Zdzisław Beksiński

I choose to write about this painter not only because he is the one of my favourite but also because I think that his art has undeniably some influence on the world. First thing is that his art is totally different from other (at least polish) artists those times. He shows us the dark , surrealistic vision of world which is so maticulous and captivating that seems real to me.

Zdzisław Beksiński was born 1929 in Sanok, Poland. He achieved an architecture degree in Kraków (Cracovia) but his biggest passion was painting , sculpture and graphic. His live was very dramatic. His wife died after some serious disease and shortly after that his son commited suicide. Beksiński himself was murdered (by the 17-years old burgler) in his apartment in 2005.
All those things have some impact  on his art but the artist never confirmed that.  He himself often found his paintings amusing and thought of them as hopeful rather than apocalyptic. His inspiration for his art is supposed to have mostly come from music.

The polish painter and the mexican director

During my research abot Beksiński I found out that one of the most  famous mexican director Guillermo del Toro admitted that the art of Beksiński inspired him to create some of his creatures.  Del Toro is a director of such films like 
Pan's Labirynth
Hellboy
Don't be afraid of Dark
The Hobbit trilogy ( in assosiation with Peter Jackson)
Mama
In all those films I can see the part of Beksiński's terrifing world.

Pan's Labirynth

Z.Beksińki - Cathedral (my favourite painting of the artist which in my opinion in amazing way shows the spirit of gothic architecture)

Mama-G.d.Torro

Pan's Labirynth

Hellboy(G.d.Torro)

G.d.Torro (film)

Pan's Labirynth (G.d.Torro)

Z.Beksiński - Pełzająca Śmierć

Don't be afraid of Dark (G.d.Torro)

Yves Saint Laurent

Yves Saint Laurent photographed by Jeanloup Sieff (
for the brand’s first male fragrance, Pour Homme. Ironically, the provocative ad did not cause much of a stir initially, as the photo was hardly published   http://www.vogue.com/slideshow/3765489/fall-fashion-prints-shoes-patterns-personality)

Last weekend I saw the biograpahy film about Yves Saint Laurent who was a french fashion designer born 1936 in Oran and died 2008 in Paris. He started his carea in the  Dior's Fashion House in which after the death of Christian Dior become the headmaster of the fashion design. More information about biography of Laurent:  http://www.vogue.com/slideshow/3765489/fall-fashion-prints-shoes-patterns-personality/
 What intrests me the most in the film is the way as I could get to know the designing way of Laurent.  His life was hard and complicated because he had to struggle with psychical and personal problems( some of them connected with his sexuality) but all this time he never resign from searching and designig new ideas.

 He was bringing art and music into his designs. There were homages to his art buddies, Andy Warhol, Picasso, Jean Cocteau and Marcel Proust whose works were reinterpreted in the form of elegant dresses and jackets. Op-art, pop-art and even the French impressionists became beautifully embroidered, wearable works of art worn by the world's fashion plates from the late Jackie Kennedy to muse Catherine Deneuve, Jane Fonda to Paloma Picasso.

Monndrian

 Once of the most recognizable collection designed by Yves was the one inspired by Moundrian's paintings. He made a simple dress with straight black lines and composition of basic colours such as red, yellow and blue. It become one of his most famous proyects, copied in all over the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The African influences

In 1967 Saint Laurent presented collection of "african" dresses made with the wooden corals, shells and rafii. This way he show us an example of fusion the elegant french haute couture with primitivness inspired by egzotic sourcess.












However , Yves Saint Laurent collections were not only be inspired but also were and still are inspiring. We still wear clothes (not even realize that) designed by him or have some connotations with his ideas.
Personally , during a film I found Saint Laurent a very modest and shy men with great genious. Which we can also noticed after his speech upon his retiremnt in 2002 :

"I participated in the transformation of my era. I did it with clothes, which is surely less important than music, architecture, painting ... but whatever it's worth I did it," 

The First Lady Of Song

One of my favourite jazz singers is Ella Fitzgerald by many called The First Lady Of Song.She was born on 25th April 1917 in Newport News and died on 15 th June 1996 in Beverly Hills. Ella Fitzgerald became famous shortly after her first performence ( when she was only 17!).She entered the famous amateur show competition at the Apollo Theater, which led to her being hired as a singer for Chick Webb's orchestra. She soon became a popular attraction at the Savoy, and  recorded her first song, "Love and Kisses," with Webb in June 1935.

Scat-singing

For me the voice of Ella Fitzgerald have something electrizing and captivating. She had got a impressive improvazing abilitis especially in her scat- singing which is singing melody and rhytms using voice as an instrument). By many people Ella Fitzgerald is thought to be one of the greates scat singers in history.

Herman Leonard and his jazz photographs 

Ella Fitzgerald with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Richard Rogers, Downbeat, New York 1948 (ELF03)

Once of the most famous jazz photographer made a photo of Ella during her performence at her birthday party at New York's Down Beat. What's interesting for me in this photo that Herman Leonard manage to show me the thrill of those times and ... looking at the expression of  Duke Ellington's face amazing talent of the singer.

http://www.jazzwax.com/2009/10/photostoryxx-herman-leonard.html

interview with Herman about jazz photography

 

Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley portrait with his characteristic cheeky,enticing smile

Elvis Presley was an american singer and actor born in Tupelo in 1935 and died in his house in Memphis in 1977. He was called the King of the Rock& Roll or just King. Well , As every person writing about Elvis I can't resist to write : Elvis Presley was a person who changed a lot in a pop culture. He was not only the very charyzmatic singer but also by many he is thought to be the symbol of sex. His provocative and scandalize hip-shaking moves made him popular and caught attention of young generation. I keep wondering what new I can write about person who have fan clubs in all over the world? Whose name knows every third person in the world . . . 
 

 

The King & Andy Warhol

The person of Elvis inspired many artists including Andy Warhol who in the early 1960s  produced several life-sized portraits of him,  By 1963, when this painting was made, Elvis was being overshadowed by a new generation of performers, and his career was on the decline.
In Double Elvis, Warhol created a strobe effect by overlapping two images of the singer. The silver background conveys a sense of glamour, while also serving a practical purpose—the opacity of the spray paint allowed Warhol to easily mask and silkscreen multiple images on top of each other. . The artist’s interest in film might explain why he created Elvis in double—the singer/actor appears to be moving back and forth, as if in a film strip.
 

Nat Finkelstein. Andy, Bob Dylan, and Elvis. 1965

Double Elvis

Andy Warhol
(American, 1928–1987)

Summarizing

In 1977 the career of the singer was felling into collapse. He had a significant overweight and according to mean onces  "  has become a caricature of himself"

 After his death many legends  appeared. Once of them said that he is still alive but don't reviel himself to the public. Which tread was used in the film Mysterious Train.(Jimmy Jarmusch).

STAR WARS

  STAR WARS is series of science fantasy films directed by George Lucas (American director, screenwriter and producer born in1944, California) The core of Star Wars is six full-length movies. telling the story about the fight between The Dark Side of the force and main characters. The action take place in the galaxy far, far away ...  More info about plot ----> here . The movies in order of appearence:

part I :The Phantom Menace ( 1999) part II:Attack of the Clones (2002) part III:Revenge of the Sith ( 2005) part IV: New Hope (1977) part V: – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) part VI– The Return of the Jedi (1983)

Brothers Hildenbrandt

The once of most important and recognizable graphic of Star Wars is the first poster which caught attention of people and had a influence in a such rapid popularity of film.

Amazingly, one of the most famous movie posters of all time came about in a matter of hours.

"Incredibly, the first version of it—without the droids—was created in a feverish, nonstop effort over just 36 hours!" said Hildebrandt. "George Lucas asked for the droids to be added and for our signatures to be larger. We made those changes at the ad agency, and off it went!"

The New Hope poster - Brothers Hildebrandt 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  A long time ago in a galxy far, far away . . . - opening crawl

  What's intresting for me its that during my research the begining titles which I thought to be once of the most recognizable things from "Star Wars design" according to the director were not so unique. Lucas has stated that the opening crawl was inspired by the opening crawls used at the beginning of each episode of the original Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers film serials, which were the inspiration for Lucas to write much of the Star Wars saga.
   In a 2005 interview, George Lucas described how the final phrasing of the text for A New Hope came about. "The crawl is such a hard thing because you have to be careful that you're not using too many words that people don't understand. It's like a poem. I showed the very first crawl to a bunch of friends of mine in the 1970s. It went on for six paragraphs with four sentences each. Brian De Palma was there...". De Palma helped to edit the text into the form used in the film

Flash Gordon - opening crawl

Star Wars -opening crawl

Grow Marketing’s San Francisco Office-Cassie Hughes and Gabrey Mean

 (the element of interior inspired by opening crawl of SW written in binar system.)

 

In my opinion the Star Wars during all those years were inspiration in variety kind of arts : graphic , movies, interiors design , fashion ... The movies are important in pop culture and for me are pleasent to watch :)

 

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer, songwriter, poet,writer and compositor born in 1941 in Duluth.
He played very many kind of music, often totally different like:

	Rock, folk, blues, country, gospel

He is an author of songs which are thought to were the anthems of the generation : Blowin' in the Wind, Like a Rolling Stone and protest songs: The Times They Are a-Changin', Hurricane.
 The most amazing things for me about Bob Dylan's songs is that they were performed by the most important rock musicians and are still performed.

Bob Dylan poster
 
The once of the most important posters of Bob Dylan is made by Milton Glaser.

Depicting Dylan with kaleidoscopic hair, the Glaser poster has been described as “psychedelic”  and for me it recalls other graphics from 60s 70s .

Milton Glaser, who had studied in Italy on a Fulbright scholarship in the early 1950s, is a formalist with a broad awareness of artists and art movements, and he took his inspiration for the Dylan profile from a 1957 self-portrait by Marcel Duchamp. Though Glaser used a similar composition, the transformation of Dylan’s curly mane into a tangled rainbow was his own invention.

Since then it was copied and used by many other artists.

M.Duchamp-selfportrait

Milton Glaser-Dylan

Czesław Niemen

Czesław Niemen was a polish singer, song writer and rock balladeer born in 1939 in Stare Wasiliszki. He was making music from 1967 to 2001. He played  rock & roll, psychedelic rock, progressive rock, folk music,avant-garde jazz, electronic music. He sang maily in polish language.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjLZwpmufw 

 Czesław Niemen was an artist whose music was charizmatic for polish people mainly because of his uncommon voice which made his performens realy dramatic and moving. Moreover , one of the Niemen's song Dziwny jest ten świat/ Strange is this World refers to political  situation in the world and become an  unofficial anthem for protesting polish youth.

In my opinion it has udeniably something in common with the song All you Need is Love - The Beatels which also encourage people to  make love not war and become an anthem of hippies.

charakteristic design

Graphics from the fronts of the albums have a characteristic for the 60s bright colours and fluid, variable font.On one of the albums we can even see an artist dressed in hippie jacket , red trousers and with hairstyle similar to singers from the band The Beatels.

English translation of the song Dziwny jest ten świat

  http://lyrics-translations.com/song/show/366792/czesaw-niemen/lyrics-and-translation-dziwny-jest-ten-wiat/