bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945)
Authors: Pecora Vincent P.
Published: September 2018

Adolf Hitler was the dominant political figure in German Nazism. He became chairman of the Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei [the National Socialist German Workers’ Party or NSDAP] in 1921, and was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933. Between 1934 and 1945 he ruled as führer [leader, but in this case absolute dictator]. Hitler guided Germany to rearmament in the 1930s, and triggered World War II with the invasion of Poland in 1939. He inspired a quest for German racial purity, and elevated anti-Semitism and xenophobia from a cultural prejudice to an all-encompassing state policy of genocide.
Hulme, Thomas Ernest (1883–1917)
Authors: Hadjiyannis Christos
Published: September 2018

T. E. Hulme was an influential early 20th-century English poet and thinker. Credited by T. S. Eliot in 1924 as the "forerunner of a new attitude of mind," Hulme is understood to have played a formative part in the development of the Imagist doctrine. He was an early advocate of the philosophy of Henri Bergson (1859–1941), a spokesperson for modern abstract art, and was responsible for introducing into the British intellectual scene the ideas of Gustave Kahn (1859–1936), Pierre Lasserre (1867–1930), Wilhelm Worringer (1881–1965), and Georges Sorel (1847–1922), among others. Hulme was very critical of liberal humanism and described himself as a "Tory by disposition." When World War I broke out in 1914, Hulme firmly supported Britain’s decision to declare war against Germany.
Nishida, Kitarō [西田 幾多郎] (1870–1945)
Authors: Van Overmeire Ben
Published: September 2018

Arguably the most important Japanese philosopher of the 20th century, Nishida Kitarō was one of the first thinkers to engage deeply with the sudden massive influx of foreign ideas that characterized the Meiji era, while still maintaining a distinctive place for Asian ideas. Beginning with An Inquiry into the Good (1911), Nishida’s lifelong philosophical goal was to identify the foundation of consciousness and existence, something he later called the "place" [basho]. Successive works identified this foundation as "pure experience," "absolute will," and, finally, "absolute nothingness." All these "places" have in common the fact that they lack any distinctive features: being fields (another term Nishida employs) that contain oppositions (such as subject-object, me-you, knowledge-feeling), they cannot of themselves have distinguishable qualities.

Although Nishida’s actions during the Pacific War have been the subject of significant debate, his influence is uncontested: the so-called Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy comprises those building on or reacting to his ideas. Because he valued both Christian and Buddhist traditions, Nishida has also been a pivotal figure in East-West religious dialog.
Organicism
Authors: Pokhrel Arun Kumar
Published: September 2018

Modernist organicism emphasizes the interrelationship between the natural world and society, and links sociocultural changes with nature, biology, and aesthetic forms in imagining the human being—and society—as organic structures. Modernist organicist aesthetics follow the modernist organic principle of art, "form follows function." Crucial to the theory of modernist organicism are theories of biology and life such as those of Charles Darwin, Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Herbert Spencer. Importantly, modernist organicist aesthetics emphasizes a sense of place or region and ecological consciousness (e.g., the Garden City movement in Britain in the early 20th century and the cultural or anthropological turn of the 1930s). A list of modernist organicists might include D. H. Lawrence, and later Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Patrick Geddes, Ebenezer Howard, Richard Llewellyn, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Lewis Mumford, Willa Cather, Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and Louis Zukofsky, to name only a few. These artists viewed nature as a living force and showed the interdependence between nature and human beings.
Washington, Booker T. (1856–1915)
Authors: Pecora Vincent P.
Published: September 2018

Born into slavery in Virginia, Booker Taliaferro Washington was the most prominent spokesman for Black Americans at the end of the 19th century. After attending the Hampton Institute, a school established to educate freedmen (freed black slaves), he was named head of the new Tuskegee Institute, a teachers college in Alabama that, like Hampton, would become one of the historically black universities in the United States. At Tuskegee, Washington earned the respect of a wide array of white businessmen, industrialists, and philanthropists, from George Eastman and Julius Rosenwald (a president of Sears, Roebuck and Company) to Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

Washington’s most important intellectual contribution may have been his Atlanta Address of 1895. In the midst of Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation, which arose in response to failed reconstruction policies in the American South, Washington argued that the direct legal confrontation of the segregation of white and black Americans was premature. Instead, in his address at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895 (also known as the "Atlanta Compromise"), Washington argued for a slow, ameliorative approach to racial equality and desegregation, one that emphasized technical and industrial schooling, self-help, and success in business in order to demonstrate a black citizenry capable of responsible and reliable political participation, one deserving of full civil rights, including equal access to electoral polls (that is, free of poll taxes and literary tests) and equal representation before the law.
Anani, Nabil (1943--)
Authors: Sherwell Tina
Published: September 2018

Nabil Anani was born in Latrun, Palestine in 1943. He graduated in Fine Arts from Alexandria University, Egypt in 1969, going on to work as a teacher trainer at the UN training college in Ramallah while maintaining his own full-time studio practice. Anani was awarded the first Palestinian National Prize for Visual Art in 1997 by former President Yasser Arafat, and was appointed head of the League of Palestinian Artists in 1998. In 2006 he was awarded the King Abdullah of Jordan Award in Fine Arts for the Middle East. He participated in numerous exhibitions of Palestinian Art around the world, and was a founding member of Al Wasiti Art Center in Jerusalem and The International Academy of Art, Palestine in Ramallah.
Aoki, Shigeru [青木繁] (1882–1911)
Authors: Rosenbaum Roman
Published: September 2018

Aoki Shigeru, a Japanese painter active during the Meiji period, is noted for his combination of Western-style (yōga) painting with indigenous Japanese subjects (Nihonga). He is best known for his work Umi no kou (海の幸, Fortune of the Sea, 1904) and has achieved legendary status due to his early death at the age of 28.

Aoki’s legacy includes his versatility in synthesizing a variety of Western art trends, including Art Nouveau, Realism, and Symbolism, and combining them with themes from traditional Japanese classical literary works such as the Kojiki (古事記, Record of Ancient Matters, c.711–712) and the Nihon Shoki (日本書紀, The Chronicles of Japan, c.720). In his professional career he had a reputation for leaving paintings incomplete.

After leaving home for Tokyo to pursue his career, Aoki completed his education in 1904 and relocated to rural Japan, where his son was born. After his wife returned home to look after her ill father, their relationship came to an end and Aoki never saw his family again. In October 1908 he abandoned his homestead and went on an extended painting trip, creating numerous works. His peripatetic lifestyle eventually led him to Kyushu in the last years of his life. In 1911, he died of tuberculosis at a hospital in Fukuoka.
Anderson, Sherwood
Authors: Ritzenberg Aaron
Published: September 2018

Sherwood Anderson was an American short-story writer, novelist, and memoirist. He was a businessman turned author whose writing often rendered the lives of ordinary people in the Midwest during the emergence of modern culture. His most enduring literary legacy is Winesburg, Ohio (1919), a work that explores the inner lives of an array of characters in a small, seemingly isolated town. His experimental prose style, along with his lyrical treatment of everyday lives, influenced a number of American modernists, including Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane, Katherine Anne Porter, Henry Miller, William Faulkner, and Nathanael West.

Sherwood Anderson was born in 1876 in Camden, Ohio, the third of seven children. His experiences growing up in the small town of Clyde, Ohio — where he helped support the family by taking on a wide variety of jobs — served as the basis for much of his later writing. He served in the military, worked as an advertising man, and managed an Ohio paint factory. In 1912, he suffered what most historians think was a nervous breakdown in response to business and marital stresses. Anderson would later write about this time as a moment when he repudiated the life of materialism in order to fully invest himself in artistic pursuits.
Ayad, Ragheb (1892–1982)
Authors: Radwan Nadia
Published: September 2018

Born into a Coptic family in one of Cairo’s popular neighborhoods, Ragheb Ayad is a prominent member of a generation of Egyptian artists known as al-ruwwād or "pioneers." He was among the first students of the newly established School of Fine Arts in Cairo in 1908. Throughout his career, he depicted scenes of rural and popular daily life in his oil paintings and drawings. He created an original folklorist style inspired by the arts of Ancient Egypt and traditional practices. Graduating in 1911, he taught at the Great Coptic School before receiving a scholarship in 1925 to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Ayad was the initiator of the idea of creating an Egyptian Academy in Rome. In 1930, he was appointed head of the Decoration Department at the School of Applied Arts in Giza. He was named director of the Free Section of the School of Fine Arts in Cairo in 1937. Between 1950 and 1955, he was the director of the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art.
Beier, Georgina (1938--)
Authors: Greven Katharina
Published: September 2018

Georgina Beier, née Betts, was born in London in 1938. At age sixteen she enrolled in the Kingston Art School; however, she dropped out after fifteen months, later claiming that the academic atmosphere risked impeding her personal development. In 1959 she moved to Nigeria where she met and married Ulli Beier, becoming his second wife.

In 1964 Beier began conducting annual art workshops at the Mbari Mbayo Club (Osogbo, Nigeria), where she encouraged her students to be authentic, rather than becoming preoccupied with academic constraints. Famous artists who emerged from these workshops, such as Twins Seven Seven, Muraina Oyelami, and Rufus Ogundele, were, like Beier, never academically trained. Beier also participated in the theater company of the Mbari Mbayo Club, painting backdrops and designing costumes for plays and religious ceremonies.

Beier relocated with her husband to several different countries, including Papua New Guinea, Australia, India, and Germany. Despite these relocations, she continued to run workshops with local artists and maintained her own artistic practice, producing many works including paintings, sculptures, textiles, lithographs, furniture design, murals, mosaics, and illustrations for publications by Ulli Beier.
Calligraphy in Japan
Authors: Nakamura Fuyubi
Published: September 2018

Known as sho [書], shodō [書道], shosha [書写] or shūji [習字] in the twenty-first century, calligraphy holds an ambiguous and complicated status as art in modern Japan. Practiced by high society members and Buddhist monks in earlier periods, calligraphy gained public popularity during the Edo period (1603–1868). However, calligraphy’s status became contentious during the Meiji period (1868–1912), with the introduction of European concepts of art and the emphasis on calligraphy’s practical skill in the newly structured education system. New expressions in calligraphy emerged, not only because of European influences, but also due to the discovery of Chinese calligraphy classics from the Six Dynasties period (third to sixth centuries). During the Taisho period (1912–1926), calligraphers participated in international and public exhibitions, which led to the establishment of an independent role for professional calligraphers in the Shōwa period (1926–1989). The passing of a style from master to disciple became common among calligraphers. While calligraphy remains a social practice as much as an artistic one, geijutsu-sho, or artistic calligraphy, was established in the early 20th century.
Darat al Funun [A Home for the Arts]
Authors: Rogers Sarah Ann
Published: September 2018

Founded in 1993 by husband and wife Khalid and Suha Shoman, Darat al Funun represents a pioneering initiative for the visual arts in Jordan’s private sector. Neither a museum nor a gallery, Darat al Funun was founded as a home for the arts, dedicated to research, creativity, and cultural exchange. Housed in five historic buildings in the heart of the capital, Amman, Darat al Funun hosts artists’ residencies, workshops, exhibition galleries, lecture halls, a library, café, dissertation fellowship program, and extensive programming. Equally dedicated to research and practice, and artists and their audiences, Darat al Funun serves as a meeting point for artists from the region and abroad, while providing an infrastructure for a complete trajectory of artistic creation. Darat al Funun is also home to the Khalid Shoman Collection. Established in the early 1980s, the collection represents one of the earliest of its kind dedicated exclusively to contemporary art of the Arab world and its diasporas.
Djaya, Agus (1913–1994)
Authors: Cox Matt
Published: September 2018

Agus Djaya was an Indonesian artist who rejected academic formalism in favor of a more expressive mode of painting, achieved by the flattening of space and the juxtaposition of bold colors. While he received some training in the form of a drawing course under the Dutch educator P. Pijpers, he was a predominantly self-taught artist. His work, with some exceptions, is not overtly political. Rather, Djaya tended to paint subject matter that referred to Javanese mythology or popular festivities in a style that can be described as a synthesis of fauvism and expressionism. He launched himself on the Indonesian art scene working alongside Sudjojono to establish PERSAGI (Persatuan Ahli-Ahli Gambar Indonesia, or The Indonesian Painters’ Association) in 1938. Following his success in a number of exhibitions, including a show at the Kloff bookstore, Jakarta (1940) and the BataviascheKunstkring (Batavian Art-circle) touring show (1941), he quit his job as a schoolteacher and devoted himself to being a full-time artist. From 1942–1945, during the period of Japanese occupation, he once again worked alongside his friend Sudjojono, this time at the Keimin Bunka Shidosho (People’s Educational and Cultural Guidance Institute) to teach courses and organize exhibitions. During this time he also received military training and later became a major in the Indonesian army. The complex relationship between Indonesian painters who sought not only national independence, but also international recognition as artists, is demonstrated by Djaya’s inclusion in the IndicheSchildersWeebar (Painters for a Fortified Indonesia) exhibition in Jakarta in 1940, and a joint exhibition with his brother, Otto, at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1947.
Eggeling, Viking (1880–1925)
Authors: Leskosky Richard J.
Published: September 2018

Viking Eggeling, born in Lund, Sweden as the son of a music store owner, was an avant-garde painter who worked in Italy, France, Switzerland, and Germany. He became a pioneer of abstract cinema with Diagonalsymphonien [Diagonal Symphony] (1924). Early in his career in Paris he was influenced by Cubism. In Zurich in 1918, he associated with the founders of Dadaism and was subsequently active in Constructivist groups. Eggeling sought to create a universal language of abstract symbols as well as a visual equivalent to music. His friend Hans (Jean) Arp, considered to be the pioneer of the Dadaist movement in Zurich, introduced him to Hans Richter, who had similar interests. The two soon collaborated in painting scrolls with sequential abstract images, which eventually led both to film and animation. Assisted by Bauhaus student Erna Niemeyer, Eggeling created Diagonal Symphony, a silent black-and-white short in which abstract shapes, constantly growing and disappearing along diagonal axes, created visual rhythms. Eggeling premiered his film to friends in 1924. Its first public screening was in Berlin at the 3 May 1925 First International Avant-Garde Film Exhibition titled "Der absolute Film", featuring the works of several other avant-garde filmmakers. The film received critical praise for its exploration of time and the non-literary potential of film. Too ill to attend the public screening, Eggeling died sixteen days later. Diagonal Symphony is his only surviving film.
Hammad, Mahmoud (1923–1988)
Authors: Lenssen Anneka
Published: September 2018

Mahmoud Hammad, born in Jarabulus, Syria, was among the first Arab artists to adopt the letterforms of the Arabic language as a basis for modern compositions. His experiments predate the pan-regional 1970s florescence of horoufiyah (visual manipulations of the Arabic letter in fine art) by more than a decade, and his early Arabic writing paintings, first exhibited in Damascus, Beirut, São Paulo, and Venice in the early 1960s, deconstructed the letters to produce semi-geometric abstract compositions. Hammad would continue to explore Arabic writing for the duration of his career, though his later paintings struck a more studied balance between formal and communicative properties. Coming of age during the Syrian struggle for independence, Hammad played the roles of both artist and organizer in the Syrian art world. He started exhibiting in Damascus as early as 1939, and was a member of Studio Veronese, the country’s first fine arts club. In 1952 he was granted a study fellowship to the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, which he completed in 1956. After returning to Syria, Hammad taught in rural schools, later joining the faculty of the new College of Fine Arts in Damascus in 1960. He became dean of the college in the 1970s, a role he retained until 1981. He died in Damascus, Syria.
Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music, The
Authors: Jakelski Lisa
Published: September 2018

The Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music (WarszawskaJesień) is one of Europe’s longest-running festivals of contemporary music. With two exceptions (1957 and 1982), the festival has taken place annually since 1956. During the Cold War, the festival was an important venue for transnational connections. In the early 2010s, it remains one of Poland’s liveliest cultural institutions. Tadeusz Baird and Kazimierz Serocki are often credited as the Warsaw Autumn’s initiators, yet the idea for the festival came from the Polish Composers’ Union as a whole. The timing of their proposal reflected the expanded possibilities of the mid-1950s, when hard-line Stalinist policies were giving way to the limited political and cultural reforms of the Thaw. Many composers hungered for the restoration of foreign contacts that had been severed by Poland’s occupation during World War II and its subsequent absorption into the Soviet bloc. They hoped that an international festival of contemporary composition would counteract years of isolation and bring Polish musical life into the modern age. Crucial early support came from higher-ups in Poland’s communist party, who approved of the Warsaw Autumn festival based on its potential as an arena for Cold War competition. And the festival delivered: the first institution of its kind, it featured an eclectic line-up of compositions and performers from both the American and Soviet zones of influence.
Jaafari, Nazem al- (1918--)
Authors: Lenssen Anneka
Published: September 2018

Al-Jaafari was one of the first painters in Syria to achieve recognition as a professional artist. Pursuing a semi-romantic realist style for the whole of his career, he specializes in portraits and drawings of old Damascus. Born in Damascus, Syria, Al-Jaafari’s formative years were characterized by a restless search to attain advanced training. He went to Turkey in 1941, but returned to Syria, where he attended some of the earliest civic art clubs in Damascus including Studio Veronese (est. 1941) and the Association of Arab Arts (est. 1943). In 1944 he traveled to Cairo to study oil painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, completing a degree in 1947. He would travel again in 1953–54, moving to Brazil for a year before returning to Syria permanently. In Damascus, he taught at secondary schools, briefly taught at the College of Fine Arts before resigning, completed a vast body of landscape and portrait paintings, and executed a number of commissions for postage stamps and medals. Because of his career-long commitment to realistic painting, Jaafari’s work frequently featured in Syrian exhibitions sent to the countries of the Soviet bloc.
Kamel, Youssef (1891–1971)
Authors: Radwan Nadia
Published: September 2018

Youssef Kamel is an Egyptian painter renowned for his impressionist landscapes of the countryside and views of medieval Cairo. As one of the leading figures of the "Pioneers" group (al-ruwwād), he was among the first students to attend the newly founded School of Fine Arts in Cairo (1908), along with artists Mahmoud Moukhtar and Ragheb Ayad. He studied under the Italian painter Paolo Forcella and graduated in 1911. After working as a drawing teacher in secondary schools, Kamel received a scholarship in 1925 to pursue his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. On his return to Egypt, in 1929, he was appointed professor at the School of Fine Arts in Cairo, eventually becoming the head of its Painting Department in 1937. Kamel also worked as a curator and directed the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art from 1948 to 1949. He was named director of the School of Fine Arts in Cairo between 1950 and 1953.
Kim, Pok-chin [김복진, 金復鎭] (1901–1940)
Authors: Lee Jungsil Jenny
Published: September 2018

Kim Pok-chin was a pioneering modern sculptor, art critic, and socialist agitator who led a progressive literary movement in colonial Korea. Studies of Kim and his art date mostly after 1988, due to national security laws in South Korea that had prevented previous research. Kim learned sculpture at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts from 1920 to 1925. He left behind a wide range of work on both traditional and modern subjects. In his nudes, monumental statues of great Korean historical figures, and Buddhist subjects, Kim’s style was representational, realistic, and Western. These works were done in various media such as clay, bronze, gold, and wood. In addition to sculpture, Kim was interested in literature and modern theater. In 1923, he established the play performance group T’owŏlhoe in Japan. Moreover, Kim was a leader of the Socialist writers’ group, KAPF (Korea Artista Proleta Federatio, 1925–1935). He fought for Korea’s liberation from Japan and then for the people’s revolution against Feudalism. From 1928 to 1933, Kim was imprisoned for his secret work with the Communist Party and then died suddenly. During the Korean War, most of his art was lost with only a few Maitreya statues remaining in local Buddhist monasteries.
Kim, Soo-yong (September 23, 1929--)
Authors: Cook Ryan
Published: September 2018

Trained as a filmmaker during the Korean War, Kim Soo-yong debuted in 1958 amid the South Korean film industry’s postwar recovery and became one of the representative Korean filmmakers of the 1960s. Under the film policies of Park Chung-hee’s military government, the film industry suffered from censorship and quotas. The literary film emerged as an important genre signifying quality and artistic merit. Kim’s 1965 Kaenmaŭl [Seaside Village] marked him as a leading director of literary adaptations, which account for half his prolific oeuvre of over one hundred films. Kim also worked in popular genres, including comedy, melodrama, youth films, and anti-communist films, but is remembered for films that display realist, non-paternalistic perspectives on postwar society. His 1963 film Hyŏlmaek [Kinship] depicted the generational divide among North Korean defectors living in poverty on the fringes of society in the industrializing South. Seaside Village provocatively took on the sexuality of widows in a fishing community and contained lesbian innuendos. Several of his films also demonstrated a formal modernism. The 1967 An’gae [Mist], regarded as one of his highest achievements, employs experimental montage and a temporally complex flashback structure. In later years, he has been credited with helping ease film censorship in South Korea.
Levy, Julien (1906–1981)
Authors: Stein Nathaniel
Published: September 2018

New York-based art collector and gallerist, Julien Levy, was an important advocate for photography as a modern art medium in the 1930s and 1940s, and was instrumental in introducing the surrealist movement to New York. Levy studied at Harvard University in the mid-1920s, where his teachers included future tastemakers A. Everett ("Chick") Austin and Alfred Barr Jr. In 1926, Levy befriended Marcel Duchamp, with whom he traveled to Europe, circulating among the artistic avant-garde. Relationships with Man Ray, Mina Loy, Berenice Abbott, and others encouraged Levy’s activities as a collector and shaped the experimental spirit of the Julien Levy Gallery, which opened in New York in 1931. In the decade prior to the founding of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, Levy mounted exhibitions addressing the history of the medium and arguing for the avant-garde photography of the moment, much as Alfred Stieglitz had done in the 1910s and 1920s. More broadly, the Levy Gallery was an important—in some cases first—American venue for Surrealist-influenced artists including Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Max Ernst, Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dalí, Arshile Gorky, Clarence John Laughlin, Pavel Tchelitchew, and Joseph Cornell.
Mun Sen, Yong (1896–1962)
Authors: Chuah Kelvin
Published: September 2018

Yong Mun Sen was a prominent watercolorist born in Sarawak, Malaysia, and is acknowledged as one of the country’s pioneer artists. His watercolor landscapes and depictions of life present visual histories of British Malaya, and his subject matter ranges from tropical scenes to farming imagery to local architecture. A self-taught painter, Mun Sen’s residence in Singapore and subsequent permanent relocation to Penang created his fruitful artistic relationships with artists based in both locations. Notably, Mun Sen went for plein air trips with his peers in Singapore and Penang, which was an art activity not previously practiced by local artists in the area but most suitable for watercolor productions. Artists active in Penang before World War II also held gatherings at Mun Sen’s photographic studio. This group of artists formed the Penang Chinese Art Club (1935) with Mun Sen serving as vice-president. Mun Sen also contributed to the formation of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore (1938). As Tan Chong Guan has written, local and foreign patrons collected Mun Sen’s watercolors, including Malcolm MacDonald, the governor-general of British Malaya. Mun Sen was nationally recognized with exhibitions at The National Art Gallery of Malaysia and also the State Museum of Penang, both in 1972.
Ngatane, Ephraim Mojalefa (1938–1971)
Authors: Stephenson Jessica
Published: September 2018

Born in 1938 in Maseru, Lesotho (then Basutoland), South Africa, Ephraim Ngatane was a painter and jazz musician affiliated with the first generation of modern black South African artists of the 1950s and 1960s. He received art instruction in watercolor and oil painting at the Polly Street and Jubilee Centers where he later served as a teacher and developed major talents including Dumile Feni, Louis Maqhubela, and Ben Macala. Ngatane was a member of the "Weekend Painters" group initiated by Durant Shilahli. Through this affiliation he rejected the romantic expressionism advocated at Polly Street for a documentary realist approach. His later work incorporated religious symbolism and also moved into abstraction. Ngatane’s work served as a model for a generation of artists depicting African township life. In 1963 Ngatane held his first solo show at the Adler Fielding Gallery, Johannesburg. He continued to exhibit work actively until his untimely death at the age of 33. His work is featured in numerous public and private collections, including the Pretoria Art Museum, the William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley, and the University of the Witwatersrand Collection, Johannesburg. Ngatane died in 1971 in Soweto, Johannesburg, Gauteng (then Transvaal), South Africa.
Rebay (von Ehrenwiesen), Hilla (1890–1967)
Authors: Saletnik Jeffrey
Published: September 2018

Before immigrating to the United States, Hilla Rebay, a painter, was part of an artistic circle in Germany that included Jean Arp and Rudolf Bauer among others. In 1927, she began advising Solomon R. Guggenheim in building his collection of non-objective art. Rebay served as director and curator of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting from 1939 to 1952, and the museum was subsequently renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Among her achievements was selecting Frank Lloyd Wright to design a "temple" in which to house the collection, now one of the most iconic buildings in the world. She bequeathed a portion of her art collection, which included works by Piet Mondrian and other European modernists, to the museum upon her death.
Schmidt-Rottluff, Karl (1884–1976)
Authors: Soika Aya
Published: September 2018

The German expressionist painter, printmaker, and sculptor Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was born into a miller’s family in Rottluff near Chemnitz in Saxony. Like Emil Nolde and other artists at the time, he added his birthplace to his common surname "Schmidt." During his short career as a student of architecture at the Technical University in Dresden, he co-founded DieBrücke together with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, and Fritz Bleyl in June 1905. Although he discontinued his studies, he remained part of the group until its official dissolution in Berlin on 27 May 1913. Unlike his former Brücke colleagues, Schmidt-Rottluff did not undergo major stylistic changes during the 1920s when many artists returned to a greater naturalism. During the National Socialist dictatorship, his art was officially defamed and included in the propaganda exhibition Degenerate Art (1937). He continued to be active as an artist until his death, also remaining a resident of Berlin, where he had moved in 1911. In 1947, he accepted a professorship at the newly founded Academy of Fine Arts in the western part of Berlin; he also played a prominent role in the foundation of the Brücke-Museum Berlin, which opened in 1967. Together with the Karl and Emy Schmidt-Rottluff Foundation, the Brücke-Museum looks after his estate, which includes paintings, works on paper, and sculpture, as well as an impressive collection of the artist’s woodblocks.
Stella, Joseph (1877–1946)
Authors: Thomas Adam M.
Published: September 2018

An Italian-born American artist, Joseph Stella contributed to the adaptation of Futurism in the United States and to the advent of Precisionism. After immigrating to New York City from Naples in 1896, he studied at the Art Students League and the New York Art School. From 1909 until 1912, Stella resided in Europe, where his exposure to avant-garde movements, especially Italian Futurism, influenced his subsequent depictions of machine-age America. Between 1913 and the early 1920s, Stella developed a personal painting style characterized by abstracted forms, vivid colors, and vertiginous perspectives of urban and industrial architecture. In several compositions featuring the Brooklyn Bridge in particular, Stella evokes the dynamism and immensity of New York with kaleidoscopic divisions of space and crisscrossing webs of lines. Botanical and figural subjects, often with religious associations and references to the tradition of Italian art, dominate work from the second half of his career. Perpetually restless, Stella visited Italy repeatedly in the 1920s and lived in Paris in the early 1930s. Several years of illness preceded his heart failure in 1946.
Takeuchi, Seihô [竹内栖鳳] (1864–1942)
Authors: Loh Kazuhara Eve
Published: September 2018

Takeuchi Seihô was one of the most prolific Nihonga painters in Kyoto’s painting circles. Originally trained under Kôno Bairei [幸野楳嶺] (1884–1895) from the Maruyama-Shijiô school [円山四条], Seihô excelled in depicting nature scenes, and advocated sketching from life or shasei [写生] as the foundation for artistic practice. Seihô was adept at and experimented with Western-style painting upon returning from a six-month trip to Europe in 1901. He explored a diverse range of subjects and styles including Western landscapes, poetic ink paintings, decorative figure works, and realistic animal paintings. In order to depict animals, Seihô observed animals extensively, thus capturing not only their likeness but also their psychological characteristics. Tabby Cat [班猫] (1924), which is classified as Important Cultural Property in Japan, showcases Seihô’s mastery and grasp of animal subjects. In 1937, Seihô was awarded the Order of Culture. In addition to his successful career as an artist, he was a teacher who profoundly influenced the next generation of Nihonga artists from Kyoto.
Xu Beihong [徐悲鴻] (1895–1953)
Authors: Ma William H.
Published: September 2018

Xu Beihong was a key figure in modern Chinese art who used his Western academic training to remake Chinese art in the 20th century. He began his career in Shanghai as an illustrator and commercial painter. After briefly studying in Japan, he took another opportunity to study in France in 1919 at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts under Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret (1852–1929). He was an avid defender of French academic style and an opponent of European modernism in the modernization of Chinese art; for this he was sometimes criticized for obstructing artistic progress in China. Returning to China, he served as the head of various university art departments and academies. As one of the first Chinese artists to achieve international fame, he met with many renowned cultural figures, including Rabindranath Tagore, in the interest of creating a unified Asian style of modernism. Addressing the social and political needs of modern Chinese art, his monumental works combined French academic composition and the aesthetics of Realism with traditional Chinese painting techniques and subjects. He is mostly known today for his later monochromatic paintings of horses, done with precisely controlled Chinese brushwork, yet at the same time able to convey a sense of expressive dynamic movement.
Zeid, Fahrelnissa (1901–1991)
Authors: Touati Samia
Published: September 2018

Fahrelnissa Zeid was a prominent and influential figure in Turkish modern art. An accomplished early modernist Turkish painter, she was as influential for modern Jordanian art. Zeid addressed a variety of themes and subjects in her artworks, including scenes of everyday life and portraits of family members, relatives, and friends. In her portraits, Zeid exaggerated her subjects’ features. The large rounded eyes and elongated faces she rendered are reminiscent of Byzantine iconography and Egyptian Fayum portraits. Although Zeid’s art is predominantly abstract, her style is unique and draws on Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam. One of the first women to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul in 1920, Zeid studied under the Turkish painter Namik Ismail. Considered a pioneer of modern Turkish abstract painting, Zeid joined a circle of young Turkish artists known as the D Group in 1942. In 1928, she traveled to Paris and trained in the studio of Stahlbach and Roger Bissière at the Académie Ranson. Zeid took part in a generation of artists referred to as the New Ecole de Paris, as their exhibitions in Paris led to the emergence of various art movements.
Anhalt, Istvan (1919–2012)
Authors: Elliott Robin
Published: September 2018

Istvan Anhalt was a Hungarian-born Canadian composer and one of the leading figures in avant-garde composition during the second half of the twentieth century in Canada. Nearly all of his major compositions were written after his emigration to Canada in 1949. At various times in his works he made use of dodecaphony, electronic music, and extended vocal techniques. Many of his most significant compositions are for orchestra, but he contributed to all major genres, from solo instrumental works to opera. From the mid-1970s onwards he began to use more traditional compositional techniques, from which he fashioned an original, distinctive, and evocative idiom. In addition to his work as a composer, Anhalt had an important career as a university music professor and administrator (at McGill University and then at Queen’s University in Kingston) and he was also known for his work as an insightful music theorist. About half of his two dozen or so major compositions were completed after his retirement from academia in 1984.
Boulanger, Lili (1893–1918)
Authors: Hamer Laura
Published: September 2018

Lili Boulanger was a French composer and the first woman to win the Prix de Rome in musical composition. Born into a musical family and prevented by illness from following a full musical education at the Paris Conservatoire, she mainly studied at home with her sister Nadia and Georges Caussade, although she enrolled in Paul Vidal’s composition class at the Conservatoire in 1912. In 1913, she won the Prix de Rome for her cantata Faust et Hélène. Boulanger’s text-setting and use of form are reminiscent of earlier French composers, especially Massenet and Fauré, though her musical language and innovative use of timbre are more experimental. Her late works, including Pie Jesu, moved towards polytonality. Debussy was an important musical influence on her style, as evidenced by her choice of Symbolist texts. Grief, mourning, and isolation are important themes within her work, as is her devout (though liberal) Catholicism.
Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich
Authors: Bangert Daniel
Published: September 2018

The Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich (DTÖ) [Monuments of Music in Austria] is a series of critical editions of historical music, primarily by composers born or working in Austria during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The DTÖ was an initiative of the musicologist Guido Adler who served as its founding General Editor.

In 1888, the musicologist Guido Adler petitioned the Austrian Ministry of Culture and Education for the publication of a series of editions of historical music (Monumenta Historiae Musices), a project that was to become the DTÖ. Adler became General Editor of the series at a meeting of the Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe von Denkmälern der Tonkunst in Österreich (Society for the Publication of Monuments of Music in Austria) held in 1893, and the first volume of the series appeared in 1894 (Masses by Johann Joseph Fux). Adler served as General Editor in 1893–1938; others who have held the position include Erich Schenk (1939–74) and Othmar Wessely (1974–98). Music critic Eduard Hanslick served as the first president of the DTÖ Society (1893–97) and members of the editorial board have included prominent composers such as Johannes Brahms, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss. The journal Studien zur Musikwissenschaft: Beihefte der Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich Studies in Musicology: Supplements of the DTÖ was founded in 1913.
Diagonalsymphonien [Diagonal Symphony] (1924)
Authors: Leskosky Richard J.
Published: September 2018

Diagonalsymphonien [Diagonal Symphony], a black-and-white, abstract, animated short film made in Germany by Swedish painter Viking Eggeling, assisted by Bauhaus student Erna Niemeyer, is a seminal work of avant-garde cinema. It arose from Eggeling’s experiments trying to create a universal language of abstract symbols in which he created sequential images on long painted scrolls. Though silent, the film explores the concept of visual music—the artificial creation of visual rhythms analogous to music. Eggeling made his images with paper and tin foil cut-outs affixed to black sheets of paper filmed one frame at a time. The abstract shapes, constantly growing and disappearing along diagonal axes, often suggest musical instruments such as panpipes, grand pianos, zithers, and drums. Eggeling premiered his film to friends in 1924. Its first public screening was in Berlin at the 3 May 1925 First International Avant-Garde Film Exhibition, titled Der absolute Film, along with Rene Clair’s Entr’acte (1924), Fernand Leger’s Ballet mecanique (1924), and examples of Walther Ruttmann’s Lichtspiele Opus works (1921–25) and Hans Richter’s Rhythmus films (1921–25). Eggeling’s film received critical praise for its exploration of time and the non-literary potential of film. He, however, was too ill to attend the public screening and died sixteen days later. Diagonal Symphony is his only surviving film.
Enríquez Salazar, Manuel (1926–1994)
Authors: Alonso-Minutti Ana R.
Published: September 2018

A. Mexican composer and violinist, Enríquez is regarded as one of the leading figures of the experimental music scene in Mexico during the second half of the twentieth century. His use of serial techniques, indeterminacy, and graphic notation was very influential for composers of a younger generation. Through his leadership of diverse institutions and festivals, he played an important role in promoting new music both at national and international levels.
Joachim, Otto (1910–2010)
Authors: Strachan Jeremy
Published: September 2018

Born in Düsseldorf and eventually settling in Montreal, Canada, Otto Joachim was a composer, violist, painter, and instrument builder. Joachim fled Nazi Germany in 1934 and spent fifteen years performing in Singapore and China, before immigrating to Montreal in 1949. There he taught at McGill University and the Conservatoire de Montreal, formed the Montreal Consort of Ancient Instruments (1958–69), and became principal violist of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. By 1956 he had established his own fully functional electroacoustic music studio. Early compositions such as Asia (symphonic poem, 1929–39) predate later explorations in a melodic and idiomatic dodecaphonic style developed in the 1940s and ‘50s (L’Eclosion for solo piano, 1954; and Concertante No. 1, 1955–57). Throughout the 1960s Joachim experimented with aleatory, graphic notation, and mixed media in works that balanced electronic, acoustic, and theatrical elements. Katimavik (four-channel tape, 1967) was commissioned for Canada’s centennial celebrations and musically mirrored the structure of the architecture of the Canadian pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal; Illuminations I (1965) employs serial and aleatoric techniques in exploring relationships between light and sound. Joachim received the Grand-Prix Paul Gilson for Illuminations II (1969), an honorary doctorate from Concordia University (1994), and was made Chevalier de l’Ordre National de Québec (1993).
Modernist Music in Turkey (1923--)
Authors: Gedik Ali Cenk
Published: September 2018

Modernist music in Turkey owes its foundations to the late bourgeoisie revolution in 1923. The young republic, motivated by the building of a modern nation-state, rejected the traditional Ottoman music and sought to synthesize Turkish folk music and Western classical music through what is known as the "Music Revolution." The first generation of modern composers, Cemal Reşit Rey (1904–1972), Hasan Ferid Alnar (1906–1978), Ulvi Cemal Erkin (1906–1972), Ahmet Adnan Saygun (1907–1991), and Necil Kazım Akses (1908–1999) were called the "Turkish Five." These talented musicians attended European conservatories in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. A second generation of composers, including Bülent Arel (1919–1990), İlhan Usmanbaş (1921–), and İlhan Mimaroğlu (1926–2012) followed a different path by appreciating recent trends in modernist music, ranging from serial to electronic music. While a similar trend continued within the next generations of composers, each generation also appreciated the traditional Ottoman and Turkish folk music. However, the "Music Revolution" ultimately failed due to the musical policies of right-wing governments.
Rugeles, Alfredo (1949--)
Authors: Ojeda Tovar Roberto Elias
Published: September 2018

The Venezuelan maestro Alfredo Rugeles was born in Washington, D.C., on 13 December 1949, while his parents were on diplomatic service. Composer, conductor, lecturer, and pedagogue, his thirty years at the podium give testament to Rugeles’ brilliant and varied career as an orchestra conductor. Artistic Director of the Simon Bolivar Symphonic Orchestra since 1991, Rugeles is frequently invited to conduct renowned ensembles throughout the world, including Europe and North, Central and South America.

Rugeles is recognized as an opera and concert conductor of refined taste, accompanying world-class soloists such as Paul Badura-Skoda, Montserrat Caballé, Alexis Cárdenas, Chick Corea, Alirio Díaz, Monique Duphil, Jane Eaglen, Natalia Gutman, Maurice Hasson, Frans Helmerson, François Le Roux, Aquiles Machado, Wynton Marsalis, Shlomo Mintz, Gabriela Montero, Jorge Luis Prats, Ruggiero Ricci, Mstislav Rostropovitch, Edison Ruiz, and Renata Scotto, among many others.
Scratch Orchestra
Authors: Venn Edward
Published: September 2018

The Scratch Orchestra grew out of an Experimental Music class run by Cornelius Cardew at Morley College (1968–73). Though a number of people contributed towards the discussions that led to the formation of the ensemble in 1969, it is Cardew, Michael Parsons, and Howard Skempton who are most frequently cited as the founders. (This is in part due to the three composers contributing £5 each to open the orchestra’s bank account.) Cardew wrote and published the ‘Draft Constitution’ of the orchestra in 1969, and the first meeting took place in November that year.

The Scratch Orchestra consisted of musicians and non-musicians, and was devoted to the exploration of experimental music. The constitution, written in a deliberately formal style, favoured a democratic, open form of governance, though in practice Cardew’s leadership was pivotal to the ensemble. More specifically, a range of activities were described: mental discipline (members were encouraged to write down ideas frequently for "scratch music’’—accompaniments that could be performed alongside, and as a background to, other scratch musics); collaboration (in the form of improvisation rites such as in the Nature Study Notes); irreverence ("popular classics" ranging from Beethoven to Schoenberg were to be performed in an ad hoc style); and imagination ("research projects"). Compositions such as Cardew’s The Great Learning were performed too.