In the digital age, we are able to recognize civil disobedience and call it by name, but this was certainly not the case for this Old Boy writing in 1912; he read about the criminal past-times of Mrs. Pankhurst (Emmeline Pankhurst, 1850 – 1928) and her two daughters (Christobel Pankhurst, 1880 – 1960; Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst, 1882 – 1960), and thought that no good could possibly come of such rabble-rousing.
New York City’s contributions to the American language go considerably further than the pronunciation of ‘avenyeh’ for avenue or ‘erl’ for lubricant. Peter Stuyvesant’s village has made rich entries into our spoken and written tongue. A handful, culled from Dr. Mitford M. Matthew’s A Dictionary of Americanisms
follows.
Click here to read more articles about American English.
Egged on by the 1929 completion of the Chrysler building, the curious souls who ran the New York offices of THE LITERARY DIGEST were moved to learn more about skyscrapers, both in New York as well as other parts of the U.S. and We were surprised to learn that as of 1929
50 percent of the buildings in New York from 10 to 20 stories and 60 percent of those over 20 stories are located between 14th and 59th streets.
This article also presents statistical data concerning the number of tall buildings that could be found throughout the 1920s United States.
In answer to the cry for more affordable cars that can easily be purchased by working families, the French automobile industry of 1912 produced a line of long, narrow, boat-like cars, mounted on four wire wheels, carrying it’s passengers in tandem fashion. The production of these one and two cylinder air-cooled motors was based more upon the production lines of motorcycles rather than cars.
A one page article regarding Swiss-born painter Paul Thevenaz
Read a 1937 article about another gay artist: Paul Cadmus.
This cartoon was drawn by the artist Reginald Marsh (1898 – 1954), who had a swell time comparing and contrasting the bio-diversity along 1922 Fifth Avenue; from the free-verse poets on Eighth Avenue up to the narrow-nosed society swanks on Sixty-Eighth Street -and everyone else in between.
Here is a petite notice that appeared in a 1915 issue of VANITY FAIR heralding a new portrait by the British painter William Orpen (1878 – 1931), which depicted the likeness of a popular American stage actress Mrs. Oscar Lewisohn (Edna May Pettie 1878 – 1948). The anonymous reviewer compared the portrait styles of Orpen with that of London’s reigning portrait painter, John Singer Sargent:
Sargent had a way of showing his sitters as they didn’t think they looked. On the other hand, Orpen has a trick of making his sitters look like what they would like to be.
Attached is a brief review of Civilization, the silent anti-war film produced by Thomas Ince in 1917. Sadly, Ince underestimated the power of film as a means of persuasion; World War I raged on for another year and a half following it’s release.
A VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE profile of the American painter Robert Henri (1865 – 1929):
Robert Henri does not sympathize with the artists who throw their work in the face of the public with a ‘There, take it or leave it.’ Indeed, he has an almost hieratic belief in the power of the fine arts, not merely to delight, but to improve, to uplift and to educate the masses.
Click here to read further about the 1913 Armory show.
A VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE profile of the American painter Robert Henri (1865 – 1929):
Robert Henri does not sympathize with the artists who throw their work in the face of the public with a ‘There, take it or leave it.’ Indeed, he has an almost hieratic belief in the power of the fine arts, not merely to delight, but to improve, to uplift and to educate the masses.
Click here to read further about the 1913 Armory show.
The ink-stained editors at QUICK MAGAZINE rarely ever concerned themselves with the Bohemian-happenings of the New York art world, but when the abstract expressionist painter Robert Motherwell (1915 – 1991) strayed from the standard-issue art supply tools and used a reflective fabric called Scotchlite in the creation of a 12 foot, three-paneled mural – the editors thought it was news.
The U.S. had only been actively engaged in World War II for five months when the American artist Rockwell Kent (1882 – 1971) felt the impulse to write about the unique roll an artist must play when a democracy goes to war:
The art of a democracy must be, like democracy itself, of and by and for the people. It must and will reflect the public mood and public interest…Awareness of America, of its infinitely varied beauties and of its sometimes sordid ugliness; awareness of the life of America, of its fulfillments and its failures; awareness, if you like, of God, the landscape architect supreme – and political failure: of the promise of America and of its problems, art has been, or has aimed to be, a revelation. It is for the right to solve these problems our way that we are now at war.
Attached is a page from VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE depicting the ten European princesses from 1914, having benefited from full hair and make-up, posing bemedaled and amused in full military dress before the society magazine cameras.
The Royals pictured on this page were all granted the ceremonial rank of ‘Colonel’ in the household cavalry units within their respective principalities, as well as a few of the cavalry regiments outside their domains.
Several of the Royal and Imperial women in Europe, who are possessed of military rank, have lost their colonelcies in foreign regiments by the World War. Thus, the Czarina and the Russian Grand Duchess, as well as Queen Mary of England, have been deprived of their commands in the Kaiser’s army.
Esther McCoy (1904 – 1989) was one of the few voices in Forties journalism to champion modern architecture in the city Los Angeles. Sadly, the common thinking among too many critics and editors at the time held that Gomorrah-Sur-la-Mer could only to be relied upon for innovations like Cobb Salad and valet parking – but McCoy recognized that the city’s dramatic quality of light and odd lunar landscape combined to create fertile ground for modern architecture. Unlike other like-minded critics and historians who discovered the city in later decades, such as Reyner Banham, McCoy came to know the Viena-trained architect Rudolph Schindler, who is the subject of this 1945 article.
Esther McCoy (1904 – 1989) was one of the few voices in Forties journalism to champion modern architecture in the city Los Angeles. Sadly, the common thinking among too many critics and editors at the time held that Gomorrah-Sur-la-Mer could only to be relied upon for innovations like Cobb Salad and valet parking – but McCoy recognized that the city’s dramatic quality of light and odd lunar landscape combined to create fertile ground for modern architecture. Unlike other like-minded critics and historians who discovered the city in later decades, such as Reyner Banham, McCoy came to know the Viena-trained architect Rudolph Schindler, who is the subject of this 1945 article.
The art of living in the wrong century – this is Saul Steinberg’s (1914 – 1999) own designation for the predicament he has been illustrating for over a decade. In his latest collection, The Passport
The art of living in the wrong century – this is Saul Steinberg’s (1914 – 1999) own designation for the predicament he has been illustrating for over a decade. In his latest collection, The Passport
The oddballs who read old Hollywood magazines from the year 1929 seem to all be in agreement that these magazines all shared the same frenzied, enthusiastic energy; something new and wonderful and unpredictable had been introduced and it was going to cause an enormous shake up in every movie capitol under the sun: sound.
But it was in the past year that the newest art, that of the silent drama, like prehistoric Man, stood up on it’s hind legs and began to talk. Like prehistoric man, it talked badly at first. But soon it’s words came a shade more fluently, and gradually they began, when arranged, to make a small degree of sense.
