Armistice Day...Every Family Has a Story

[Gary Note: Blogging, of late, has been taking a back seat to life...which is as it should be.  But today you're getting a pair of posts!]

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Armistice Day...Every Family Has a Story

I am reposting the same post I have put up for the past several years on 11 Nov, commemorating the end of World War I.

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For Veteran's Armistice Day (as it was originally called)....

Every family has a story. My mother told me of my great-grandfather, Julius (or Jules?) Brinkmann, who was killed on this date in 1918 in World War I on the Western Front.

Word of the armistice, which took effect the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918, did not reach all the lines in real time. He was killed sometime later that day, AFTER the armistice.

He would have been one of the very last casualties of the Great War. You know, the war that was supposed to end all wars.

Oh, and he was a German. Funny, that really doesn't seem to matter, does it?

What is your family story? Please comment.

This is a generic photo, not of Julius--because my Mom's family lost ALL their possessions, including family photos, when they were bombed out in Frankfurt in WW II--but it could have been.

Photo credit here.

Cats in Art: Four Studies of Kittens (Desportes)

From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art.  Having moved on from Stefano Zuffi's marvelous work, The Cat in Art, I am now using some ideas from Caroline Bugler's equally impressive book, The Cat/3500 Years of the Cat in Art.  You really should check out and/or own both of these wonderful works, easily available on Amazon or eBay (and I have no financial interest).

Image credit Community ArtAuthority, Four Studies of Kittens, Alexandre-Francois Desportes, ca 1710, oil on light brown paper, 10" x 20", held in a private collection.

Bulger's comment:

The artist has depicted yowling kittens so convincingly that one can almost hear their cries.  Desportes was the foremost animal painter in France in the early years of the 18th century...his considerable success was founded on accurate observation and the ability to convey a sense of each animal as an individual.

What's not to like about kittens, except that these guys all seem to be in some greater or lesser extent of agitation?  The only one of the crew that seems somewhat calmer than the other felines is the one at the top center, and even that kitty seems a tad on edge as it seems to mew rather than holler.

Bulger believes that this oil sketch was later finalized as this painting.  I featured that painting here at Cats in Art a couple of years ago.

Image credit Community ArtAuthority, A Dog and a Cat Fighting in a Kitchen Interior.

[Gary note: With my Cats in Arts posts, I encourage you to scope out the art appreciation site Artsy (I have no financial interest in the site, I just like it), where you can explore many aspects of the world of art.  You'll certainly be entertained and enlightened!]

Cats in Art: Gray Cat on a Cushion (Kirchner)

Sorry for being dark, changes coming. Here is a Cats in Art post that I ran 5 years ago in Nov 2013.  Here's the original link.

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From my continuing weekly Sunday series of cats in art. I'm using some ideas from the coffee table book, The Cat in Art, by Stefano Zuffi. This is post 2 of 3 examining the cat works of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and, like last week, is a post-World War I work.

Image credit Art is Not for Sissies, here.  Gray Cat on a Cushion, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1919-20, oil on canvas, 31" x 27", held by Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany.

Zuffi comments:  

A comparison between Kirchner's works before and after the First World War highlights with dramatic effect the state of mind of a German intellectual.  The cat is tense, the forward-pointing whiskers a clear sign of nervousness; and its tail looks as it is about to beat against the cushion.  The animal's glaring eyes and the violent colors in the background, where the fabric seems to evoke explosive flashes of light, add to this painting's sense of tension.

In this image Zuffi descriptively nails it--the kitty is agitated, restless, ready to detonate.  One would try to pet this cat at one's own risk (I know this, for we have a similarly twitchy cat who can go from a hiss to a purr--and back--in less than 10 seconds).

I do love the background as well.  The colors are quite at odds with the central image of the cat, but contribute to the overall discordance of the scene.

In looking at the series of chronological works of Kirchner, I could see the light openness of his earlier works being supplanted by his somewhat darker post-war art.  He was quite changed by his experiences as a soldier in the war...and who could not be?

Here is a telling quote from Kirchner himself on the war (as found in The Art Story, here):

"The heaviest burden of all is the pressure of the war and the increasing superficiality. It gives me incessantly the impression of a bloody carnival. I feel as though the outcome is in the air and everything is topsy-turvy. All the same, I keep on trying to get some order in my thoughts and to create a picture of the age out of confusion, which is after all my function." 

Through all the madness, Kirchner still knew what he had to do as an artist:

 "...I keep on trying to get some order in my thoughts and to create a picture of the age out of confusion, which is after all my function."