The Layered World of Sergio Cerchi

I really need to see an actual painting by Florentine artist Sergio Cerchi to be sure of what he's doing. This site suggests that his paintings are built atop collections of panels. But just looking at images of the on the internet, I can't rule out the possibility that those seeming panel edges are simply lines painted on a normal artists' canvas.

Another difficulty I'm experiencing with this post is that information regarding Cerchi on the internet is almost nil. For instance, nowhere have I found his birthdate. What we know is that he has spent all or nearly all his life, training and career in Florence and that he has a strong interest in music as well as art. Here is his own web site. It's a bit hard to navigate, but clicking on his photo leads to a brief self-statement. Otherwise, there are many examples of his work.

Cerchi interests me because he seems knowledgeable about history and art history. Plus, he is skilled at depicting people and giving them a sense of psychological mystery in many cases. His use of rectangular elements is quirky, but adds additional interest for the viewer. Also, many of his works are square, often having a one-meter format, the same as Gustav Klimt used for his Attersee landscapes.

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Appuntamento

Il Drago

Quixote II

La Passeggiata

Samurai

Diana

Eva

Leda

Ventaglio II

Butterfly

Cielo

New York City People: 1965

During the 1960s, rigid following of women's clothing and grooming fashions began to fall away. I find it fairly easy to guess the approximate dates of when photos taken in the years from around 1910 until about 1960, even if there were no cars in the background to refine my analysis. But after 1960, it isn't at all that simple.

Yes, the current scene of casual clothing with plenty of dominant logotypes is different from what one saw 50 years ago, but not by all that much. Today, 50-year-old scenes don't strike me as old-fashioned  seeming as 50-year-old scenes did in 1966 -- or 100-year old scenes do today (the same scenes, of course, from 50 years farther out).

Below are photos I took of people in New York City in June of 1965. While the subjects do not appear totally modern, they are close enough that they can be seen as simply people, and not participants in a retro costume party.

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Tourists on Sixth Avenue.

Women on Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center in background.

Women near Sixth Avenue.

Passing out pamphlets, Fifth Avenue & 49th Street.

Window shopper, East 49th Street.

Vendor, Downtown Manhattan.

Vendor, Sixth Avenue & 51st Street.

Carriages at the Plaza.  The building at the left across Fifth Avenue is the Sherry-Netherland, at the right is the Savoy Plaza.

Unloading a Cadillac, Central Park South.

Masked girls crossing Madison Avenue for some unknown purpose.

Cyrus, the Senior Cuneo

Cyrus Cincinnati Cuneo (1879-1916) died young from a freak accident: blood poisoning from a hatpin prick at a dance.

At the time, he was a successful illustrator and painter based in England. Today he might be better known as being the father of Terence Cuneo, a beloved and honored British illustrator.

But he wasn't British by origin. Cyrus (or "Ciro" as he was called) was born in San Francisco to Italian immigrants, growing up in the North Beach part of town. He became a boxer to help support himself while studying art in Paris where he greatly impressed James McNeill Whistler, one of his teachers. A biographical note is here, and a PDF with useful information is here.

Cuneo was versatile, as can be seen in the collection below.

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Illustration from a book of A.J. Raffles stories by E.W. Hornung

Canadian trapper attacked by wolves
Cuneo spent some time in Canada, mostly doing artwork for Canadian Pacific.  This illustration might be for a fiction piece.

Frontispiece for "The Air Patrol" by Herbert Strang (pseudonym)

The Sinking of the Gneisenau
This looks like an Illustrated London News sort of illustration. The Gneisenau was a German cruiser, part of Admiral von Spee's fleet that was mostly destroyed by the British in the Battle of the Falklands, 8 December 1914.

Japanese Tea Garden
Now for a change of pace from book and magazine illustration ...

The Picnic

Nell Marion Tenison - the artist's wife

The Diners - 1913

Arriving at the Ball

Edmund F. Ward

Edmund Franklin Ward (1892-1990) was not as famous as some other illustrators during the 1890-1960 heyday of American magazine illustration. But he was competent and had his successes, especially in the 1920s.

Ward's brief Wikipedia entry is here and other links touching on his career are here and here.

As can be seen below, his 1920s style is similar to that of contemporary illustrators such as Dean Cornwell who painted in thick oils. As many other illustrators did, Ward altered his style and media to go along with changing illustration fashion. One result of this is that there is no distinctive Ward style.

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Dean Cornwell illustration - 1919
Compare the 1920s illustrations by Ward below to this Cornwell.

Trouble on the Trail - 1923

The Stowaway - The Kelly Collection - 1924

We Mean Business - Kelly Collection - 1924

Egyptian vignette - 1923
Vignette format illustration was common for secondary story illustrations. The lead illustration might have conventional rectangular borders, but others in the same magazine piece or illustrations in later issues containing other parts of the same, continuing story might be vignetted.

Vignette - story illustration

Vignette- story illustration

Vignette - Saturday Evening Post story illustration

Caught in the Act
This possibly unfinished illustration or study was made around the mid-1930s. Note that the green hat in the mirror is not that same shape as the one in the foreground.

Thunder on the Plains - This Week magazine, February 1936
Here we see a change to watercolor or perhaps colored inks.

GE Lamps advertisement - 1946
An example of Ward's postwar work.

Albert Guillaume at the Theatre

Albert Guillaume (1873-1942) was a French illustrator and painter with a satirical mindset. His Wikipedia entry is here.

Guillaume usually poked fun at the haute bourgeoisie, so for this post I decided to present some of his works dealing with the theatre.

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Musique savante
The music lover seems inspired, but I'm not so sure about the others nearby.

La Loge au théâtre
He tended to depict pretty younger women with older men, so maybe there was a good deal of that during the Belle Époque and later.

Les admiratrices (Lucien Guitry dans sa loge) - 1922

Private opera box
A group utterly fixated on what's happening on stage.

Au theatre - 1920s

Les retardataires
The performance of the late arrivals.

TWA Terminal at JFK Airport : Some 1965 Photos

There is little lack of photographs of the TWA terminal designed by Eero Saarinen at JFK Airport in New York City, but I'll add to that pile in this post.

For some background on the terminal, its Wikipedia entry is here.

It was an astonishing building when it opened in May of 1962, and remains so. TWA was staggering by the 1980s however, entering its first bankruptcy in 1991 and ten years later its remains were acquired by American Airlines. The terminal has had an equally uneven existence, and the plan is to transform it into a hotel -- the structure being the hotel's public areas (as best I can tell).

With one exception, the photos below were taken by me in June of 1965. They originally were slides that I scanned, cropped in many cases, and most had their color adjusted. They are not great photographic art, but might give you the flavor of the place when it was still fairly new.

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View of the TWA terminal when nearly completed.

The approach was through a parking lot that is long gone.

Heading towards the entrance from the passenger drop-off zone.

The clock says it's nearly 6 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

The tube-like shape in the background is a passageway to the airplanes.

View from the upper level.

A conversation nook.

The restaurant-bar.  The tail of a KLM airliner is seen at the extreme left.

Another view from the second level. It's now exactly 6 p.m.

Flight information board.  The parking lot can be seen in the background.

The building is visually entertaining because all those sweeping shapes have to come together here and there to create interesting details such as this.