Modjesko was a popular drag performer in Paris in the early years of the twentieth century. Art critic, Félix Fénéon, included this portrait in several exhibitions at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, including the group show Portraits of Men. In 1909, he signed artist Kees van Dongen to a seven-year contract. Both anarchists, van Dongen and Fénéon shared a desire to advocate for the rights of socially marginalized people.
Modjesko, Soprano Singer (1908) was Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
Oh, how I love a modern product whose design riffs on a retro look! I spotted this adorable (and practical!) Melitta Heritage Series Pour-Over Coffeemaker at the recent IHA Show, and was instantly smitten: not only with its millennial Pink color, but also by the vintage glazed porcelain design! Wow!
It makes perfect sense that this design is from the brand’s new Heritage Collection. While Melitta is a well-known brand that many of us have grown up with, I didn’t know anything about the company’s engaging backstory! In 1908, German housewife Melitta Bentz invented the world’s first pour-over coffeemaker when she poked holes in the bottom of a brass cup and lined it with a sheet of her son’s blotting paper (the first coffee filter)! The pour-over method that we take for granted, which results in rich, flavorful handcrafted coffee, came to be because a smart lady came up with an on-the-fly solution to effortlessly make coffee more delicious!
Melitta’s Heritage Series Pour-Over Coffeemaker Set includes a porcelain Pour-Over cone and matching 20 once carafe. The design debuted at IHA2018 and is available in stores now.
In titling this painting The Jewess (1908), one of the first that Modigliani exhibited, the artist declared that the sitter’s cultural identity was more important than her name. The model was most likely Modigliani’s lover, Maud Abrantes. Beyond her pallor, she is depicted with a withdrawn, languid demeanor, her cheeks and deeply set eyes touched with startling tabs of green, a streak of which also highlights the ridge of the patrician, aquiline nose. A curious pale mark obscures the area between her eyes, further isolating and drawing attention to her nose
This emphasis on the nose recurs throughout Modigliani’s work and is a focal point of his sculpture. It is s self-referential facet of his own Jewishness — an identity that his daughter later recalled as being deeply important to him. Modigliani’s exploration of his Jewish identity, as a central aspect of his portraiture, has been little noticed.
Photographed in the Jewish Museum in NYC as part of the Exhibit Modigliani Unmasked, which Continues Through February 4th, 2018.
A toll clerk by profession, Henri Rousseau only began to paint seriously in his forties. Critics lambasted the untrained artist’s unsentimental images of faraway places (he never traveled outside of France), yet the Parisian avant-garde celebrated his unique style. Executed only two years before he died a pauper, The Football Players (1908) illustrates Rousseau’s quirky attempts to depict modern times with a new sport, rugby. The active, albeit stylized athletes present a rare exception from Rousseau’s largely static compositions.
Between 1907 and 1911, Pablo Picasso continued to break apart the visible world into increasingly small facets of monochromatic (using one color) planes of space within his cubist style. Painted in Paris, during the Winter of 1908-09, Fruit Dish is considered to be one of the most outstanding examples of this process.
Fruit Dish is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
