December 24 – Highlighting Artists

nPosted on December 24, 2018

Key points

nLike every other date in the year, today marks the birthday of creative and artistic humans. Today I am going to highlight six famous birthdays – all artists:

nPaul Manship – born in 1885, Minnesota.

nManship was a sculptor who created classical-looking pieces with mythological subjects. He was important in the Art Deco movement.

nGertrude K. Lathrop – born in 1896 – New York.

nLathrop grew up in a family of artists. She loved sculpting animals, but she is also well known for her award-winning medals.

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nMary Ellen Crisp – born in 1896 – New Jersey.

nCrisp created embroidered murals. Most of her embroidered pieces are pictures, but a few are more abstract.

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nAd Reinhardt – born in 1913, Buffalo, New York.

nReinhardt was a painter who was part of abstract expressionism, minimalism, and conceptual art.
One series of paintings were solid black.

nYes, you got it – Reinhardt made, displayed, and sold paintings that were just solid black. And his pieces might auction off for as much as $250,000 each!!!

nOn Kawara – born in 1932 – Japan.

nAfter high school, Kawara moved from a smaller town to Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Eight years later he moved to Mexico, then New York City (in the U.S.) and Paris (in France). He lived most of his life in New York City but continued to travel.

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Kawara was a conceptual artist. Instead of expressing emotion and his own personality, Kawara used art to explore information, ideas, concepts. For example, his Today series of paintings all seem very similar: they consist of the date on which the painting was made in simple, clean white letters on a solid background. The variation was provided by the different colors of background and the different dates, of course – but the more interesting variation was provided by the fact that the date used the language and date conventions used in whatever country he was in that day.

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nMartina Lopez – born in 1952 – Seattle, Washington.

nLopez manipulates photos – often old photos – in order to explore and express ideas. Below left is the ordinary photo she used as a starting point; on the right, her version of the photo. That hair-swooping-over-the-face thing is definitely what used to happen to our family photos, since film was pricey and we had to wait a couple of weeks to see how our pics turned out!

nIf you are surprised that there are six artists who share the same birthday….don’t be, because there are LOTS more artists born on December 24 of various years: