Birmingham trip

view of a skull, Leonardo Di Vinci

This drawing dates from around 1510, although Leonardo had first started looking at human skulls in 1499, when he got access to human cadavers from the hospital of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. He used innovative techniques, such as injecting molten wax, to locate and draw the cavities around the brain in the bones of the cranium.
In common with many people at the time, he was keen to find the seat of the human soul. The spine was thought to be the most likely location. Leonardo showed that the brain and spine were connected but never identified where the human soul lies. He disputed the belief - then widely held - that sperm were produced in the marrow of the spinal column.
The sketch is one of the Windsor Folios, part of the Royal Collection, held at Windsor.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/leonardo/gallery/skull.shtml

Numbers in love, Giacomo Balla

                                                                                     'Numbers in Love'
                                                                             1924 -- oil on burlap


Balla took a series of numbers and broke it into the 2D print convention by ejecting them into 3D space. This kind of ejection now forms a different part of the standard repertoire of a computer graphics designer with typography. Text can move into 3D space, just like the Futurist painter wanted it to.
http://giacomoballa.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/numbers-in-love.html


“Numbers in Love” was another famous painting that I did in 1924. As you can see, this painting is using geometrical shapes and numbers. During the beginning of the second wave of Futurism (1920’s), I began using numbers and geometric shapes to my paintings. I was experimenting with different methods and approaches during this time. I was also continuing to follow many forms of futuristic movement ideas at this time. My geometric experiments were not the only experiments that I did during the 1920’s period. 
http://giacomoballa.tumblr.com/post/34280315729/numbers-in-love-was-another-famous-painting-that

Nutcracker, John Chamberlian

Artist:

John Chamberlain

(American, 1927–2011)

Title:

Nutcracker,

1958

Medium:

Sculptures, Painted steel

Size:

47 x 39 x 30 in. (119.4 x 99.1 x 76.2 cm.)

http://www.artnet.com/artists/john-chamberlain/nutcracker-a-8x2RP4koaLmy2A_O1PjljA2

John Chamberlain, Nutcracker ($1.2-1.8m) $4.786,500
http://www.artmarketmonitor.com/2011/05/09/sothebys-allan-stone-evening-sale-54-8m/john-chamberlain-nutcracker-1-2-1-8m-4-786500/

Leonardo Di Vinci text (raw research)

Childhood, 1452–1466

Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452 (Old Style), "at the third hour of the night"^{[nb 4]} in the Tuscan hill town of Vinci, in the lower valley of the Arno river in the territory of the Medici-ruled Republic of Florence.^[12] He was the out-of-wedlock son of the wealthy Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, a Florentine legal notary, and Caterina, a peasant.^{[11][13][nb 5]} Leonardo had no surname in the modern sense, "da Vinci" simply meaning "of Vinci": his full birth name was "Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, (son) of (Mes)ser Piero from Vinci".^[12] The inclusion of the title "ser" indicated that Leonardo's father was a gentleman.
Little is known about Leonardo's early life. He spent his first five years in the hamlet of Anchiano in the home of his mother, then from 1457 he lived in the household of his father, grandparents and uncle, Francesco, in the small town of Vinci. His father had married a sixteen-year-old girl named Albiera, who loved Leonardo but died young.^[14] When Leonardo was sixteen his father married again, to twenty-year-old Francesca Lanfredini. It was not until his third and fourth marriages that Ser Piero produced legitimate heirs.^[15]
Leonardo received an informal education in Latin, geometry and mathematics. In later life, Leonardo recorded only two childhood incidents. One, which he regarded as an omen, was when a kite dropped from the sky and hovered over his cradle, its tail feathers brushing his face.^[16] The second occurred while he was exploring in the mountains: he discovered a cave and was both terrified that some great monster might lurk there and driven by curiosity to find out what was inside.^[14]
Leonardo's early life has been the subject of historical conjecture.^[17] Vasari, the 16th-century biographer of Renaissance painters, tells of how a local peasant made himself a round shield and requested that Ser Piero have it painted for him. Leonardo responded with a painting of a monster spitting fire which was so terrifying that Ser Piero sold it to a Florentine art dealer, who sold it to the Duke of Milan. Meanwhile, having made a profit, Ser Piero bought a shield decorated with a heart pierced by an arrow, which he gave to the peasant.^[18]

Verrocchio's workshop, 1466–76

In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to the artist Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio, whose workshop was "one of the finest in Florence".^[19] He apprenticed as a garzone (studio boy) to Andrea del Verrocchio, the leading Florentine painter and sculptor of his day^[20] Other famous painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop include Domenico Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.^[14][21] Leonardo would have been exposed to both theoretical training and a vast range of technical skills^[22] including drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modelling.^{[23][nb 6]}
Much of the painted production of Verrocchio's workshop was done by his employees. According to Vasari, Leonardo collaborated with Verrocchio on his The Baptism of Christ, painting the young angel holding Jesus' robe in a manner that was so far superior to his master's that Verrocchio put down his brush and never painted again.^[24] On close examination, the painting reveals much that has been painted or touched-up over the tempera using the new technique of oil paint, with the landscape, the rocks that can be seen through the brown mountain stream and much of the figure of Jesus bearing witness to the hand of Leonardo.^[25] Leonardo may have been the model for two works by Verrocchio: the bronze statue of David in the Bargello and the Archangel Raphael in Tobias and the Angel.^[13]
By 1472, at the age of twenty, Leonardo qualified as a master in the Guild of Saint Luke, the guild of artists and doctors of medicine,^{[nb 7]} but even after his father set him up in his own workshop, his attachment to Verrocchio was such that he continued to collaborate with him.^[14] Leonardo's earliest known dated work is a drawing in pen and ink of the Arno valley, drawn on 5 August 1473.^{[nb 8][21]}

Professional life, 1476–1513

Florentine court records of 1476 show that Leonardo and three other young men were charged with sodomy but acquitted.^{[13][nb 9]} From that date until 1478 there is no record of his work or even of his whereabouts.^[26] In 1478 he left Verrocchio's studio and was no longer resident at his father's house. One writer, the "Anonimo" Gaddiano claims that in 1480 Leonardo was living with the Medici and working in the Garden of the Piazza San Marco in Florence, a Neo-Platonic academy of artists, poets and philosophers which the Medici had established.^[13] In January 1478, he received his first of two independent commissions: to paint an altarpiece for the Chapel of St. Bernard in the Palazzo Vecchio and, in March 1481, The Adoration of the Magi for the monks of San Donato a Scopeto.^[27] Neither commission was completed, the second being interrupted when Leonardo went to Milan.
In 1482 Leonardo, who according to Vasari was a most talented musician,^[28] created a silver lyre in the shape of a horse's head. Lorenzo de' Medici sent Leonardo to Milan, bearing the lyre as a gift, to secure peace with Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan.^[29] At this time Leonardo wrote an often-quoted letter describing the many marvellous and diverse things that he could achieve in the field of engineering and informing Ludovico that he could also paint.^[21][30]
Leonardo worked in Milan from 1482 until 1499. He was commissioned to paint the Virgin of the Rocks for the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception and The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie.^[31] In the spring of 1485, Leonardo travelled to Hungary on behalf of Ludovico to meet Matthias Corvinus, for whom he is believed to have painted a Holy Family.^{[32][not in citation given]} Between 1493 and 1495 Leonardo listed a woman called Caterina among his dependents in his taxation documents. When she died in 1495, the list of funeral expenditures suggests that she was his mother.^[33]

Leonardo was employed on many different projects for Ludovico, including the preparation of floats and pageants for special occasions, designs for a dome for Milan Cathedral and a model for a huge equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza, Ludovico's predecessor. Seventy tons of bronze were set aside for casting it. The monument remained unfinished for several years, which was not unusual for Leonardo. In 1492 the clay model of the horse was completed. It surpassed in size the only two large equestrian statues of the Renaissance, Donatello's Gattamelata in Padua and Verrocchio's Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice, and became known as the "Gran Cavallo".^{[21][nb 10]} Leonardo began making detailed plans for its casting;^[21] however, Michelangelo insulted Leonardo by implying that he was unable to cast it.^[14] In November 1494 Ludovico gave the bronze to be used for cannon to defend the city from invasion by Charles VIII.^[21]
At the start of the Second Italian War in 1499, the invading French troops used the life-size clay model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target practice. With Ludovico Sforza overthrown, Leonardo, with his assistant Salai and friend, the mathematician Luca Pacioli, fled Milan for Venice^[34] where he was employed as a military architect and engineer, devising methods to defend the city from naval attack.^[14] On his return to Florence in 1500, he and his household were guests of the Servite monks at the monastery of Santissima Annunziata and were provided with a workshop where, according to Vasari, Leonardo created the cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist, a work that won such admiration that "men and women, young and old" flocked to see it "as if they were attending a great festival".^{[35][nb 11]}

In Cesena, in 1502 Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, acting as a military architect and engineer and travelling throughout Italy with his patron.^[34] Leonardo created a map of Cesare Borgia's stronghold, a town plan of Imola in order to win his patronage. Maps were extremely rare at the time and it would have seemed like a new concept. Upon seeing it, Cesare hired Leonardo as his chief military engineer and architect. Later in the year, Leonardo produced another map for his patron, one of Chiana Valley, Tuscany, so as to give his patron a better overlay of the land and greater strategic position. He created this map in conjunction with his other project of constructing a dam from the sea to Florence, in order to allow a supply of water to sustain the canal during all seasons.
Leonardo returned to Florence where he rejoined the Guild of Saint Luke on 18 October 1503, and spent two years designing and painting a mural of The Battle of Anghiari for the Signoria,^[34] with Michelangelo designing its companion piece, The Battle of Cascina.^{[nb 12]} In Florence in 1504, he was part of a committee formed to relocate, against the artist's will, Michelangelo's statue of David.^[39]
In 1506 Leonardo returned to Milan. Many of his most prominent pupils or followers in painting either knew or worked with him in Milan,^[14] including Bernardino Luini, Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio and Marco d'Oggiono.^{[nb 13]} At this time he may have commenced a project for an equestrian figure of Charles II d'Amboise, the acting French governor of Milan.^[40] A wax model survives, and if genuine, is the only example of Leonardo's sculpture.^[41]
Leonardo did not stay in Milan for long because his father had died in 1504, and in 1507 he was back in Florence trying to sort out problems with his brothers over his father's estate. By 1508 Leonardo was back in Milan, living in his own house in Porta Orientale in the parish of Santa Babila.^[42]

Old age, 1513–1519

From September 1513 to 1516, under Pope Leo X, Leonardo spent much of his time living in the Belvedere in the Vatican in Rome, where Raphael and Michelangelo were both active at the time.^[42] In October 1515, King Francis I of France recaptured Milan.^[27] On 19 December, Leonardo was present at the meeting of Francis I and Pope Leo X, which took place in Bologna.^[14][43][44] Leonardo was commissioned to make for Francis a mechanical lion which could walk forward, then open its chest to reveal a cluster of lilies.^{[45][nb 14]} In 1516, he entered François' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé^{[nb 15]} near the king's residence at the royal Château d'Amboise. It was here that he spent the last three years of his life, accompanied by his friend and apprentice, Count Francesco Melzi, and supported by a pension totalling 10,000 scudi.^[42]

Leonardo died at Clos Lucé, on 2 May 1519. Francis I had become a close friend. Vasari records that the king held Leonardo's head in his arms as he died, although this story, beloved by the French and portrayed in romantic paintings by Ingres, Ménageot and other French artists, as well as by Angelica Kauffman, may be legend rather than fact.^{[nb 16]} Vasari states that in his last days, Leonardo sent for a priest to make his confession and to receive the Holy Sacrament.^[47] In accordance with his will, sixty beggars followed his casket.^{[nb 17]} Melzi was the principal heir and executor, receiving as well as money, Leonardo's paintings, tools, library and personal effects. Leonardo also remembered his other long-time pupil and companion, Salai and his servant Battista di Vilussis, who each received half of Leonardo's vineyards, his brothers who received land, and his serving woman who received a black cloak "of good stuff" with a fur edge.^{[nb 18][48]} Leonardo da Vinci was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in Château d'Amboise, in France.
Some 20 years after Leonardo's death, Francis was reported by the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini as saying: "There had never been another man born in the world who knew as much as Leonardo, not so much about painting, sculpture and architecture, as that he was a very great philosopher."^{[
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci#Life}

John chamberlian text (raw research)

Born in Rochester, Indiana as the son of a saloonkeeper,^[3] Chamberlain was raised mostly by his grandmother after his parents divorced.^[4] He spent much of his youth in Chicago. After serving in the U.S Navy from 1943 to 1946, he attended the Art Institute of Chicago (1951–52) and Black Mountain College (1955–56). At Black Mountain, he studied with the poets Charles Olsen, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan, who were teaching there that semester.^[5] The following year, he moved to New York, where for the first time he created sculpture that included scrap-metal auto parts.^[6] Over the course of his prolific career, he had studios in New York, New Mexico, Florida, Connecticut, and finally Shelter Island.^[7]

Work[edit]

Chamberlain is best known for creating sculptures from old automobiles (or parts of) that bring the Abstract Expressionist style of painting into three dimensions. He began by carving and modelling, but turned to working in metal in 1952 and welding 1953.^[8] By 1957, while staying with the painter Larry Rivers in Southampton, New York,^[9] he began to include scrap metal from cars with his sculpture Shortstop,^[10] and from 1959 onward he concentrated on sculpture built entirely of crushed automobile parts welded together. Far more than just another wrinkle on assemblage Shortstop and subsequent works completely reinvented modeling casting, and volume altering Marcel Duchamp’s notion of the readymade and using the car as both medium and tool.^[11]
By the end of the 1960s, Chamberlain had replaced his signature materials initially with galvanized steel, then with mineral-coated Plexiglas, and finally with aluminum foil. In 1966, he began a series of sculptures made of rolled, folded, and tied urethane foam.^[12] Since returning in the mid-1970s to metal as his primary material, Chamberlain has limited himself to specific parts of the automobile (fenders, bumpers, or the chassis, for example).^[13] In 1973, two 300-pound metal pieces by Chamberlain were mistaken for junk and carted away as they sat outside a gallery warehouse in Chicago.^[9]
In the early 1980s, Chamberlain moved to Sarasota, Florida, where an 18,000-square-foot warehouse studio on Cocoanut Avenue enabled him to work on a much grander scale than he previously had.^[6] Many of the subsequent works Chamberlain made in Florida revert to more volumetric, compact configurations, often aligned on a vertical axis. As seen in the so-called Giraffe series (circa 1982–83), for example, linear patterns cavort over multicolored surfaces—the results of sandblasting the metal, removing the paint, and exposing the raw surface beneath.^[5] In 1984, Chamberlain created the monumental American Tableau created for display on the Seagram Building's plaza.^[14]
Chamberlain also made abstract colour paintings from 1963, and from 1967 he made several films, such as "Wide Point" (1968)^[8] and “The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez,” filmed in Mexico with Warhol regulars Taylor Mead and Ultra Violet.^[9] In the last decade of his life, the artist expanded his work to large-format photographs.^{[
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chamberlain_(sculptor)}

Giacomo Balla text (raw research)

Born in Turin, in the Piedmont region of Italy, Balla was the son of a photographer ^[1] and as a child he studied music.
At 9, when his father died, he gave up music and began working in a lithograph print shop. Until age of twenty, his interest in art was such that he decided to study painting at local academies and exhibited several of his early works. Following academic studies at the University of Turin, Balla moved to Rome in 1895, where he met and married Elisa Marcucci. For several years he worked in Rome as an illustrator, a caricaturist, and also did portraiture. In 1899, his work was shown at the Venice Biennale, and in the ensuing years his art was on display at major Italian exhibitions in Rome and Venice. In Munich, Berlin,and Düsseldorf, Germany. Salon d'Automne in Paris, and galleries in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Around 1902, he taught Divisionist techniques to Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini.^[2] Influenced by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Giacomo Balla adopted the Futurism style, creating a pictorial depiction of light, movement and speed. He was signatory to the Futurist Manifesto in 1910, and began designing and painting Futurist furniture, also created Futurist "antineutral" clothing. In painting, his new style is demonstrated in Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash (1912). Seen here, is his 1914 work titled Abstract Speed + Sound (Velocità astratta + rumore). In 1914, Balla also began sculpting, and the year after, created the well-known sculpture, Boccioni's Fist.
During World War I, Balla's studio became the meeting place for young artists. By the end of the war, the Futurist movement showed signs of decline. In 1935, he was made a member of Rome's Accademia di San Luca. In 1955, Balla participated in the documenta 1 in Kassel, Germany.
He died on March 1, 1958.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Balla