A STUNT GONE HORRIBLY AND TERRIBLY AWRY

Over 30,000 people stood on the Texas prairie near Waco in late afternoon sunshine on September 15^th in 1896.  They all had come to witness the disaster that none believed would occur because they had been assured by the wise and educated men of the day that it could not happen.  A few moments after the clock snuck past 5 PM, two 35-ton locomotives, both hauling seven boxcars and each moving at roughly 60 miles per hour, intentionally slammed into each other…

The spectacle was a publicity stunt at the town of Crush, built expressly for the purpose of allowing folks to watch a train crash and a metropolis abandoned immediately after its gruesome purpose had been served.  Two mighty locomotives would meet head on at a terrific speed and suffer only minor damage… 

 

The burg was named for William George Crush, a passenger agent for the Katy aka the Missouri, Kansas, & Texas Railway.  He’d been tasked with promoting and staging this display of engineering prowess.  [Readers who live in the Houston, Texas, area may suspect correctly that one of the suburbs of the nation’s fourth largest city took its name from the MKT nickname.] To gin up crowds, the Katy’s officials charged no admission to witness the collision which would prove the durability of their equipment even in the face of horrific disaster…

The only cost imposed upon witnesses was the train fare required to visit the briefly lived metropolis of Crush-- and that was offered at rock bottom rates.  One could travel from El Paso to the site for only $5, from Waco for pennies on the dollar.  Upon arrival, the thirsty could “wet their whistles” with all the absolutely free “fresh Waco water” they could drink and find shade in tents on loan from the Ringling Brothers circus…

But something went wrong a few moments after the clock snuck past 5 PM in the late afternoon sunshine…

All the technocrats who assured Mr Crush the stunt would be perfectly safe hadn’t told the boilers in the engines of Old Number 999 (painted bright green) and Old Number 1001 (painted bright red) that their meeting would be perfectly safe.  One indestructible boiler decided to prove the 19^th Century’s exuberant faith in Man’s Progress dead wrong by exploding, hurling jagged metal fragments into the crowd at the moment of impact.  At least two people died, many more suffered grievous injury…

One of the witnesses to the disaster (which resulted in Mr Crush’s immediate firing in public and quiet rehiring in private the next day) may have been a young black man, about thirty years of age, born and raised in northeast Texas, then touring the area as a musician.  Historians can’t verify that Scott Joplin-- America’s most famous ragtime composer, best known for The Maple Leaf Rag-- actually witnessed the publicity stunt gone horribly and terribly awry but they can say he did pen a lively little tune about the most famous event in Crush’s brief history, submitting it for a copyright about a month after The Crash…

 

The Great Crush Collision March, performed by Benjamin Loeb: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KFmZdBvPYQ

 

 

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CREDITS

Note: Information for this essay is taken primarily from readily available sources such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and almanacs.  When other sources are employed they are credited either in the text or as follows:  information about the Crush Crash also taken from the Lone Star Junction website at .http://www.lsjunction.com/facts/crush.htm All photographs are taken from Wikipedia or Google Images without source or authorship credits available, except as noted: None.

West of the 100th Meridian, South of the 32nd Parallel

A Second Rider, Fallen

We tarry with the Blue Riders a bit longer to celebrate the legacy of August Macke.  Not quite a decade younger than his close friend Franz Marc, this son of Westphalia was also the son of a building contractor (and amateur artist) and a farmer’s daughter.  He grew up in Cologne and Bonn.  While still a schoolboy, he became friends with another lad named Walter Gerhardt.  It sometimes happens that one’s friends have beautiful sisters and, as it sometimes happens when friends have lovely siblings, August fell in love with Walter’s sister, the pretty Elisabeth Gerhardt whom he married and whom the War To End All Wars widowed on the battlefields of Champagne not three months after the conflict began…

August, born in cold January winds and dead in September breezes, tell us the meaning behind the enigmatic title, Three Acts-- is it drama of which you wished to speak in broad strokes of color, or is it the beauty of a lovely woman come to the attention of a lover, or perhaps you meant to say to say something about life itself…



The Artist's Wife, 1909



Nude with Coral Necklace, 1911



The Russian Ballet, 1912



Zoological Garden, 1912



Landscape with Cows and Camel, circa 1912



The Sunny Way, 1913



The Milliner's Shop, 1914



View into a Lane, 1914



Three Acts, 1913

 

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Louis Nugent: Almost

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Other Fine Art America sites for discriminating collectors:

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http://fineartamerica.com/groups/all-natural-scenic-landscapes.html

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/4-abstract.html

CREDITS

Note: Information for this essay is taken primarily from readily available sources such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and almanacs.  When other sources are employed they are credited either in the text or as follows:  None. All photographs are taken from Wikipedia or Google Images without source or authorship credits available, except as noted: None.

A Blue Rider, Fallen

We noted World War One hastened the end of the Blue Rider circle of painters in our last installment.  Two brilliant and talented men, August Macke and Franz Marc, both Blue Riders, joined the armed forces to defend their homeland and both became-- all too soon-- casualties of conflict.  This week we celebrate Franz Marc’s legacy.  In his mid-thirties at the outbreak of the War To End All Wars, this prolific celebrant of color and form volunteered for military service.  He died at thirty-six years of age…

 

The Tiger, 1912



The Fate of Animals, 1913



The Waterfall, 1912



Horse Stalls, 1913



The Dream, 1912



Deer in a Monastery Garden, 1912



Two Standing Nudes with Green Rock, 1911

 

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http://louis-nugent.artistwebsites.com/

Louis Nugent: Fan Dancer

 

We’re also on Facebook:  Louis R Nugent Photography on Facebook @ louisnugent22.

 

Other Fine Art America sites for discriminating collectors:

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/west-texas.html

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/art-inspired-by-art.html

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/all-natural-scenic-landscapes.html

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/4-abstract.html

 

CREDITS

Note: Information for this essay is taken primarily from readily available sources such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and almanacs.  When other sources are employed they are credited either in the text or as follows:  None. All photographs are taken from Wikipedia or Google Images without source or authorship credits available, except as noted: None.

BLUE RIDERS: A FIRST GLANCE

“Every work of art is the child of its time.  Often it is the mother of our emotions.”-- Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1912

Munich (and Vienna) rarely leap to the forefront of consciousness in the minds of most Americans when the phrase “art capital of Europe” is spoken.  Why this is may simply be an unfortunate aftermath of two World Wars triggered by madmen in that part of the world, an attempt by the victors to marginalize the defeated by trivializing their artistic contributions…



Wassily Kandinsky: The Last Judgment, 1912

 

Yet the truth remains that in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, both cities attracted brilliant writers and artists from both sides of the Atlantic.  Thomas Wolfe, born in North Carolina, was among those who traveled to Munich.  He began writing Look Homeward, Angel, while in Europe.  While the most likely source of the novel’s title are lines from a poem by John Milton carved onto a tombstone near Wolfe’s childhood home, some say young Tommy Wolfe found himself on the losing end of a fist fight in Munich.  This more romantic version has it that his (married, rich, and much older) lover gently whispered “Look homeward, angel” as she tended his bruised face…



Franz Marc: The Tower of Blue Horses, 1913

 

It was a bruising of another sort that inspired a group of German and Russian artists living in Munich circa 1911 to form a short-lived circle of painters calling themselves “The Blue Riders”…

Critics thought Wassily Kandinsky’s The Last Judgement too outrageous to be included in a serious exhibit.  Emotionally bruised by the rejection, Kandinsky and his friend Marc Franz gathered a circle of like-minded painters around themselves and garnished their works with dashes of fauvism and cubism, adding a sprinkle of expressionistic emotion to vitalize the work…



August Macke: View into a Lane, 1914

 

This group’s name may have been inspired by the title of one of Kandinsky’s earlier pieces (dating to about 1903) but Kandinsky later wrote that both he and Franz Marc loved the color blue and both found equines and equestrian sport fascinating.  For Kandinsky, especially, blue had a profound spiritual meaning as it linked man to the divine.  The darker the blue, the closer to God…



August Macke: Rokoko, 1912

[Kandinsky trained as an economist and lawyer, incidentally, and did not move toward a career in the arts until he was thirty years of age.  The son of a tea merchant, he grew to spiritual maturity in the Russian Orthodox Church.]

No artistic manifestos were ever produced by this group of painters, although it did produce an “Almanac” in 1912.  (The outbreak of World War One prevented publication of a second edition of the almanac.) Each held differing views about what art should emphasize.  What bonded them was a deep and abiding faith that art must not ignore the spiritual and that art should be spontaneous and intuitive…

Alexej von Jawlensky: Head in Blue, 1912

Rarely does very much good come of the carnage of battle.  World War brought an end to the Blue Riders.  Franz Marc and August Macke, two of the Blue Riders, died in the trenches in military service.  Kandinsky and the other Russian members were driven from Munich because men who led their homelands preferred to settle differences with bullets…  

 

The Blue Rider Almanac, 1912

 

THE MARKETPLACE

An easy and inexpensive way to build a collection of work by today's finest painters, sculptors, and photographers-- Greeting cards from Fine Art America.  Easier still: just browse the Louis R Nugent gallery at Fine Art America.  Choose from hundreds of unique ideas for home and office decor or holiday and birthday cards for yourself or that special someone.  Individual cards cost less than $5.  Wall prints start at only $22.

Louis Nugent: Desert Voodoo

 http://louis-nugent.artistwebsites.com/

We’re also on Facebook:  Louis R Nugent Photography on Facebook @ louisnugent22.

Other Fine Art America sites for discriminating collectors:

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/west-texas.html

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/art-inspired-by-art.html

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/all-natural-scenic-landscapes.html

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/4-abstract.html

 

CREDITS

Note: Information for this essay is taken primarily from readily available sources such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and almanacs.  When other sources are employed they are credited either in the text or as follows:  None. All photographs are taken from Wikipedia or Google Images without source or authorship credits available, except as noted: None.