Camille Pissarro

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags , on March 11, 2024 by Cade

July 10, 1830 – November 13, 1903

The (arguably literal) father of French Impressionism, Camille Pissarro convened, nurtured and pushed the collective that defined one of the most famous movements in modern art history. Born on the island of St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies, Pissarro learned painting from local masters and initially concentrated on the lives and culture of the Caribbean people. He attended boarding school in France and – after spending some time in South America – returned to Paris at the age of 25 to embark on a career as an artist.

His focus on natural settings and rural life remained throughout his career. While he continued his studies at the Académie Suisse and the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Pissarro met fellow artists like Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne. They shared frustration with the strict rules that surrounded the official Salon in Paris. Together, the artists explored themes and techniques that allowed them to express themselves in new, unconventional ways.
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Susan Sontag

Posted in Montparnasse Cemetery with tags , on March 4, 2024 by Cade

January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004

Susan Sontag was an American novelist and essayist whose criticism covered a wide range of topics throughout the 1960s, ’70s and 80s. Her breakout work was 1964’s essay Notes on ‘Camp’ which popularized “camp” as an aesthetic sensibility. She went on to write Against Interpretation, On Photography and Illness as Metaphor as well as a number of novels and other fictional works. Sontag was also a filmmaker and occasionally directed theatre…including a production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in a war-torn theatre in Bosnia in 1994. She was a prolific activist who wrote and spoke out about subjects like the Vietnam war, feminism, human rights and the AIDS epidemic of the ’80s.

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George Frederic Handel

Posted in Westminster Abbey with tags , on February 26, 2024 by Cade

handel1February 23, 1684  – April 14, 1759

Before Beethoven, before Mozart, before Tchaikovsky…there was Handel. One of the big three composers of the pre-Classical Baroque era (along with Bach and Vivaldi) Georg Friederich Händel quickly became known in his Brandendburg-Prussian hometown (modern-day Germany). Before the age of 10, he was discovered playing a church organ and his formal music education commenced. Marked by distinctively harmonic – if LONG – cantatas and church compositions, Handel’s early career led him to Hamburg and then to Italy, where he composed sacred church music when classic Italian opera was not allowed by the Pope.

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Malcolm McLaren

Posted in Highgate Cemetery with tags on February 19, 2024 by Cade

January 22, 1946 – April 08, 2010

The history of popular culture – and counter-cultural music in particular – is riddled with provocateurs. Characters whose entire being longs to push boundaries and shock the system. Enter Malcolm McLaren.

Whether selling original clothes out of a dingy shop in Chelsea or building the foundational architecture of the punk rock subgenre of music, McLaren approached everything he did with a proverbial thumb in the eye of “The Man”.

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Alexandre Dumas

Posted in The Pantheon with tags , on February 12, 2024 by Cade

July 24, 1802 – December 05, 1870

French novelist and playwright, Alexandre Dumas, was a leading voice in the 19th Romantic literary movement. Born of a mixed-race lineage stemming from the Caribbean French colony known today as Haiti, Dumas used his struggles with race issues along with his travels throughout a changing European landscape to craft historical fiction that was both immediately popular and enduring. Though a successful playwright at the start of his career, his most famous works are arguably his many novels, including “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers.” Like many of his contemporaries, much of his writing was released serially and later compiled into the works we know today.

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Benjamin Franklin

Posted in Christ Church Burial Ground with tags on February 5, 2024 by Cade

January 6, 1705 – April 17, 1790

The key. The kite. The bifocals. The legend.

Benjamin Franklin is arguably one of the most popular and famous Americans in the history of the country. Born in Boston to English colonists, Ben was one of 17 children between his father’s two marriages. Originally, his father wanted him to be a minister, but could not afford to pay for more than two years of school. Young Ben dropped out and became an apprentice in his brother’s printshop.

Printmaking would define much of Franklin’s early life. He moved himself to Philadelphia and began publishing leaflets, newsletters and – eventually – newspapers. Gravitating toward critique and satire, his writings (often under pseudonyms) became very popular. He made a very good living having founded a number of papers in Pennsylvania and other colonies.
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Hank Gathers

Posted in Mount Lawn Cemetery with tags , on January 29, 2024 by Cade

February 11, 1967 – March 4, 1990

Casual sports fans may not immediately know the name Hank Gathers, but fans of college basketball likely know it too well. Gathers was a standout power forward at Loyola Marymount University during the late 1980s. He led the nation in both scoring (32.7 points/game) and rebounds (13.7/game) his junior year for the Lions. In a December home game during his senior year, Gathers collapsed on the court. After seeing doctors, he was diagnosed with a heart condition and given a regimen of medications. He missed two games and, when he returned, claimed the medication had a negative affect on his performance. His dosage was adjusted down over the following weeks and it’s believed he refused to take the meds at all on game days. He continued; however, to play well over this stretch. On March 4th, 1990, during a West Coast Conference Tournament game against Portland, Gathers collapsed again. This time, he never got up.

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Rembrandt van Rijn

Posted in Westerkerk with tags , on January 22, 2024 by Cade

July 15, 1606 – October 04, 1669

Perhaps the most prolific and famous visual artist of all-time, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a leading talent in the already-packed-with-talent, era known as the Dutch Golden Age. Throughout the prosperous 17th Century, the Dutch masters perfected a painting style which moved away from the religious subjects of previous generations in lieu of more common, everyday people and daily life. The fact that they were able to capture the nuance of light so well only added to the lasting appeal. Dozens of painters became famous for their works: Vermeer, Steen, Cuyp, legends all. But, none reached the heights of the man who is simply remembered by one name: Rembrandt.
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Ian Holm

Posted in Highgate Cemetery with tags , on January 15, 2024 by Cade

September 12, 1931 – June 19, 2020

Prolific Shakesperean actor, Sir Ian Holm, did not become a household name overnight, but his award-winning, nearly six decade career should be the envy of any aspiring thespian. Born in Essex, England, Holm secured a place at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the age of 19. From RADA, it was a certain jump to a long tenure at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Performances on stage and television built up his reputation and, by 1967, he had won a Tony award for his role in Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming on Broadway. More roles followed, including the voice of Frodo Baggins in the BBC’s radio production of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – a sign of legendary things to come.

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Marcel Marceau

Posted in Père Lachaise Cemetery with tags on January 8, 2024 by Cade

March 22, 1923 – September 22, 2007

Marcel Marceau was arguably the most famous World-War-II-Jewish-Resistance-hero-turned-international-mime-superstar in the history of the world. Top 3, at very least.

Born Marcel Mangel in France along the German border, Marcel’s family fled to central France when the Nazis invaded. He and his brother joined the liberation movement after their father was killed in Auschwitz. With the resistance, they helped rescue many Jewish children from captivity and racial laws at the time. Following the liberation of Paris, Marcel joined the French army for the remainder of the war.

As a young boy, Marcel was introduced to performing when his mother took him to see Charlie Chaplin movies. During his time with the resistance, he dabbled with silent comedy and mime to entertain children being evacuated. When the war ended, he entered college and studied the art of mime officially.

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