T. Lux Feininger

T. Lux Feininger (1910–2011) was an American painter, avant-garde photographer, author, and art teacher who was born in Berlin to Julia Berg and Lyonel Charles Feininger, an American living in Germany from the age of sixteen.

At sixteen, Lux Feininger became a student at the Bauhaus at Dessau, where he studied painting with Josef Albers, Paul Klee, and Wassily Kandinsky, played in a student jazz band, and participated in experimental theatre. It was here that he began taking photographs and assumed the role of an artistic photojournalist chronicling the daily life at Bauhaus. 

Although no photographic studio was part of the Bauhaus until 1929, his photography was influenced by the aesthetic of László Moholy-Nagy, who lived adjacent to the Feininger family. Soon Feininger was selling his photographs to periodicals and newspapers through an agency. By 1929 his work was featured in Film und Foto, a survey of modern photography.

Gerard Sekoto

Gerard Sekoto (1913 –1993), was a South African artist and musician. He is recognised as the pioneer of urban black art and social realism.

His art skills emerged in his teenage years, when he attended the Diocesan Teachers Training College in Pietersburg. 

In 1938 at the age of 25 he left for Johannesburg to pursue a career as an artist.

In 1947 he left South Africa to live in Paris under self-imposed exile. The first years in Paris were hard, and Sekoto was employed as a pianist purely by chance at l'Echelle de Jacob ("Jacob’s ladder"), a trendy nightclub that had reopened for business after World War II. Here he played jazz and sang "Negro spirituals", popular French songs of the period and some Harry Belafonte. Music became the way that he could pay his living and art school expenses.

Sekoto played piano and sang on several records. He composed 29 songs, mostly excessively poignant, recalling the loneliness of exile, yet displaying the inordinate courage of someone battling to survive in a foreign cultural environment.

In 1966 he visited Senegal for a year.

Sekoto's paintings became political in the 1970s due to apartheid in his home country. In 1989 the Johannesburg Art Gallery honoured him with a retrospective exhibition and the University of Witwatersrand with an honorary doctorate.

He died on 20 March 1993 at a retirement home outside Paris.

Boinero/Inventor Dario Zapico

Beret Project visitor Dario Zapico from Asturias (Spain) sent me these pictures of his great invention: an economic, easy to manufacture wardrobe hanger for berets!

If Dario Zapico was a New Zealander, he would be congratulated for his "Number 8 Wire" Kiwi ingenuity.

A very nifty contraption that should get a good following. I know one boinero who will certainly put a Saturday morning into manufacturing one of these...

Catalunya über alles!

The plot of “Catalunya über alles!” is made up of three stories with shared characters and a common location: an inner Catalonia village. The time is the present.

In the first story,
an ex-convict who has served a 19-year prison sentence for rape returns home to reintegrate into society. Through his eyes, we see the new reality in the village: the weekly market taken by immigrants, and a politician who rails against this new reality in his speeches. Soon, all the eyes and prejudices will be on him.

The second story is about a Sub-Saharan immigrant hit by the crisis. He needs a job, no matter which, so as to provide for his family. He finds his “opportunity” in a debt collection company, whose employees are dressed in the typical Catalan outfit, with barretina. His first assignment will be to chase a defaulting politician, the one who wants to kick immigrants out of the village.

In the third story, a wealthy family returns home earlier than planned, and catches an Albanian Kosovar burglar in it. The house owner and the criminal begin a fight that ends with the death of the burglar. The last shot is at point-blank range. From that moment, the businessman becomes the focus of a media circus: social avenger or murderer.

Boineros with Tattoos

Ted Joans

Theodore "Ted" Joans (1928 –2003) was an American jazz poet, surrealist, trumpeter, and painter. His work stands at the intersection of several avant-garde streams and some have seen in it a precursor to the orality of the spoken-word movement. 

However he criticized the competitive aspect of "slam" poetry. Joans is known for his motto: "Jazz is my religion, and Surrealism is my point of view".

Marae Kai Masters

Marae Kai Masters is a Māori Television popular competitive cooking show where teams from various marae (Māori meeting houses) compete in preparing kai (food).

Master Chef and presenter Joe McLeod is a dedicated beret wearer, pictured here gathering Rongoa to add flavor into the Umu Marumaru Hangi for herbal infused steam cooking wild pork.

Joe certainly has an interesting manner of wearing his beret; it makes me think of that beautiful spot by EiTB (Basque Television):

François Bernat-Salles

François Bernat-Salles, born in 1855 in Gavarnie ( Hautes-Pyrénées  was one of the great mountain guides of the Pyrenees.

Like most inhabitants of the mountain village of Gavarnie, François Bernat-Salles was a modest farmer and shepherd. With the arrival of tourists wishing to explore the mountains, a demand for guides and porters created, which was for many farmers an opportunity to make some extra income. François Bernat-Salles began as a bearer of Célestin Passet . With his strength and his knowledge of the mountain, he became a first class guide.

He worked for prestigious clients: Henry Russell, Roger de Monts, Henri Brulle and Jean Bazillac.

In 1888, he accompanied Roger de Monts and Célestin Passet for the first ascent of the north face of Mont Perdu. This feat earned him a recommendation by Henri Brulle, and the following year he is part of the team Brulle, Bazillac, de Monts & Celestin Passet at the Vignemale . Three days later he did the north face of Mont Perdu.

He ended his life as he had begun as a modest shepherd. He is buried in the cemetery of Gavarnie, in the square of Pyrénéistes.

La Fleur de l'âge

La Fleur de l'âge (1947) is an unfinished film by Marcel Carné, starring Leonie Bathiat (Arletty) and Anouk Aimée and some well sized Basque berets.

In pre-war France, children were jailed under horrific conditions. The film tells of the massive escape that took place on the island of Belle-Île-en-Mer in 1937, and of the child hunt that ensued.

The “hunt” to recover the fugitives was not only attended by the authorities, but also residents and tourists, who were offered a bounty.

Twenty minutes of La Fleur de l'âge have been mounted. In an interview with the magazine Cinematograph (issue 108, March 1985), Arletty says that nearly half of the film was shot, but realisation didn't happen as other things took over...

Daddy Squeeze (Dan Newton)

"Daddy Squeeze" has been playing offbeat accordion music since 1987, when he won the Nebraska State Accordion Contest at the Czech Festival in Wilber, Nebraska. He has used the squeeze box for playing all kinds of music not normally associated with free-reed instruments, as well as standard accordion material.

Daddy Squeeze also enjoys mixing up styles and genres that don't generally seem compatible. "Music out of context", or "Ethno-clectic Bop" is the result of his genre-bending experiments with Celtic, Tex-Mex, Creole, Blues, Jazz, Scandinavian, Polka and pop music.

Anouk Aimée

Anouk Aimée (1932) is a French film actress, who has appeared in 70 films since 1947, having begun her film career at age 14. In her early years she studied acting and dance besides her regular education. Although the majority of her films were French, she also made a number of films in Spain, Great Britain, Italy and Germany, along with some American productions.

Among her films are Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), after which she was considered a "rising star who exploded" onto the film world.

 Aimée was born Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus in Paris, France, the daughter of actor Henri Murray (born Henry Dreyfus) and actress Geneviève Sorya (born Durand).

Although some have speculated that she may be related to Captain Alfred Dreyfus, this has never been confirmed. Her father was Jewish and her mother was Roman Catholic. She was raised Catholic but later converted to Judaism as an adult.

Accordionist Manuel (Manny) Bobenrieth

Born in Concepcion, Chile, Manuel Bobenrieth began studying the accordion at age five. He studied at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland and received a Bachelor of Music Degree in Performance from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., becoming the first accordionist to graduate with such a degree from that institution.

In 1986, Manny became a member of the United Stated States Army Band. As the accordionist with the Army Strolling Strings, he has performed for three Presidents, including Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton at numerous White House State Dinners in honor of foreign dignitaries such as Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Prince Charles and Princess Diana, Boris Yeltsin, King Hussein, the Emperor of Japan and Nelson Mandela. 

Cellist Myles Jordan

Myles Jordan had an eclectic upbringing in Canada, appearing on CBC television as a childhood actor, and studying art for six years before taking up the cello.  

After serving four years with the National Ballet Orchestra of Canada he won a Floyd S. Chalmers Foundation Award.  From New York he moved to Philadelphia, where he became associate principal cellist of the Concerto Soloists’ Chamber Orchestra for a season before embarking on doctoral studies.  He is a founder of the DaPonte String Quartet, and has played with the group for close to twenty years.  A fascination with early music, especially Johann Sebastian Bach, led him to explore the Baroque violoncello piccolo with which he recently recorded a rigorously historicist interpretation of three Bach cello suites for the Centaur label.  He lives in rural Maine.

Robert M. Knight

Since 1968 Robert M. Knight’s photographs have served as testimony to the greatest moments in rock and roll history. He is one of the first professional photographers to shoot Jimi Hendrix and the last to photograph Stevie Ray Vaughn. His unprecedented access to just about the entire world’s most recognized artists in music has given him a unique insight into the emotion of the music.

Raised in Hawaii, based in Los Angeles, Robert Knight is a long time advertising/travel photographer who also specializes in the rock and roll music industry. His career spans from 1968 to the present. Constantly working in the music industry for international record companies, publications, and musical equipment manufacturers, Robert is best known for his “Guitar Legend” archive, having worked with such artists as Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, to such contemporary artists as John Mayer, Tom Morello, and John-5.

Robert is also part of Guitar Center’s Hollywood RockWalk team, working alongside RockWalk Director Dave Weiderman. Robert and partner Maryanne Bilham have an exhibition on the outside of the more than 150 Guitar Centers around America, which is one of the largest outdoor gallery shows of original photographic art. Robert Knight has published several books: Rock Prophecies (2009) “50 Rock Guitarists” Shinko Music (1995) “Hollywood’s RockWalk, The First Decade” (1996) and is part of “Led Zeppelin -The Photographers” (1996).

Robert's professional life was chronicled in the documentary film Rock Prophecies.

Psycho Bunny

Psycho Bunny is a men’s clothing company based in New York, founded in 2005 by Robert Godley and Robert Goldman.

Handmade from English silk, their first collection of neckties introduced the signature long-eared, crossbone-clad lagomorph icon to the world. Inspired by the 17th-century non-conformist maritime marauders and secret societies like the infamous Skull & Bones, Godley sketched a logo on a napkin. "When I showed that tie to a buyer, she said, 'Look at the psycho bunny!'" Godley says. "The name stuck."

Psycho Bunny "uses English silks made in a 270-year-old mill that are then sewn by hand in Mr. Goldman's family-owned third-generation tie workshop in Belleville, N.J. The collection has grown to include polo shirts, swim trunks and socks."

Since the initial launch of the Psycho Bunny neckwear collection, the brand has expanded into multiple categories including polo shirts, cashmere scarves and socks, and other men's apparel items.

Weta

Weta (plural weta) is the common name for a group of about 70 insect species in the families Anostostomatidae and Rhaphidophoridae, endemic to New Zealand. The word is from the Māori language, where singular and plural have the same form.

Many weta are large by insect standards and some species are among the largest and heaviest in the world. A captive giant weta (Deinacrida heteracantha) filled with eggs reached a record 70 g, making it one of the heaviest documented insects in the world and heavier than a sparrow.

Their physical appearance is like a long-horned grasshopper, or cricket, but the hind legs are enlarged and usually very spiny. Because they can cope with variations in temperature, weta are found in a variety of environments, including alpine, forests, grasslands, caves, shrub lands and urban gardens. Most weta are predators or omnivores preying on other invertebrates, but the tree and giant weta eat mostly lichens, leaves, flowers, seed-heads, and fruit.

This is however not a lesson on entomology, but a beret post. I found that an old beret, covering the stump of a hollow cabbage-tree in our garden, makes a perfect environment to breed weta!

Streetlow vs Brown berets

Magazines of the lowrider culture have long used semi-nude models in their features and advertisements to attract more readers. Recently one of those magazines, Streetlow, published its latest issue with one of their models wearing a Brown Beret uniform in a sexualized manner. 

As the Brown Berets have been a symbol in the Chicano community of resistance and revolutionary struggle, this disrespect caused righteous indignation from actual Brown Berets.