1904–1983
George Balanchine
If dance came from theater, George Balanchine sought to divorce the former from any sense of narrative and make movement its primary expression. The celebrated choreographer labeled ballet an “independent art,” and his mastery of the “plotless” ballet—where the overwrought stage sets, excessively deployed music and over-the-top spectacle of productions that were en vogue were disregarded to instead put dance back in the spotlight—reinvigorated the medium. Yet Balanchine came from a classical background. The child of a composer, he had an innate understanding of music, and trained in piano and music theory. Those disciplines would give him a firm understanding of how to pair sound with choreography later in life; and especially in his collaborations with the modernist composer Igor Stravinsky. Balanchine joined the corps de ballet of the Maryinsky Theatre Ballet Company at 17, and in 1924 left the Soviet Union on a tour with the company. While in Paris, he had an opportunity to audition for the Ballet Russes, and was accepted. Its leader, Sergei Diaghilev, elevated him to the level of choreographer, and he served as the company’s ballet master until Diaghilev’s death in 1929. Balanchine’s approach was a decided departure from the over-the-top theatricality in Russia and England at the time. He started his own company in Paris, Les Ballets 1933, and collaborated with contemporaries like theater provocateur Bertolt Brecht. Later, the choreographer departed Europe for the U.S. at the behest of the American dance critic Lincoln Kirstein, founding the School of American Ballet so that the country would have a conservatory on par with the grand, rigorous schools in Europe. He finally settled in the U.S. permanently to form the Ballet Society, which would then become the New York City Ballet, an institution synonymous with the director’s neoclassical style. With nearly 500 works to his name, dabbling in film, theater and opera, and including such classics as The Nutcracker and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Balanchine’s legacy is immortalized.*
Founded in 1933 with Boris Kochno, Les Ballets 1933 was a ballet company that existed for less than four weeks and tailored itself to small, wealthy audiences in Paris and London. Balanchine used the company to create new works that were completely independent, both in choreography and music. Reviews were mixed, however, as some critics said the company was too youthful, like its founder, and others thought it too extravagant. Composers ranged from Kurt Weill to Tchaikovsky, with costumes by Barbara Karinska.
1912–2006
GORDON PARKS
The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was one of many public initiatives the United States took to create opportunity in rural communities during the Great Depression. The FSA hired photographers and writers—including Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks—to document the effects of the economic blight on their fellow citizens. The work that Parks completed during his fellowship cemented his eye as a chronicler of socioeconomic strife, race relations, poverty and civil rights in America. Parks was entirely self-taught, after purchasing a camera from a pawnshop.¶ His talent, as a photographer and beyond, quickly became clear. He was the first African-American to become a staff photographer at Life magazine, and the first to direct and produce a Hollywood movie (based on his own bestselling novel). Parks joined Life in the ’40s and cut a path that would eventually define the magazine’s brand of photojournalism and social documentary, and represent the realities of black America. Shaft, the seminal ’70s action flick, is a Gordon Parks vehicle. But Parks’ camera worked in tandem with his own empathetic perspective. “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs,” he said in a 1999 interview. “I knew at that point I had to have a camera.” *
1938–1993
Rudolf Nureyev
With his long hair, high cheekbones and impeccable contemporary technique, Rudolf Nureyev brought a charismatic celebrity to the world of ballet—and is partly responsible for bringing the classic art form to a mass audience. Though he was born and trained in the Soviet Union, he defected in the ’60s, eventually dancing as a guest of the British Royal Ballet. In an era where ballerinas typically stole the spotlight, Nureyev’s animalistic energy and striking looks brought the role of the male dancer to the fore. Nureyev came to New York to work with another Russian-born success, George Balanchine, who cast him in a New York City Opera production of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. He quickly became part of the city’s celebrity crowd and a regular at Studio 54, palling around with owner Steve Rubell and patrons like Andy Warhol, Liza Minnelli and other socialites. While he set the standard of the classical dancer, Nureyev found himself drawn to modern dance as well, eventually performing with the Martha Graham Dance Company. He also served as the director of the Paris Opera Ballet, bringing choreography to new heights and recontextualizing classic narratives with contemporary, inventive spins, such as a Cinderella set in Hollywood.*
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With inexhaustible stamina, Nureyev performed at a nonstop pace over his long career, acquiring over 90 roles and appearances with over 30 major ballet and modern dance companies.
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Ford’s long career began in the silent film era and lasted through the mid-1960s. He started as a prop man after high school, and his first opportunity to direct came in 1917.
1894–1973
john ford
Iconography always has an author, and in the case of the freewheeling, wild, open-skied American West, John Ford gave the landscape a visual vernacular. The Irish-American film director staged many scenes in Monument Valley (amid the sweeping sandstone buttes, a red sand desert that straddles the Arizona–Utah border is even named John Ford’s Point). Though he was awarded a record number of four Best Director Oscars for a variety of films (The Informer, How Green Was My Valley, an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and The Quiet Man), the director became venerated for his succession of Westerns, including Stagecoach, The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. He is also responsible for shaping the rough-and-tumble ideal of American masculinity over his many collaborations with John Wayne—the prototypical good-guy cowboy in the white hat. ¶ Known for his hardheadedness and heroic actions during World War II, Ford got his start in Hollywood as a jack-of-all-trades assistant for his director brother before climbing the ranks. He eventually made over 100 films in his decades-long career, beginning in the silent era. He exercised a talent for cutting in-camera—editing as film was shot to combat waste of time and resources. He also assembled a repertory-like group of actors, including Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Henry Fonda (the father of Peter and Jane) and his brother, Francis, to portray his vision. The director both gave loyalty to and expected it from this inner circle. Toward the end of his life, Ford lost vision in his left eye during an on-set accident and took to wearing a black eye patch; it made him, at over six feet tall, an imposing figure (he was also known to have both a drink—often going through cases of beer in a day—and cigar in hand while he worked). But Ford was in the business of myth making, and as one of the lines in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance goes, “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”*
1886–1962
MICHAEL CURTIZ
The master of the classic film, Michael Curtiz embodied the quintessential idea of the Hollywood studio director. After being recruited by studio head Jack Warner during the silent era, the Hungarian-born filmmaker embarked on a decades-long contract with Warner Brothers, prolifically completing nearly 100 romantic comedies, melodramas and swashbuckling epics. His most famous: the Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman World War II romance Casablanca, which earned him his first (and only) Academy Award for Best Director. But Curtiz also made his mark in 1945 with the original Mildred Pierce starring Joan Crawford, and with multiple collaborations with of-the-era action star Errol Flynn. Although history hasn’t always been kind to the European émigré— the film critic Andrew Sarris, who coined the term “auteur theory” to distinguish dir
ectors who maintained a visual and psychological vision, dubbed Casablanca’s success “a happy accident” and an “exception” to his theory, discounting Curtiz as a studio hand for hire, though admittedly one with technical prowess. Curtiz reportedly functioned on little sleep and clashed with his actors, but as his long-term collaborations with Flynn and James Cagney attest, he knew how to cultivate strong showings from his performers. And, as Bogart’s Rick says in Casablanca, “We’ll always have Paris.” *
1910–1998
Akira Kurosawa
As a teenager, Akira Kurosawa often accompanied his older brother, who worked as a benshi, or narrator, for silent films, to cinemas. But the Japanese filmmaker didn’t start working behind the camera until years later. He initially trained as a painter, graduating from the Doshisha School of Western Painting, but abandoned his work as an artist when financial success never came. When P.C.L. Studios, in Tokyo, asked for applicants for assistant directors, Kurosawa signed up as a last-ditch attempt for a job. He was accepted as an apprentice, and after working on a series of projects, he directed his first film, Sanshiro Sugata, in 1943.¶ Kurosawa lived a quiet life in Tokyo with his wife and children, but in the ’50s he came to symbolize a radical postwar style of Japanese filmmaking along with contemporaries like Yasujirō Ozu. The three-way-split narrative of Rashomon, which became Kurosawa’s claim to fame on the international film circuit, is a study of truth, deception, denial and embellishment. The historical epic, like Rashomon and The Seven Samurai (which was remade into the American Western The Magnificent Seven), became an important framing mechanism for Kurosawa’s ruminations on human happiness and misery, and one that he dissected until he completed his last film in 1993.*
1936–2011
Sylvia robinson
Sylvia Robinson had an innate talent for spotting what was next. And as the woman behind the very first rap label, Sugar Hill Records, she was an early architect of hip-hop. Born in New York City, Robinson was a singer first and had a contract with Columbia Records at the age of 14, singing on blues tracks. In the ’50s she earned a hit, “Love Is Strange,” while performing in the duo Mickey & Sylvia; another success came with “Pillow Talk,” which Robinson wrote and eventually sang herself when it was turned down by Al Green for being too “provocative.” In addition to performing, she was a heavyweight behind the decks, starting to produce records with the label she established with her husband in the ’60s.¶ Robinson first had the idea to record rap when she heard a DJ spitballing in a local club, and she drove around Englewood, New Jersey, looking for rappers to collaborate on a track. She led the random group to the studio and orchestrated their freestyles over a series of instrumentals and samples (including “Good Times” by the disco band Chic)—which would become “Rapper’s Delight,” and the group the Sugarhill Gang. Robinson also signed Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and produced their track “The Message,” which was to become not just a rap anthem for its throbbing beat but a shift in the genre to one with political potential.*
1908–1991
DAVID LEAN
Omar Sharif appears out of a mirage, slowly advancing on horseback through the desert haze. Then he fires a gun. The sequence, a long three minutes, was as much an indelible moment for the Egyptian-born actor as it was for his director, David Lean, on the 1962 period drama Lawrence of Arabia. Perfectionism can err on the side of ruthlessness, but for Lean it was absolutely essential, his driving force—even if it did cultivate an autocratic reputation.¶ In the introduction to Stephen M. Silverman’s biography of the filmmaker, Katharine Hepburn categorized him as “strong and savage” and “the best movie director in the world.” Lean’s ability to utilize celluloid as a canvas for sumptuous visuals, along with his technical skill, is what made a number of his works, such as Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and The Bridge on the River Kwai such staggering epics that influenced a generation of filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.¶ Born in Croydon, London, to Quaker parents, Lean landed an apprenticeship at Gaumont Studios in the 1920s, running errands, making tea and serving as a camera assistant before making his way to the editing suite. It is there that the making of this exacting director would come to fruition.*
1919–2009
Merce Cunningham
The subject of Merce Cunningham’s dance and choreography was the question of dance itself. The spiritual and conceptual heir to the trailblazing work of Martha Graham, arguably the originator of the modern dance movement, Cunningham elevated the conceptual discussion to a level that would alter the course of avant-garde dance, performance and art. Especially of note was his long-term creative relationship with composer John Cage, who became Cunningham’s partner in not just art but life. The two devised performances in which sound (Cage’s domain) and dance could be generated independently. When performed in unison, the two could clash, interact, thrive—choreography was no longer dependent on music, and could move into new arenas.¶ Born in Washington state, Cunningham first trained in the theater in Seattle before moving to dance—though the devices of theater and people like Antonin Artaud continued to inspire him. The idea of chance became a monumental influence as well. Cunningham incorporated the I Ching, a classical Chinese text, as well as Zen Buddhism into his process. The names of his compositions, such as “Tread,” “Signals” and “Objects,” are also poignantly evocative of poetry. His work with Cage was a forebear of the Judson Church movement, which gave rise to artists like Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer. Then, in the ’70s, he started putting dance projects on film, while keeping the reins as a choreographer; he appeared in every performance by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company up until the age of 70, and even performed with Mikhail Baryshnikov a decade later. In the late ’80s he started using a computer to choreograph compositions and became interested in motion-capture software. Still available today, the web series “Mondays with Merce,” posted on YouTube and produced by the Merce Cunningham Trust, was a peek into the dancer’s process in his final years, as well as the company’s inner workings and rehearsals.*
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Cunningham’s first encounter with dance came through an early teacher, who was also a circus performer and vaudevillian. “I started as a tap dancer,” he told the Los Angeles Times of his origins. “It was my first theater experience, and it has stayed with me all my life.” He went on to work at the forefront of modern dance for over 60 years.
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Cunningham founded his eponymous company while teaching at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College. The experimental art school was inspiring for other influential artists including Josef Albers and Robert Rauschenberg.
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The American socialite discovered a passion for art after a trip to Paris in 1901. She went on to study sculpture in the French capital and her hometown of New York.
1875–1942
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
Heiress to one of the wealthiest families in the United States, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney started her art practice as a sculptor. She was known for large-scale public works, many of them dealing with classical, social and political themes, such as the Three Graces and The Titanic Memorial, the latter completed in memoriam of the luxury liner. But her greatest endeavor was shaping the recognition and preservation of American art. In 1907, she opened a studio in New York’s Greenwich Village. The assemblage of salons and rooms snaked through a network of carriage houses and town houses on West Eighth Street, overlooking MacDougal Alley, just north of Washington Square Park. While the studio became the seat of her sculpting practice, it was also a place for artists to gather and discuss ideas. Purchasing works from many of them over the years, she established the Whitney Studio in 1914 as an exhibition space. It became fertile ground for New York artists of the era, and was officially inaugurated the Whitney Studio Club in 1918. (The Whitney Studio Galleries came a decade later.) Whitney evolved into a serious art patron, supporti
ng young artists like Edward Hopper, and as her engagement with the contemporary New York art scene grew, so did her collection. In 1929, she offered more than 600 works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the director refused the donation. So Whitney decided to strike out on her own. With the mission of featuring American art and American artists, she founded the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1930, opening the institution in the West Eighth Street space the next year. The site is now part of the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, and the museum has grown through many different homes. After opening on West 54th Street in 1954, it moved to the iconic brutalist Marcel Breuer–designed building at Madison Avenue and 75th Street in 1963. In 2015, the museum relocated once again, to Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, in a new glass structure designed by the Italian-born architect Renzo Piano.*
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