All posts by markpaskewitz

Future Library Project Will Offer a Unique Perspective on History, Art

Following more than 4 years as senior director of clinical development at Kyowa Kirin Pharma, Inc., in La Jolla, California, Dr. Mark Paskewitz assumed his current position as vice president of the National Institute of Clinical Research, Inc., in Los Angeles. Outside of work, Dr. Mark Paskewitz is an avid reader. His favorite topics include art and history, although he also follows politics in France and Spain.

In the somewhat near future, lovers of history and the arts will have a unique opportunity to experience and analyze historical works of art without the groundwork of modern criticism. Unfortunately, readers will need to wait until 2114 to take part in the experience. The Future Library project was launched in 2014, and will continue for a century. Each year, a prominent writer is selected to author a story or novel that will remain completely unread until 2114, at which point a limited anthology series will be printed using paper from 100 trees planted in Nordmarka forest at the start of the project.

Prior to the unveiling, the series will be housed in a special room at Oslo Public Library, known as the Silent Room. Margaret Atwood, best known for Cat’s Eye, Oryx and Crake, and The Handmaid’s Tale, was the first author to pen a manuscript for the Future Library project, turning in Scribbler Moon in May of 2015. Other contributions include David Mitchell’s From Me Flows What You Call Time, and The Last Taboo by Elif Shafak. In October of 2019, Karl Ove Knausgard was announced as the next author. In the summer of 2020, he will turn in his manuscript as part of a special ceremony in the Nordmarka forest.

The Painting Styles of Impressionism and Postimpressionism

 

Postimpressionism
Image: britannica.com

At the National Institute of Clinical Research, vice president of clinical operations Dr. Mark Paskewitz supports a variety of clinical studies. In his leisure time, Dr. Mark Paskewitz enjoys the work of Impressionist painters such as Edouard Manet and Postimpressionist painters such as Paul Cezanne.

In the second half of the 1800s, France produced two of the world’s most influential painting schools: Impressionism and Postimpressionism. The former began around 1860 and lasted until the end of the century. Impressionism is characterized by a rejection of the then-prevailing academic style in favor of a new style that captured the ephemeral shifts in motion and light as experienced in real time.

Claude Monet, an iconic Impressionist painter, often painted the same scene over and over in sequences, with each addition to the sequence reflecting different conditions of light and mood. His famous water lily sequence, which he painted in his own garden, includes roughly 250 canvases.

As Impressionism broke with the academic style, Postimpressionism broke with the Impressionist style in approximately 1880. Postimpressionists such as Paul Cezanne and Vincent van Gogh turned away from vicissitudes in the vein of natural light, opting instead to emphasize symbolic meaning and bold colors.

A Brief Introduction to the Dutch Golden Age of Painting

 

Rembrandt  pic
Rembrandt
Image: biography.com

Best known for developing revolutionary drugs at innovative companies like Kyowa Kirin Pharma, Mark Paskewitz now heads the National Institute of Clinical Research as vice president. He complements his passion for drug research and development with a love of the arts. An avid reader, Mark Paskewitz has refined his interests in a range of artistic movements by reading art history.

In the seventeenth century, an elite group of painters known as the Dutch Masters ushered in the “Golden Age” of Dutch painting. Among the most famous of the Dutch Masters are Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn—more commonly referred to as Rembrandt—and Pieter de Hooch.

The Dutch Golden Age was defined by experimental works and fierce debates over what art should be. Some artists and critics suggested it should be an ode to nature, while others sought to celebrate the heights of humanity as found in classical antiquity. Some scholars and curators have posited that this era in art history determined the future of painting through a battle between idealists and realists.

Henri Matisse’s Connection with Traditional Yup’ik Masks of Alaska

Henri Matisse pic
Henri Matisse
Image: biography.com

Mark Paskewitz is a Southern California pharmaceutical development professional with experience managing a variety of successful clinical trials. Passionate about art history, Mark Paskewitz particularly enjoys the works of French Impressionists and those who followed, including Henri Matisse.

A Heard Museum exhibit in Phoenix, titled Yua: Henri Matisse and the Inner Arctic Spirit, draws attention to an aspect of the French modernist that few are aware of. The route to these late works involved Matisse’s exile to Nice and the French Riviera in 1940, following the Nazi invasion of France.

With his daughter staying in Paris and risking her life as part of the Resistance, Matisse was fighting his own personal struggle against cancer. Undergoing surgery in his 70s and just barely surviving, Matisse came to see all that followed as “extra time.” He embarked on new forms of art with new enthusiasm, including cutouts and masks, which he copied from the Inuit masks his son-in-law collected.

Fascinated by masks from his early years, Matisse drew dozens of Yup’ik masks from Alaska, which had shamanistic dancing and ceremonial uses. Combining naturalistic, sculptural qualities and spiritual meanings, the masks attracted Matisse for their complex, highly symbolic aesthetic. The Heard Museum exhibition pairs Matisse’s drawings with actual Yup’ik masks crafted from natural elements such as feathers, wood, hide, and baleen.