Domesticating efficiency : Lillian Moller Gilbreth

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Lillian Moller Gilbreth [1878-1972] is perhaps best remembered for motherhood. Her children wrote the popular books Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes about their experiences growing up with such a large and famous family. But Lillian Moller Gilbreth was not only a mother; she was also a scholar, inventor, author, industrial engineer, industrial psychologist and a recipient of many honorary mentions/awards.

A pioneer in ergonomics, Dr. Gilbreth patented many kitchen appliances including an electric food mixer, shelves inside refrigerator doors, and the famous trash can with a foot-pedal lid-opener. She is best known for work simplification and industrial efficiency, to help workers in industry, which she shows in her classic Time & Motion Studies. She is one of the first scientists who recognized the effects of stress and lack of sleep [fatigue] on the worker.

Together with her husband , she pioneered industrial management techniques still in use today. She was one of the first 'superwomen" to combine a career with her home life.

After the death of her husband, Frank Gilbreth, with whom she partnered in the management consulting firm of Gilbreth Inc. and co-authored many of the worker studies, Lillian Gilbreth continued their work and extended the work into the home in an effort to find the 'one best way' to perform household chores. She also did studies to assist the physically challenged : for example, she designed an ideal kitchen layout for a person afflicted with heart disease.

Lillian Gilbreth was an industrial engineer for General Electric and worked on improving kitchen designs. Gilbreth interviewed over 4,000 women to design the proper height for stoves, sinks, and other kitchen fixtures. In 1966, she became the first women to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

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The seed of growth and development or Helen Keller's "Aha!"

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“Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.”
--Helen Keller--

From the moment early humans created words, the seed of the library was there, in the beginning, with the word.

The Miracle Worker, the classic play [and film] of Helen Keller's life, depicts this seed at the moment of sprouting. The six-year-old Helen, deaf, blind and locked for years in a silence of darkness and almost wild with frustration, stands at the pump, her hand under the running water. Her teacher Annie Sullivan is spelling "water" in sign letters repeatedly into Helen's little palm - - probably for the hundredth time.

Then there is that stark moment of epiphany when the child, for years bereft of any way to communicate, makes the sudden connection between the cold water and the fingers insistently making shapes in her palm. In that moment, a human child skips over eons of human history, leaping from the inchoate and languageless state of man's prehistory into the world of signs.
Later, Helen Keller wrote that she wasn't fully conscious until she had language:

"It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old. The morning after my teacher came she gave me a doll. ... As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. .."

Source : here

Surrealism meets elderly lady

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Look carefully, and you see the tiny wrinkly waves the fish produces while she knits..
This collage-sketch is absurd, strange and perhaps somewhat disturbing. Does it come close to surrealism ? Does it have anything to do with symbolism ? Or any -isms aside, what does it convey ?

A group of artists, the Surrealists sought to explore an inner reality beyond the rational world. They often used symbols to portray bizarre, dreamlike landscapes and were influenced by the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud.

The Surrealists were interested in more distinct forms than the Impressionists, who often depicted objects dissolved in bright sunlight. Like Dada artists, they experimented with new subjects. Unlike Dada artists, the Surrealists were not in favor of anarchy as a way of protesting politics and war. Andre Breton, poet and critic was known as one of the founding fathers of the Surrealist movement. In his treatise of 1924, First Manifesto of Surrealism, Breton defined the doctrines of the movement. In it, Breton emphasized the importance of an "automatic" approach and a dream state for creativity.

One of the most controversial and key figure of the Surrealist movement was Salvador Dali. He was intrigued by Freud's ideas of the unconscious mind, and the symbolic significance these ideas held, inspired most of his art. Dali, more than many other Surrealists, combined realism into his strange landscapes, giving them a startling, familiar quality. His goal was "to record unconscious objects as precisely as possible."

Neo-primitivism

"Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning." Igor Stravinsky

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A Russian art movement originated from the book Neo-primitivizm (1913) written by A. Schevchenko.

This book introduces a new style in painting with elements of cubism, futurism and traditional Russian folk art. The work Neo-primitivism in the West is also used as a wider term to describe the work of artists who aspire to the aesthetic of primitivism. One of these artists is Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky [June 17th, 1882 - April 6th, 1971], who was a Russian composer. He is considered by both the West and his native Russia to be the most influential composer of the 20th century. An example of primitivism in music is Stravinsky's third ballet, The rite of Spring. When it first premiered in Paris, a riot erupted in the audience — spectators were shocked and outraged by its pagan primitive sound, its harsh dissonance and percussions and the pounding rhythms — but but it too was recognized as a masterpiece and influenced composers all over the world.