How Ukraine’s Works of Art Are Being Saved in Wartime–Using the Lessons of World War II

in Art, Current Affairs, History | April 11th, 2022

Much in Ukraine has been lost since the Russ­ian inva­sion com­menced this past Feb­ru­ary. But efforts to min­i­mize the dam­age have been respond­ing on all fronts, and not just geo­graph­i­cal ones. The preser­va­tion of Ukrain­ian cul­ture has become the top pri­or­i­ty for some groups, in response to Russ­ian forces’ seem­ing intent to destroy it. “Cul­tur­al her­itage is not only impact­ed, but in many ways it’s impli­cat­ed in and cen­tral to armed con­flict,” says Hay­den Bas­sett, direc­tor of the Vir­ginia Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry’s Cul­tur­al Her­itage Mon­i­tor­ing Lab, in the Vox explain­er above. “These are things that peo­ple point to that are uni­fy­ing fac­tors for their soci­ety. They are tan­gi­ble reflec­tions of their soci­ety.”

This very qual­i­ty made them a sad­ly appeal­ing tar­get for Russ­ian attacks. As the video’s nar­ra­tor puts it, Vladimir Putin “has made it clear that iden­ti­ty is at the ide­o­log­i­cal cen­ter of Rus­si­a’s inva­sion,” osten­si­bly an effort to reuni­fy two lands of a com­mon civ­i­liza­tion. For Ukraine, the strat­e­gy to pro­tect its own cul­tur­al her­itage dur­ing wartime involves two phas­es of work.

First, “iden­ti­fy what needs pro­tect­ing,” already a require­ment of the 1954 Con­ven­tion for the Pro­tec­tion of Cul­tur­al Prop­er­ty in the Event of Armed Con­flict (known as the “Hague Con­ven­tion). In Ukraine’s case, the list includes no few­er than sev­en UNESCO World Her­itage Sites.

Step two is to secure these cul­tur­al trea­sures, whether they be paint­ings, sculp­tures, build­ings, or any­thing else besides. This requires the col­lab­o­ra­tion of “gov­ern­ment agen­cies, mil­i­taries, NGOs, aca­d­e­mics, muse­um insti­tu­tions,” says Bas­sett, as well as of vol­un­teers on the ground phys­i­cal­ly safe­guard­ing the arti­facts. This often involves hid­ing them when­ev­er pos­si­ble, and “if his­to­ry is any indi­ca­tion,” says the nar­ra­tor, “col­lec­tions have moved under­ground or out­side of major cities, or out­side the coun­try entire­ly.” So it was in Europe under the maraud­ing of Nazi Ger­many, includ­ing, as seen in the France 24 seg­ment above, with hold­ings of the Lou­vre up to and includ­ing the Mona Lisa. The state of world geopol­i­tics today may have us won­der­ing if we’ve tru­ly learned the lessons of the Sec­ond World War, but at least the fight to save Ukrain­ian cul­ture reminds that we haven’t for­got­ten them all.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online: 1,000+ Librar­i­ans Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­serve Arti­facts of Ukrain­ian Civ­i­liza­tion Before Rus­sia Can Destroy Them

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

Ukraini­ans Play­ing Vio­lin in Bunkers as Rus­sians Bomb Them from the Sky

Lis­ten to Last Seen, a True-Crime Pod­cast That Takes You Inside an Unsolved, $500 Mil­lion Art Heist

When Pablo Picas­so and Guil­laume Apol­li­naire Were Accused of Steal­ing the Mona Lisa (1911)

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Rembrandt Book Bracelet: Behold a Functional Bracelet Featuring 1400 Rembrandt Drawings

in Art, Creativity, Design, Fashion, Museums | April 8th, 2022

Admit­ted­ly jew­el­ry is not one of our areas of exper­tise, but when we hear that a bracelet costs €10,000, we kind of expect it to have a smat­ter­ing of dia­monds.

Design­ers Lyske Gais and Lia Duinker are get­ting that amount for a wrist­let com­prised chiefly of five large paper sheets print­ed with high res images down­loaded free from the Rijksmu­se­um’s exten­sive dig­i­tal archive of Rem­brandt draw­ings and etch­ings.

Your aver­age pawn­bro­ker would prob­a­bly con­sid­er its 18-karat gold clasp, or pos­si­bly the cus­tom-made wood­en box in which it can be stored when not in use the most pre­cious thing about this orna­ment.

An ardent bib­lio­phile or art lover is per­haps bet­ter equipped to see the book bracelet’s val­ue.

Each gilt edged page — 1400 in all — fea­tures an image of a hand, sourced from 303 down­loaded Rem­brandt works.

An illus­tra­tion on the design­ers’ Duinker and Dochters web­site details the painstak­ing process where­by the book­bracelet takes shape in 8‑page sec­tions, or sig­na­tures, cross stitched tight­ly along­side each oth­er on a paper band. Put it on, and you can flip through Rem­brandt hands, Rolodex-style. When you want to do the dish­es or take a show­er, just pack it flat into that cus­tom box.

Gais and Duinker also include an index, which is handy for those times when you don’t feel like hunt­ing and peck­ing around your own wrist in search of a hand that appeared in the Flute Play­er or  Christ cru­ci­fied between the two mur­der­ers.

The Rembrandt’s Hands and a Lion’s Paw bracelet, titled like a book and pub­lished in a lim­it­ed edi­tion of 10, nabbed first prize in the 2015 Rijksstu­dio Awards, a com­pe­ti­tion that chal­lenges design­ers to cre­ate work inspired by the Rijksmuseum’s col­lec­tion.

(2015’s sec­ond prize went to an assort­ment of con­serves and condi­ments that harkened to Johannes Hannot’s 1668 Still Life with Fruit. 2014’s win­ner was a palette of eye­shad­ow and some eye­lin­ers inspired by Jan Adam Kruseman’s 1833 Por­trait of Ali­da Christi­na Assink and a Leen­dert van der Cooghen sketch.)

But what about that spe­cial art lov­ing bib­lio­phile who already has every­thing, includ­ing a Rem­brandts Hands and a Lions Paw boekarm­band?

Maybe you could get them Col­lier van hond­jes, Gais and Duinker’s fol­low up to the book bracelet, a rub­ber chok­er with an attached 112-page book pen­dant show­cas­ing Rem­brandt dogs sourced from var­i­ous museum’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions.

Pur­chase Rem­brandt’s Hands and a Lions Paw lim­it­ed edi­tion book bracelet here.

And embark on mak­ing your own improb­a­ble thing inspired by a high res image in the Rijksmu­se­um’s Rijks Stu­dio here.

via Colos­sal/Neatora­ma

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and cre­ator, most recent­ly of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Home Movies of Frida Kahlo (and a Side Order of Romantic Entanglements)

in Art, Film, History, Life | April 1st, 2022

Ear­ly home movies have a cer­tain pre­dictable qual­i­ty. Their sub­jects wan­der around, point­ing at things. They shoo the cam­era away with embar­rassed grins, clus­ter togeth­er awk­ward­ly, and casu­al­ly chat up their side pieces in front of their spous­es….

Wait, what now?

The vis­it between mar­ried artists Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera and exiled Russ­ian Com­mu­nist leader Leon Trot­sky and his wife Natalia Sedo­va appears both cor­dial and ordi­nary in Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ivan Heisler’s footage, above.

The Trot­skys took up res­i­dence in La Casa Azul, Kahlo’s fam­i­ly home in Jan­u­ary 1937,  after Rivera per­suad­ed Pres­i­dent Lázaro Cár­de­nas to offer them sanc­tu­ary in Mex­i­co.

Short­ly after arrival, Sedo­va wrote a let­ter to friends, speak­ing warm­ly of the hos­pi­tal­i­ty she was receiv­ing:

We were breath­ing puri­fied air…A motorcar…carried us across the fields of palms and cac­ti to the sub­urbs of Mex­i­co City; a blue house, a patio filled with plants, airy rooms, col­lec­tions of Pre-Columbian art, paint­ings from all over: we were on a new plan­et, in Rivera’s house.

Heisler’s slice of life film would appear to be a con­tin­u­a­tion of this relaxed and hap­py vibe.

Trot­sky pats Rivera on the back and con­vers­es ani­mat­ed­ly with Kahlo, near­ly 30 years his junior. The two women embrace and stroll arm in arm, as the men take inter­est in a cac­tus.  Sedo­va seems  delight­ed when Rivera kiss­es her hand. Then every­one stands around and looks at trees.

Gosh, isn’t it nice when all mem­bers of two cou­ples get along so well?

Is it pos­si­ble, though, that an extra cou­ple was lurk­ing in plain sight?

Short­ly after meet­ing, Trot­sky and Kahlo entered into a brief but pas­sion­ate fling, exchang­ing sweet noth­ings in Eng­lish, con­ceal­ing love notes between the pages of books, and bor­row­ing Kahlo’s sis­ter Cristina’s house for trysts.

They called it quits in July of 1937, after Sedo­va caught on and issued her hus­band an ulti­ma­tum.

Accord­ing to the Hoover Insti­tu­tion Library and Archives, Heisler’s film was shot in 1938.

So we will amend our state­ment to say, isn’t it nice when two cou­ples get along so well, even after two of them were dis­cov­ered to be cheat­ing on their part­ners with each oth­er?

Kahlo’s and Rivera’s extra­mar­i­tal dal­liances are hard­ly news, of course.

Dan­ger­ous Minds sug­gests that part of what drew Kahlo to Trot­sky was the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get back at Rivera for his affair with Cristi­na — the sis­ter who vol­un­teered her house as love nest.

And in Van­i­ty Fair, Amy Fine Collins details how Rivera “boast­ed to any­one who would lis­ten” about Kahlo’s same sex lia­sons, but was apoplec­tic over her entan­gle­ments with men, includ­ing sculp­tor Isamu Noguchi, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nick­o­las Muray, and Trotsky’s sec­re­tary Jean van Hei­jenoort, wit­ness to the bla­tant flir­ta­tion between the artist and his boss.

The romance with Trot­sky “infu­ri­at­ed him most” Collins writes, adding that “long after Trotsky’s assas­si­na­tion, Kahlo delight­ed in dri­ving Rivera into a rage by humil­i­at­ing him with the mem­o­ry of her affair with the great Com­mu­nist.”

…kind of makes one wish this lit­tle film had sound.

The absence of audio is also lament­ed by view­ers of this col­orized assem­blage of ama­teur footage star­ring Kahlo and Rivera.

Trot­sky appears again at the 1:03 mark. Dare we describe him as look­ing smit­ten?

There’s some spec­u­la­tion that the young woman at 1:17 is musi­cian Chavela Var­gas, anoth­er of Kahlo’s lovers. In that same moment, Kahlo proves her­self as in com­mand of her cin­e­mat­ic image as she was in her self-por­traits. She’s as self-pos­sessed as a movie star through­out.

Which makes the ear­ly glimpse of her sketch­ing en plein air in a fur coat and West­ern style hat, feet propped on a low wall, all the more dis­arm­ing.

It’s rare to see Fri­da Kahlo caught off guard, or so she appears, smil­ing and ges­tur­ing off­screen toward the osten­si­ble sub­ject of her draw­ing.

Is there a lip read­er in the house?

(Seri­ous ques­tion.)

For good mea­sure, here is even more footage — the Kahlo-Riveras at the Casa Azul, as cap­tured by Kahlo’s lover Nick­o­las Muray, whose famous 1939 por­trait of the artist in a magen­ta rebo­zo was declared “mar­velous as a Piero del­la Francesca” by her hus­band.

“To me it is more than that,” Kahlo wrote to Muray:

It is a trea­sure, and besides, it will always remind me [of] that morn­ing we had break­fast togeth­er.

Under­stand­ably, some view­ers remain dis­ap­point­ed that the snip­pets of Kahlo on film lack sound, but sure­ly the “voice” in which she wrote her many loves, Diego includ­ed, is far more expres­sive than any audio that a home movie might have cap­tured.

Which is not to say we’ll nev­er hear Fri­da. Above is a record­ing the Nation­al Sound Library of Mex­i­co believes to be her, from a radio show aired the year after her death.

The title of the text from which she is heard read­ing?

Por­trait of Diego.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Inti­ma­cy of Fri­da Kahlo’s Self-Por­traits: A Video Essay

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life and Work of Fri­da Kahlo

What the Icon­ic Paint­ing The Two Fridas Actu­al­ly Tells Us About Fri­da Kahlo

Vis­it the Largest Col­lec­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Work Ever Assem­bled: 800 Arti­facts from 33 Muse­ums, All Free Online

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Fri­da Kahlo’s Blue House Free Online

Dis­cov­er Fri­da Kahlo’s Wild­ly Illus­trat­ed Diary: It Chron­i­cled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and cre­ator, most just late­ly, of Inven­tive, Not Well-known: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Com­ply with her @AyunHalliday.

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A Gallery of Fantastical Alchemical Drawings

in Art, Books, History, Internet Archive, Libraries | March 31st, 2022

I once had to tell a ten-year-old that the Har­ry Pot­ter book series was not a his­tor­i­cal lit­er­ary clas­sic but a recent pub­lish­ing phe­nom­e­non that occurred in my life­time. She was amazed, but she was­n’t sil­ly for think­ing that the books might date from a far­away past. They do, after all, make fre­quent ref­er­ence to fig­ures from cen­turies when alche­my flour­ished in Europe, and magi­cians like Paracel­sus and Nicholas Flamel (both of whom appear in Pot­ter books and spin-offs) plied their soli­tary craft, such as it was. Should we call it mag­ic, ear­ly sci­ence, occult reli­gion, out­sider art, or some admix­ture of the above?

We can call it “black mag­ic,” but the term was not, as the Chris­tians thought, a ref­er­ence to the dev­il, but to the soil of the Nile. “Derived from the Ara­bic root ‘kimia,’” writes the Pub­lic Domain Review, “from the Cop­tic ‘khem’ (refer­ring to the fer­tile black soil of the Nile delta), the word ‘alche­my’ alludes to the dark mys­tery of the pri­mor­dial or First Mat­ter (the Khem).”

Find­ing this first sub­stance con­sti­tutes “the alchemist’s cen­tral goal – along with the dis­cov­ery of the Stone of Knowl­edge (The Philosopher’s Stone) and the key to Eter­nal Youth.”

In the descrip­tion above, we can see the roots of Rowling’s fic­tions and the ori­gins of many a world-shap­ing mod­ern myth. Alchemists study and change mat­ter to pro­duce cer­tain effects – just as ear­ly sci­en­tists did – and it may sur­prise us to learn just how fer­vent­ly some well-known ear­ly sci­en­tists, most espe­cial­ly Isaac New­ton, pur­sued the alchem­i­cal course. But the essence of alche­my was imag­i­na­tion, and the artists who depict­ed alchem­i­cal rit­u­als, mag­i­cal crea­tures, mys­ti­cal sym­bols, etc. had no short­age of it, as we see in the images here, drawn from Well­come Images and the Man­ley Palmer Hall col­lec­tion at the Inter­net Archive.

The images are strange, sur­re­al, cryp­tic, and seem to ref­er­ence no known real­i­ty. They are the inspi­ra­tion for cen­turies of occult art and eso­teric lit­er­a­ture. But each one also had prac­ti­cal intent — to illus­trate mys­te­ri­ous, often secre­tive process­es for dis­cov­er­ing the foun­da­tions of the uni­verse, and prof­it­ing from them. If these tech­niques look noth­ing like our mod­ern meth­ods for doing the same, that’s for good rea­son, but it does­n’t mean that alche­my has noth­ing to do with sci­ence. It is, rather, sci­ence’s weird dis­tant ances­tor. See more alchem­i­cal images at the Pub­lic Domain Review.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Bril­liant Col­ors of Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made with Alche­my

Videos Recre­ate Isaac Newton’s Neat Alche­my Exper­i­ments: Watch Sil­ver Get Turned Into Gold

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Myth­i­cal ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ Is Being Dig­i­tized & Put Online (Along with His Oth­er Alche­my Man­u­scripts)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Explore MoMA’s Collection of Modern & Contemporary Art Every Time You Open a New Browser Tab

in Art, Creativity, Google, Technology | March 28th, 2022

There are brows­er exten­sions designed to increase your pro­duc­tiv­i­ty every time you open a new tab.

Oth­ers use pos­i­tive affir­ma­tions, inspir­ing quotes, and nature pho­tog­ra­phy to put your day on the right track.

We here­by announce that we’re switch­ing our set­tings and alle­giance to New Tab with MoMA.

After installing this exten­sion, you’ll be treat­ed to a new work of mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary art from The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s col­lec­tion when­ev­er you open a new tab in Chrome.

If you can steal a few min­utes, click what­ev­er image comes up to explore the work in greater depth with a cura­tor’s descrip­tion, links to oth­er works in the col­lec­tion by the same artist, and in some cas­es instal­la­tion views, inter­views and/or audio seg­ments.

Expect a few gift shop heavy hit­ters like Vin­cent Van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night, but also less­er known works not cur­rent­ly on view, like Yay­oi Kusama’s Vio­let Obses­sion, a row­boat slip­cov­ered in elec­tric pur­ple “phal­lic pro­tru­sions.”

Vio­let Obses­sion’s New Tab with MoMA link not only shows you how it was dis­played in the 2010 exhi­bi­tion Mind and Mat­ter: Alter­na­tive Abstrac­tions, 1940s to Now, you can also tog­gle around the instal­la­tion view to explore oth­er works in the same gallery.

You can hear audio of Kusama describ­ing how she “encrust­ed” the boat in soft sculp­ture pro­tu­ber­ances in her favorite pink­ish-pur­ple hue “to con­quer my fear of sex:”

Boats can come and go lim­it­less­ly and move ahead on the water. The boat, hav­ing over­come my obses­sion would move on for­ev­er, car­ry­ing me onboard

A link to a 1999 inter­view with Grady T. Turn­er in BOMB allows Kusama to give fur­ther con­text for the work, part of a sculp­ture series she con­ceives of as Com­pul­sion Fur­ni­ture:

My sofas, couch­es, dress­es, and row­boats bris­tle with phal­lus­es. … As an obses­sion­al artist I fear every­thing I see. At one time, I dread­ed every­thing I was mak­ing.

That’s a pret­ty robust art his­to­ry les­son for the price of open­ing a new tab, though such deep dives can def­i­nite­ly come at the expense of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

We weren’t expect­ing the 3‑dimensional nature of some of the works our tabs yield­ed up.

Stop, Repair, Pre­pare: Vari­a­tions on Ode to Joy for a Pre­pared Piano, No.12008 by Jen­nifer Allo­ra and Guiller­mo Calzadil­la required a live musi­cian to play Ode to Joy from Lud­wig van Beethoven’s Ninth Sym­pho­ny upside down and back­wards, from a hole carved into the cen­ter of a grand piano.

Frances Ben­jamin John­ston’s plat­inum print, Stair­way of the Trea­sur­er’s Res­i­dence: Stu­dents at Work from the Hamp­ton Album 1899–1900, is per­haps more eas­i­ly grasped if you can’t go too far down the rab­bit hole with the art­work appear­ing in your new tab.

An excerpt from the 2019 pub­li­ca­tion, MoMA High­lights: 375 Works from The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, New York pro­vides a brief bio of both John­ston, “a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er, not­ed for her por­traits of Wash­ing­ton politi­cians and her images of coal min­ers, iron­work­ers, and women labor­ers in New Eng­land tex­tile mills” and the Hamp­ton Insti­tute, Book­er T Washington’s alma mater.

Book­mark such bite-sized cul­tur­al his­to­ry breaks, and cir­cle back when you have more time.

Speak­ing of which, allow us to leave you with this thought from artist Felix Gon­za­lez-Tor­res, cre­ator of 1991’s time-based instal­la­tion Unti­tled (Per­fect Lovers), a par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cep­tu­al offer­ing from New Tab with MoMA:

Time is some­thing that scares me… or used to. This piece I made with the two clocks was the scari­est thing I have ever done. I want­ed to face it. I want­ed those two clocks right in front of me, tick­ing.

Set your Chrome Brows­er up to use New Tab with MoMA here. 

Relat­ed Con­tent 

MoMA’s Online Cours­es Let You Study Mod­ern & Con­tem­po­rary Art and Earn a Cer­tifi­cate

How to Make Comics: A Four-Part Series from the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Puts Online 90,000 Works of Mod­ern Art

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Yayoi Kusama, Obsessed with Polka Dots, Became One of the Most Radical Artists of All Time

in Art | March 25th, 2022

Yay­oi Kusama turned 93 this past Tues­day, and she remains not just artis­ti­cal­ly pro­duc­tive but glob­al­ly beloved. Her work itself con­tin­ues to appeal to an ever wider range of view­ers of all nation­al­i­ties and ages. “Yay­oi Kusama is a Japan­ese artist who is some­times called ‘the princess of pol­ka dots’,” says the brief intro­duc­tion to her life and work offered at Take Kids. “Although she makes lots of dif­fer­ent types of art – paint­ings, sculp­tures, per­for­mances and instal­la­tions – they have one thing in com­mon, DOTS!” That’s cer­tain­ly one way of describ­ing her, though any­one who’s fol­lowed her 70-year-long career will notice the con­spic­u­ous absence of oth­er, equal­ly impor­tant ele­ments of her art’s devel­op­ment: men­tal ill­ness, for instance, or enor­mous num­bers of phal­lus­es.

Yet even the new video essay on Kusama from Great Art Explained, a Youtube chan­nel very much pitched to an adult view­er­ship, takes as its focus the artist’s rela­tion­ship with var­i­ous­ly sized two-dimen­sion­al sol­id cir­cles. At the age of ten, says the chan­nel’s cre­ator James Payne, she “had her first hal­lu­ci­na­tion, which she described as flash­es of light, auras, or dense fields of dots. The dots would come to life and con­sume her and she would find her­self oblit­er­at­ed.” Since then, and though her art has “crossed from art to fash­ion and from film­mak­ing to per­for­mance art, her con­tin­u­ing explo­ration of the pol­ka dot has remained the one con­sis­tent motif.”

In approach­ing an artist through a sin­gle motif rather than a sin­gle work, this video breaks from the stan­dard Great Art Explained for­mat, but that does­n’t stop Payne from telling Kusama’s sto­ry with his usu­al suc­cinct­ness. He begins with her dis­com­fit­ing upbring­ing in a well-off rur­al Japan­ese house­hold and con­tin­ues to her dis­cov­ery of and sub­se­quent cor­re­spon­dence with Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, who made Kusama the nec­es­sary intro­duc­tions in the New York art world. Through her rig­or­ous work habits and con­tin­u­ous push­ing of aes­thet­ic and polit­i­cal bound­aries, Kusama even­tu­al­ly became a fig­ure of some renown in that city’s avant-garde scene of the nine­teen-six­ties — a milieu that proved recep­tive to the “soft-sculp­ture phal­lus­es” with which many of her cre­ations then bris­tled.

Kusama returned to her home­land in the ear­ly 1970s, and soon there­after only those with the sharpest mem­o­ries of the avant-garde six­ties remem­bered her work. Only a 1989 ret­ro­spec­tive at New York’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Con­tem­po­rary Arts returned her to the inter­na­tion­al fame she has enjoyed ever since. Many of us now have vivid mem­o­ries of step­ping into her com­plete­ly mir­rored, dense­ly dot-lit “infin­i­ty rooms” over the years and in dif­fer­ent muse­ums around the world. Though Kusama began mak­ing them in the mid-nine­teen-six­ties, they’ve turned out to be ide­al­ly suit­ed to the social-media era. “Peo­ple queue up for hours for just six­ty sec­onds in one of her infin­i­ty-room instal­la­tions,” says Payne. “Each image they take of infin­i­ty joins mil­lions more on the inter­net — itself infi­nite.” Only now, in Kusama’s tenth decade, has the rest of the world caught up with her.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load Full Issues of MAVO, the Japan­ese Avant-Garde Mag­a­zine That Announced a New Mod­ernist Move­ment (1923–1925)

Ven­er­a­ble Female Artists, Musi­cians & Authors Give Advice to the Young: Pat­ti Smith, Lau­rie Ander­son & More

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

The Great Wave Off Kana­gawa by Hoku­sai: An Intro­duc­tion to the Icon­ic Japan­ese Wood­block Print in 17 Min­utes

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Japanese Toy Designs from the Late 19th & Early 20th Century: Explore an Online Archive

in Art, History | March 24th, 2022

After two cen­turies of iso­la­tion, Japan re-opened to the world in the 1860s, at which point West­ern­ers imme­di­ate­ly became enam­ored with things Japan­ese. It was in that very same decade that Vin­cent Van Gogh began col­lect­ing ukiyo‑e wood­block prints, which inspired him to cre­ate “the art of the future.” But not every West­ern­er was drawn first to such ele­vat­ed fruits of Japan­ese cul­ture. When the American­ educator­ William ­Elliot­ Griff­is went to Japan in 1876 he mar­veled at a coun­try that seemed to be a par­adise of play: “We do not know of any coun­try in the world in which there are so many toy-shops, or so many fairs for the sale of things which delight chil­dren,” he wrote.

That quote comes from Matt Alt’s Pure Inven­tion: How Japan’s Pop Cul­ture Con­quered the World.  “While West­ern tastemak­ers vora­cious­ly con­sumed prints, glass­ware, tex­tiles, and oth­er grown-up delights, it was in fact toys that formed the back­bone of Japan’s bur­geon­ing export indus­try in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry,” Alt writes.

You can expe­ri­ence some of the plea­sures of that peri­od’s Japan­ese visu­al art along with some of the plea­sures of that peri­od’s Japan­ese toy cul­ture in the Ningyo-do Bunko data­base. This dig­i­tal archive’s more than 100 albums of water­col­or toy-design ren­der­ings from the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­turies are, in the words of Bib­liOdyssey’s Paul Ker­ri­g­an, “by turns scary and intrigu­ing.”

These masks, dolls, tops, and oth­er fan­ci­ful works of the toy­mak­er’s craft may not imme­di­ate­ly appeal to a gen­er­a­tion raised with smart­phones. But their designs, root­ed in Japan­ese mythol­o­gy and region­al cul­tures, nev­er­the­less exude both a still-uncom­mon artistry and a still-fas­ci­nat­ing “oth­er­ness.” If this seems like kid’s stuff, bear in mind the caus­es of Japan’s trans­for­ma­tion from a post-World War II sham­bles to per­haps the most advanced coun­try in the world. As Alt tells the sto­ry of this aston­ish­ing devel­op­ment, Japan went from mak­ing sim­ple tin jeeps to tran­sis­tor radios to karaoke machines to Walk­men to vast cul­tur­al indus­tries of comics, film, tele­vi­sion, and relat­ed mer­chan­dise: all toys, broad­ly defined, and we in the rest of the world under­es­ti­mate their pow­er at our per­il. Rum­mage through the designs here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wagashi: Peruse a Dig­i­tized, Cen­turies-Old Cat­a­logue of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Can­dies

Hun­dreds of Won­der­ful Japan­ese Fire­work Designs from the Ear­ly-1900s: Dig­i­tized and Free to Down­load

Watch Tee­ny Tiny Japan­ese Meals Get Made in a Minia­ture Kitchen: The Joy of Cook­ing Mini Tem­pu­ra, Sashi­mi, Cur­ry, Okonomiya­ki & More

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invent­ed Lin­coln Logs, “America’s Nation­al Toy” (1916)

Watch Bat­tered & Bruised Vin­tage Toys Get Mes­mer­iz­ing­ly Restored to Near Mint Con­di­tion

On Christ­mas, Browse A His­tor­i­cal Archive of More Than 50,000 Toys

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch David Hockney Paint with Light, Using the Quantel Paintbox Graphics System (1986)

in Art, Technology, Television | March 24th, 2022

Think of the tele­vi­sion graph­ics you remem­ber from the nine­teen-eight­ies — or, per­haps more like­ly, the nine­teen-eight­ies tele­vi­sion graph­ics you’ve seen late­ly on Youtube. Much of it looks cheesy today, but some exam­ples have become appeal­ing­ly retro over the decades, and cer­tain works remain gen­uine­ly impres­sive as pieces of dig­i­tal art. Nowa­days we can, in the­o­ry, repli­cate and even out­do the finest TV imagery of the eight­ies on our com­put­ers, or even our phones. But in the days before high-pow­ered per­son­al com­put­ing, let alone smart­phones, how did such bril­liant­ly col­ored, ener­get­i­cal­ly ani­mat­ed, and some­times gen­uine­ly artis­tic graph­ics get made? The answer, nine times out of ten, was on the Quan­tel Paint­box.

Intro­duced in 1981, the Paint­box was a cus­tom-designed dig­i­tal graph­ic work­sta­tion that cost about $250,000 USD, or more than $623,000 today. To major tele­vi­sion sta­tions and net­works that mon­ey was well spent, buy­ing as it did the unprece­dent­ed­ly fast pro­duc­tion of images and ani­ma­tions for broad­cast. ”It used to be that we had a staff of artists who drew and drew,” the New York Times quotes ABC’s direc­tor of pro­duc­tion devel­op­ment as say­ing in an arti­cle on graph­ics for the 1984 Olympics.

“But with the Paint­box an artist can come up with a graph­ic in fif­teen min­utes that used to take two days.” Its capa­bil­i­ties did much to influ­ence the look and feel of that decade, for bet­ter or for worse: look­ing back, design­er Steven Heller rues its prop­a­ga­tion of “shad­ow-rid­den, faux-hand­made eight­ies aes­thet­ics.”

As a cut­ting-edge piece of hard­ware, the Paint­box was beyond the reach of most artists, due not just to its cost but also the con­sid­er­able kn0w-how required to use it. (Skilled “oper­a­tors,” as they were called, could in the eight­ies com­mand a wage of $500 per hour.) But for David Hock­ney, who was already famous, suc­cess­ful, and known for his inter­est in bright col­ors as well as new tech­nol­o­gy, the chance came in 1986 when the BBC invit­ed him to par­tic­i­pate in a tele­vi­sion series called Paint­ing with Light.  A show­case for the cre­ative poten­tial of the Paint­box, it also brought on such lumi­nar­ies as col­lage artist Richard Hamil­ton and “grand­fa­ther of Pop Art” Lar­ry Rivers, sit­ting them down at the work­sta­tion and film­ing as they exper­i­ment­ed with its pos­si­bil­i­ties.

“You’re not draw­ing on a piece of paper,” Hock­ney explains in his episode. “You’re draw­ing, actu­al­ly, direct­ly onto this TV screen where you’re see­ing it now.” By now we’ve all done the same in one way or anoth­er, but in the eight­ies the con­cept was nov­el enough to be hard to artic­u­late. Hock­ney empha­sizes that the Paint­box pro­duces “hon­est” images, in that the elec­tron­ic medi­um in which the artist works is the very same medi­um through which the view­er per­ceives that work. The eager­ness with which he takes up its ground­break­ing pres­sure-sen­si­tive sty­lus (“a bit like a kind of old-fash­ioned ball­point pen”), some­times with a cig­a­rette in the oth­er hand, shows that Hock­ney’s pen­chant for draw­ing on the iPhone and iPad over the past decade or so is hard­ly an iso­lat­ed late-career lark. Even in 1986 he under­stood what you could do with dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, and could also sense one of its prime dan­gers: you’re nev­er sure when to stop doing it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Hockney’s iPad Art Goes on Dis­play

David Hock­ney Shows Us His Sketch Book, Page by Page

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

Time Trav­el Back to 1926 and Watch Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Make Art in Some Rare Vin­tage Video

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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