Marina Abramović Brings Back Her Iconic Performance Art Piece, The Artist Is Present, to Raise Money for Ukraine

in Art, Current Affairs | March 23rd, 2022

For a cou­ple of months in 2010, Mari­na Abramović spent her days word­less­ly and motion­less­ly sit­ting at a table in the atri­um of the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. Any vis­i­tor could sit in the chair oppo­site her, for as long as they liked. In response, Abramović said noth­ing and did almost noth­ing (even dur­ing vis­its from Lou Reed, Bjork, or her long-ago lover and col­lab­o­ra­tor, the late Ulay). The whole expe­ri­ence con­sti­tut­ed a piece of per­for­mance art, titled The Artist Is Present. As with many works of that form, to ask why Abramović did it is to miss the point. Noth­ing like it had been done before, and it thus promised to enter unchart­ed artis­tic, social, and emo­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry.

A dozen years lat­er, the artist will be present again, but this time with a high­ly spe­cif­ic motive in mind: to raise mon­ey for the besieged nation of Ukraine. “Abramović has part­nered with New York’s Sean Kel­ly Gallery and Art­sy to offer a per­for­mance art meet-and-greet… or at least meet-and-silent­ly-stare,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Sarah Rose Sharp.

“Through March 25, inter­est­ed par­ties can bid on one of two oppor­tu­ni­ties for a lim­it­ed restag­ing of Abramović’s epic per­for­mance The Artist Is Present.” These meet-and-silent­ly-stares “will be cap­tured by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mar­co Anel­li, who doc­u­ment­ed almost all of the 1,500 par­tic­i­pants in the orig­i­nal per­for­mance.”

Pro­ceeds “will go to Direct Relief, which is work­ing with Ukraine’s Min­istry of Health to pro­vide urgent med­ical assis­tance as well as long-term aid to the many lives dev­as­tat­ed by the war.” Last month, when Rus­sia launched its inva­sion, Abramović released the video state­ment above. In it she explains hav­ing done some work in Ukraine last year, which afford­ed her an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get to know some of its peo­ple. “They’re proud, they’re strong, and they’re dig­ni­fied,” she says, and an attack on their coun­try “is an attack to all of us,” an “attack to human­i­ty.” If you feel the same way, have some mon­ey to spend, and missed out on the first The Artist Is Present — and if you think you can hold your own across from the for­mi­da­ble pres­ence glimpsed in the video — con­sid­er mak­ing a bid of your own.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed con­tent:

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

Mari­na Abramović and Ulay’s Adven­tur­ous 1970s Per­for­mance Art Pieces

Mari­na Abramović’s Method for Over­com­ing Trau­ma: Go to a Park, Hug a Tree Tight, and Tell It Your Com­plaints for 15 Min­utes

Per­for­mance Artist Mari­na Abramović Describes Her “Real­ly Good Plan” to Lose Her Vir­gin­i­ty

Advice to Young Aspir­ing Artists from Pat­ti Smith, David Byrne & Mari­na Abramović

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

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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Explore Rarely-Seen Art by J. R. R. Tolkien in a New Web Site Created by the Tolkien Estate

in Art, Literature | March 22nd, 2022

J. R. R. Tolkien man­aged to write the Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, which ought to be accom­plish­ment enough for one mor­tal. But he also wrote the The Hob­bit, the gate­way for gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren into his major work, as well as a host of oth­er works of fic­tion, poet­ry, and schol­ar­ship, many of them not pub­lished until after his death in 1973. And those are only his writ­ings: a life­long artist, Tolkien also pro­duced a great many draw­ings and paint­ings, book-cov­er designs, and pic­tures meant to delight his own chil­dren as well as the chil­dren of oth­ers.

Yet some­how more mate­r­i­al has remained in the vault, and only now brought out for prop­er pub­lic con­sid­er­a­tion. As report­ed ear­li­er this month by Art­net’s Sarah Cas­cone, Tolkien’s estate “has released a new web­site fea­tur­ing art­works, some pre­vi­ous­ly unseen,” all cre­at­ed by the man him­self.

“In addi­tion to a num­ber of detailed maps, the estate has released illus­tra­tions Tolkien cre­at­ed for The Hob­bit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Sil­mar­il­lion, as well as draw­ings he made for his chil­dren, land­scapes drawn from real life, and imag­ined abstrac­tions.”

Tolkie­nol­o­gists will also thrill to the new site’s “pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished pho­tographs of Tolkien and his fam­i­ly, includ­ing his son Christo­pher, who drew the final ver­sions of the Lord of the Rings maps for pub­li­ca­tion.” (Christo­pher died in 2020, and Tolkien’s last sur­viv­ing child Priscil­la died just last month.) Divid­ed into sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to his writ­ing, his paint­ing, his schol­ar­ship, his let­ters, his life, and relat­ed audio-visu­al mate­r­i­al, this online exhi­bi­tion presents Tolkien as not just a world-builder but a man in full. In his life and work, he estab­lished the mod­el for the mod­ern fan­ta­sy nov­el­ist, but also — as under­scored by a jour­ney across his full nar­ra­tive, intel­lec­tu­al, and artis­tic range — an ide­al unlike­ly to be equaled any time soon. Vis­it the site here.

via Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed con­tent

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J. R. R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

Dis­cov­er J. R. R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

The Largest J. R. R. Tolkien Exhib­it in Gen­er­a­tions Is Com­ing to the U.S.: Orig­i­nal Draw­ings, Man­u­scripts, Maps & More

Dis­cov­er J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lit­tle-Known and Hand-Illus­trat­ed Children’s Book, Mr. Bliss

J. R. R. Tolkien Sent Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from Father Christ­mas to His Kids Every Year (1920–1943)

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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Behold the Strandbeest, the Mechanical Animals That Roam the Beaches of Holland

in Art | March 8th, 2022

No car­toon Dutch land­scape omits a wind­mill. With their wood­en frames and large blades, those mechan­i­cal struc­tures have been used in the Nether­lands since at least the twelfth cen­tu­ry, first to pump water out of poten­tial­ly arable low­lands, and lat­er for such uses as saw­ing wood and pound­ing grain. Today, of course, there exist much more effi­cient tech­nolo­gies for those jobs, but the wind­mill nev­er­the­less remains a Dutch cul­tur­al icon. In the Nether­lands the wind itself also blows as strong as ever, just wait­ing to be har­nessed: if not by indus­try, then per­haps by art. Enter Theo Jansen, inven­tor of the strand­beest — Dutch for “beach beast,” an apt descrip­tion of its nature.

Elab­o­rate­ly con­struct­ed with off-the-shelf mate­ri­als like wood, PVC pip­ing, and sheets of fab­ric, Jansen’s large and fan­tas­ti­cal-look­ing strand­beesten walk through the sand as if mov­ing under their own voli­tion. In fact they’re wind-pow­ered kinet­ic sculp­tures, artic­u­lat­ed in such a way as to make their move­ments look whol­ly organ­ic.

Cre­at­ed for more than thir­ty years now through Jansen’s intel­li­gent design, the strand­beesten are also sub­ject to a process not unlike bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion. You can see it in the artist’s clip com­pi­la­tion at the top of the post and Taschen’s new book Strand­beest: The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Lena Her­zog (wife, inci­den­tal­ly, of Wern­er Her­zog, a known appre­ci­a­tor of such “con­quests of the use­less”). You can also pur­chase mini mod­els of the Strand­beest online.

“I make skele­tons that are able to walk on the wind,” Jansen once said. “Over time, these skele­tons have become increas­ing­ly bet­ter at sur­viv­ing the ele­ments such as storms and water and even­tu­al­ly I want to put these ani­mals out in herds on the beach­es, so they will live their own lives.” His goals also include equip­ping future gen­er­a­tions of strand­beesten with a kind of mechan­i­cal arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, which would let them avoid the kind of dan­gers that got their ances­tors top­pled or stuck. But in their sheer uncan­ny mag­nif­i­cence, even the least intel­li­gent exam­ples have fas­ci­nat­ed the world. A few years ago Jansen and one of his cre­ations even appeared on The Simp­sons, sug­gest­ing that one day, car­toon Dutch land­scapes may be incom­plete with­out a strand­beest.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Exis­ten­tial Moments with Theo Jansen and His Amaz­ing Kinet­ic Sculp­tures, the Strand­beests

Behold the Kinet­ic, 39-Ton Stat­ue of Franz Kafka’s Head, Erect­ed in Prague

Metrop­o­lis II: Dis­cov­er the Amaz­ing, Fritz Lang-Inspired Kinet­ic Sculp­ture by Chris Bur­den

A Per­fect Spring­time Ani­ma­tion: The Wind­mill Farmer by Joaquin Bald­win

Alexan­der Calder’s Archive Goes Online: Explore 1400 Works of Art by the Mod­ernist Sculp­tor

Pen­du­lum Waves as Kinet­ic Art

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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A Digital Archive of Hieronymus Bosch’s Complete Works: Zoom In & Explore His Surreal Art

in Art | March 4th, 2022

Very lit­tle is known about the Dutch painter Hierony­mus Bosch. And I am going to sug­gest that is a good thing. Would it help to know that this man who cre­at­ed tru­ly inspired, end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing views of heav­en and hell, of crea­ture-filled gar­dens of debauch­ery, had a par­tic­u­lar point of view on human­i­ty? Or that he thought there was a “cor­rect” way to under­stand his paint­ings? Per­haps it’s the mys­tery of the man that brings us clos­er to these works, to study them in detail, and to delight in their play­ful hor­ror. And for those who real­ly want detail, the Bosch Project is the place to find it.

The Bosch Project (aka the Bosch Research and Con­ser­va­tion Project) began in 2010 as a way to bring togeth­er the artist’s 45 paint­ings “spread across 2 con­ti­nents, 10 coun­tries, 18 cities, and 20 col­lec­tions” for in-depth research, avail­able to every­one.

The year 2016 marked the 500th anniver­sary of Bosch’s death, with cel­e­bra­tions in the artist’s birth­place of Her­to­gen­bosch and a rev­o­lu­tion­ary exhi­bi­tion in Noord­bra­bants, which stirred con­tro­ver­sy when it dis­put­ed the authen­tic­i­ty of sev­er­al major works in the Pra­do Muse­um in Spain, added two new attri­bu­tions, and restored nine works.

Here is where the Bosch Project web­site shines. The “syn­chro­nized image view­ers” allow us to zoom in to the small­est brush­stroke to exam­ine Bosch’s detailed worlds and char­ac­ters. And in a nod to his use of trip­tychs, the oth­er two sides of the paint­ing zoom in as well. It makes for some inter­est­ing, but not essen­tial, jux­ta­po­si­tions. It’s also easy to move around in the work with just the scroll­wheel of the mouse. Oth­er paint­ings allow the view­er to exam­ine the infrared reflec­togram of the painting’s lay­ers, expos­ing Bosch’s cor­rec­tions and dele­tions. Clos­er exam­i­na­tion of his grand pan­els reveals Bosch’s car­toon­ish brush­work, his car­i­ca­ture, and his immense humor. For sure, the artist want­ed us to med­i­tate on greater mat­ters like our own sal­va­tion, but there’s so much fun in the way he paints ani­mals, or in the bac­cha­na­lia of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, you can be for­giv­en for think­ing he’d want to par­ty as well. Grab that scroll wheel and check out the Garden—there’s plen­ty of room. Enter the Bosch Project web­site here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Mean­ing of Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Explained

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Free Coloring Books from The Public Domain Review: Download & Color Works by Hokusai, Albrecht Dürer, Harry Clarke, Aubrey Beardsley & More

in Art, Books, Creativity, History | March 4th, 2022

Did you some­how miss that the Pub­lic Domain Review has got­ten in on the adult col­or­ing book craze?

If so, don’t feel bad. There were prob­a­bly a lot of oth­er news items vying for your atten­tion back in March of 2020, when the first vol­ume was released “for diver­sion, enter­tain­ment and relax­ation in times of self-iso­la­tion.”

By the time the sec­ond vol­ume made its debut less than two months lat­er, the first had been down­loaded some 30,000 times.

Tell your scarci­ty men­tal­i­ty to stand down. You may be late to the par­ty, but all 40 images can still be down­loaded for free, “to ease and aid plea­sur­able focus in these odd­est of times.”

It’s our belief that odd times call for odd images so we’re repro­duc­ing some of our favorites below, though be advised there are also plen­ty of calm­ing botan­i­cal prints and grace­ful maid­ens for those crav­ing a less chal­leng­ing col­or­ing expe­ri­ence.

Behold Saint Antho­ny Tor­ment­ed by Demons by Mar­tin Schon­gauer (c. 1470–75), above!

And below, the 13-year-old Michelangelo’s repro­duc­tion in tem­pera on a wood pan­el. Biog­ra­phers Gior­gio Vasari and Ascanio Con­divi both told how the young artist vis­it­ed the fish mar­ket, seek­ing inspi­ra­tion for the demons’ scales. Per­haps you will be inspired by the bare­ly teenaged High Renais­sance master’s palette, though it’s YOUR col­or­ing page, so you do you.

In “Fill­ing in the Blanks: A Pre­his­to­ry of the Adult Col­or­ing Craze”, his­to­ri­ans Melis­sa N. Mor­ris and Zach Carmichael recount how pub­lish­er Robert Say­er’s illus­trat­ed book, The Florist, “for the use & amuse­ment of Gen­tle­men and Ladies” was pub­lished with the explic­it under­stand­ing that read­ers were meant to col­or in its botan­i­cal­ly semi-inac­cu­rate images:


Com­prised of pic­tures of var­i­ous flow­ers, the author gives his (pre­sum­ably) adult read­ers detailed instruc­tions for paint mix­ing and col­or choice (includ­ing the delight­ful sound­ing “gall-stone brown”).

Per­haps you will bring some of Sayer’s sug­gest­ed col­ors to bear on the above image from Parisian book­seller Richard Breton’s Les songes dro­la­tiques de Pan­ta­gru­el (1565), a col­lec­tion of 120 grotesque wood­cut fig­ures intend­ed as a trib­ute to the bawdy writer (and priest!) François Rabelais, or a pos­si­bly just a can­ny mar­ket­ing ploy.

Next, let’s col­or this perky fel­low from Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Nazari’s famous alchem­i­cal trea­tise on metal­lic trans­mu­ta­tion, Del­la tra­mu­ta­tione metal­li­ca sog­ni tre from 1599. 

The “winged pig in the world” by Dutch engraver and map­mak­er Cor­nelis Anthon­isz doesn’t look very cheer­ful, does he? He’s on top of the impe­r­i­al orb, but he’s also an alle­go­ry of the cor­rupt world. Hope­ful­ly, this will get sort­ed by the time pigs fly.

As to Ambroise Paré’s 1598 ren­der­ing of a “cam­phur” … well, let’s just say THIS is what a prop­er uni­corn should look like.

Accord­ing to an anno­tat­ed check­list that accom­pa­nied the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum’s Clois­ters’ 75th Anniver­sary exhi­bi­tion Search for the Uni­corn, Paré, a pio­neer­ing French bar­ber sur­geon, claimed that it live(d) in the Ara­bi­an Desert, and that its horn can cure var­i­ous mal­adies, espe­cial­ly poi­son­ing.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. Think about it as you col­or.

Hoku­sai, Albrecht Dür­er, and Aubrey Beard­s­ley, are among the artists whose work you’ll encounter, “arranged in vague order of dif­fi­cul­ty — from a sim­ple 17th-cen­tu­ry kimono pat­tern to an intri­cate thou­sand-flow­ered illus­tra­tion.”

Down­load Vol­ume 1 of the Pub­lic Domain Review Col­or­ing book in US Let­ter or A4 for­mat.

And here is Vol­ume 2 in US Let­ter or A4 for­mat.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Free Col­or­ing Books from 101 World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: Down­load and Col­or Hun­dreds of Free Images

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

Down­load 150 Free Col­or­ing Books from Great Libraries, Muse­ums & Cul­tur­al Insti­tu­tions: The British Library, Smith­son­ian, Carnegie Hall & More

The Dro­lat­ic Dreams of Pan­ta­gru­el: 120 Wood­cuts Envi­sion the Grotesque Inhab­i­tants of Rabelais’ World (1565)

- 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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The Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel: 120 Woodcuts Envision the Grotesque Inhabitants of Rabelais’ World (1565)

in Art, Books, History | March 3rd, 2022

George Orwell lives on, to vary­ing degrees of apt­ness, in the form of the word Orwellian. David Lynch has, with­in his life­time, made nec­es­sary the term Lynchi­an. Though few of us will leave such adjec­ti­val lega­cies of our own, we should at least aspire to do so, and that task requires look­ing back to the orig­i­nal mas­ter: François Rabelais. Mer­ri­am-Web­ster defines Rabelaisian as “marked by gross robust humor, extrav­a­gance of car­i­ca­ture, or bold nat­u­ral­ism.” Rabelais expressed this sen­si­bil­i­ty at great length in La vie de Gar­gan­tua et de Pan­ta­gru­el, a pen­ta­l­o­gy of elab­o­rate satir­i­cal nov­els pub­lished from the 1530s to the 1560s — and more recent­ly endorsed by Harold Bloom, Joseph Brod­sky, Hen­ry Miller, and Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

Rabelais died in the 1550s, hence the still-unre­solved ques­tions about the author­ship of the fifth and final Gar­gan­tua and Pan­ta­gru­el book: was it com­plet­ed from his notes? Was it, in fact, a fab­ri­ca­tion by anoth­er writer?

Such was the pub­lic’s hunger for the Rabelaisian that mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent “fifth books” were pub­lished. The sat­is­fac­tion of that same insa­tiable demand seems also to have moti­vat­ed the pub­li­ca­tion of Les Songes Dro­la­tiques de Pan­ta­gru­el ou sont con­tenues plusieurs fig­ures de l’in­ven­tion de maitre François Rabelais. This slim vol­ume, writes the Pub­lic Domain Review’s Adam Green, “is made up entire­ly of images — 120 wood­cuts depict­ing a series of fan­tas­ti­cal­ly bizarre and grotesque fig­ures, rem­i­nis­cent of some of the more inven­tive and twist­ed cre­ations of Brueghel or Bosch.”

There is no main text, just a pref­ace where­in pub­lish­er Richard Bre­ton writes that “the great famil­iar­i­ty I had with the late François Rabelais has moved and even com­pelled me to bring to light the last of his work, the dro­lat­ic dreams of the very excel­lent and won­der­ful Pan­ta­gru­el.” Yet, as Green explains, “the book’s won­der­ful images are very unlike­ly to be the work of Rabelais him­self — the attri­bu­tion prob­a­bly a clever mar­ket­ing ploy.” You can view these amus­ing and grotesque images at the Pub­lic Domain Review, and in the con­text of the book as pre­served at the Inter­net Archive. “Be warned,” says Intrigu­ing His­to­ry, the artist “seems to enjoy the use of a lot of phal­lic imagery, along with frogs, fish and ele­phants.” But who is the artist?

“The cre­ator of the prints is now wide­ly thought to be François Desprez,” writes Green, “a French engraver and illus­tra­tor” who pub­lished a cou­ple of sim­i­lar­ly imag­i­na­tive sets of images with Bre­ton in 1567. Who­ev­er made them, these Rabelaisian wood­cuts remained sur­re­al enough through the cen­turies to catch the eye of none oth­er than Sal­vador Dalí, who in 1973 paid trib­ute to them with a set of lith­o­graphs of his own. (You can see more exam­ples at the Lock­port St. Gallery.) As far as the title, an exe­ge­sis at Poe­mas del río Wang offers a clar­i­fi­ca­tion: “Dro­lat­ic is an adjec­tive of dream,” and so “we must ask what kind of dream is this. It is cer­tain­ly the dream of rea­son, as it gives birth to mon­sters” — mon­sters, as a satirist like Rabelais well under­stood, not alto­geth­er unlike our­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

H.P. Lovecraft’s Mon­ster Draw­ings: Cthul­hu & Oth­er Crea­tures from the “Bound­less and Hideous Unknown”

Visu­al­iz­ing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Draw­ings of Dante’s Infer­no from the Renais­sance Through Today

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Aberdeen Bes­tiary, One of the Great Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts, Now Dig­i­tized in High Res­o­lu­tion & Made Avail­able Online

Behold Fan­tas­ti­cal Illus­tra­tions from the 13th Cen­tu­ry Ara­bic Man­u­script Mar­vels of Things Cre­at­ed and Mirac­u­lous Aspects of Things Exist­ing

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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How Aladdin Sane Became the Most Expensive Album Cover Ever — and David Bowie’s Defining Image

in Art, History, Music, Photography | March 1st, 2022

If you search for David Bowie on Spo­ti­fy, a famil­iar icon pops up: the man him­self, eyes closed, made up with a death­ly-look­ing pal­lor and a red-and-blue light­ing bolt across his face. This is the pho­to on the front of Bowie’s sixth album, 1973’s Aladdin Sane. “Per­haps more icon­ic than the music inside,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Trash The­o­ry video essay above, “it stands as the Mona Lisa of album cov­ers.” It was also, at the time of pro­duc­tion, the most cost­ly album cov­er of all time: this was at the behest of Bowie’s man­ag­er Tony Defries, who sus­pect­ed that spar­ing no expense on the image would moti­vate RCA, his label, to spare no expense pro­mot­ing the album itself.

One might call this a bold move for an artist like Bowie, who had only just made it big. In the ear­ly years of his career he’d racked up fail­ure after fail­ure: with 1971’s Hunky Dory, a kind of dec­la­ra­tion of com­mit­ment to musi­cal and artis­tic “changes,” he had a suc­cès d’es­time, but not until the fol­low­ing year did he become a bona fide star.

The vehi­cle for that trans­for­ma­tion was the album The Rise and Fall of Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars, which intro­duced the lis­ten­ing pub­lic to its title char­ac­ter, an androg­y­nous rock­er from out­er space. Through­out his sub­se­quent year and a half of tour­ing Bowie took the stage in full Zig­gy glam regalia, inhab­it­ing the char­ac­ter so ful­ly that he even­tu­al­ly began to ques­tion his own san­i­ty.

Though young British audi­ences could­n’t get enough of Zig­gy and the Spi­ders, reac­tions across the Unit­ed States were rather less enthu­si­as­tic. There, says the Trash The­o­ry nar­ra­tor, “they were not the type of British rock that rock radio played: hard-hit­ting, riff-heavy behe­moths like Led Zep­pelin or the Rolling Stones. But this indif­fer­ence was shap­ing what Bowie want­ed to do next.” His expe­ri­ence of Amer­i­ca inspired a new, hard­er-edged per­sona, Aladdin Sane. Zig­gy Star­dust “was a vision of the best a rock star could be, an inspi­ra­tional fig­ure, while Aladdin was more about fame’s dark­er under­bel­ly, fil­tered through imag­ined Amer­i­cana and futur­is­tic nos­tal­gia” — and the char­ac­ter need­ed a look to match.

Shot by Bri­an Duffy, described in the San Fran­cis­co Art Exchange vide0 above as “a very eccen­tric and incred­i­ble pho­tog­ra­ph­er,” the Aladdin Sane cov­er was print­ed with a sev­en-col­or sys­tem unprece­dent­ed in the medi­um. (Up to that point, four-col­or had been the stan­dard.) Accord­ing to Trash The­o­ry, Bowie described make­up artist Pierre Laroche’s light­ning bolt “as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of schiz­o­phre­nia, and more specif­i­cal­ly, his split feel­ings about his 1972 Amer­i­can tour.” (The shape came from the logo on a Nation­al Pana­son­ic rice cook­er in Duffy’s stu­dio.) Though the result has become, in the words of cura­tor Vic­to­ria Broack­es, “prob­a­bly the most rec­og­niz­able sym­bol in rock and roll,” Bowie nev­er actu­al­ly assumed this look onstage; ahead of him, there still lay four more decades of changes to go through.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Space Odd­i­ty,” “Heroes,” “Life on Mars” & More

David Bowie Paper Dolls Recre­ate Some of the Style Icon’s Most Famous Looks

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

Lego Video Shows How David Bowie Almost Became “Cob­bler Bob,” Not “Aladdin Sane”

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 New Herbal: A Masterpiece of Renaissance Botanical Illustrations Gets Republished in a Beautiful 900-Page Book

in Art, Biology, Books, History | February 24th, 2022

We’ve all have heard of the fuch­sia, a flower (or genus of flow­er­ing plant) native to Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca but now grown far and wide. Though even the least botan­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate among us know it, we may have occa­sion­al trou­ble spelling its name. The key is to remem­ber who the fuch­sia was named for: Leon­hart Fuchs, a Ger­man physi­cian and botanist of the six­teenth cen­tu­ry. More than 450 years after his death, Fuchs is remem­bered as not just the name­sake of a flower, but as the author of an enor­mous book detail­ing the vari­eties of plants and their med­i­c­i­nal uses. His was a land­mark achieve­ment in the form known as the herbal, exam­ples of which we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture from ninth- and eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry Eng­land.

But De His­to­ria Stir­pi­um Com­men­tarii Insignes, as this work was known upon its ini­tial 1542 pub­li­ca­tion in Latin, has worn uncom­mon­ly well through the ages. Or rather, Fuchs’ per­son­al, hand-col­ored orig­i­nal has, com­ing down to us in 2022 as the source for Taschen’s The New Herbal. “A mas­ter­piece of Renais­sance botany and pub­lish­ing,” accord­ing to the pub­lish­er, the book includes “over 500 illus­tra­tions, includ­ing the first visu­al record of New World plant types such as maize, cac­tus, and tobac­co.”

Buy­ers also have their choice of Eng­lish, Ger­man, and French edi­tions, each with its own trans­la­tions of Fuchs’ “essays describ­ing the plants’ fea­tures, ori­gins, and med­i­c­i­nal pow­ers.” (You can also read a Dutch ver­sion of the orig­i­nal online at Utrecht Uni­ver­si­ty Library Spe­cial Col­lec­tions.)

Nat­u­ral­ly, some of the infor­ma­tion con­tained in these near­ly five-cen­tu­ry-old sci­en­tif­ic writ­ings will be a bit dat­ed at this point, but the appeal of the illus­tra­tions has nev­er dimmed. “Fuchs pre­sent­ed each plant with metic­u­lous wood­cut illus­tra­tions, refin­ing the abil­i­ty for swift species iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and set­ting new stan­dards for accu­ra­cy and qual­i­ty in botan­i­cal pub­li­ca­tions.” Over 500 of them go into the book: “Weigh­ing more than 10 pounds,” writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert, “the near­ly 900-page vol­ume is an ode to Fuchs’ research and the field of Renais­sance botany, detail­ing plants like the leafy gar­den bal­sam and root-cov­ered man­drake.”

Taschen’s repro­duc­tions of these works of botan­i­cal art look to do jus­tice to Leon­hart Fuchs’ lega­cy, espe­cial­ly in the bril­liance of their col­ors. It’s enough to rein­force the assump­tion that the man has received trib­ute not just through fuch­sia the flower but fuch­sia the col­or as well. But such a dual con­nec­tion turns out to be in doubt: the col­or’s name derives from rosani­line hydrochlo­ride, also known as fuch­sine, orig­i­nal­ly a trade name applied by its man­u­fac­tur­er Renard frères et Franc. The name fus­chine, in turn, derives from fuchs, the Ger­man trans­la­tion of renard. The New Herbal is, of course, a work of botany rather than lin­guis­tics, but it should nev­er­the­less stim­u­late in its behold­ers an aware­ness of the inter­con­nec­tion of knowl­edge that fired up the Renais­sance mind.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Dis­cov­er Emi­ly Dickinson’s Herbar­i­um: A Beau­ti­ful Dig­i­tal Edi­tion of the Poet’s Col­lec­tion of Pressed Plants & Flow­ers Is Now Online

A Beau­ti­ful 1897 Illus­trat­ed Book Shows How Flow­ers Become Art Nou­veau Designs

His­toric Man­u­script Filled with Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Cuban Flow­ers & Plants Is Now Online (1826)

A Curi­ous Herbal: 500 Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Med­i­c­i­nal Plants Drawn by Eliz­a­beth Black­well in 1737 (to Save Her Fam­i­ly from Finan­cial Ruin)

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

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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