An Introduction to the Sublime, Entrepreneurial Art of Christo & Jeanne-Claude (Courtesy of Alain de Botton’s School of Life)

in Art | June 4th, 2020

Of all the work that made Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude the most famous instal­la­tion artists of the past fifty years, none still exists. If you want­ed to see the Reich­stag wrapped in sil­ver fab­ric, you’d have to have been in Berlin in the sum­mer of 1995. If you want­ed to see Cen­tral Park thread­ed with Shin­to shrine-style gates, you’d have to have been in New York in the win­ter of 2005. If you want­ed to see an enor­mous Mesopotami­an masta­ba made out of 7,506 oil bar­rels, you’d have to have been in Lon­don in the sum­mer of 2018. Though often cel­e­brat­ed for its “ephemer­al” nature, Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude’s art neces­si­tat­ed a for­mi­da­ble amount of polit­i­cal, orga­ni­za­tion­al, logis­ti­cal, and man­u­al work to pull it off — and in that con­trast lies its sub­lim­i­ty.

“To oper­ate real­is­ti­cal­ly on a large scale, they need­ed to deploy many of the skills tra­di­tion­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with busi­ness and which we think of as the domain of the entre­pre­neur,” says the arti­cle on Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude at The Book of Life, a prod­uct of Alain de Bot­ton’s School of Life. The two “had to nego­ti­ate with city coun­cils and gov­ern­ments; they had to draw up busi­ness plans, arrange large scale finance, employ the tal­ents and time of hun­dreds even thou­sands of peo­ple, coor­di­nate vast efforts and deal with mil­lions of users or vis­i­tors. And all the while, they held on to the high ambi­tions asso­ci­at­ed with being an artist.” What’s more, since the cou­ple nev­er took grants or pub­lic mon­ey of any kind, they had to turn enough of a prof­it from each project to finance the next, even more majes­tic (and to some, fool­hardy) one.

You can see more of Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude’s projects, and footage of those projects under con­struc­tion, in the School of Life video at the top of the post. It also shows Chris­to cre­at­ing the prepara­to­ry mate­ri­als that made their work pos­si­ble, not only in that they pre­sent­ed the visions of the wrapped-up pieces of infra­struc­ture or val­leys full of umbrel­las to come, but that the sale of the plans and draw­ings financed the process of mak­ing those visions real. All this in the ser­vice of what Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009, called “works of art of joy beau­ty,” and through Chris­to depart­ed the realm of exis­tence him­self last Sun­day, the rest of us have anoth­er such work to look for­ward to: L’Arc de Tri­om­phe, Wrapped. Based on an idea that came to Chris­to when he and Jeanne-Claude lived in Paris in the late 1950s and ear­ly 60s (and recent­ly delayed one more year due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic), it will pro­vide more than rea­son enough to be in Paris in the fall of 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Vision­ary Artist Chris­to (RIP) Changed the Way We See the World

Cli­mate Change Gets Strik­ing­ly Visu­al­ized by a Scot­tish Art Instal­la­tion

Pi in the Sky: The World’s Largest Ephemer­al Art Instal­la­tion over Beau­ti­ful San Fran­cis­co

This Huge Crash­ing Wave in a Seoul Aquar­i­um Is Actu­al­ly a Gigan­tic Opti­cal Illu­sion

Alain de Bot­ton Shows How Art Can Answer Life’s Big Ques­tions in Art as Ther­a­py

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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How the Visionary Artist Christo (RIP) Changed the Way We See the World

in Art | June 1st, 2020

Hus­band and wife team Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude pro­duced what is arguably the most grandiose body of work in mod­ern his­to­ry. Their tem­po­rary mon­u­ments to the very idea of huge­ness were view­able from space and impos­si­ble to ignore on the ground: Entire islands wrapped in miles of pink fab­ric. Gar­gan­tu­an yel­low and blue umbrel­las placed up and down the coasts of Cal­i­for­nia and Japan. The Reich­stag bun­dled up in white fab­ric like a mas­sive, shiny Christ­mas gift.

These projects left an indeli­ble impres­sion on mil­lions not only in the months after their unveil­ing, but decades lat­er. The icon­ic sites the two artists trans­formed always bear the mem­o­ry of hav­ing once served as a can­vas for their cre­ations.

After remov­ing the wrap­ping from the Bis­cayne Bay islands, a project he called “my Water Lilies” in hon­or of Claude Mon­et,” Chris­to remarked that Sur­round­ed Islands lived on, “in the mind of the peo­ple.” So too will Chris­to live on—remembered by mil­lions as an artist who did things no one else would ever have con­ceived of, much less car­ried out.

The artist, who passed away from nat­ur­al caus­es at age 84 yes­ter­day, seemed to savor the con­tro­ver­sy and bewil­der­ment that met his incred­i­bly labor-inten­sive out­door sculp­tures. “If there are ques­tions, if there’s a pub­lic out­cry,” he said of their 2005 Cen­tral Park instal­la­tion The Gates, “we know how the pub­lic can be angry at art, which I think is fan­tas­tic.” I remem­ber walk­ing through The Gates when it debuted and think­ing, as most every­one does at some point in response to his mas­sive out­door instal­la­tions, “but, why?”

The effect was unde­ni­ably strik­ing, hun­dreds of saf­fron flags wav­ing between rec­tan­gu­lar steel arch­ways. Spring bloomed around the rows of gates that twist­ed around the Park’s foot­paths, 7,503 gates in all. From a short dis­tance away from the park, The Gates could be breath­tak­ing. Up close, it could be crowd­ed and obtru­sive, as mass­es of tourists and locals made their way through the gaunt­let of orange steel struc­tures.

Hard­ly does it occur to us in muse­ums to ask why the art exists. We enter with lofty, ready­made ideas about its val­ue and impor­tance. But we were nev­er giv­en scripts to make sense of Christo’s whim­si­cal intru­sions into the land­scape. Instead, he and Jeanne-Claude invent­ed new forms and new venues for art, and made the mul­ti-year process of plan­ning and build­ing each work from scratch a part of the work itself.

That process includ­ed lob­by­ing leg­is­la­tures and bureau­cra­cies, sketch­ing and plan­ning, and coor­di­nat­ing with thou­sands who installed and removed the fin­ished prod­ucts. Each Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude cre­ation seemed more osten­ta­tious than the last. “His grand projects,” writes William Grimes at The New York Times, “often decades in the mak­ing and all of them tem­po­rary, required the coop­er­a­tion of dozens, some­times hun­dreds, of landown­ers, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, judges, envi­ron­men­tal groups, local res­i­dents, engi­neers and work­ers, many of whom had lit­tle inter­est in art and a deep reluc­tance to see their lives and their sur­round­ings dis­rupt­ed by an eccen­tric vision­ary.”

And yet, “again and again, Chris­to pre­vailed, through per­sis­tence, charm and a child­like belief that even­tu­al­ly every­one would see things the way he did.” This meant that every­one who had to live with Christo’s cre­ations in their back­yards had to see things his way too, for as long as the pub­lic art exist­ed. Chris­to “remained sto­ic in the face of mount­ing crit­i­cism,” as Alex Green­berg­er at Art­news puts it. Asso­ci­at­ed ear­ly with Sit­u­a­tion­ism and France’s Nou­veau Réal­isme move­ment, the artist shared the lat­ter group’s goal of dis­cov­er­ing “new ways of per­ceiv­ing the real” and the for­mer movement’s com­mit­ment to spec­ta­cle as a means of mass dis­rup­tion.

In the short video intro­duc­tions to some of Chris­to and Jean-Claude’s most famous works here, you can see how the two revealed new real­i­ties to the world, dri­ving up tourism while spurn­ing cor­po­rate dol­lars. Instead, the artists financed their own projects by sell­ing off the draw­ings and plans used to con­ceive them. Their oper­a­tion was a self-sus­tain­ing enti­ty, a thriv­ing, suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny of its own. What they made were “beau­ti­ful things,” the artist said, “unbe­liev­ably use­less, total­ly unnec­es­sary,” and also total­ly inspir­ing, infu­ri­at­ing, and unfor­get­table.

“Chris­to lived his life to the fullest,” a state­ment released by his office reads, “not only dream­ing up what seemed impos­si­ble but real­iz­ing it. Chris­to and Jeanne-Claude’s art­work brought peo­ple togeth­er in shared expe­ri­ences across the globe, and their work lives on in our hearts and mem­o­ries.” Chris­to hasn’t fin­ished with us yet. The artist died while in the final plan­ning stages of what will be his final work, L’Arc de Tri­om­phe, Wrapped (Project for Paris, Place de l’Étoile – Charles de Gaulle), first con­ceived in 1962. That project, which will swad­dle Paris’s Arc de Tri­om­phe in 269,097 feet of fab­ric, is still expect­ed to debut in 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cli­mate Change Gets Strik­ing­ly Visu­al­ized by a Scot­tish Art Instal­la­tion

“The Artist Project” Reveals What 127 Influ­en­tial Artists See When They Look at Art: An Acclaimed Video Series from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

This Huge Crash­ing Wave in a Seoul Aquar­i­um Is Actu­al­ly a Gigan­tic Opti­cal Illu­sion

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

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This Huge Crashing Wave in a Seoul Aquarium Is Actually a Gigantic Optical Illusion

in Art, Technology | May 25th, 2020

I live in Seoul, and when­ev­er I’m back in the West, I hear the same ques­tion over and over: what’s Gang­nam like? Pre­sum­ably West­ern­ers would­n’t have had any­thing to ask me before the viral­i­ty of “Gang­nam Style,” and specif­i­cal­ly of the music video sat­i­riz­ing the image of that part of the Kore­an cap­i­tal. In Kore­an, “Gang­nam” lit­er­al­ly means “south of the riv­er,” the water­way in ques­tion being the Han Riv­er, which runs through mod­ern Seoul much as the Thames and the Seine run through Lon­don and Paris. Devel­oped in the main only since the 1970s, after Kore­a’s unprece­dent­ed­ly rapid indus­tri­al­iza­tion had begun, Gang­nam looks and feels quite dif­fer­ent from the old city north of the Han. In the finan­cial cen­ter of Gang­nam, every­thing’s big­ger, taller, and more expen­sive — all of it meant to impress.

With Psy’s nov­el­ty song a thing of the dis­tant past — in inter­net years, at least — the world now thrills again to anoth­er glimpse of Gang­nam style: a dig­i­tal screen that looks like a giant water tank, full of waves per­pet­u­al­ly crash­ing against its walls. When video of this high-tech opti­cal illu­sion went viral, it looked even more uncan­ny to me than it did to most view­ers, since I rec­og­nized it from real life.

Though I hap­pen to live in Gang­buk (“north of the riv­er”), when­ev­er I go to Gang­nam, I usu­al­ly come out of the Sam­sung sub­way sta­tion, right across the street from COEX. A con­ven­tion-cen­ter com­plex embed­ded in a set of dif­fi­cult-to-nav­i­gate malls, COEX also includes SM Town COEX Artium, a flashy tem­ple of K‑pop run by music com­pa­ny SM Enter­tain­ment. Announc­ing SM Town’s pres­ence, this colos­sal wrap­around dis­play, the largest of its kind in the coun­try, usu­al­ly offers up either fresh-faced pop stars or ads for Kore­an-made cars.

Occa­sion­al­ly the SM Town screen’s pro­gram­ming gets more cre­ative, and “#1_WAVE with Anamor­phic illu­sion” has made the most strik­ing use of its shape and dimen­sions yet. Designed by Gang­nam’s own d’strict, this piece of pub­lic video art “serves as a sweet escape and brings com­fort and relax­ation to peo­ple” — or so says d’stric­t’s Sean Lee in an inter­view with Bored Pan­da’s Rober­tas Lisick­is. It’s even impressed Seoulites, accus­tomed though they’ve grown to large-scale video screens clam­or­ing for their atten­tion. Even up in Gang­buk, the LED-cov­ered facade of the build­ing right across from Seoul Sta­tion has turned into a “Dig­i­tal Can­vas” every night for near­ly a decade. Though that artis­tic instal­la­tion nev­er dis­plays adver­tis­ing, most of the increas­ing­ly large screens of Seoul are used for more overt­ly com­mer­cial pur­pos­es. There may be some­thing dystopi­an about this scale of dig­i­tal adver­tise­ment tech­nol­o­gy in pub­lic space — but as every Blade Run­ner fan knows, there’s some­thing sub­lime about it as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The MIT “Check­er Shad­ow Illu­sion” Brought to Life

Watch Mar­cel Duchamp’s Hyp­not­ic Rotore­liefs: Spin­ning Discs Cre­at­ing Opti­cal Illu­sions on a Turntable (1935)

M.C. Escher’s Per­pet­u­al Motion Water­fall Brought to Life: Real or Sleight of Hand?

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

China’s New Lumi­nous White Library: A Strik­ing Visu­al Intro­duc­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Iggy Pop, David Byrne, and More Come Together with Bedtime Stories (For Grownups)

in Art, Audio Books, Museums | May 25th, 2020

Many friends have expressed a sense of relief that their elder­ly par­ents passed before the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic hit, but I sure wish my step­fa­ther were here to wit­ness Iggy Pop cross­ing the rain­bow bridge with the heart­felt valen­tine to the late Trom­ba, the pooch with whom he shared the hap­pi­est moments of his life.

Iggy’s paean to his adopt­ed Mex­i­can street dog, who nev­er quite made the adjust­ment to the New York City canine lifestyle, would have made my stepfather’s grinchy, dog-soft heart grow three sizes, at least.

That lev­el of engage­ment would have pleased con­cep­tu­al artist Mau­r­izio Cat­te­lan, who launched Bed­time Sto­ries under the dig­i­tal aus­pices of New York City’s New Muse­um, ask­ing friends, fel­low artists, and favorite per­form­ers to con­tribute brief read­ings to foment a feel­ing of togeth­er­ness in these iso­lat­ed times.

It was left to each con­trib­u­tor whether to go with a favorite lit­er­ary pas­sage or words of their own. As Cat­te­lan told The New York Times:

It would have been quite depress­ing if all the invit­ed artists and con­trib­u­tors had cho­sen fairy tales and chil­dren sto­ries. We look to artists for their abil­i­ty to show us the unex­pect­ed so I am thank­ful to all the par­tic­i­pants for com­ing up with some gen­uine­ly weird stuff.

Thus­far, artist Ray­mond Pet­ti­bon’s smut­ty Bat­man rever­ie is as close as Bed­time Sto­ries comes to fairy­tale.

Which is to say not very close

Artist and musi­cian David Byrne (pic­tured here at age five) reads from “The Three Christs of Ypsi­lan­ti” by Mil­ton Rokeach. As part of its series of new dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, the New Muse­um presents “Bed­time Sto­ries,” a project ini­ti­at­ed by the artist Mau­r­izio Cat­te­lan. Invit­ing friends and oth­er artists and per­form­ers he admires to keep us com­pa­ny, Cat­te­lan imag­ined “Bed­time Sto­ries” as a way of stay­ing togeth­er dur­ing these days of iso­la­tion. Read more at newmuseum.org. #New­Mu­se­umBed­timeSto­ries @davidbyrneofficial

A post shared by New Muse­um (@newmuseum) on


Musi­cian David Byrne picked an excerpt from The Three Christs of Ypsi­lan­ti by social psy­chol­o­gist Mil­ton Rokeach, who detailed the inter­ac­tions between three para­noid schiz­o­phren­ics, each of whom believed him­self the Son of God.

Artist Taci­ta Dean’s cut­ting from Thomas Hardy’s poem “An August Mid­night” speaks to an expe­ri­ence famil­iar to many who’ve been iso­lat­ing solo—an acute will­ing­ness to ele­vate ran­dom bugs to the sta­tus of com­pan­ion.

Rashid John­son’s choice, Amiri Baraka’s “Pref­ace to a 20 Vol­ume Sui­cide Note,” also feels very of the moment:

Late­ly, I’ve become accus­tomed to the way

The ground opens up and envelopes me

Each time I go out to walk the dog

…

Things have come to that.

Lis­ten to the New Museum’s Bed­time Sto­ries here. A new sto­ry will be added every day through the end of June, with a line­up that includes musi­cian Michael Stipe, archi­tect Maya Lin, and artists Takashi Muraka­mi and Jeff Koons.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dol­ly Par­ton Will Read Bed­time Sto­ries to You Every Week

An Ani­mat­ed Mar­garet Atwood Explains How Sto­ries Change with Tech­nol­o­gy

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Studio Ghibli Producer Toshio Suzuki Teaches You How to Draw Totoro in Two Minutes

in Animation, Art, Film, K-12 | May 22nd, 2020

This is some­thing you can do at home. Every­one, please draw pic­tures —Toshio Suzu­ki

There’s no short­age of online tuto­ri­als for fans who want to draw Totoro, the  enig­mat­ic title char­ac­ter of Stu­dio Ghibli’s 1988 ani­mat­ed fea­ture, My Neigh­bor Totoro:

There’s a two-minute, non-nar­rat­ed, God’s-Eye-view with shad­ing…

A detailed geom­e­try-based step-by-step…

A ten-minute ver­sion for kids that uti­lizes a drink­ing glass and a bot­tle cap to get the pro­por­tions right pri­or to pen­cil­ing, ink­ing, and col­or­ing…

But none has more heart than Stu­dio Ghi­b­li pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki’s sim­ple demon­stra­tion, above.

The paper is ori­ent­ed toward the artist, rather than the view­er.

His only instruc­tion is that the eyes should be spaced very far apart.

His brush pen lends itself to a freer line than the tight­ly con­trolled out­lines of Stu­dio Ghibli’s care­ful­ly ren­dered 2‑D char­ac­ter designs.

This is Totoro as Zen prac­tice, offered as a gift to cooped-up Japan­ese chil­dren, whose schools, like so many world­wide, were abrupt­ly shut­tered in an effort to con­tain the spread of the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Free Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings: Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away & More

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Largest & Most Detailed Photograph of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch Is Now Online: Zoom In & See Every Brush Stroke

in Art | May 14th, 2020

What makes great paint­ings great? Unless you can see them for yourself—and be awed, or not, by their phys­i­cal presence—the answers will gen­er­al­ly come sec­ond-hand, through the words of art his­to­ri­ans, crit­ics, cura­tors, gal­lerists, etc. We can study art in repro­duc­tion, but see­ing, for exam­ple, the paint­ings of Rem­brandt van Rijn in the flesh presents an entire­ly dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence than see­ing them on the page or screen.

Late­ly, how­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion is chang­ing, and the bound­aries blur­ring between a vir­tu­al and an in-per­son expe­ri­ence of art. It’s pos­si­ble with dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to have expe­ri­ences no ordi­nary muse­um-goer has had, of course—like walk­ing into a VR Sal­vador Dalí paint­ing, or through a sim­u­lat­ed Ver­meer muse­um in aug­ment­ed real­i­ty.

But these tech­no­log­i­cal inter­ven­tions are nov­el­ties, in a way. Like famous paint­ings silkscreened on t‑shirts or glazed on cof­fee mugs, they warp and dis­tort the works they rep­re­sent.

That is not the case, how­ev­er, with the lat­est dig­i­tal repro­duc­tion of Rembrandt’s grand­est and most exclu­sive paint­ing, The Night Watch, a 44.8 gigapix­el image of the work that the muse­um has “released online in a zoomable inter­face,” notes Kot­tke. “The lev­el of detail avail­able here is incred­i­ble.” Even that descrip­tion seems like under­state­ment. The image comes to us from the same team respon­si­ble for the painting’s mul­ti-phase, live-streamed restora­tion.

The Rijksmuseum’s imag­ing team led by data­sci­en­tist Robert Erd­mann made this pho­to­graph of The Night Watch from a total of 528 expo­sures. The 24 rows of 22 pic­tures were stitched togeth­er dig­i­tal­ly with the aid of neur­al net­works. The final image is made up of 44.8 gigapix­els (44,804,687,500 pix­els), and the dis­tance between each pix­el is 20 microme­tres (0.02 mm). This enables the sci­en­tists to study the paint­ing in detail remote­ly. The image will also be used to accu­rate­ly track any future age­ing process­es tak­ing place in the paint­ing.

The huge­ly famous work is so enor­mous, near­ly 12 feet high and over 14 feet wide, that its fig­ures are almost life-size. Yet even when it was pos­si­ble to get close to the painting—before COVID-19 shut down the Rijksmu­se­um and before Rembrandt’s mas­ter­work went behind glass—no one except con­ser­va­tion­ists could ever get as close to it as we can now with just the click of a mouse or a slide of our fin­gers across a track­pad.

The expe­ri­ence of see­ing Rembrandt’s brush­strokes mag­ni­fied in crys­talline clar­i­ty doesn’t just add to our store of knowl­edge about The Night Watch, as the Rijksmu­se­um sug­gests above. This aston­ish­ing image also—and per­haps most impor­tant­ly for the major­i­ty of peo­ple who will view it online—enables us to real­ly com­mune with the mate­ri­al­i­ty of the paint­ing, and to be moved by it in a way that may have only been pos­si­ble in the past by mak­ing an exclu­sive, in-per­son vis­it to the Rijksmu­se­um with­out a tourist in sight. (For most of us, that is an unre­al­is­tic way to view great art.)

See the huge pho­to­graph­ic repro­duc­tion of The Night Watch here and zoom in on any detail until you can almost smell the var­nish. This image rep­re­sents the paint­ing in the cur­rent state of its restora­tion, an effort that the muse­um pre­vi­ous­ly opened to the pub­lic by live stream­ing it. Yet, the work has stopped for the past two months as con­ser­va­tion­ists have stayed home. Just yes­ter­day, the team’s onsite research began again, and will con­tin­ue at least into 2021. This huge pho­to of the paint­ing may be the clos­est almost any­one will ever get to the can­vas, and the only oppor­tu­ni­ty for some time to approx­i­mate­ly feel its mon­u­men­tal scale.

For any­one inter­est­ed, there’s also a 10 bil­lion pix­el scan of Vermeer’s mas­ter­piece Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring. Explore it here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes The Night Watch Rembrandt’s Mas­ter­piece

The Restora­tion of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch Begins: Watch the Painstak­ing Process On-Site and Online

Walk Inside a Sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí Paint­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

Expe­ri­ence the Van Gogh Muse­um in 4K Res­o­lu­tion: A Video Tour in Sev­en Parts

See the Com­plete Works of Ver­meer in Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty: Google Makes Them Avail­able on Your Smart­phone

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

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William Blake Illustrates Mary Wollstonecraft’s Work of Children’s Literature, Original Stories from Real Life (1791)

in Art, Literature, Philosophy | May 13th, 2020

Most of us know Mary Woll­stonecraft as the author of the 1792 pam­phlet A Vin­di­ca­tion of the Rights of Women, and as the moth­er of Franken­stein author Mary Shel­ley. Few­er of us may know that two years before she pub­lished her foun­da­tion­al fem­i­nist text, she wrote A Vin­di­ca­tion of the Rights of Men, a pro-French Rev­o­lu­tion, anti-monar­chy argu­ment that first made her famous as a writer and philoso­pher. Per­haps far few­er know that Woll­stonecraft began her career as a pub­lished author in 1787 with Thoughts on the Edu­ca­tion of Daugh­ters (though she had yet to raise chil­dren her­self), a con­duct man­u­al for prop­er behav­ior.

A huge­ly pop­u­lar genre dur­ing the first Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, con­duct man­u­als bore a mis­cel­la­neous char­ac­ter, incul­cat­ing a bat­tery of mid­dle-class rules, beliefs, and affec­ta­tions through a mix of ped­a­gogy, alle­go­ry, domes­tic advice, and devo­tion­al writ­ing. Young women were instruct­ed in the prop­er way to dress, eat, pray, laugh, love, etc., etc.

It may seem from our per­spec­tive that a rad­i­cal fire­brand like Woll­stonecraft would shun this sort of thing, but her mor­al­iz­ing was typ­i­cal of mid­dle-class women of her time, even of pio­neer­ing writ­ers who sup­port­ed rev­o­lu­tions and women’s polit­i­cal and social equal­i­ty.

Wollstonecraft’s assump­tions about class and char­ac­ter come into relief when placed against the views of anoth­er famous con­tem­po­rary, far more rad­i­cal fig­ure, William Blake, who was then a strug­gling, most­ly obscure poet, print­er, and illus­tra­tor in Lon­don. In 1791, he received a com­mis­sion to illus­trate a sec­ond edi­tion of Wollstonecraft’s third book, a fol­low-up of sorts to her Thoughts on the Edu­ca­tion of Daugh­ters. The 1788 work—Orig­i­nal Sto­ries from Real Life; with Con­ver­sa­tions, Cal­cu­lat­ed to Reg­u­late the Affec­tions, and Form the Mind to Truth and Good­ness—is a more focused book, using a series of vignettes woven into a frame sto­ry.

The two chil­dren in the nar­ra­tive, 14-year-old Mary and 12-year-old Car­o­line, receive lessons from their rel­a­tive Mrs. Mason, who instructs them on a dif­fer­ent virtue and moral fail­ing in each chap­ter by using sto­ries and exam­ples from nature. The two pupils “are moth­er­less,” notes the British Library, “and lack the good habits they should have absorbed by exam­ple. Mrs. Mason intends to rec­ti­fy this by being with them con­stant­ly and answer­ing all their ques­tions.” She is an all-know­ing gov­erness who explains the world away with a phi­los­o­phy that might have sound­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly harsh to Blake’s ears.

For exam­ple, in the chap­ter on phys­i­cal pain, Mary is stung by sev­er­al wasps. After­ward, her guardian begins to lec­ture her “with more than usu­al grav­i­ty.”

I am sor­ry to see a girl of your age weep on account of bod­i­ly pain; it is a proof of a weak mind—a proof that you can­not employ your­self about things of con­se­quence. How often must I tell you that the Most High is edu­cat­ing us for eter­ni­ty?… Chil­dren ear­ly feel bod­i­ly pain, to habit­u­ate them to bear the con­flicts of the soul, when they become rea­son­able crea­tures. This is say, is the first tri­al, and I like to see that prop­er pride which strives to con­ceal its suf­fer­ings…. The Almighty, who nev­er afflicts but to pro­duce some good end, first sends dis­eases to chil­dren to teach them patience and for­ti­tude; and when by degrees they have learned to bear them, they have acquired some virtue.

Blake like­ly found this line of rea­son­ing off-putting, at the least. His own poems “were not children’s lit­er­a­ture per se,” writes Stephanie Metz at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tennessee’s Roman­tic Pol­i­tics project, “yet their sim­plis­tic lan­guage and even some of their con­tent responds to the char­ac­ter­is­tics of didac­tic fic­tion and children’s poet­ry.” Blake wrote express­ly to protest the ide­ol­o­gy found in con­duct man­u­als like Wollstonecraft’s: “He calls atten­tion to society’s abuse of chil­dren in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways, show­ing how soci­ety cor­rupts their inher­ent inno­cence and imag­i­na­tion while also fail­ing to care for their phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al needs.”

For Blake, children’s big emo­tions and active imag­i­na­tions made them supe­ri­or to adults. “Sev­er­al of his poems,” Metz writes, “show the ways in which children’s innate nature has already been taint­ed by their par­ents and oth­er soci­etal forms of author­i­ty, such as the church.” Giv­en his atti­tudes, we can see why “mod­ern inter­preters of the illus­tra­tions for Orig­i­nal Sto­ries have detect­ed a pic­to­r­i­al cri­tique” in Blake’s ren­der­ing of Wollstonecraft’s text, as the William Blake Archive points out. Blake “appears to have found her moral­i­ty too cal­cu­lat­ing, ratio­nal­is­tic, and rigid. He rep­re­sents Wollstonecraft’s spokesper­son, Mrs. Mason, as a dom­i­neer­ing pres­ence.”

Nonethe­less, as always, Blake’s work is more than com­pe­tent. The style for which we know him best emerges in some of the prints. We see it, for exam­ple, in the chis­eled face, bulging eyes, and well-mus­cled arms of the stand­ing fig­ure above. For the most part, how­ev­er, he keeps in check his exu­ber­ant desire to cel­e­brate the human body. “Only a year ear­li­er,” writes Brain Pick­ings, “Blake had fin­ished print­ing and illu­mi­nat­ing the first few copies of his now-leg­endary Songs of Inno­cence and Expe­ri­ence.” Two of the songs “were inspired by Wollstonecraft’s trans­la­tion of C.G. Salzmann’s Ele­ments of Moral­i­ty, for which Blake had done sev­er­al engrav­ings.”

If he had mis­giv­ings about illus­trat­ing Wollstonecraft’s Orig­i­nal Sto­ries, we must infer them from his illus­tra­tions. But plac­ing Blake’s most famous book of poet­ry next to Wollstonecraft’s pious, didac­tic works of moral instruc­tion pro­duces some jar­ring con­trasts, show­ing how two tow­er­ing lit­er­ary fig­ures from the time (though not both at the time) con­ceived of child­hood, social class, edu­ca­tion, and moral­i­ty in vast­ly dif­fer­ent ways. Learn more about Blake’s illus­tra­tions at Brain Pick­ings, read an edi­tion of Woll­stonecraft’s Orig­i­nal Sto­ries here, and see all of Blake’s illus­tra­tions at the William Blake Archive.

via Brain Pick­ings

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter an Archive of William Blake’s Fan­tas­ti­cal “Illu­mi­nat­ed Books”: The Images Are Sub­lime, and in High Res­o­lu­tion

William Blake’s Mas­ter­piece Illus­tra­tions of the Book of Job (1793–1827)

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost

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

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Salvador Dalí’s Tarot Cards, Cookbook & Wine Guide Re-Issued as Beautiful Art Books

in Art, Books | May 11th, 2020

Main­tain­ing an aggres­sive­ly upward-waxed mus­tache; mak­ing a sur­re­al­ist film with Luis Buñuel that Buñuel described as “noth­ing more than a des­per­ate impas­sioned call for mur­der”; bring­ing an anteater on The Dick Cavett Show: Sal­vador Dalí can be described as a mas­ter of atten­tion-grab­bing gam­bits, by his admir­ers and detrac­tors alike. No won­der, then, that he appears to have some seri­ous admir­ers at Taschen. Known as a pub­lish­er of books that draw a great deal of press for their bound­ary-push­ing size, con­tent, and pro­duc­tion val­ues, Taschen would seem to be a nat­ur­al home for Dalí’s lega­cy, or at least the parts of it that fit between two cov­ers.

Besides his well-known and much-reprint­ed paint­ings, Dalí left behind a body of work also includ­ing not just film but sculp­ture, pho­tog­ra­phy, archi­tec­ture, and books. His first pub­lished vol­ume, 1938’s The Trag­ic Myth of the Angelus of Mil­let, offers a “para­noiac-crit­i­cal” inter­pre­ta­tion of the tit­u­lar pas­toral paint­ing by Jean-François Mil­let. In the 1940s he wrote, among oth­er books, The Secret Life of Sal­vador Dalí, a kind of auto­bi­og­ra­phy, and Hid­den Faces, a nov­el set among aris­toc­ra­cy in France, Moroc­co, and Cal­i­for­nia.

It was in the 1970s that Dalí’s lit­er­ary efforts took a less pre­dictable turn: 1973 saw the pub­li­ca­tion of his Les Din­ers de Gala, a cook­book fea­tur­ing such recipes as “Veal Cut­lets Stuffed with Snails,” “Thou­sand Year Old Eggs,” and “Tof­fee with Pine Cones.” In 1978 came The Wines of Gala, a per­son­al guide to “Wines of Friv­o­li­ty,” “Wines of Sen­su­al­i­ty,” “Wines of Aes­theti­cism,” and oth­ers besides. In recent years, Taschen has reprint­ed Dalí’s food and wine books with char­ac­ter­is­tic hand­some­ness. Those two now sit in the Taschen Dalí col­lec­tion along­side Dalí: The Paint­ings, the most com­plete such col­lec­tion ever pub­lished, and Dalí Tarot, a pack­age that includes not just the Dalí-designed tarot deck orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1984 but a com­pan­ion book by tarot schol­ar Johannes Fiebig.

Dalí’s wife and savvy busi­ness man­ag­er Gala — she of all those din­ners and wines — would sure­ly approve of the skill and taste that Taschen has put into pack­ag­ing even the artist’s minor work as a viable 21st-cen­tu­ry prod­uct. Well-heeled Dalí enthu­si­asts will sure­ly con­tin­ue to pay Taschen prices for such pack­ages, and even the less well-heeled ones can’t help but won­der what future reprints are on the table: lav­ish new edi­tions of Hid­den Faces, The Secret Life, or even 1948’s 50 Secrets of Mag­ic Crafts­man­ship (with its endorse­ment of pow­er nap­ping)? Dare we hope for the defin­i­tive Sal­vador Dalí Bible?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Sal­vador Dali’s 1978 Wine Guide, The Wines of Gala, Gets Reis­sued: Sen­su­al Viti­cul­ture Meets Sur­re­al Art

The Most Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Sal­vador Dalí’s Paint­ings Pub­lished in a Beau­ti­ful New Book by Taschen: Includes Nev­er-Seen-Before Works

Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Illus­trat­ed by Sal­vador Dalí in 1969, Final­ly Gets Reis­sued

Sal­vador Dalí’s Illus­tra­tions for The Bible (1963)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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