Richard Watson Gordon parades an amazing ignorance

Gordon is talking up an art exhibit on the subject of 19th century prostitution in Paris:

 It was a subject that interested them. Why? The obvious answer is that they were men, but another reason was that prostitution was linked to the idea of modernity. People had moved to the city, which was in itself a new concept, where the moral strictures of the village had disappeared. 

Gordon is a professor of fine arts.

Woodpiles as art

Anyone who has heated a house with wood can't help but pay attention to woodpiles.  Just seeing a good pile ready for use stirs emotion; this kind of creative effort is truly fine.

A beehive cell

Darrell Markewitz, historically inspired metalworker par excellence, starts thinking about sacred enclosures and monastic beehive cells. Have a look!

Victory Day in Kiev

From the Big Picture.

British eccentricity put to good use

Thanks to the BBC.

Lowry in Berwick

Long ago, Berwick-on-Tweed was a prize in the Anglo-Scottish wars over old Northumbria. For centuries now it has been English, but the casual visitor (me) has a hard time telling which kingdom it belongs in (Northumbria?). The big social issue seems to be whether dogs should be welcome in pubs.

It is not a flashy place and may never have been, but Berwick had its artistic champion in the mid-20th century, when one L.S. Lowry did many striking paintings of the streets and the people. There is now a downtown "trail" on which you can visit sites he made famous, and which are pretty much the same.

A genealogy site has a good selection of Berwick neighborhoods and the paintings they inspired.

Summer, Park Avenue, 1930

From Ephemeral New York.

From Ephemeral New York: Spring Night, Greenwich Village

By Martin Lewis, 1930.  More here.

A work of minor genius...

...but genius still.  King Philip IV signs autographs.

Congrats to Improv Everywhere and all involved in the project.  And thanks to Will McLean for the heads-up.

Scott Caple exhibit in Toronto, February 25, 2011

As a bit of relief from very serious matters, I pass along this invitation from Scott Caple, an extraordinarily talented artist and animator:

I am having a SHOW in Downtown Toronto , at the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop, 486 College St. / Friday Feb. 25 / 7-11. It 's going to be a show of layout and design work from past projects I 've worked on -Incredibles, Hunchback, the Bluth movies, maybe even some Nelvana stuff - plus some personal work. Some will be original , some won't. But there WILL be refreshments and good conversation. And signed prints for sale!

If you can, go!

More beautiful iron work from a re-enactor

Historical re-enactors and re-creationists don't have the highest reputation either with the general public or among scholars.  since I have spent more than my fair share of time running around in armor, I  have a  different opinion. Part of it goes back to the attitude that "historians don't own history" ( or at least not all of it :-)) but also because I know a number of people who have come out of the reenactment and become masters of some historical-based skill.   Their accomplishments deserve the highest praise.

One such person is Darrell Markewitz, whom I've known for almost 40 years now. In that time has grown from a young eccentric  to a mature eccentric who knows things other people don't know and can do things that other people can't do.  He loves researching historical techniques and has done valuable work in connection with Viking culture in North America, but he is also a contemporary person who makes iron – based art for modern clients. Here, too, he might be seen as a reenactor – reenacting some of the graphic innovations of the 1970s. Whatever you call it, I say it is good, and better than good. The picture above is an example of a commission piece for a patron/client.  Go here to have a closer look and, if you've got the cash and share Darrell's belief in the beauty of iron, give him a call.

Original mind at work

Anyone can burn a book, or threaten to.  How many can write stuff this good?

Bird of Paradise by Holly Anne Garnett

Link.

Full of awe

On a personal note

Jane Cloutier is a Michigan artist who works in cut paper. I acquired a piece very much like this just today hoping to get more in the future. This picture does not really do the piece I got justice. My original is far more colorful and vibrant. If you want to see more go here.

What does this have to say about historical movements in general?

Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station refers us to this dance party:



Draw your own conclusions!

Steampunk

Here is a nifty article at the Smart Set, via the League of Ordinary Gentlemen (how appropriate!).

The aesthetic movement Steampunk wants to bring the wonder back into our relationship with machines. Its tack is to fully embrace (and affect) an Edwardian orientation to the world. Though Steampunk has been a growing cultural trend for a few decades, it really came into its own in the aughts and is now a full-fledged phenomenon. Steampunks dress like the Wright Brothers and Arctic explorers. They write alternate history fantasies in which alien clones ride around in dirigibles by the light of gas lamps. Steampunks are fascinated by mechanics, and Steampunk art, jewelry, and fashion often involve gears, wheels, pulleys, and, of course, steam: a laptop computer fused with a rickety typewriter; an arcade game redesigned to look like a mini-submarine. What most defines Steampunk as a culture, however, is attitude. The “punk” in Steampunk confronts technology's alienating qualities with messy DIY defiance. The “steam” (besides its literal connotations) is almost like another word for magic: brute, utilitarian contraptions powered by clouds, and breath — ephemeral energy.

Steampunk tries to capture that Edwardian moment when steam power still ruled and the romance of technology lay precisely in the line it toed between destruction and possibility. Equally fascinated by flying machines and trench warfare, Steampunk is both optimistic and nihilistic. I like to think of this attitude as Gleehilism. It's this Gleehilism that makes Steampunk one of the defining aesthetic movements of the early 21st century.

Image: Extraordinary gentlemen/woman.

A great Canadian work of art

I have said elsewhere that I am a sucker for great ephemeral works of art, for instance (some) Olympic opening ceremonies.

Last night's pagentry was not perfect, but it had perfect moments.

My first reaction, sparked by the beginning act featuring representatives of First Nations, was to think, almost seriously:

"I hear that Jack Vance is blind, but I have a feeling he may have scripted this anyway. He sees things more vividly with his inner eye than most of us with the outer ones."

But really it was better than that; not the creation of a 92-year-old American I admire very much, but of much younger Canadians I don't know with dazzling technical skills and first-class creative ideas. And performers who could dance energetically for an hour straight! And fly!

Even if you saw it on TV, you owe it to yourself to see the Big Picture presentation, to remind you, and see details you might have missed.

Image: One of those perfect moments. I had a hard time choosing.

Detroit Industry, a mural by Diego Rivera

Back when I was teaching introductory world history, I became aware that Diego Rivera -- the early 20th century artist and social critic, the man whose huge murals of the Spanish conquest of Mexico probably formed everybody's image of those events and especially what the Aztec looked like (at second or third hand if not directly)-- had some of his work in the Detroit Institute of Art. Somehow I got the idea that it might have been some version of his Mexican historical work.

Well, today I was at the DIA and found out how wrong I was. Diego Rivera was in Detroit in 1932-3, and while he was there he was commissioned by the Ford heir, Edsel Ford, to do original work right on the walls of an interior court built specially for that purpose. It is a depiction Detroit Industry, showing its power, its dynamism, its potential for evil as well as good. What's haunting about the murals are the occasional appearances of warplanes, men in gas masks, and the production of poison gas bombs.

This is an amazing piece of art, and I bet next to no one knows about it anymore. There are lots of pictures on the web, including some posted by the Institute itself, but there's no substitute for seeing this kind of large-scale art in person. I gasped when I first saw it.

At the top of this post, is one small section of the mural which I think comes across fairly well at the scale at which you're going to see it. It shows workers in the foreground being observed by both men and women in dressier clothes. The observers have rather sour expressions on their faces. My theory is that the noise is probably overpowering. Or are they repulsed for some other reason?

I am rather surprised that the generally conservative Ford family patronized Diego Rivera. They must have thought he was the next thing to a communist. I mean, have a look at this (On a communist site yet.) Even the Detroit Industry murals show no sympathy for the captains of industry.

By the way, I should point out that the Detroit Institute of Art has mountains of good stuff in a very impressive building, right downtown in what might be called the museum district of Detroit.

We can have pictures of winter

It's not very wintry in Windsor, Ont., but we can have pictures of ice and cold.

Above you should see an ice scupture at the Ice Museum in Chena Hot Springs, Alaska, as featured on Jim Wright's Stonekettle Station, quite a nice blog.

And following this link you can see "hair ice" which forms on dead wood in certain conditions. I've got dead wood all over my North Bay area property, but I've never seen this.