Pietro Travaglini designed this bookshelf to bend and shift as seamlessly as your own backbone. The shelves are accented by white LED lights which I’m sure gives it a ghostly glow at night.
[spotted by Jenny via Furnifurnish]
Parisian museums are getting more and more historically innovative with their programming. First, the amazing looking "Science and Curiosities: exhibition at Versailles (as discussed in this recent post). And now this just in: The Cinémathèque Française will be co-producing a phantasmagoria projection & spectacle in partnership with--and to be performed at--The Louvre!
Phantasmagoria, invented in the wake of--and said to be a response to--The French Revolution, are essentially ghost shows in which images of skeletons, demons, and ghosts (see top image) are projected via a modified magic lantern and, through a series of ingenious special effects, seem to move about, approach and retreat from, the viewer. These forms of spectacle were very popular around the time of the French Revolution and were also performed throughout the 19th Century; with the advent of film, they metamorphosed into the horror movie, a popular form to this day.
The phantasmagoria projection & spectacle at the Louvre will consist of a series of phantasmagoria projections and spectacles between the dates of January 13th until March 28th of 2011; The highlight will be a grand phantasmagoria projection on March 6 where guest Phantasmagores Laure Parchomenko & Laurent Mannoni promise to conjure-up a variety of spirits which haunted the aftermath of the Revolution at 14:30 & 18:00.
More information about this event can be found (in French) here.
Via the Early Visual Media website and mailing list.
Near NYC? Collect anything unique or out of the ordinary? Want to be on the next episode of "Oddities?" Email your info to odditiesshow@gmail.com!!!! The producers will be in touch!
This call for collectors just in from the production crew of "Oddities," the new Discovery and Science Channel series based on Obscura Antiques and Oddities in New York City. If you are a collector of unusual things and interested in appearing on the show--or would like additional information--email odditiesshow@gmail.com.
You can find out more about the show at this recent post and on the official website by clicking here.
Never have I seen such a beautiful and seamless combination of figure drawing, internal anatomy and, well, silliness. It is as if Michael Reedy has grown tired of rendering the classic figure drawing and has drifted to rendering the thoughts and dreams of the subjects. His anatomical artwork is reminiscent of the fanciful anatomy of Albinus’ and Vesalius’ texts from back in the day and he does an excellent job balancing between the fine art and superflous illustration.
From Michael:
The human figure and portraiture have been central to my studies and explorations as a practicing artist for the past twelve years. In a desire to extend beyond historical modes of representation, I have found myself increasingly interested in depictions of the body that fall outside the canon of art history, namely in cartooning and medical illustration. Ultimately, I believe that by combining the visual language and style employed by various modes of representation, both inside and outside the accepted boundaries of fine art, I can locate and capitalize on unique areas of resistance essential to the production of new meaning.
[Spotted by David Cheney]
A nice appreciation of the cabinet of curiosity approach to contemporary museum curation in today's Wall Street Journal:
At the [Royal Ontario Museum, aka ROM ], objects taken from its separate collections (fine and decorative arts, history, textiles, archaeology, geology, mineralogy, paleontology and zoology) are often mixed and matched in highly interdisciplinary displays to create a narrative not often seen in the more specialized museums that we are used to. For example, English dresses and slippers from the late 18th and early 19th centuries are displayed next to African and Asian clothing of the same era, alongside printing blocks and a wall-text description of berries used to produce dyes, because one of the points being made is how colors and patterns were dyed or printed onto these fabrics. Comparisons are being drawn about widely divergent cultures and industrial practices.
"In so many museums, curators are telling the story of the objects on display—why this is in the collection, why that is an important piece—while we're trying to use the objects in our collections to tell a story about how people go about their lives here and elsewhere around the world, and often about the intersection of the natural and cultural worlds," she said.
Here's another example: A display contains ceramic vases, silver, clocks, weathervanes and furniture from the 18th century, across from painted portraits of men, women and children who lived in Canada back then. None of the individual objects have their own labels, and only some wall text describes life in that time. Who were those people in the portraits? Who painted them? Where were those chairs and vases made? Did those people own that silver? Presumably, the curators know and aren't telling us. At the ROM, the point isn't so much the individual objects as creating a big-picture view of life at a certain time and place. "We encourage visitors to make connections in their own minds," Ms. Carding said...The ROM is in some ways a throwback. Before people traveled so much or had such wide access to books and photographs (in short, an education), 18th- and 19th-century museums were cabinets of curiosities that provided a world of collected knowledge, a walk-in encyclopedia of objects both natural and man-made, practical and artistic. It is rare to find this type of institution anymore; museums now are more and more specialized...
Like the original cabinets of curiosities, there is a little something for everyone, but not so much as to bore people. Known as the "Stair of Wonders," the landings between floors have their own miniature displays—seashells or insects or battalions of metal toy soldiers—to perk up interest when it may be flagging. There's also a life-size, walk-through diorama of the St. Clair Cave in Jamaica, with its plaster-cast hanging bats, insects and stalagmites (based on ROM scientists' work at the site). "People here talk about their old favorites; so many people just love the bat cave," Ms. Carding said.
You can read the full article--from which the excerpt is drawn--by clicking here.
Image via Ddrees Art.
I love this simple campaign for the Vancouver amusement park, Playland by Rethink Communications. Their advertising and design work is very fresh and smart, so if you need some visual and conceptual inspiration, check out their site!
Olivier Valsecchi’s latest collection highlights bodies in motion and accentuates the human form as it is met with dust. These photos convey beauty and discomfort. It looks as if some individuals are embracing the impact of dust and others are retreating from it, and still some seem to glide through it as if in water. Whatever may be the case for the models, the powder brings out the details of the bodies, even when obscured by small clouds. The images are haunting and beautiful.
You can see more of this work and Valsecchi’s other pieces on his site.
[via Change the Thought]
Morbid Anatomy is pleased to announce "A: Head on B: Body: The Real Life Dr. Frankenstein," a lecture and screening exploring the notion of the "mad scientist" in fact and fiction, history and myth. The focal point of the presentation will be the real life mad scientist Dr. Robert White, a professor and pioneering neurosurgeon whose experiments with what he termed "full body transplants" pushed many troubling boundaries.
The event will feature a short documentary film about Dr, White by Jim Fields, director of the “End of the Century: the Story of the Ramones." Fields and Lewi will introduce the film–which features a series of interviews with Dr. White discussing his controversial experiments–with an illustrated lecture contextualizing the doctor’s work within the history of “mad scientists” past and present, fictional and actual; scientists whose hubris drove them to go rogue by tampering with things perhaps best left alone.
Full event description follows; hope very much to see you there!
A: Head on B: Body: The Real Life Dr. Frankenstein
A screening and lecture with film-maker Jim Fields and Mike Lewi
Date: Friday, January 7th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid AnatomyIn an eventful and successful career spanning 40 years, Dr. Robert White–pioneering neurosurgeon and Professor at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University–did many things. He participated in Nobel Prize-nominated work, published more than 700 scholarly articles, examined Vladimir Lenin’s preserved brain in Cold War Russia, founded Pope John Paul II’s Committee on Bioethics, went to mass daily, and raised 10 children. He also engaged in a series of horrifying and highly controversial experiments reminiscent of a B-Movie mad scientist, experiments which pushed the limits of medical ethics, infuriated the animal rights community, and questioned notions of identity, consciousness, and corporeality as well as mankind’s biblically-condoned dominion over the animal kingdom.
Tonight, join film-maker Jim Fields–best known for his 2003 documentary “End of the Century” about the legendary punk band The Ramones–and Mike Lewi for a screening of Fields’ short documentary about the life and work of this real-life Dr. Frankenstein whose chilling “full body transplants” truly seem the stuff of a B-Movie terror. Fields will introduce the film–which features a series of interviews with Dr. White discussing his controversial experiments–with an illustrated lecture contextualizing the doctor’s work within the history of “mad scientists” past and present, fictional and actual; scientists whose hubris drove them to go rogue by tampering with things perhaps best left alone.
Jim Fields made a few documentaries, one of which, “End of the Century: the Story of the Ramones” is particularly long. He’s currently a video journalist at Time Magazine and Time.com.
Mike Lewi is a filmmaker, event producer, and disc jockey.
You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here and can can access the event on Facebook here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.
Image: Drawing by Dr. Harvey Cushing, early 20th Century, found on the Yale Medical Library website.
Tomorrow night at Observatory. So hope to see you there!
The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?
An illustrated lecture with cult author and cultural critic Mark Dery, followed by a Krampus/Solstice-themed after party with music, specialty cocktails, and more
Date: Tuesday, December 21 (Winter Solstice)
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $10
Presented by Morbid AnatomyCanceled, last year, by an act of Cthulhu–the Mother of All Blizzards, which dumped 20 inches of snow across the Northeast–Dery’s wickedly witty lecture, “The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?,” is sure to inspire Christmas jeer.
Few Americans know that Santa descends from the mock king who held court at Saturnalia, the Roman festival celebrating the winter solstice. Or that he shares cultural DNA with the Lord of Misrule who presided over the yuletide Feast of Fools in the Middle Ages—lewd, blasphemous revels that gave vent to underclass hostility toward feudal lords and the all-powerful church.
In “The Vast Santanic Conspiracy: Is St. Nick the Tool of a Plot too Monstrous to Mention?,” Dery, a cultural critic and book author, takes a look at the Jolly Old Elf’s little-known role as poster boy for officially sanctioned eruptions of social chaos, as well as his current status as a flashpoint in “the Christmas Wars”—cultural battles between evangelicals, atheists, conservatives, and anti-consumerists over the “true” meaning of Christmas. Along the way, Dery considers New Age theories that Santa is a repressed memory of an ancient Celtic cult revolving around red-capped psychedelic mushrooms; Nazi attempts to re-imagine Christmas—a holiday consecrated to a Jewish baby, for Christ’s sake—as a pre-Christian invention of tree-worshipping German tribes, in some misty, Wagnerian past; and the suspicious similarities between Satan and Santa, connections that have fueled a cottage industry of conspiracy theories on the religious right.
Mark Dery (http://www.markdery.com) is a cultural critic. He is best known for his writings on the politics of popular culture in books such as The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink and Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century. Dery is widely associated with the concept of “culture jamming,” the guerrilla media criticism movement he popularized through his 1993 essay “Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of the Signs”; “Afrofuturism,” a term he coined and theorized in his 1994 essay “Black to the Future” (included in the anthology Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture, which he edited); and the Pathological Sublime, which he introduced in The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium. He has been a professor in the Department of Journalism at New York University, a Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellow at UC Irvine, a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, a blogger for True/Slant (http://trueslant.com/markdery/) and Thought Catalog (http://thoughtcatalog.com/) and a guest blogger at Boing Boing. A Portuguese-only collection of his recent essays, Não Devo Pensar Em Coisas Ruins (I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts), has just been published in Brazil by Editora Sulina.
You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.
Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like Victorian baby talk. Especially when it sounds like this.
More, from the Go Report website:
While we may never know what the ‘must have’ Christmas gift was in 1890, we do know that it most assuredly wasn’t Thomas Edison’s talking doll.
Using miniature phonographs embedded inside, these “talking” baby dolls were toy manufacturers’ first attempt at using sound technology in toys. They marked a collaboration between Edison and William Jacques and Lowell Briggs, who worked to miniaturize the phonograph starting in 1878.
Unfortunately, production delays, poor recording technology, high production costs, and damages during distribution all combined to create toys that were a complete disaster, terrifying children and costing their parents nearly a month’s pay.
Edison would later refer to the dolls as his “little monsters.”
To hear this wee monstrous baby reciting, we are led to believe, "Little Jack Horner," click here. To read the entire story from which the above excerpt is drawn, click here. Sound from Archive.org.
Thanks to my lovely friend Matt Murphy for this charming holiday tale about a rare Edison commercial misfire.
Cote cliché: 09-575178
Inventory Number: P4460
Fund: Photographs
Title: Anatomical wax
Description: Gallery comparative anatomy, circa 1880
Author: Petit Pierre Lanith (1831-1909)
Photo credit: Contact us in advance for monographs, exhibition panels, commercial editions, advertising and communication. An additional proof be sent to the museum. (C) National Museum of Natural History, Dist. RMN / image MNHN, Central Library
Period: 19th century
Date: 1880
Location: Paris, National Museum of Natural History, Central Library
Click on image to see much larger, more interesting image. Via RMN found via Bits and Bites Tumblr.
Be warm this season with this super cute skull sequenced sweater by TopShop. Say that 5 times!
Grey cardigan by Sister with sequin fairisle skull pattern embellishment and two front pockets.
50% Acrylic,50% Wool.
Paul Alexander Thornton is back with a new stop motion skull. His Sugar Skull was featured in July.
He created the dripping effect using watercolor and red ballpoint pen.
[via tdw]
Talk about a hungry hippo, it looks as if Pepe chowed down on a member of the military, delicious. This wonderful one page comic documenting 12 objects found in the stomach of Columbian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s escaped pet hippopotamus was illustrated by Dan Zettwoch and featured in the 4th edition of STUDYGROUP 12. The Ignatz Award-winning comics anthology that is STUDYGROUP 12 is available for purchase on Etsy for those curious, and it looks as if it has some pretty rad artwork in it. The Etsy page also has a better and more in-depth description of the publication. Be sure to check out Dan’s blog, he’s got some great prints and breakdowns on there.
Ugh finally something I can hang in my own home! These vinyl manhoods come in all shapes and sizes and seem to be made from the best vinyl out there. Check out Bodega and Michael Leon’s creation here, to learn more.
[via CoolHunting]
Calling all artists and makers:
RETROFUTUROLOGY
How the Past Saw the Present // How the Present Sees the FutureA group show of visual art at Observatory, Brooklyn, curated by the Hollow Earth Society, Ethan Gould & Wythe Marschall, Founding Colonels
The imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is a powerful agent for creating, as it were,a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature. —Kant
To have an imagined future, you must simultaneously have an imagined present and an imagined past.
A DeLorean decked out in flashing lights and complicated-looking wires: It's a modest-budget promise that, yes, the technologies of our age—our new computer chips and LED lights and cars with doors that open upright like a space pod—can puncture the time barrier, with the right old-fashioned mad scientist at the steering wheel! Where to go? A rowdy 1950s, wherein a white kid can invent rock and roll? A steampunk 1800s? A future wherein the promises of kaleidoscopic, holographic advertising from the late 1980s come to fruition—a world with yet another layer of retrofuturist dreaming added onto the small-town diner...?
Our visions of the future are nested.
Our conception of time is hyperreal. In explaining the visual gimmicks of a single cultural artifact such as the Buggles's "Video Killed The Radio Star," we must refer to the heyday of radio; the future promised by television executives in synthesizer advertisements; science fiction pulp covers from the 1950s; the neon-on-black-and-white aesthetic of MTV in its early years, not to mention the gallery scene that birthed that aesthetic; 1950s diner-decor futurism; the late-1970s body-posturing and dystopic styling of Devo; Fritz Lang's Metropolis, looking forward to 2026; the garb of mad scientists in movies from the 1940s;—and the sigh that comes with opening a magazine and seeing all of this, compressed down into an ad for sunglasses for hipsters.
Or not even for hipsters: The retrocamp fashion exemplified by an irritating blend of past and future has been recompressed and sold in shopping malls internationally. This isn't marginal pulp—
This is the process on which the present runs.
You are invited to join us for a group show
The Hollow Earth Society seeks artists working in drawing, printmaking, and painting, and possibly sculpture and video/multimedia art (space is limited) for RETROFUTUROLOGY, a group show focused on past- and present-futures, to be up from January 29 to March 5, 2011, at Observatory (observatoryroom.org). Submissions are due January 8, 2011.
How to submit:
Include all information listed below. Late or incomplete submissions will not be considered unless they are mind-staggeringly fantastic and presented with great humility.Send us up to five images. Digital submissions will be accepted via email. Files must be in JPEG or PDF format. Please number your image files to correspond to your image list.
Send an image list. Double check that the numbers on your list correspond to the numbers in the names of your actual files. In your list, include for each image: an image number, the work's title, the date of work, the medium, and its size and price.
Along with the list, please include a brief description of each image.
Send a three-line bio, your contact information and an email address. You may also submit a résumé.If you like, send an optional artist’s statement, no longer than 300 words.
THERE IS NO FEE TO ENTER.
Deadline: All email submissions must be received no later than January 8, 2011. (All accepted work should be physically received at Observatory no later than January 24, 2011.)
Return of submitted materials: Include a SASE and make sure there is sufficient postage, or pay for shipping and we will ship your work back to you. If work is two-dimensional, the Hollow Earth Society is more than happy to have it on file for future shows and keep it exhibited for sale on our website. The same 30% commission for art sold will apply.
Drop-Off: If you have been accepted into the show and are in the NYC area, you may wish to drop off your art at the gallery. Email us (gallery@hollowearthsociety.com) to schedule a date and time.
Pick-Up: Return of mailed artwork with return postage will begin on March 12, 2011.
Email submissions to:
gallery@hollowearthsociety.comBy post:
Observatory
543 Union Street
Brooklyn, NY 11215
To find out more, click here.
On a very quick jaunt to London from which I have only just returned, I was very, very fortunate (thank you so much, Mr. Pat Morris!) to have had the opportunity to visit the now fully-installed Museum of Everything Exhibition #3, which I only had seen in its half-ready state a few days before exhibition opening a few months back.
All I have to say is: WOW.
The Museum of Everything #3--curated by the British pop and ruralist artist Sir Peter Blake, perhaps best remembered for his design of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album--is truly a wonder. This immersive spectacle of an exhibition celebrates popular art in the broadest of senses, both in content and in installation, and uses as its departure point Blake's own formidable private collection of such works supplemented by artifacts and artworks drawn from a variety of other privately held collections.
The installation of the exhibition is delightful, fun-house-inspired and immersive, with dark hallways, rickety stairs, and surprising turns leading you into rooms devoted in turn to--among other things--pitch cards and souvenir photos of fun-fair freaks, Victorian circus banners, marionette collections, Punch and Judy sets, Victorian anthropomorphic taxidermy, shell work pieces and a reconstructed shell grotto, Victorian découpage and other paper craft, and musical toys that go off in unison every half hour or so, filling the entire space with a beautiful circus-music cacophony. Each room has a feeling all its own, with a style of installation particularly and artfully suited to the artifacts within.
Mr. Blake's own collection provides the framework for the exhibition--as the casually-narrated exhibition labels, often in Blake's own unaffected voice make clear--but of equal if not greater importance are supplementary collections drawn from a broad variety of other passionate private collectors. Some of the most impressive effects of the exhibition come from the ingenious curation of artifacts drawn from a large number of private collectors into a single assemblage, such as my favorite, the magnificent homage to Walter Potter's Museum of Curiosities. This installation not only re-unites for the first time many of Potter's famously over-the-top taxidermalogical tableaux with wall-art, photographs and other ephemera from his recently disbanded collection, but also contextualizes his work within the broader theme of Victorian taxidermy, anthropomorphic and otherwise, with lavish Victorian bird jars, depictions of boxing squirrels (a popular Victorian taxidermy trope, I am told) and a variety of "straight" taxidermy pieces as well.
The whole of this literally fantastic exhibition is held together by the exuberance and inventiveness of the installation--never art-world and never boring, labyrinthian in structure and bristling with work floor to ceiling--and by the homespun exhibition labels narrating the exhibition in the informal voice of Blake and some of the other collectors and artists. Through the sum of its parts, the exhibition serves also as a reminder of what pop art meant before it became just another art-world term and white-room enshrined product: a celebration of the "homely arts," the arts of the people and of everyday life, of the fairground and the parlor. It is also a reminder that art can be fun, appeal to the senses, not be in a white room, and still make you think.
If you CAN see this exhibition before its December 24th closing, I simply cannot recommend it highly enough. Intriguing, brilliant, thought-provoking, and a lot of fun.
The Museum of Everything is located at the corner of Regents Park Rd and Sharples Hall St, NW1 8YL. For more information, visit the exhibition website by clicking here.
You can find out more about the Museum of Everything at this recent blog post as well.
Images are all drawn from postcards available at the Museum of Everything gift shop. A lovely (if slightly expensive) book is available also. Click here for more.
This is the best thing ever. It’s how I feel after a ride in a New York City cab, the Batman ride at Great America, or a really great Saturday night in Chicago. TYPOE is the artist behind this and has a current exhibit at Art Basel Miami.
Here’s some more about the artist:
Cast between worlds of opposing values, at once an anonymous prestidigitator and high-ranking glitterati, TYPOE straddles an unseen fence. His handiwork, which swaths billboards, public arenas, and buildings literally rotting with neglect, has expanded from the crumbling edifice of a cultural misnomer into the social spotlight. By nature a commenter, a heckler, his self-referential styling’s are violent and poetic in equal measure. Illuminating parodies between gang relations and organized religion, corporations and the massacre of war, TYPOE’s mixed media creations range from factory finished luxury items and graphics to vandalized found objects that flaunt a punk-like disregard for beauty. Simmering for the moment under the lid of ‘the gallery’ these fetishistic, narcissistic articles resonate with devastating potential and beget insurgent thoughts.
Check out more of his amazing graffiti work here!
