The Engineering of the Strandbeest: How the Magnificent Mechanical Creatures Have Technologically Evolved

in Art, Technology | December 11th, 2024

Life evolves, but machines are invent­ed: this dichoto­my hard­ly con­flicts with what most of us have learned about biol­o­gy and tech­nol­o­gy. But cer­tain spec­i­mens roam­ing around in the world can blur that line — and in the curi­ous case of the Strand­beesten, they real­ly are roam­ing around. First assem­bled in 1990 by the Dutch artist Theo Jansen, a Strand­beest (Dutch for “beach beast”) is a kind of wind-pow­ered kinet­ic sculp­ture designed to “walk” around the sea­side in an organ­ic-look­ing fash­ion. Jansen has made them not just ever larg­er and more elab­o­rate over the decades, but also more sta­ble and more resilient, with an eye toward their even­tu­al­ly out­liv­ing him.

Improv­ing the Strand­beest has been a long process of tri­al and error, as explained in the Ver­i­ta­si­um video above. Jansen’s process espe­cial­ly resem­bles bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion in that the changes he makes to his cre­ations tend to be retained or dis­card­ed in accor­dance with the degree to which they assist in adap­ta­tion to their sandy, watery envi­ron­ment.

Get­ting them to walk upright in the sand was hard enough, and ulti­mate­ly required com­put­er mod­el­ing to deter­mine just the right angles at which to con­nect their joints. But the joints them­selves have also demand­ed improve­ment, giv­en that the rig­ors of a Strand­beest’s “life” neces­si­tate both flex­i­bil­i­ty and dura­bil­i­ty.

We’ve fea­tured Jansen and his Strand­beesten more than once here on Open Cul­ture, but this new video reveals anoth­er dimen­sion of his life­long project: to keep them from walk­ing into the sea. This chal­lenge has led him to build “brains” that detect when a Strand­beest has drawn too close to the water. Con­struct­ed with sim­ple mechan­i­cal valves, these sys­tems are rem­i­nis­cent of not just the neu­rons in our own heads, but also of the col­lec­tions of bina­ry switch­es that, assem­bled in much greater num­bers, have tech­no­log­i­cal­ly evolved into the basis of the dig­i­tal devices that we use every day. While a com­put­er can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly last for­ev­er, a liv­ing crea­ture can’t — and nor, so far, can a Strand­beest. But now that Jansen has dis­cov­ered their “genet­ic code,” inven­tors all over the world have already begun their own work prop­a­gat­ing this diverse, cap­ti­vat­ing species world­wide.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

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Explore an Online Archive of 2,100+ Rare Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels

in Art, Books, Literature | December 5th, 2024

As Christ­mas­time approach­es, few nov­el­ists come to mind as read­i­ly as Charles Dick­ens. This owes main­ly, of course, to A Christ­mas Car­ol, and even more so to its many adap­ta­tions, most of which draw inspi­ra­tion from not just its text but also its illus­tra­tions. That 1843 novel­la was just the first of five books he wrote with the hol­i­day as a theme, a series that also includes The Chimes, The Crick­et on the Hearth, The Bat­tle of Life, and The Haunt­ed Man and the Ghost’s Bar­gain. Each “includ­ed draw­ings he worked on with illus­tra­tors,” writes BBC News’ Tim Stokes, though “none of them dis­plays quite the icon­ic mer­ri­ment of his ini­tial Christ­mas cre­ation.”

“Any­one look­ing at the illus­tra­tions to the Christ­mas books after A Christ­mas Car­ol and expect­ing sim­i­lar images to Mr Fezzi­wig’s Ball is going to be dis­ap­point­ed,” Stokes quotes inde­pen­dent schol­ar Dr. Michael John Good­man as say­ing.

Pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned less with Christ­mas as a hol­i­day and more “with the spir­it of Christ­mas and its ideals of self­less­ness and for­give­ness, as well as being a voice for the poor and the needy,” Dick­ens “had to cre­ate some very dark sce­nar­ios to give this mes­sage pow­er and res­o­nance, and these can be seen in the illus­tra­tions.”

Good­man’s name may sound famil­iar to ded­i­cat­ed Open Cul­ture read­ers, since we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his online Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery, whose dig­i­tized art col­lec­tion has been grow­ing ever since. It now con­tains over 2,100 illus­tra­tions, includ­ing not just A Christ­mas Car­ol and all its suc­ces­sors, but all of Dick­ens’ books from his ear­ly col­lec­tion of obser­va­tion­al pieces Sketch­es by Boz to his final, incom­plete nov­el The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood. And those are just the orig­i­nals: every true Dick­ens enthu­si­ast soon­er or lat­er gets into the dif­fer­ences between the waves of edi­tions that have been pub­lished over the bet­ter part of two cen­turies.

The Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery has entire sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the posthu­mous “House­hold Edi­tion,” which have even more art than the orig­i­nals; the lat­er “Library Edi­tion,” from 1910, fea­tur­ing the work of esteemed and pro­lif­ic illus­tra­tor Har­ry Fur­niss; and even the 1912 “Pears Edi­tion” of the Christ­mas books, put out by the epony­mous soap com­pa­ny in cel­e­bra­tion of the cen­te­nary of Dick­ens’ birth. But none of them quite matched the lav­ish­ness of that first Christ­mas Car­ol, on which Dick­ens had decid­ed to go all out: as Good­man writes, “it would have eight illus­tra­tions, four of which would be in col­or, and it would have gilt edges and col­ored end­pa­pers.” Alas, this extrav­a­gance “left Dick­ens with very lit­tle prof­it” — and with an unusu­al­ly prag­mat­ic but nev­er­the­less unfor­get­table Christ­mas les­son about keep­ing costs down. Enter the Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

3,000 Illus­tra­tions of Shakespeare’s Com­plete Works from Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, Pre­sent­ed in a Dig­i­tal Archive

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

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Édouard Manet Illustrates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edition Translated by Stephane Mallarmé (1875)

in Art, Literature | December 4th, 2024

Manet's Raven

Edgar Allan Poe achieved almost instant fame dur­ing his life­time after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Raven (1845), but he nev­er felt that he received the recog­ni­tion he deserved. In some respects, he was right. He was, after all, paid only nine dol­lars for the poem, and he strug­gled before and after its pub­li­ca­tion to make a liv­ing from his writ­ing.

Raven_Manet_B2

Poe was one of the first Amer­i­can writ­ers to do so with­out inde­pen­dent means. His work large­ly met with mixed reviews and he was fired from job after job, part­ly because of his drink­ing. After his death, how­ev­er, Poe’s influ­ence dom­i­nat­ed emerg­ing mod­ernist move­ments like that of the deca­dent poet­ry of Charles Baude­laire (who called Poe his “twin soul”) and his sym­bol­ist dis­ci­ple Stéphane Mal­lar­mé.

Raven_Manet_C2

Mal­lar­mé would write of Poe, “His cen­tu­ry appalled at nev­er hav­ing heard / That in this voice tri­umphant death had sung its hymn.” To bring that hymn of death, the raven’s cry of “Nev­er­more,” to French read­ers, he made a trans­la­tion of The Raven, Le Cor­beau, in 1875 at age 33.

Raven_Manet_D2

Poe also had a tremen­dous influ­ence on the visu­al arts in France. Illus­trat­ing the text was none oth­er than Édouard Manet, the painter cred­it­ed with the gen­e­sis of impres­sion­ism. The result­ing engrav­ings, ren­dered in dark, heavy smudges, give us the poem’s unnamed, bereaved speak­er as the young Mal­lar­mé, unmis­tak­able with his push­b­room mus­tache.

Sad­ly, the New York Pub­lic Library tells us, “the pub­li­ca­tion was not a com­mer­cial suc­cess.” (See Manet’s design for a poster and the book cov­er at the top of the post.)

Raven_Manet_E2

The book also illus­trates the rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ship between Poe and French art and lit­er­a­ture. Chris Semt­ner, cura­tor of a Rich­mond, Vir­ginia exhib­it on this mutu­al influ­ence, remarks that Poe “read Voltaire among oth­er French authors”—such as Alexan­dre Dumas—“in col­lege” and found them high­ly influ­en­tial. Like­wise, Poe left his mark not only on Baude­laire, Mal­lar­mé, and Manet, but also Paul Gau­guin, Odilon Redon, and Hen­ri Matisse.

You can read Le Cor­beau here in a dual lan­guage edi­tion, with all the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions. View and down­load high-res scans of the engrav­ings here. And just above, lis­ten to The Raven read aloud in Mallarmé’s French, cour­tesy of the Inter­net Archive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Aubrey Beardsley’s Macabre Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s Short Sto­ries (1894)

Har­ry Clarke’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions for Edgar Allan Poe’s Sto­ries (1923)

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

 

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Beautiful 19th Century Maps of Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise & More

in Art, Books, Literature, Religion | December 3rd, 2024

Even the least reli­gious among us speak, at least on occa­sion, of the cir­cles of hell. When we do so, we may or may not be think­ing of where the con­cept orig­i­nat­ed: Dan­te’s Div­ina Com­me­dia, or Divine Com­e­dy. We each imag­ine the cir­cles in our own way — usu­al­ly fill­ing them with sin­ners and pun­ish­ments inspired by our own dis­tastes — but some of Dan­te’s ear­li­er read­ers did so with a seri­ous­ness and pre­ci­sion that may now seem extreme. “The first cos­mo­g­ra­ph­er of Dante’s uni­verse was the Flo­ren­tine poly­math Anto­nio Manet­ti,” writes the Pub­lic Domain Review’s Hunter Dukes, who “con­clud­ed that hell was 3246 miles wide and 408 miles deep.” A young Galileo sug­gest­ed that “the Inferno’s vault­ed ceil­ing was sup­port­ed by the same phys­i­cal prin­ci­ples as Brunelleschi’s dome.”

In 1855, the aris­to­crat sculp­tor-politi­cian-Dante schol­ar Michelan­ge­lo Cae­tani pub­lished his own pre­cise artis­tic ren­der­ings of not just the Infer­no, but also the Pur­ga­to­rio and Par­adiso, in La mate­ria del­la Div­ina com­me­dia di Dante Alighieri dichiara­ta in VI tav­ole, or The Divine Com­e­dy of Dante Alighieri Described in Six Plates.

“The first plate offers an overview of Dante’s cos­mog­ra­phy, lead­ing from the low­est cir­cle of the Infer­no up through the nine heav­en­ly spheres to Empyre­an, the high­est lev­el of Par­adise and the dwelling place of God,” writes Dukes. “The Infer­no is visu­al­ized with a cut­away style,” its cir­cles “like geo­log­i­cal lay­ers”; ter­raced like a wed­ding cake, “Pur­ga­to­ry is ren­dered at eye lev­el, from the per­spec­tive of some lucky soul sail­ing by this island-moun­tain.”

In Par­adise, “the Infer­no and Pur­ga­to­ry are now small blips on the page, worlds left behind, encir­cled by Mer­cury, Venus, Sat­urn, and the oth­er heav­en­ly spheres.” At the very top is “the can­di­da rosa, an amphithe­ater struc­ture reserved for the souls of heav­en” where “Dante leaves behind Beat­rice, his true love and guide, to come face-to-face with God and the Trin­i­ty.” You can exam­ine these and oth­er illus­tra­tions at the Pub­lic Domain Review or Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Library’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions, which adds that they come from “a sec­ond ver­sion of this work pro­duced by Cae­tani using the then-nov­el tech­nol­o­gy of chro­molith­o­g­ra­phy” in 1872, “pro­duced in a some­what small­er for­mat by the monks at Monte Cassi­no” — a crew who could sure­ly be trust­ed to believe in the job.

via the Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

An Illus­trat­ed and Inter­ac­tive Dante’s Infer­no: Explore a New Dig­i­tal Com­pan­ion to the Great 14th-Cen­tu­ry Epic Poem

Rarely Seen Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Are Now Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Uffizi Gallery

A Dig­i­tal Archive of the Ear­li­est Illus­trat­ed Edi­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1487–1568)

Explore Divine Com­e­dy Dig­i­tal, a New Dig­i­tal Data­base That Col­lects Sev­en Cen­turies of Art Inspired by Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy: A Free Course from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

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

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Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Creative Process: A Look Inside the Books & Techniques That Allowed His Art to Flow

in Art | November 29th, 2024

The sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat has its unfor­tu­nate aspects: not just his pre­ma­ture death, but also the aggres­sive mar­ket­ing of his work and per­sona in the years lead­ing up to it. He became a vogue artist of the eight­ies in part because he could be tak­en as an unfil­tered voice of the street, craft­ing his out­sider-artis­tic visions on pure, untu­tored impulse. But despite gen­uine­ly hav­ing come from a poor, trou­bled back­ground — and lived accord­ing to what seems to have been a strong anti-aca­d­e­m­ic incli­na­tion — Basquiat’s pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment was much more seri­ous and delib­er­ate than many of his buy­ers could have imag­ined.

“At the begin­ning of his career, Basquiat went out and bought two books,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Make Art Not Con­tent video above, “two books that would inform all of his work.” One was Hen­ry Drey­fuss’ Sym­bol Source­book: An Author­i­ta­tive Guide to Inter­na­tion­al Graph­ic Sym­bols, which “would end up pro­vid­ing source mate­r­i­al for almost all of the 1,500 draw­ings and 600 paint­ings that he left behind.”

The oth­er was Robert Far­ris Thomp­son’s Flash of the Spir­it: Afro-Amer­i­can Art & Phi­los­o­phy, which gave him a “guid­ing ide­ol­o­gy” to get him past the inevitable artis­tic road­blocks: he could always return to “the under-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of black art in the estab­lished art world,” and “when you have a mes­sage, art comes out of you eas­i­ly.”

But Basquiat also had the advan­tage of being able to work very quick­ly indeed, which is what brought him to the atten­tion of Andy Warhol: “When one of the most pro­lif­ic artists of all time is jeal­ous of your speed, you know you’re doing some­thing right.” Think­ing too much inter­rupts your flow, but if you cre­ate as fast as you can, thoughts won’t have a chance to intrude. And remem­ber, “most of the flow that you will have while mak­ing art will come from all the things you are doing when you are not mak­ing art.” Sad­ly, Basquiat died before the age of the inter­net — but if he had­n’t, you can bet he’d be spend­ing his down­time absorb­ing some­thing more inter­est­ing than social media.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Paint­ings of Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Video Essay

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Chaot­ic Bril­liance of Jean-Michel Basquiat: From Home­less Graf­fi­ti Artist to Inter­na­tion­al­ly Renowned Painter

What Makes Basquiat’s Unti­tled Great Art: One Paint­ing Says Every­thing Basquiat Want­ed to Say About Amer­i­ca, Art & Being Black in Both Worlds

The Sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Rise in the 1980s Art World Gets Told in a New Graph­ic Nov­el

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

Take a Close Look at Basquiat’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Art in a New 500-Page, 14-Pound, Large For­mat Book by Taschen

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

 

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Ken Burns’ New Documentary on Leonardo da Vinci Streaming Online (in the US) for a Limited Time

in Art, Film | November 26th, 2024

A quick heads up: The film­mak­er Ken Burns has just released his new doc­u­men­tary on Leonar­do da Vin­ci. Run­ning near­ly four hours, the film offers what The New York Times calls a “thor­ough and engross­ing biog­ra­phy” of the 15th-cen­tu­ry poly­math. Cur­rent­ly air­ing on PBS, the film can be streamed online through Decem­ber 17th. If you reside in the US, you can watch Part 1 here, and Part 2 here. The film’s trail­er appears above.

PS: As Metafil­ter observes, the PBS web­site also fea­tures some nice bonus mate­r­i­al, includ­ing 3D mod­els of Leonar­do’s inven­tions and a high-res gallery of some of Leonar­do’s work fea­tured in the doc­u­men­tary. Be sure to check them out.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (Cir­ca 1482)

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To Do List (Cir­ca 1490)

The Inge­nious Inven­tions of Leonar­do da Vin­ci Recre­at­ed with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Why Leonar­do da Vinci’s Great­est Paint­ing is Not the Mona Lisa

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books Get Dig­i­tized: Where to Read the Renais­sance Man’s Man­u­scripts Online

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14 Self-Portraits by Pablo Picasso Show the Evolution of His Style: See Self-Portraits Moving from Ages 15 to 90

in Art | November 25th, 2024


15 years old (1896)

It’s pos­si­ble to look at Pablo Picas­so’s many for­mal exper­i­ments and peri­od­ic shifts of style as a kind of self-por­trai­ture, an exer­cise in shift­ing con­scious­ness and try­ing on of new aes­thet­ic iden­ti­ties. The Span­ish mod­ernist made a career of sweep­ing dra­mat­ic ges­tures, announce­ments to the world that he was going to be a dif­fer­ent kind of artist now, and every­one had bet­ter catch up. Even in his most abstract peri­ods, his work radi­at­ed with an emo­tion­al ener­gy as out­sized as the man him­self.


18 years old (1900)

Picasso’s ani­mus and vital­i­ty even per­me­ate his least invit­ing paint­ing, Les Demoi­selles d’Avignon, a broth­el scene with five geo­met­ri­cal women, two with African and Iber­ian masks; “a paint­ing of nudes in which there is scarce­ly a curve to be seen,” writes The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones, “elbows sharp as knives, hips and waists geo­met­ri­cal sil­hou­ettes, tri­an­gle breasts.” The 1907 self-por­trait of Picas­so at age 25 (below) comes from this peri­od, when the artist began his rad­i­cal Cubist break with every­thing that had gone before.


20 years old (1901)

An old­er ver­sion Les Demoi­selles d’Avignon con­tained a male fig­ure, “a stand-in for the painter him­self.” Even when he did not appear, at least not in a final ver­sion, in his own work, Picas­so saw him­self there: his moods, his height­ened per­cep­tions of real­i­ty as he imag­ined it.

The somber Blue Peri­od paint­ings, with their mood­i­ness and “themes of pover­ty, lone­li­ness, and despair,” cor­re­spond with his mourn­ing over the sui­cide of a friend, Cata­lan artist Car­los Casage­mas. The Picas­so in the 1901 por­trait fur­ther up looks gaunt, bro­ken, decades old­er than his 20 years. In the 1917 draw­ing fur­ther down, how­ev­er, the artist at 35 looks out at us with a haughty, smooth-cheeked youth­ful gaze.


24 years old (1906)

Dur­ing this time, as World War I end­ed, he had begun to design sets for Diaghilev’s famed Bal­lets Russ­es, where he met his wife, bal­le­ri­na Olga Khokhlo­va, and moved in com­fort­able cir­cles, though he was him­self des­per­ate for mon­ey. Each por­trait deliv­ers us a dif­fer­ent Picas­so, as he sheds one mask and puts on anoth­er. Trac­ing his cre­ative evo­lu­tion through his por­trai­ture means nev­er mov­ing in a straight line. But we do see his demeanor soft­en and round pro­gres­sive­ly over time in his por­traits. He seems to grow younger as he ages.


25 years old (1907)

The severe youth of 15, fur­ther up, brood­ing, world-weary, and already an accom­plished draughts­man and painter; the grim­ly seri­ous roman­tic at 18, above—these Picas­sos give way to the wide-eyed matu­ri­ty of the artist at 56 in 1938, at 83, 89, and 90, in 1972, the year before his death. That year he pro­duced an intrigu­ing series of eclec­tic self-por­traits unlike any­thing he had done before. See these and many oth­ers through­out his life below.


35 years old (1917)


56 years old (1938)


83 years old (1965)


85 years old (1966)


89 years old (1971)


90 years old (June 28, 1972)


90 years old (June 30, 1972)


90 years old (July 2, 1972)


90 years old (July 3, 1972)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thou­sands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Avail­able in a New Dig­i­tal Archive

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

What Makes Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca a Great Paint­ing?: Explore the Anti-Fas­cist Mur­al That Became a World­wide Anti-War Sym­bol

15-Year-Old Picas­so Paints His First Mas­ter­piece, “The First Com­mu­nion”

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

 

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Behold a Digital Restoration of 655 Plates of Roses & Lilies by Pierre-Joseph Redouté: The Greatest Botanical Illustrator of All Time

in Art, Biology, Books | November 19th, 2024

Pierre-Joseph Red­outé made his name by paint­ing flow­ers, an achieve­ment impos­si­ble with­out a metic­u­lous­ness that exceeds all bounds of nor­mal­i­ty. He pub­lished his three-vol­ume col­lec­tion Les Ros­es and his eight-vol­ume col­lec­tion Les Lil­i­acées between 1802 and 1824, and a glance at their pages today vivid­ly sug­gests the painstak­ing nature of both his process for not just ren­der­ing those flow­ers, but also for see­ing them prop­er­ly in the first place. While Red­outé’s works have long been avail­able free online, the dig­i­tal forms in which they’ve been avail­able haven’t quite done them jus­tice — cer­tain­ly not to the mind of design­er and data artist Nicholas Rougeux.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Rougeux here on Open Cul­ture for his online restora­tions of a host of ven­er­a­ble artis­tic pub­li­ca­tions that lav­ish­ly cap­ture the nat­ur­al world: Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants; British & Exot­ic Min­er­al­o­gy; A Mono­graph of the Trochilidæ, or Fam­i­ly of Hum­ming-Birds; Werner’s Nomen­cla­ture of Colours; and Euclid­’s Ele­ments. Even hav­ing deep expe­ri­ence with those works, Rougeux can declare that, “sim­ply put, Redouté’s illus­tra­tions are stun­ning. His atten­tion to detail in stip­pling and water­col­or has earned him the title ‘the Raphael of Flow­ers’ and is con­sid­ered the great­est botan­i­cal illus­tra­tor of all time.”

Hence Rougeux’s deci­sion to under­take a restora­tion of Les Ros­es and Les Lil­i­acées, an “oppor­tu­ni­ty to become inti­mate­ly famil­iar with his tech­niques and devel­op a deep­er appre­ci­a­tion for his efforts.” The project end­ed up demand­ing eleven months, only some of which were tak­en up by bring­ing the orig­i­nal col­ors back to Red­outé’s paint­ings, which “not only depict the phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of the ros­es but also con­vey their del­i­cate beau­ty and fra­grance.” Rougeux also had to dig­i­tal­ly re-cre­ate the read­ing expe­ri­ence of these books for the inter­net, cus­tom-design­ing a dig­i­tal gallery for view­ing their ros­es and lilies as they pop out against their new­ly added dark back­grounds.

Plac­ing all of Red­outé’s flow­ers against those back­grounds entailed the real Pho­to­shop labor, tak­ing each image and “mak­ing the lay­er mask man­u­al­ly by care­ful­ly and slow­ly trac­ing along every edge” — for all 655 plates of Les Ros­es and Les Lil­i­acées, as Rougeux writes in a detailed mak­ing-of blog post. “No mat­ter the com­plex­i­ty, I traced every flower, every leaf, every stem, every root, and every hair to pre­serve all the details and ensure that Redouté’s hard work looked as good on a dark back­ground as it did on a light one.” Trans­lat­ing art from one medi­um to anoth­er can be a supreme­ly effec­tive way to cul­ti­vate a full appre­ci­a­tion of the artist’s skill — and in this case, a no less full appre­ci­a­tion of his patience. See the online restora­tion of  Les Ros­es et Les Lil­i­acées here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

A Lav­ish­ly Illus­trat­ed Cat­a­log of All Hum­ming­bird Species Known in the 19th Cen­tu­ry Gets Restored & Put Online

In 1886, the US Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sioned 7,500 Water­col­or Paint­ings of Every Known Fruit in the World: Down­load Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

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

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

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