Why Babies in Medieval Paintings Look Like Middle-Aged Men: An Investigative Video

in Art, History | November 10th, 2017

How much spe­cial treat­ment should we give chil­dren, and how much should we regard them as small adults? The answer to that ques­tion varies not just between but with­in time peri­ods and soci­eties. The atti­tude in the 21st-cen­tu­ry west can, at times, seem to have erred toward a patron­iz­ing over­pro­tec­tive­ness, but his­to­ry has shown that if the social pen­du­lum swings one way, it’ll prob­a­bly swing the oth­er in due time. We cer­tain­ly find our­selves far from the view of chil­dren tak­en in medieval Europe, of which we catch a glimpse when­ev­er we behold the babies in its paint­ings — babies that invari­ably, accord­ing to a Vox piece by Phil Edwards, “look like ugly old men.”

“Medieval por­traits of chil­dren were usu­al­ly com­mis­sioned by church­es,” writes Edwards, “and that made the range of sub­jects lim­it­ed to Jesus and a few oth­er bib­li­cal babies. Medieval con­cepts of Jesus were deeply influ­enced by the homuncu­lus, which lit­er­al­ly means lit­tle man.” It also goes along with a strange­ness preva­lent in medieval art which, accord­ing to Creighton Uni­ver­si­ty art his­to­ri­an Matthew Averett, “stems from a lack of inter­est in nat­u­ral­ism” and a reliance on “expres­sion­is­tic con­ven­tions.” These con­di­tions changed, as did much else, with the Renais­sance: “a trans­for­ma­tion of the idea of chil­dren was under­way: from tiny adults to unique­ly inno­cent crea­tures” with the cute­ness to match.

You can wit­ness a ver­i­ta­ble parade of odd­ly man­like medieval babies in the short video at the top of the post. “After the Renais­sance, cherubs did­n’t seem out of place, and nei­ther did cuter pic­tures of baby Jesus,” says Edwards, nar­rat­ing. “It’s kind of stayed that way since. We want babies who look like they need their cheeks pinched, not their prostates checked. We want them chub­by and cute, and we want babies that fit our ideals” — ideals that have led from pudgy angels to the Ger­ber Baby to the col­lect­ed work of Anne Ged­des. We prob­a­bly need not fear an aes­thet­ic return to the mid­dle-aged, homuncu­lar babies of yore, but their frowny expres­sions have cer­tain­ly made a come­back in real life: just look at any 21st-cen­tu­ry infant immersed in an iPad.

via Vox

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hierony­mus Bosch’s Medieval Paint­ing, “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights,” Comes to Life in a Gigan­tic, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion

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

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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Watch a 17th-Century Portrait Magically Get Restored to Its Brilliant Original Colors

in Art, History | November 8th, 2017

Every week, five mil­lion peo­ple in the Unit­ed King­dom alone tune in to the BBC’s Fake or For­tune?, a tele­vi­sion show about the prove­nance and attri­bu­tion of notable works of art. That may well say some­thing about the British char­ac­ter, but it says even more about its host and co-cre­ator, art deal­er Philip Mould. Involved with antiques from a very ear­ly age, he dis­plays in Fake or For­tune? and his oth­er media projects a keen sense of not just how a piece of art appeals to us, but what hid­den poten­tial it car­ries with­in. Take, for instance, the grimy 17th-cen­tu­ry por­trait you can see par­tial­ly restored in the clip above, which he post­ed on Twit­ter this week.

At first glance, the paint­ing might not look that much worse for wear than any­thing else from the Jacobean era, but even the first few min­utes of work reveal the true bril­liance of the col­ors hid­den under­neath what turn out to be lay­ers of brown and yel­low. They’ve actu­al­ly built up in the name of preser­va­tion: over about 200 years, a few (or more than a few) coats of var­nish had been applied to the can­vas in order to pro­tect it, but that var­nish turns col­or over time. Luck­i­ly, with the right tools and the right tech­nique, it comes off.

“The paint­ing was orig­i­nal­ly in a pri­vate col­lec­tion in Eng­land,” Mould told the Tele­graph. “A mix­ture of gel and sol­vent was cre­at­ed, specif­i­cal­ly just to remove the var­nish and not to dam­age the under­ly­ing paint.” Cer­tain­ly the por­trait’s sub­ject would approve of her appear­ance’s return to its for­mer splen­dor, though lit­tle infor­ma­tion remains as to the iden­ti­ty of the lady her­self: “We don’t know the iden­ti­ty yet but cer­tain icono­graph­ic clues are start­ing to emerge,” said Mould. “All we know is she is 36 and it was paint­ed in 1617.”

And so we hap­pen upon anoth­er of the com­pelling aspects of art his­to­ry: its poten­tial to turn into a detec­tive sto­ry. But if you’d like to accom­pa­ny the nar­ra­tive expe­ri­ence with a lit­tle more tech­ni­cal knowl­edge, have a look at the short video above show­ing what it takes to revive a 400-year-old mas­ter­work. Peo­ple once com­mis­sioned por­traits so that pos­ter­i­ty could know their like­ness­es, but one won­ders if they under­stood just how far into pos­ter­i­ty their like­ness­es would make it — some of them, thanks to art restor­ers, look­ing fresh­er than they have for cen­turies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Restor­ing a 400-Year-Old Paint­ing: A Five-Minute Primer

The Art of Restor­ing Clas­sic Films: Cri­te­ri­on Shows You How It Refreshed Two Hitch­cock Movies

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

Short Film Takes You Inside the Recov­ery of Andy Warhol’s Lost Com­put­er Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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

in Art, Books, Literature | November 8th, 2017

Book his­to­ry buffs don’t need to be told, but the rest of us prob­a­bly do: incun­able—from a Latin word mean­ing “cra­dle,” “swad­dling clothes,” or “infancy”—refers to a book print­ed before 1501, dur­ing the very first half-cen­tu­ry of print­ing in Europe. An over­whelm­ing num­ber of the works print­ed dur­ing this peri­od were in Latin, the transcon­ti­nen­tal lan­guage of phi­los­o­phy, the­ol­o­gy, and ear­ly sci­ence. Yet one of the most revered works of the time, Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy—writ­ten in Italian—fully attained its sta­tus as a lit­er­ary clas­sic in the lat­ter half of the 15th cen­tu­ry.

In addi­tion to numer­ous com­men­taries and biogra­phies of its author, over 10 edi­tions of the epic Medieval poem— the tale of Dante’s descent into hell and rise through pur­ga­to­ry and paradise—appeared in the peri­od of incunab­u­la, the first in 1472. The 1481 edi­tion con­tained art based on San­dro Botticelli’s unfin­ished series of Divine Com­e­dy illus­tra­tions. The first ful­ly-illus­trat­ed edi­tion appeared in 1491. None of these print­ings includ­ed the word Divine in the title, which did not come into use until 1555. The Com­me­dia, as it was orig­i­nal­ly called, con­tin­ued to gain in stature into the 16th cen­tu­ry, where it received lav­ish treat­ment in oth­er illus­trat­ed edi­tions.

You can see Illus­tra­tions from three of the edi­tions from the first 100-plus years of print­ing here, and many more at Dig­i­tal Dante, a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort from Colum­bia University’s Library and Depart­ment of Ital­ian. These images, from Columbi­a’s Rare Book and Man­u­script Library, rep­re­sent a 1497 wood­cut edi­tion, at the top, with a num­ber of hand-col­ored pages; an edi­tion from 1544, above, with almost 90 cir­cu­lar and tra­di­tion­al­ly-com­posed scenes, all of them prob­a­bly hand-col­ored in the 19th cen­tu­ry; and a 1568 edi­tion with three engraved maps, one for each book, like the care­ful­ly-ren­dered visu­al­iza­tion of pur­ga­to­ry, below.

Of this last edi­tion, Jane Siegel, Librar­i­an for Rare Books, writes, “the rel­a­tive lack of illus­tra­tions are bal­anced by the fine­ness and detail made pos­si­ble by using expen­sive cop­per engrav­ings as a medi­um, and by the live­ly dec­o­rat­ed and his­to­ri­at­ed wood­cut ini­tials sprin­kled through­out the vol­ume at the head of each can­to.” Each of these his­tor­i­cal arti­facts shows us a lin­eage of crafts­man­ship in the infan­cy and ear­ly child­hood of print­ing, a time when lit­er­ary works of art could be turned dou­bly into mas­ter­pieces with illus­tra­tion and typog­ra­phy that com­ple­ment­ed the text. Luck­i­ly for lovers of Dante, fine­ly-illus­trat­ed edi­tions of the Divine Com­e­dy have nev­er gone away.

You can see more images by enter­ing the Dig­i­tal Dante col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Artists Illus­trate Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy Through the Ages: Doré, Blake, Bot­ti­cel­li, Mœbius & More

Botticelli’s 92 Sur­viv­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1481)

Mœbius Illus­trates Dante’s Par­adiso

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

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2,000+ Impressionist, Post-impressionist & Early Modern Paintings Now Free Online, Thanks to the Barnes Foundation

in Archives, Art | November 7th, 2017

Georges Seu­rat, Hen­ri Rousseau, Gior­gio de Chiri­co, Auguste Renoir, Vin­cent Van Gogh — all of us asso­ciate these names with great inno­va­tions in paint­ing, but how many of us have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to look long and close enough at their work to under­stand those inno­va­tions? To feel them, in oth­er words, rather than just to know about them? The Barnes Foun­da­tion in Philadel­phia has just recent­ly made it pos­si­ble for us to con­tem­plate thou­sands of works of art includ­ing those of Impres­sion­ist, Post-Impres­sion­ist, and ear­ly Mod­ern mas­ters, zoomed in up close and at any length we like, by dig­i­tiz­ing their col­lec­tion and mak­ing it free online.

“Thanks to Open Access,” writes Art­net’s Sarah Cas­cone, “2,081 of the Barnes’s 4,021 objects have been pub­lished online. Of those, there are high-res­o­lu­tion images of 1,429 works avail­able for down­load in the pub­lic domain.

It’s a big step for a muse­um that as recent­ly as 1991 hadn’t pub­lished any col­or imagery of its hold­ings,” due in part to the pref­er­ences of founder and “eccen­tric art col­lec­tor Alfred C. Barnes (1872–1951), who drew up strict rules for how the muse­um would be run.” For instance, it seems that Barnes, who dis­ap­proved of the way the ear­ly col­or pho­tog­ra­phy repro­duced paint­ings, felt he had no choice but to ban it in his muse­um entire­ly.

“As we were rethink­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of our col­lec­tion online we were con­sid­er­ing the sen­si­tiv­i­ty Barnes had around col­or repro­duc­tion,” writes Deputy Direc­tor of Audi­ence Engage­ment and Chief Expe­ri­ence Offi­cer Shel­ley Bern­stein, “but we also had to think about the needs of today’s stu­dents, researchers, and schol­ars. It goes with­out say­ing that the work of oth­er insti­tu­tions  —  the open access ini­tia­tive at the Met, espe­cial­ly  —  helped make these deci­sions much eas­i­er.” And though the Barnes first start­ed putting its works of art on the inter­net five years ago, “that last iter­a­tion of the col­lec­tion online didn’t fore­ground the abil­i­ty for users to down­load or share images eas­i­ly.”

Now, the Barnes’ online col­lec­tion fea­tures near­ly 1,500 items free to down­load so far. But cur­rent­ly down­load­able or not, every­thing uploaded so far appears in an eas­i­ly search­able, brows­able, and, most of all, view­able form. Here we have van Gogh’s The Broth­el, Paul Cézan­ne’s The Bathers, and Rousseau’s Out­skirts of Paris, four paint­ings that, in many ways, look as styl­is­ti­cal­ly fresh as they did when first revealed in the late 19th cen­tu­ry to the mid-20th. The fact that 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy has made it so much eas­i­er for all human­i­ty to see that would, one likes to think, have pleased even old Mr. Barnes him­self.

Enter the Barnes online col­lec­tion here.

via Art­net News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

Aston­ish­ing Film of Arthrit­ic Impres­sion­ist Painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1915)

Impres­sion­ist Painter Edgar Degas Takes a Stroll in Paris, 1915

The Maligned Impres­sion­ist Painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir Illus­trates Emile Zola’s Grit­ty Nov­el L’Assommoir (1878)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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

in Art, Books, Food & Drink | November 6th, 2017

Pop­u­lar food cul­ture is dom­i­nat­ed by sta­tus sym­bols of restau­rant-inspired con­sumer kitchen­ware and appli­ances, thanks in large part to real­i­ty tele­vi­sions shows about cook­ing com­pe­ti­tions which can make the prepa­ra­tion of haute cui­sine seem more acces­si­ble to the aver­age home chef than it may actu­al­ly be.

Many would argue, how­ev­er, that we’ve come a long way since the 70s, when the mass-mar­ket prod­ucts that held sway over best-sell­ing cook­ing guides went by names like Ham­burg­er Helper, Cool Whip, and Jel­lo. Back then, will­ful anachro­nism Sal­vador Dali stepped into this com­mer­cial land­scape with his 1973 cook­book Les Din­ers de Gala, offer­ing aris­to­crat­ic, extrav­a­gant recipes—next to even more extrav­a­gant art—with exot­ic ingre­di­ents often impos­si­ble to find at the local super­mar­ket both then and now.

Dali made it plain that his object was to bring back pure plea­sure to din­ing, the adven­tur­ous opu­lence he and his wife, Gala, so appre­ci­at­ed in their own out­sized social lives. A few years lat­er, Dali did the same thing with the fine-din­ing bev­er­age of choice, pub­lish­ing The Wines of Gala, an “eccen­tric guide to wine grapes and their ori­gin,” writes This is Colos­sal. The book’s “group­ings are appro­pri­ate imag­i­na­tive clas­si­fi­ca­tions.”

The Wines of Gala splits into two parts: “Ten Divine Dali Wines” and “Ten Gala Wines.” The lat­ter includes cat­e­gories like “Wines of Friv­o­li­ty,” “Wines of Joy,” “Wines of Sen­su­al­i­ty,” “Wines of Pur­pose,” and “Wines of Aes­theti­cism.” Among the Divine Dali Wines, we find “The Wine of King Minos,” “Lacrima Christi,” “Chateauneuf-du-Pape,” and “Sher­ry.” In an appen­dix, Dali sur­veys “Vine­yards of the World,” gen­er­al­ly, and “Vine­yards of France,” specif­i­cal­ly, and offers “Advice to the Wine-Lov­ing Gourmet.”

While some of Dali’s wine advice may go over our heads, maybe the real rea­son we’re drawn to his cook­book and wine guide is the art­work they con­tain with­in their pages, like­ly also the prin­ci­ple rea­son arts pub­lish­er Taschen has reis­sued both of these pub­li­ca­tions. The Wines of Gala is due out on Novem­ber 21, but you can pre-order a hard copy now (or find used copies of the orig­i­nal 1970s edi­tion here). In it you’ll find much bewitch­ing orig­i­nal art to com­ple­ment the pas­sion­ate descrip­tions of wine.

The “rich and extrav­a­gant wine bible fea­tures 140 illus­tra­tions by Dali,” notes Rebec­ca Ful­leylove. “Many of the art­works fea­tured are appro­pri­at­ed pieces, includ­ing… a work from Dali’s late Nuclear Mys­tic phase, The Sacra­ment of the Last Sup­per.” Even to this solemn affair, Dali brings “his abil­i­ty to seek out plea­sure and beau­ty in every­thing.”

via This is Colos­sal/It’s Nice That

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Sal­vador Dalí Goes Com­mer­cial: Three Strange Tele­vi­sion Ads

Sal­vador Dalí’s Melt­ing Clocks Paint­ed on a Lat­te

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

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The Elegant Mathematics of Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci’s Most Famous Drawing: An Animated Introduction

in Art, History, Math | November 6th, 2017

Near­ly 500 years after his death, we still admire Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s many and var­ied accom­plish­ments in paint­ing, sculp­ture, archi­tec­ture, sci­ence, and quite a few oth­er fields besides, most of which would have begun with his putting down some part of the for­mi­da­ble con­tents of his head on to a piece of paper. (As we’ve seen, some­times he need­ed to draw up a to-do list first.) Some of those works remained on paper, and even became famous in that hum­ble form. If you’ve only seen one of Leonar­do’s draw­ings, for instance, it’s almost cer­tain­ly Vit­ru­vian Man.

Leonar­do’s cir­ca-1490 study of the pro­por­tions of the human body — or to put it in more com­mon terms, the pic­ture of the naked fel­low stand­ing inside a square and a cir­cle — stands at an inter­sec­tion of art and math­e­mat­ics, one at which Leonar­do spent a great deal of time through­out his life. The Ted-ED les­son above, writ­ten by edu­ca­tor James Ear­le, gets into “the geo­met­ric, reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of this decep­tive­ly sim­ple draw­ing” whose title ref­er­ences the first-cen­tu­ry BCE Roman archi­tect and civ­il engi­neer Mar­cus Vit­ru­vius Pol­lio, who claimed that “the navel is the cen­ter of the human body, and that if one takes a com­pass and places the fixed point on the navel, a cir­cle can be drawn per­fect­ly around the body.”

Vit­ru­vius also real­ized that “arm span and height have a near­ly per­fect cor­re­spon­dence in the human body, thus plac­ing the body per­fect­ly inside a square as well.” Both he and Leonar­do saw real impli­ca­tions in this align­ment between anato­my and geog­ra­phy, begin­ning with the notion that build­ings and oth­er works of man should also take on these “per­fect” pro­por­tions. All of this ties in with the prob­lem, first pro­posed by ancient geome­ters, of “squar­ing the cir­cle,” that is, find­ing a pro­ce­dure to hand-draw a square and a cir­cle both of equal area. Leonar­do used Vit­ru­vian Man to point toward one pos­si­ble solu­tion using the human body.

You can learn more about the impor­tance and lega­cy of the draw­ing in the BBC doc­u­men­tary The Beau­ty of Dia­grams, avail­able on Youtube (part one, part two). “Although the dia­gram does­n’t rep­re­sent some huge sci­en­tif­ic break­through,” says its host, math­e­mati­cian Mar­cus du Sautoy, “it cap­tures an idea: that math­e­mat­ics under­pins both nature and the man­made world. It rep­re­sents a syn­the­sis of archi­tec­ture, anato­my, and geom­e­try. But it’s the per­fec­tion and ele­gance of Leonar­do’s solu­tion to this rid­dle of the square and the cir­cle in Vit­ru­vius which gives the dia­gram its pow­er and its beau­ty.” And judg­ing by the unabat­ed pop­u­lar­i­ty of Vit­ru­vian Man par­o­dies, it looks to have at least anoth­er half-mil­len­ni­um of rel­e­vance ahead.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Sub­lime Anato­my Draw­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci: Avail­able Online, or in a Great iPad App

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Bizarre Car­i­ca­tures & Mon­ster Draw­ings

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Ralph Steadman’s Wild­ly Illus­trat­ed Biog­ra­phy of Leonar­do da Vin­ci (1983)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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What to Say When You Don’t Understand Contemporary Art? A New Short Film, “Masterpiece,” Has Helpful Suggestions

in Art, Comedy, Film, Life | November 6th, 2017

Mas­ter­piece, Run­yararo Map­fu­mo’s short film above, will feel very famil­iar to any­one who has strug­gled for words to share with a friend after his or her under­whelm­ing Off-Off-Broad­way solo show, open mic per­for­mance, or art instal­la­tion…

Equal­ly famil­iar, from the reverse angle, to any artist who’s ever invit­ed a trust­ed friend to view his or her pas­sion project, hop­ing for approval or at the very least, inter­est… some­thing more robust than the pal­try crumbs the friend man­ages to eek out under pres­sure.

A British Film Insti­tute Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val select­ed short, Mas­ter­piece focus­es on a tight group of male friends… one of whom has reached beyond the com­mu­nal com­fort zone in the ser­vice of his art. His earnest­ness con­founds his old pals, who clown around out­side the gallery where they’ve gath­ered for an after hours pre­view of his work, one staunch­ly assert­ing that he only showed up because his mum made him, and also, he was told there’d be free food.

Once inside the friends are left alone to puz­zle out his mas­ter­piece. What to say? Maybe they should draw par­al­lels to the cur­rent socio-polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion? Per­haps they could tell their friend his work  is rem­i­nis­cent of Ger­man Expres­sion­ism?

Yoko Ono or Mar­cel Duchamp would have made a more apt com­par­i­son, as writer-direc­tor Map­fu­mo is sure­ly aware. Mas­ter­piece is notable for more than just its pitch-per­fect take on artist vs. befud­dled but still sup­port­ive friends. As Map­fu­mo told Direc­tors Notes:

I’ve been told time and time again to “write what you want to see.” I start­ed think­ing about what that meant to me in a every­day con­text. These char­ac­ters are black men that I recognize…I didn’t want the con­flict to revolve around their iden­ti­ty but rather through their obser­va­tions. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Look at Art: A Short Visu­al Guide by Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry

An Online Guide to 350 Inter­na­tion­al Art Styles & Move­ments: An Invalu­able Resource for Stu­dents & Enthu­si­asts of Art His­to­ry

Your Brain on Art: The Emerg­ing Sci­ence of Neu­roaes­thet­ics Probes What Art Does to Our Brains

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her most recent artis­tic endeav­or is The­ater of the Apes Sub-Adult Divi­sion’s pro­duc­tion of Ani­mal Farm, open­ing next week in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Thoth Tarot Deck Designed by Famed Occultist Aleister Crowley

in Art | November 3rd, 2017

Back in 2014 we fea­tured a short primer and doc­u­men­tary on the life and work of Aleis­ter Crow­ley, also known — at least to the British press of the time — as “the wickedest man in the world.” The name rings a bell to just about every­one, and for many of us sum­mons up vague notions of a life ded­i­cat­ed to the pro­mo­tion of alter­na­tive moral­i­ty or pagan­ism or trick­ery or some kind of rel­ished evil, but how many of us can name one of Crow­ley’s works? The best-known occultist-artist-moun­taineer of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry left behind a rich and col­or­ful lega­cy, and here we have one of its most tan­gi­ble prod­ucts: the Thoth tarot deck.

Crow­ley worked on the deck, says Learntarot.com (itself draw­ing from Stu­art Kaplan’s Ency­clo­pe­dia of Tarot), from 1938 to 1943, accord­ing to prin­ci­ples laid out in his Book of Thoth. The artist, Lady Frie­da Har­ris, “worked with Crow­ley’s rough sketch­es to pro­duce images that would be faith­ful to his inter­pre­ta­tions and her own vision.” You can pur­chase copies of the Thoth Tarot Deck here.

Raven’s Tarot Site offers a piece of cor­re­spon­dence from Har­ris to Crow­ley dat­ing from 1940, around the mid­dle of the project. “I do not pre­tend to appre­hend it, only it is like music, and the only kind of writ­ing I want to read,” she writes of his famous­ly dif­fi­cult-to-com­pre­hend but (under the right cir­cum­stances) enter­tain­ing writ­ing on the occult, “only it makes me feel as if I lived in a desert and I am mighty thirsty.”

Crow­ley had — and near­ly 70 years after his death, still has — that effect on some peo­ple. He inspired Har­ris, who would become one of the stand­out dis­ci­ples, to pro­duce a work of div­ina­to­ry art whose aes­thet­ics reflect as much his own as those of the Aus­tri­an eso­teri­cist Rudolf Stein­er. Now best known for his role in devel­op­ing the Wal­dorf sys­tem of child­hood edu­ca­tion, Stein­er also came up with a philo­soph­i­cal sys­tem called anthro­pos­o­phy that posits the human abil­i­ty to con­tact the spir­i­tu­al realm. It may lack the same dan­ger­ous and flam­boy­ant black-mag­ic (or rather, black-mag­ick) appeal of Crow­ley’s visions, but both men, in their own way, spent a life­time striv­ing for ways to tap into a world hid­den beneath the sur­face of exis­tence. For those with an inter­est in that sort of thing, turn­ing over a few tarot cards remains one of the eas­i­est ways to knock on its door.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

Aleis­ter Crow­ley & William But­ler Yeats Get into an Occult Bat­tle, Pit­ting White Mag­ic Against Black Mag­ic (1900)      

Carl Jung: Tarot Cards Pro­vide Door­ways to the Uncon­scious, and Maybe a Way to Pre­dict the Future

Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky Explains How Tarot Cards Can Give You Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

H.R. Giger’s Tarot Cards: The Swiss Artist, Famous for His Design Work on Alien, Takes a Jour­ney into the Occult

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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