Uruguayan-French poet Jules Laforgue, one of the young T.S. Eliot’s favorites, pub­lished his major work, The Imi­ta­tion of Our Lady the Moon, in 1886, two years before his untime­ly death at 27 from tuber­cu­lo­sis. It is “a book of poems,” notes Wuther­ing Expec­ta­tions, “about clowns who live on the moon… wear black silk skull­caps and use dan­de­lions as bou­tonieres.” The Pier­rots in his poems, Laforgue once wrote in a let­ter, “seem to me to have arrived at true wis­dom” as they con­tem­plate them­selves and their con­flicts in the light of the moon’s many faces.

I can­not help but think of Laforgue when I think of anoth­er artist who, around the same time, began on the oth­er side of the world what is often con­sid­ered the great­est work of his career. The artist, Japan­ese print­mak­er Tsukio­ka Yoshi­toshi, also stood astride an old world and a rapid­ly mod­ern­iz­ing new one. And his visu­al rumi­na­tions, though lack­ing Laforgue’s arch com­e­dy, beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trate the same kind of dreamy con­tem­pla­tion, lone­li­ness, melan­choly, and weary res­ig­na­tion. The moon, as Laforgue wrote—a “Cat’s‑eye of bright / Redeem­ing light”—both com­forts and taunts us: “It comes with the force of a body blow / That the Moon is a place one can­not go.”

Yoshitoshi’s prints fea­ture a fix­a­tion on the moon’s mys­ter­ies, and a the­atri­cal device to aid in the con­tem­pla­tion of its mean­ings: char­ac­ters from Chi­nese and Japan­ese folk­lore and heroes from nov­els and plays, all of them staged just after key moments in their sto­ries, in sta­t­ic pos­tures and in silent dia­logue with the night. Heav­i­ly invest­ed with lit­er­ary allu­sions and deeply laden with sym­bol­ism, the 100 prints, writes the Fitzwilliam Muse­um, “con­jure a refined poet­ry to give a new twist to tra­di­tion­al sub­jects.”

The por­traits, most­ly soli­tary, wist­ful, and brood­ing, “pen­e­trat­ed deep­er into the psy­chol­o­gy of his sub­jects” than pre­vi­ous work in Yoshi­toshi’s Ukiyo‑e style, one soon to be altered per­ma­nent­ly by West­ern influ­ences flood­ing in between the Edo and Mei­ji peri­ods. Yoshi­toshi both incor­po­rat­ed and resist­ed this influ­ence, using fig­ures from Kabu­ki and Noh the­ater to rep­re­sent tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese arts, yet intro­duc­ing tech­niques “nev­er seen before in Japan­ese wood­block prints,” writes J. Noel Chi­ap­pa, break­ing con­ven­tion by “show[ing] peo­ple freely, from all angles,” rather than only in three-quar­ter view, and by using increased real­ism and West­ern per­spec­tives.

Yoshi­toshi began pub­lish­ing these prints in 1885, and they proved huge­ly pop­u­lar. Peo­ple lined up for new addi­tions to the series, which ran until 1892, when the artist died after a long strug­gle with men­tal ill­ness. In these last years, he pro­duced his great­est work, which also includes a kabu­ki-style series based on Japan­ese and Chi­nese ghost sto­ries, New Forms of 36 Ghost Sto­ries. “In a Japan that was turn­ing away from its own past,” Chi­ap­pa writes, Yoshi­toshi, “almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly man­aged to push the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese wood­block print to a new lev­el, before it effec­tive­ly died with him.

His tumul­tuous career, after very suc­cess­ful begin­nings, had fall­en into dis­re­pair and he had been pub­lish­ing illus­tra­tions for sen­sa­tion­al­ist news­pa­pers, an erot­ic por­trait series of famous cour­te­sans, and macabre prints of vio­lence and cru­el­ty. These pre­oc­cu­pa­tions become com­plete­ly styl­ized and psy­chol­o­gized in his final works, espe­cial­ly in One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon, an extra­or­di­nary series of prints. View them all, with short descrip­tions of each sub­ject, here, or at the Ronin Gallery, who pro­vide infor­ma­tion on the size and con­di­tion of each of its prints and allow view­ers to zoom in on every detail. The images have also been pub­lishished in a 2003 book, One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon: Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Yoshi­toshi.

While it cer­tain­ly helps to under­stand the lit­er­ary and cul­tur­al con­text of each print in the series, it is not nec­es­sary for an appre­ci­a­tion of their exquis­ite visu­al poet­ry. Per­haps the artist’s memo­r­i­al poem after his death at age 53 pro­vides us with a mas­ter key for view­ing his One Hun­dred Aspects of the Moon.

hold­ing back the night
with increas­ing bril­liance
the sum­mer moon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pens When a Japan­ese Wood­block Artist Depicts Life in Lon­don in 1866, Despite Nev­er Hav­ing Set Foot There

Down­load Hun­dreds of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters of the Tra­di­tion

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

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

From film­mak­er Steve Olpin comes a short doc­u­men­tary (a “doc­u­men­tary poem”) called Earth and Fire, about artist and prim­i­tive pot­ter Kel­ly Magle­by. The film fol­lows Kel­ly as she trav­els into “the back­coun­try of South­ern Utah with a knife and a buck­skin for 10 days to try to learn about Anasazi pot­tery by doing it the way the Anasazi did it.” On her web­site, Kel­ly writes “My desire to make Anasazi pot­tery start­ed with my inter­est in prim­i­tive and sur­vival skills. I love the fact that you can go into the wild with noth­ing and get all you need to sur­vive and even flour­ish from the earth. The idea that you can go out and dig up some ‘dirt’, shape it, paint it and fire it all using only mate­ri­als found in nature is amaz­ing to me.” On her site, she details her method for mak­ing the pot­tery. Find more info about the Anasazi and their pot­tery here and here.

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!

Any­one who watched Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing from 1983 to 1994 knows the show had a bit of a sur­re­al qual­i­ty to it. With that soft voice, reduced often to a whis­per, Ross slapped some paint onto the can­vas, smeared it around, and even­tu­al­ly some­thing mag­i­cal appeared–a moun­tain, a stream, a for­est, what­ev­er.  Nowa­days, the show has expe­ri­enced some­thing of a renais­sance and achieved cult sta­tus. 30 sea­sons of The Joy of Paint­ing live on YouTube (legit­i­mate­ly, it seems), and they’ve become fod­der for cre­ative projects that take Bob Ross to new sur­re­al heights. Exhib­it 1, “Deeply Arti­fi­cial Trees,” appears above.

This art­work rep­re­sents what it would be like for an AI to watch Bob Ross on LSD (once some­one invents dig­i­tal drugs). It shows some of the unrea­son­able effec­tive­ness and strange inner work­ings of deep learn­ing sys­tems. The unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of the human voice are learned and gen­er­at­ed as well as hal­lu­ci­na­tions of a sys­tem try­ing to find images which are not there.

For a lit­tle on the sci­ence of arti­fi­cial neur­al net­works, see this relat­ed item in our archive: What Hap­pens When Blade Run­ner & A Scan­ner Dark­ly Get Remade with an Arti­fi­cial Neur­al Net­work.

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:

Watch Bob Ross’ The Joy of Paint­ing Free Online: The First 27 Sea­sons

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Ren­dered in the Style of Picas­so; Blade Run­ner in the Style of Van Gogh

Neur­al Net­works for Machine Learn­ing: A Free Online Course

Few painters have cre­at­ed as rich a world as Hierony­mus Bosch did in The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights. The late 15th- or ear­ly 16th-cen­tu­ry trip­tych, which depicts the cre­ation of man, the licen­tious frol­ick­ing of all crea­tures on a par­a­disi­a­cal Earth, and the sub­se­quent fall into damna­tion, draws a scruti­ny — and caus­es an amuse­ment — as intense as ever. As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, you can now take a vir­tu­al tour of the paint­ing (there’s even an app for it), see it brought to life with mod­ern ani­ma­tion, and hear the song tat­tooed on the pos­te­ri­or of one of the work’s many char­ac­ters.

Bosch not only cre­at­ed a world with The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, he pop­u­lat­ed it thor­ough­ly. And despite the human-cen­tric sto­ry the work appears to take as its basis, the cast with which it retells it extends far beyond mere human­i­ty: the pan­els fea­ture not just wildlife of all shapes and sizes but a vari­ety of myth­i­cal grotesques, from imps to chimeras to hybrids of man and ani­mal to much more besides. He drew from the same sur­re­al imag­i­na­tive well to fill his oth­er paint­ings, and you can now pull out a few of these col­or­ful, men­ac­ing, pre­pos­ter­ous, and dark­ly humor­ous char­ac­ters your­self in col­lectible fig­urine form.

Though “not a big knick­knack per­son,” Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Tara McGin­ley admits to dig­ging this selec­tion of “tiny objects” straight from the mind of Bosch, all “kin­da cool-look­ing in their own obvi­ous­ly weird way” and none “too expen­sive. The fig­urines start at around $45, depend­ing on qual­i­ty, size and detail.” (You can find them on Ama­zon.) She high­lights such issues as “Hel­met­ed Bird Mon­ster,” which accord­ing to man­u­fac­tur­ers Para­s­tone fea­tures a sev­ered foot “swing­ing from the bird’s hel­met refer­ring to the hor­ri­ble cor­po­ral pun­ish­ments which could be expect­ed in hell.”

“Dev­il on Night Chair,” one of the most rec­og­niz­able denizens of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights’ third pan­el, comes cast in his famous posi­tion, “eat­ing a per­son on a chair where he will excrete the human remains.” The con­sid­er­ably less sat­is­fied “Fat Bel­ly with Dag­ger” comes from the third pan­el of a dif­fer­ent trip­tych, The Temp­ta­tion of Saint Antho­ny, the dag­ger in his bel­ly show­ing “the con­se­quences of intem­per­ance. His eyes look out at you in acknowl­edg­ment.” Its mak­ers promise that “you will look at it in won­der as to how Bosch’s mind con­ceived of such an unusu­al lit­tle fel­low.” Have a look at Dan­ger­ous Minds’ orig­i­nal post and Ama­zon’s Bosch fig­urine page for more infor­ma­tion on how to obtain them, whether for your­self or as gifts for friends and fam­i­ly. They cer­tain­ly won’t look at them the same way they do Hum­mel fig­urines.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Cre­ates Stun­ning Real­is­tic Por­traits That Recre­ate Sur­re­al Scenes from Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ings

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

New App Lets You Explore Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Lis­ten to a Record­ing of a Song Writ­ten on a Man’s Butt in a 15-Cen­tu­ry Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ing

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.