When Henri Matisse Was 83 Years Old, He Couldn’t Go to His Favorite Swimming Pool, So He Created a Swimming Pool as a Work of Art

in Art | June 19th, 2023

I will die from the heat, take me home. I will make my own Pool. — Hen­ri Matisse

Rep­re­sent­ing water is an elu­sive propo­si­tion for many artists, espe­cial­ly when it’s not pos­ing placid­ly on a wind­less, moon­lit evening.

In the sum­mer of 1952, Hen­ri Matisse head­ed to a favorite Cannes swim­ming pool with his stu­dio assis­tant (and favored mod­el), Lydia Delec­torskaya.

Short­ly after their arrival, the octo­ge­nar­i­an became over­whelmed by the heat, and the two dou­bled back to his home in Nice, where he instruct­ed Delec­torskaya to pin white paper to the burlap wall treat­ment of his din­ing room, until it ringed the room at head lev­el.

This tab­u­la rasa became the pool that he filled with swim­mers, divers and marine crea­tures he cut from paper his assis­tants had col­ored ultra­ma­rine blue with gouache.

His shapes were both sim­ple and evoca­tive, sug­gest­ing all the exu­ber­ant life­forms splash­ing in a swim­ming pool on a swel­ter­ing summer’s day.

They adorned the walls of his din­ing room until his death, two years lat­er.

His wid­ow super­vised its removal, mak­ing sure that the place­ment of the indi­vid­ual cut outs could be dupli­cat­ed on fresh white paper pinned to new burlap pan­els.

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art acquired The Swim­ming Pool, Matisse’s first and only self-con­tained, site-spe­cif­ic cut-out in 1975, exhibit­ing it to great acclaim.

Wel­come sum­mer by tak­ing a stroll through the instal­la­tion with mem­ber­ship guest spe­cial­ist Josephine McReynolds, above.

McReynolds, a 2019 grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, finds in the work a blur­ring of the bound­aries between ear­ly child­hood and old age, draw­ing on our col­lec­tive mem­o­ries of sum­mer to “pro­vide the life force in this pool.”

While we’re at it, we should thank MoMA’s con­ser­va­tors for their efforts to restore and pre­serve The Swim­ming Pool after deter­min­ing it had suf­fered extreme dam­age from the acid­i­ty of the burlap, and expo­sure to light and atmos­pher­ic pol­lu­tion.

Senior con­ser­va­tor Karl Buch­berg esti­mates that it took some 2000 hours just to sep­a­rate the paper ele­ments from the burlap using a scalpel, rotary tool, and, in places, dis­man­tling the burlap strand by strand by pulling on indi­vid­ual threads.

The con­ser­va­tors restored the col­or bal­ance to the best of their abil­i­ties and rein­stalled the work at its intend­ed height, in a con­fig­u­ra­tion that mim­ics the archi­tec­ture of the Matiss­es’ din­ing room.

Read more about the con­ser­va­tion of Matisse’s The Swim­ming Pool here.

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch a Japanese Artisan Make a Noh Mask, Creating an Astonishing Character From a Single Block of Wood

in Art, Theatre, Travel | June 5th, 2023

Noh actors under­go years of rig­or­ous train­ing to per­fect their per­for­mance tech­nique.

The ancient clas­si­cal art requires actors’ faces to be obscured by rigid masks carved from sin­gle blocks of hino­ki wood. A thor­ough com­mand of pos­ture, phys­i­cal ges­ture, and voice is essen­tial for con­vey­ing the char­ac­ters’ emo­tions.

The qual­i­ty of the mask is of utmost impor­tance, too.

Naka­mu­ra Mit­sue, a mak­er of tra­di­tion­al Noh masks, whose inter­est in human faces and por­trai­ture orig­i­nal­ly led her to study west­ern art, notes that the cre­ator must pos­sess a high degree of skill if the mask is to func­tion prop­er­ly. The best masks will sug­gest dif­fer­ent atti­tudes from dif­fer­ent angles.

Tera­su, or an upwards tilt con­veys hap­py emo­tions, while the down­ward tilt of kumora­su express­es dark­er feel­ings and tears.

The most expert­ly carved masks’ eyes will appear to shift as the actor changes posi­tion.

The full range of human expres­sion is the most dif­fi­cult to achieve with del­i­cate-fea­tured female Noh masks.

“I used to change its direc­tion and stare at it in the mir­ror all night,” Ms. Naka­mu­ra writes on her web­site, recall­ing how her men­tor, the cel­e­brat­ed crafts­man Yasue­mon Hori, taught her how to carve Ko-Omote, a mask rep­re­sent­ing the youngest woman in the Noh canon.

When cre­at­ing a mask of a beau­ti­ful girl or child I feel very hap­py but when cre­at­ing an onryo (ghost spir­it) I can feel sor­row or anger.

Ms. Nakamura’s ded­i­ca­tion, exper­tise and patience are on abun­dant dis­play in the word­less Process X video, above.

She is, as the New York Times notes, one of a grow­ing num­ber of female prac­ti­tion­ers:

When she began, she knew of only one oth­er woman in the field, but this year, all four of her cur­rent appren­tices, some of whom study for as long as 10 years, are female. Some adhere to the tra­di­tion­al arche­types and tech­niques, while oth­ers rad­i­cal­ly rein­ter­pret them.

Like many oth­er Japan­ese women of her gen­er­a­tion, she did as expect­ed, mar­ry­ing and hav­ing chil­dren short­ly after com­plet­ing her edu­ca­tion. She began study­ing mask mak­ing when her chil­dren began school, wait­ing until they were 18 to leave her mar­riage. By then, she was well posi­tioned to sup­port her­self as a pro­fes­sion­al nō-men-shi (Noh mask mak­er.)

A sin­gle mask by a respect­ed nō-men-shi can take a month to com­plete, but can fetch a price in the neigh­bor­hood of ¥500,000.

Ms. Naka­mu­ra labors in a work­shop in her tra­di­tion­al-style home in Kyoto.

Her tools and sup­plies are equal­ly old-fash­ioned — a mix­ture of seashell pow­der and rice glue, a mor­tar and pes­tle, a chis­el that she wields per­ilous­ly close to her knees and slip­per-clad feet…

As Jason Haidar writes in Kan­sai Scene:

It may be no coin­ci­dence that Ms. Naka­mu­ra wields a chis­el so nat­u­ral­ly and with such skill, One of the main chis­els used for carv­ing Noh masks is called a tou, which is anoth­er word mean­ing samu­rai sword. Ms. Naka­mu­ra always cred­it­ed her par­ents for encour­ag­ing her to learn a skill that could allow her to sup­port her­self with­out a hus­band, and this mod­ern think­ing could be attrib­uted to her fam­i­ly being of samu­rai lin­eage. After the reforms of the Mei­ji Restora­tion (1868–1912) that saw the ush­er­ing in of mod­ern Japan, her ances­tors learned the impor­tance of being self-suf­fi­cient, inde­pen­dent, and hav­ing a diverse range of skills – val­ues which were passed down to her.

Explore a gallery of Mit­sue Nakamura’s Noh masks here. Click on spe­cif­ic images to learn about each mask’s pur­pose in Noh, rec­og­nized by UNESCO as hav­ing “Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Her­itage”.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Hyp­not­ic Look at How Japan­ese Samu­rai Swords Are Made

Watch a Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ter Make 190+ Dif­fer­ent Joints, All With­out Nails, Screws, or Glue

Japan­ese Restau­rants Show You How to Make Tra­di­tion­al Dish­es in Med­i­ta­tive Videos: Soba, Tem­pu­ra, Udon & More

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Art Collection of David Bowie: An Introduction

in Art, Music | May 29th, 2023

Today, it hard­ly sur­pris­es us when a suc­cess­ful, wealthy, and influ­en­tial rock star has a large art col­lec­tion. But David Bowie, ahead of the cul­ture even at the out­set of his career, began accru­ing art well before suc­cess, wealth, or influ­ence. He put out his debut album when he was twen­ty years old, in 1967, and did­n’t hes­i­tate to cre­ate a “rock star” lifestyle as soon as pos­si­ble there­after. As the world now knows, how­ev­er, rock star­dom meant some­thing dif­fer­ent to Bowie than it did to the aver­age man­sion-hop­ping, hotel room-trash­ing Con­corde habitué. When he bought art, he did so not pri­mar­i­ly as a finan­cial invest­ment, nor as a bid for high-soci­ety respectabil­i­ty, but as a way of con­struct­ing his per­son­al aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al real­i­ty.

Bowie kept that project going until the end, and it was only in 2016, the year he died, that the pub­lic got to see just what his art col­lec­tion includ­ed. The occa­sion was Bowie/Collector, a three-part auc­tion at Sothe­by’s, who also pro­duced the new video above. It exam­ines Bowie’s col­lec­tion through five of its works that were par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant to the man him­self, begin­ning with Head of Ger­da Boehm by Frank Auer­bach, about which he often said — accord­ing to his art buy­er and cura­tor Beth Greenacre — “I want to sound like that paint­ing looks.” Then comes Por­trait of a Man by Erich Heck­el, whose paint­ings inspired the record­ings of Bowie’s acclaimed “Berlin peri­od”: Low, “Heroes,” Lodger, and even Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, which Bowie pro­duced.

As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, Bowie also loved fur­ni­ture, none more so than the work of the Ital­ian design col­lec­tive known as Mem­phis. This video high­lights his red Valen­tine type­writer, a pre-Mem­phis 1969 cre­ation of the group’s co-founder Ettore Sottsass. “I typed up many of my lyrics on that,” Bowie once said. “The pure gor­geous­ness of it made me type.” Much lat­er, he and Bri­an Eno were look­ing for ideas for the album that would become Out­side, a jour­ney that took them to the Gug­ging Insti­tute, a Vien­na psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal that encour­aged its patients to cre­ate art. He end­ed up pur­chas­ing sev­er­al pieces by one patient in par­tic­u­lar, a for­mer pris­on­er of war named Johann Fis­ch­er, enchant­ed by “the sense of explo­ration and the lack of self-judg­ment” in those and oth­er works of “out­sider” art.

The video ends with a mask titled Alexan­dra by Beni­nese artist Romuald Hazoum, whom Bowie encoun­tered on a trip to Johan­nes­burg with his wife Iman. Like many of the artists whose work Bowie bought, Hazoumè is now quite well known, but was­n’t when Bowie first took an inter­est in him. Made of found objects such as what looks like a tele­phone hand­set and a vinyl record, Alexan­dra is one of a series of works that “play on expec­ta­tions and stereo­types of African art, and are now high­ly sought after.” Bowieol­o­gists can hard­ly fail to note that the piece also shares its name with the daugh­ter Bowie and Iman would bring into the world a few years lat­er. That could, of course, be just a coin­ci­dence, but as Bowie’s col­lec­tion sug­gests, his life and his art — the art he acquired as well as the art he made — were one and the same.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Behold the Paint­ings of David Bowie: Neo-Expres­sion­ist Self Por­traits, Illus­tra­tions of Iggy Pop, and Much More

96 Draw­ings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beat­on & More

Bowie’s Book­shelf: A New Essay Col­lec­tion on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life

How Aladdin Sane Became the Most Expen­sive Album Cov­er Ever — and David Bowie’s Defin­ing Image

“David Bowie Is” — The First Major Exhib­it Ded­i­cat­ed to Bowie Spans 50 Years & Fea­tures 300 Great Objects

Meet the Mem­phis Group, the Bob Dylan-Inspired Design­ers of David Bowie’s Favorite Fur­ni­ture

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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John Singer Sargent’s Scandalous Paintings: An Introduction to Madame X and Dr. Pozzi at Home

in Art, History | May 24th, 2023

Hen­ry James, per­haps the most famous Amer­i­can expa­tri­ate nov­el­ist of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, won a great deal of his fame with The Por­trait of a Lady. John Singer Sar­gent, per­haps the most famous Amer­i­can expa­tri­ate painter of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, won a great deal of his fame with a por­trait of a lady — but not before it seemed to kill his illus­tri­ous career at a stroke. When it was first shown to the pub­lic at the Paris Salon of 1884, Sar­gen­t’s Por­trait of Madame X drew a range of reac­tions from bit­ter dis­missal to near-vio­lent anger. But today, as Great Art Explained host James Payne says in the new video above, “it is gen­uine­ly hard to see what the fuss was about.”

“Twen­ty years before, in 1865, Manet had shown Olympia at the Salon, to a scan­dal­ized Paris. So why the shock now? The dif­fer­ence was that Manet’s Olympia was a pros­ti­tute, like the women in Toulouse-Lautrec’s paint­ing also on dis­play in 1884. But Madame X was part of French high soci­ety.” She was, all those first view­ers would have known, the socialite, banker’s wife, and “pro­fes­sion­al beau­ty” Vir­ginie Amélie Aveg­no Gautreau. Her rumored pen­chant for infi­deli­ties would­n’t have been unusu­al for her par­tic­u­lar place and time, but her back­ground as the New Orleans-born daugh­ter of a Euro­pean Cre­ole fam­i­ly cer­tain­ly would have.

Behold­ing Madame X, “Parisians were forced to con­front their own deca­dence, which they pre­ferred not to acknowl­edge, and this was where Sar­gent went wrong. The salons were a sacro­sanct part of French cul­ture, and he, a for­eign­er, was flaunt­ing immoral­i­ty in their faces with a paint­ing of anoth­er for­eign­er, an exot­ic one at that.” He’d already stirred up a cer­tain amount of con­tro­ver­sy three years ear­li­er with Dr. Pozzi at Home, anoth­er full-length por­trait that por­trayed its sub­ject – the high­ly accom­plished and noto­ri­ous­ly hand­some gyne­col­o­gist Samuel-Jean Pozzi — in a man­ner whose sheer infor­mal­i­ty verges on the con­cu­pis­cent.

Payne thus regards Dr. Pozzi and Madame X as “male-female ver­sions of the same type. They are both flam­boy­ant pea­cock fig­ures, with a streak of van­i­ty and a knack for seduc­tion. There is some­thing in the way they are posed which is uncon­ven­tion­al. They have an indi­rect gaze, and they both have supreme con­fi­dence verg­ing on arro­gance.” That only Sar­gent could have — or, at least, would have — cap­tured and trans­mit­ted those qual­i­ties with such direct­ness was­n’t appre­ci­at­ed quite so much at the time. Ostra­cized in Paris, where he’d been a sought-after por­traitist to the wealthy, he packed up Madame X and set off for Lon­don, where he soon rebuilt his career. The advice to do so came from none oth­er than Hen­ry James, who knew a thing or two about advan­ta­geous relo­ca­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How John Singer Sar­gent Became the Great­est Por­traitist Who Ever Lived — by Paint­ing “Out­side the Lines”

When John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X” Scan­dal­ized the Art World in 1884

The Scan­dalous Paint­ing That Helped Cre­ate Mod­ern Art: An Intro­duc­tion to Édouard Manet’s Olympia

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

Art His­to­ry School: Learn About the Art & Lives of Toulouse-Lautrec, Gus­tav Klimt, Frances Bacon, Edvard Munch & Many More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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 Ben Kingsley Play Salvador Dalí in the Trailer for the New Film, Dalíland

in Art, Film | May 23rd, 2023

By itself, the prospect of see­ing Sir Ben Kings­ley play Sal­vador Dalí would be enough to get more than a few movie­go­ers into the the­ater (or onto their couch­es, stream­ing). But then, so would the prospect of see­ing him play prac­ti­cal­ly any­one: Mahat­ma Gand­hi (as the Acad­e­my acknowl­edged), or Georges Méliès, or Dmitri Shostakovich, or a foul­mouthed Lon­don gang enforcer. Dalí­land, which comes out next month, promis­es a rich por­tray­al of Dalí not just by Kings­ley, but by also Ezra Miller, an actor pos­sessed of a phys­i­cal resem­blance to the artist in his youth as well as a pub­lic life seen as scan­dalous and occa­sion­al­ly crim­i­nal.

This choice of cast­ing, with the trou­bled Miller play­ing the young Dalí and the ultra-respectable Kings­ley play­ing the old, reflects a cer­tain intent to cap­ture the dual­i­ty of the char­ac­ter him­self. Kings­ley has spo­ken of devel­op­ing his inter­pre­ta­tion of Dalí “based on his lan­guage; his behav­ior; his taste in love, life, food, wine, and every­thing; and also his dar­ing to break so many rules.”

You can hear him reflect more on the expe­ri­ence in the Dead­line Hol­ly­wood video just below. “I love his work,” he says. “I love his fear­less­ness, and he was exhil­a­rat­ing and exhaust­ing to play, as I antic­i­pat­ed he would be.” He also has high praise for direc­tor Mary Har­ron, who’s known for her adap­ta­tion of Bret Eas­t­on Ellis’ Amer­i­can Psy­cho.

Har­ron’s first fea­ture was I Shot Andy Warhol, about Warhol’s near-mur­der­er Valerie Solanas, and her most recent, Char­lie Says, tells the sto­ry of Leslie Van Houten and the Man­son fam­i­ly. Such pic­tures demon­strate her facil­i­ty with bio­graph­i­cal dra­ma, as well as her invest­ment in the cul­ture of post­war Amer­i­ca and the eccen­tric per­son­al­i­ties that both enlivened and dark­ened it. Dalí­land takes place in the win­ter of 1974, which Dalí and his wife Gala spent at the St. Reg­is Hotel in New York. Its pro­tag­o­nist, a young gallery employ­ee played by Christo­pher Briney, gets pulled into Dalí’s world and becomes respon­si­ble for mak­ing sure the artist has all the work ready for his fast upcom­ing show.

“The film’s sev­en­ties set­ting allows it to be a por­trait of the moment when the art world under­went its tec­ton­ic shift, fus­ing with the mon­ey cul­ture, becom­ing a kind of pig­gy bank for the wealthy,” writes Vari­ety’s Owen Gleiber­man. “Dalí and Gala have, in their way, played into this. They’re exploiters of Dalí’s leg­end who have, in turn, been exploit­ed.” At that time Dalí still had about fif­teen years to go, but Kings­ley sees the peri­od as “pos­si­bly the clos­ing chap­ters of Dalí’s life,” the set­ting of “his com­ing to terms with mor­tal­i­ty, a sub­ject with which he strug­gled dread­ful­ly.” The phe­nom­e­non wit­nessed by Briney’s char­ac­ter, and thus the audi­ence, is “how a genius leaves the world” — and, in this par­tic­u­lar case, leaves it con­sid­er­ably more sur­re­al than he found it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dalí, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

Sir Ben Kings­ley Reads a Let­ter Writ­ten by Gand­hi to Hitler (in the Voice of Mahat­ma Gand­hi)

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & More (1970)

Watch: New Film by Roman Polan­s­ki, Star­ring Hele­na Bon­ham Carter, Sir Ben Kings­ley & Pra­da Shoes

Sal­vador Dalí on What’s My Line?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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 Traditional Japanese Carpenter Make 190+ Different Joints, All Without Nails, Screws, or Glue

in Architecture, Art | May 3rd, 2023

Before the inter­net, it would have been hard to imag­ine that peo­ple around the world would one day be unable to get enough of tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese car­pen­try, and specif­i­cal­ly tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese join­ery. And before Youtube, who could have pre­dict­ed that videos show­ing each and every step of a wood­work­ing project — with­out nar­ra­tion, or indeed expla­na­tion of any kind — would find an enthu­si­as­tic view­er­ship? At the inter­sec­tion of these two sur­pris­ing phe­nom­e­na stands that chan­nel H Car­pen­ter, whose unadorned, method­i­cal, and detailed por­tray­als of wood­en joint-mak­ing have racked up mil­lions upon mil­lions of views.

In tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese join­ery, which we’ve fea­tured many times before here on Open Cul­ture, the car­pen­ter uses no nails, screws, or adhe­sives. Rather, he carves the ends of the pieces of wood to be joined into inter­lock­ing three-dimen­sion­al shapes that can hold sol­id for decades, or even cen­turies.

The biggest advan­tage of this tech­nique, writes a com­menter on one video, “is that it min­i­mizes the use of rust-prone nails and oth­er mate­ri­als, reduces dam­age to the wood, and damp­ens seis­mic shak­ing with unfas­tened joints” — always a con­sid­er­a­tion in earth­quake-prone Japan. “Fur­ther­more, the entire build­ing can be dis­as­sem­bled like Lego blocks, and only the dam­aged parts can be replaced and rebuilt as before.”

Like many oth­er Japan­ese tra­di­tions, this form of car­pen­try has been around for a long time indeed, and through the cen­turies has built up a for­mi­da­ble library of joints, many of them com­plex enough  not to be com­pre­hen­si­ble at first glance. With 193 videos on the rel­e­vant playlist so far, H car­pen­ter seems to have made a mis­sion of con­struct­ing all of them on Youtube not just to aid our under­stand­ing of their work­ings, but also to pro­vide us with the sen­so­ry plea­sures of the process itself. (A few mil­lion of his views are sure­ly account­ed for by ASMR enthu­si­asts alone.) Just like his fore­bears in the craft, he does it with­out using a sin­gle nail — as well, per­haps as a coun­ter­bal­ance to the chat­ter of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, with­out speak­ing a sin­gle word.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery: A Kyoto Wood­work­er Shows How Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Cre­at­ed Wood Struc­tures With­out Nails or Glue

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Unearth 100-Year-Old Wood Joiner­ies While Tak­ing Apart a Tra­di­tion­al House

Build­ing With­out Nails: The Genius of Japan­ese Car­pen­try

Free Soft­ware Lets You Cre­ate Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Joints & Fur­ni­ture: Down­load Tsug­ite

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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School Principal, Forced to Resign After Students Learn About Michelangelo’s “David,” Visits the Renaissance Statue in Florence

in Art, Current Affairs | May 3rd, 2023

In March, a Flori­da school prin­ci­pal lost her job when 6th graders encoun­tered Michelangelo’s “David” dur­ing an art his­to­ry lesson–even though the school osten­si­bly spe­cial­izes in offer­ing stu­dents “a con­tent-rich clas­si­cal edu­ca­tion in the lib­er­al arts and sci­ences.” Par­ents appar­ent­ly found the Renais­sance sculp­ture, um, “porno­graph­ic.”

Fast for­ward two months, and the for­mer prin­ci­pal Hope Car­rasquil­la has now trav­eled to Flo­rence and vis­it­ed Michelangelo’s “David” in per­son. This came at the invi­ta­tion of the may­or of Flo­rence, Dario Nardel­la, and the direc­tor of the Gal­le­ria dell’Accademia, Cecilie Holl­berg. Above you can see Holl­berg on the left, and Car­rasquil­la on the right.

On Insta­gram, Car­rasquil­la com­ment­ed:

I’m very impressed. The thing that strikes me the most, and that I did­n’t know, is that this whole gallery was built for him [Michelangelo’s “David”]. I think it’s beau­ti­ful, it looks like a church. And to me, that just rep­re­sents real­ly the puri­ty of this fig­ure and you see his human­i­ty.  There is noth­ing wrong with the human body. Michelan­ge­lo did noth­ing wrong. He could only sculpt it like this. It could­n’t be oth­er­wise. He’s won­der­ful and I’m real­ly hap­py to be here.

In her own state­ment, Holl­berg said:

I am delight­ed to wel­come her and show her the mag­nif­i­cence of our muse­um, as well as per­son­al­ly intro­duce her to David, a sculp­ture that I reit­er­ate has noth­ing to do with pornog­ra­phy. It is a mas­ter­piece rep­re­sent­ing a reli­gious sym­bol of puri­ty and inno­cence, the tri­umph of good over evil. His nudi­ty is an out­ward man­i­fes­ta­tion of Renais­sance thought, which con­sid­ered man the cen­tre of the uni­verse. Peo­ple from all over the world, includ­ing many Amer­i­cans, make the pil­grim­age to admire him every year. Cur­rent­ly, more than 50% of vis­i­tors are from the Unit­ed States. I am cer­tain that Ms. Car­rasquil­la will receive the wel­come and sol­i­dar­i­ty she deserves here in Flo­rence.

Flori­da may be can­cel­ing clas­si­cal art and thought. Flo­rence is decid­ed­ly not.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Michelangelo’s David Still Draws Admi­ra­tion and Con­tro­ver­sy Today

Michelangelo’s Illus­trat­ed Gro­cery List

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (1482)

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Why Renaissance Masters Added Egg Yolk to Their Paints: A New Study Sheds Light

in Art, History, Science | May 2nd, 2023

Today we think of the Renais­sance as one of those peri­ods when every­thing changed, and if the best-known arti­facts of the time are any­thing to go by, noth­ing changed quite so much as art. This is reflect­ed in obvi­ous aes­thet­ic dif­fer­ences between the works of the Renais­sance and those cre­at­ed before, as well as in less obvi­ous tech­ni­cal ones. Egg yolk-based tem­pera paints, for exam­ple, had been in use since the time of the ancient Egyp­tians, but in the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry they were replaced by oil paints. When chem­i­cal analy­sis of the work of cer­tain Renais­sance mas­ters revealed traces of egg, they were assumed to be the result of chance con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

Now, thanks to a recent study led by chem­i­cal engi­neer Ophélie Ran­quet of the Karl­sruhe Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, we have rea­son to believe that painters like Bot­ti­cel­li and Leonar­do kept eggs in the mix delib­er­ate­ly. Oil replaced tem­pera because “it cre­ates more vivid col­ors and smoother col­or tran­si­tions,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Tere­sa Nowakows­ki.

“It also dries slow­ly, so it can be used for longer after the ini­tial prepa­ra­tion.” But “the col­ors dark­en more eas­i­ly over time, and the paint is more sus­cep­ti­ble to dam­age from light expo­sure. It also has a ten­den­cy to wrin­kle as it dries,” vis­i­ble in Leonar­do’s Madon­na of the Car­na­tion below.


Putting in a bit of egg yolk may have been a way of using oil’s advan­tages while min­i­miz­ing its dis­ad­van­tages. Ran­quet and her col­lab­o­ra­tors test­ed this idea by doing it them­selves, re-cre­at­ing two pig­ments used dur­ing the Renais­sance, both with egg and with­out. “In the may­olike blend” pro­duced by the for­mer method, writes Sci­ence­News’ Jude Cole­man, “the yolk cre­at­ed stur­dy links between pig­ment par­ti­cles, result­ing in stiffer paint. Such con­sis­ten­cy would have been ide­al for tech­niques like impas­to, a raised, thick style that adds tex­ture to art. Egg addi­tions also could have reduced wrin­kling by cre­at­ing a firmer paint con­sis­ten­cy,” though the paint itself would take longer to dry.

In prac­tice, Renais­sance painters seem to have exper­i­ment­ed with dif­fer­ent pro­por­tions of oil and egg, and so dis­cov­ered that each had its own strengths for ren­der­ing dif­fer­ent ele­ments of an image. Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Tay­lor Michael writes that in The Lamen­ta­tion Over the Dead Christ, seen up top, “Bot­ti­cel­li paint­ed Christ, Mary Mag­da­lene, and the Vir­gin, among oth­ers, with tem­pera, and the back­ground stone and fore­ground­ing grass with oil.” Thanks to the oxi­diza­tion-slow­ing effects of phos­pho­lipids and antiox­i­dants in the yolk — as sci­en­tif­ic research has since proven — they’ve all come through the past five cen­turies look­ing hard­ly worse for wear.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Car­avag­gio Paint­ed: A Re-Cre­ation of the Great Master’s Process

Dis­cov­er Harvard’s Col­lec­tion of 2,500 Pig­ments: Pre­serv­ing the World’s Rare, Won­der­ful Col­ors

The Largest & Most Detailed Pho­to­graph of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch Is Now Online: Zoom In & See Every Brush Stroke

A 900-Page Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­or from 1692: A Com­plete High-Res­o­lu­tion Dig­i­tal Scan

A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with Traces of the Orig­i­nal Col­ors Still In It

The Old­est Known Globe to Depict the New World Was Engraved on an Ostrich Egg, Maybe by Leonar­do da Vin­ci (1504)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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