Explore MoMA’s Collection of Modern & Contemporary Art Every Time You Open a New Browser Tab

in Art, Creativity, Google, Technology | March 28th, 2022

There are brows­er exten­sions designed to increase your pro­duc­tiv­i­ty every time you open a new tab.

Oth­ers use pos­i­tive affir­ma­tions, inspir­ing quotes, and nature pho­tog­ra­phy to put your day on the right track.

We here­by announce that we’re switch­ing our set­tings and alle­giance to New Tab with MoMA.

After installing this exten­sion, you’ll be treat­ed to a new work of mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary art from The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s col­lec­tion when­ev­er you open a new tab in Chrome.

If you can steal a few min­utes, click what­ev­er image comes up to explore the work in greater depth with a cura­tor’s descrip­tion, links to oth­er works in the col­lec­tion by the same artist, and in some cas­es instal­la­tion views, inter­views and/or audio seg­ments.

Expect a few gift shop heavy hit­ters like Vin­cent Van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night, but also less­er known works not cur­rent­ly on view, like Yay­oi Kusama’s Vio­let Obses­sion, a row­boat slip­cov­ered in elec­tric pur­ple “phal­lic pro­tru­sions.”

Vio­let Obses­sion’s New Tab with MoMA link not only shows you how it was dis­played in the 2010 exhi­bi­tion Mind and Mat­ter: Alter­na­tive Abstrac­tions, 1940s to Now, you can also tog­gle around the instal­la­tion view to explore oth­er works in the same gallery.

You can hear audio of Kusama describ­ing how she “encrust­ed” the boat in soft sculp­ture pro­tu­ber­ances in her favorite pink­ish-pur­ple hue “to con­quer my fear of sex:”

Boats can come and go lim­it­less­ly and move ahead on the water. The boat, hav­ing over­come my obses­sion would move on for­ev­er, car­ry­ing me onboard

A link to a 1999 inter­view with Grady T. Turn­er in BOMB allows Kusama to give fur­ther con­text for the work, part of a sculp­ture series she con­ceives of as Com­pul­sion Fur­ni­ture:

My sofas, couch­es, dress­es, and row­boats bris­tle with phal­lus­es. … As an obses­sion­al artist I fear every­thing I see. At one time, I dread­ed every­thing I was mak­ing.

That’s a pret­ty robust art his­to­ry les­son for the price of open­ing a new tab, though such deep dives can def­i­nite­ly come at the expense of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

We weren’t expect­ing the 3‑dimensional nature of some of the works our tabs yield­ed up.

Stop, Repair, Pre­pare: Vari­a­tions on Ode to Joy for a Pre­pared Piano, No.12008 by Jen­nifer Allo­ra and Guiller­mo Calzadil­la required a live musi­cian to play Ode to Joy from Lud­wig van Beethoven’s Ninth Sym­pho­ny upside down and back­wards, from a hole carved into the cen­ter of a grand piano.

Frances Ben­jamin John­ston’s plat­inum print, Stair­way of the Trea­sur­er’s Res­i­dence: Stu­dents at Work from the Hamp­ton Album 1899–1900, is per­haps more eas­i­ly grasped if you can’t go too far down the rab­bit hole with the art­work appear­ing in your new tab.

An excerpt from the 2019 pub­li­ca­tion, MoMA High­lights: 375 Works from The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, New York pro­vides a brief bio of both John­ston, “a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er, not­ed for her por­traits of Wash­ing­ton politi­cians and her images of coal min­ers, iron­work­ers, and women labor­ers in New Eng­land tex­tile mills” and the Hamp­ton Insti­tute, Book­er T Washington’s alma mater.

Book­mark such bite-sized cul­tur­al his­to­ry breaks, and cir­cle back when you have more time.

Speak­ing of which, allow us to leave you with this thought from artist Felix Gon­za­lez-Tor­res, cre­ator of 1991’s time-based instal­la­tion Unti­tled (Per­fect Lovers), a par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cep­tu­al offer­ing from New Tab with MoMA:

Time is some­thing that scares me… or used to. This piece I made with the two clocks was the scari­est thing I have ever done. I want­ed to face it. I want­ed those two clocks right in front of me, tick­ing.

Set your Chrome Brows­er up to use New Tab with MoMA here. 

Relat­ed Con­tent 

MoMA’s Online Cours­es Let You Study Mod­ern & Con­tem­po­rary Art and Earn a Cer­tifi­cate

How to Make Comics: A Four-Part Series from the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art

The Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Puts Online 90,000 Works of Mod­ern Art

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

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How Yayoi Kusama, Obsessed with Polka Dots, Became One of the Most Radical Artists of All Time

in Art | March 25th, 2022

Yay­oi Kusama turned 93 this past Tues­day, and she remains not just artis­ti­cal­ly pro­duc­tive but glob­al­ly beloved. Her work itself con­tin­ues to appeal to an ever wider range of view­ers of all nation­al­i­ties and ages. “Yay­oi Kusama is a Japan­ese artist who is some­times called ‘the princess of pol­ka dots’,” says the brief intro­duc­tion to her life and work offered at Take Kids. “Although she makes lots of dif­fer­ent types of art – paint­ings, sculp­tures, per­for­mances and instal­la­tions – they have one thing in com­mon, DOTS!” That’s cer­tain­ly one way of describ­ing her, though any­one who’s fol­lowed her 70-year-long career will notice the con­spic­u­ous absence of oth­er, equal­ly impor­tant ele­ments of her art’s devel­op­ment: men­tal ill­ness, for instance, or enor­mous num­bers of phal­lus­es.

Yet even the new video essay on Kusama from Great Art Explained, a Youtube chan­nel very much pitched to an adult view­er­ship, takes as its focus the artist’s rela­tion­ship with var­i­ous­ly sized two-dimen­sion­al sol­id cir­cles. At the age of ten, says the chan­nel’s cre­ator James Payne, she “had her first hal­lu­ci­na­tion, which she described as flash­es of light, auras, or dense fields of dots. The dots would come to life and con­sume her and she would find her­self oblit­er­at­ed.” Since then, and though her art has “crossed from art to fash­ion and from film­mak­ing to per­for­mance art, her con­tin­u­ing explo­ration of the pol­ka dot has remained the one con­sis­tent motif.”

In approach­ing an artist through a sin­gle motif rather than a sin­gle work, this video breaks from the stan­dard Great Art Explained for­mat, but that does­n’t stop Payne from telling Kusama’s sto­ry with his usu­al suc­cinct­ness. He begins with her dis­com­fit­ing upbring­ing in a well-off rur­al Japan­ese house­hold and con­tin­ues to her dis­cov­ery of and sub­se­quent cor­re­spon­dence with Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, who made Kusama the nec­es­sary intro­duc­tions in the New York art world. Through her rig­or­ous work habits and con­tin­u­ous push­ing of aes­thet­ic and polit­i­cal bound­aries, Kusama even­tu­al­ly became a fig­ure of some renown in that city’s avant-garde scene of the nine­teen-six­ties — a milieu that proved recep­tive to the “soft-sculp­ture phal­lus­es” with which many of her cre­ations then bris­tled.

Kusama returned to her home­land in the ear­ly 1970s, and soon there­after only those with the sharpest mem­o­ries of the avant-garde six­ties remem­bered her work. Only a 1989 ret­ro­spec­tive at New York’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Con­tem­po­rary Arts returned her to the inter­na­tion­al fame she has enjoyed ever since. Many of us now have vivid mem­o­ries of step­ping into her com­plete­ly mir­rored, dense­ly dot-lit “infin­i­ty rooms” over the years and in dif­fer­ent muse­ums around the world. Though Kusama began mak­ing them in the mid-nine­teen-six­ties, they’ve turned out to be ide­al­ly suit­ed to the social-media era. “Peo­ple queue up for hours for just six­ty sec­onds in one of her infin­i­ty-room instal­la­tions,” says Payne. “Each image they take of infin­i­ty joins mil­lions more on the inter­net — itself infi­nite.” Only now, in Kusama’s tenth decade, has the rest of the world caught up with her.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load Full Issues of MAVO, the Japan­ese Avant-Garde Mag­a­zine That Announced a New Mod­ernist Move­ment (1923–1925)

Ven­er­a­ble Female Artists, Musi­cians & Authors Give Advice to the Young: Pat­ti Smith, Lau­rie Ander­son & More

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

The Great Wave Off Kana­gawa by Hoku­sai: An Intro­duc­tion to the Icon­ic Japan­ese Wood­block Print in 17 Min­utes

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & 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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Japanese Toy Designs from the Late 19th & Early 20th Century: Explore an Online Archive

in Art, History | March 24th, 2022

After two cen­turies of iso­la­tion, Japan re-opened to the world in the 1860s, at which point West­ern­ers imme­di­ate­ly became enam­ored with things Japan­ese. It was in that very same decade that Vin­cent Van Gogh began col­lect­ing ukiyo‑e wood­block prints, which inspired him to cre­ate “the art of the future.” But not every West­ern­er was drawn first to such ele­vat­ed fruits of Japan­ese cul­ture. When the American­ educator­ William ­Elliot­ Griff­is went to Japan in 1876 he mar­veled at a coun­try that seemed to be a par­adise of play: “We do not know of any coun­try in the world in which there are so many toy-shops, or so many fairs for the sale of things which delight chil­dren,” he wrote.

That quote comes from Matt Alt’s Pure Inven­tion: How Japan’s Pop Cul­ture Con­quered the World.  “While West­ern tastemak­ers vora­cious­ly con­sumed prints, glass­ware, tex­tiles, and oth­er grown-up delights, it was in fact toys that formed the back­bone of Japan’s bur­geon­ing export indus­try in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry,” Alt writes.

You can expe­ri­ence some of the plea­sures of that peri­od’s Japan­ese visu­al art along with some of the plea­sures of that peri­od’s Japan­ese toy cul­ture in the Ningyo-do Bunko data­base. This dig­i­tal archive’s more than 100 albums of water­col­or toy-design ren­der­ings from the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­turies are, in the words of Bib­liOdyssey’s Paul Ker­ri­g­an, “by turns scary and intrigu­ing.”

These masks, dolls, tops, and oth­er fan­ci­ful works of the toy­mak­er’s craft may not imme­di­ate­ly appeal to a gen­er­a­tion raised with smart­phones. But their designs, root­ed in Japan­ese mythol­o­gy and region­al cul­tures, nev­er­the­less exude both a still-uncom­mon artistry and a still-fas­ci­nat­ing “oth­er­ness.” If this seems like kid’s stuff, bear in mind the caus­es of Japan’s trans­for­ma­tion from a post-World War II sham­bles to per­haps the most advanced coun­try in the world. As Alt tells the sto­ry of this aston­ish­ing devel­op­ment, Japan went from mak­ing sim­ple tin jeeps to tran­sis­tor radios to karaoke machines to Walk­men to vast cul­tur­al indus­tries of comics, film, tele­vi­sion, and relat­ed mer­chan­dise: all toys, broad­ly defined, and we in the rest of the world under­es­ti­mate their pow­er at our per­il. Rum­mage through the designs here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wagashi: Peruse a Dig­i­tized, Cen­turies-Old Cat­a­logue of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Can­dies

Hun­dreds of Won­der­ful Japan­ese Fire­work Designs from the Ear­ly-1900s: Dig­i­tized and Free to Down­load

Watch Tee­ny Tiny Japan­ese Meals Get Made in a Minia­ture Kitchen: The Joy of Cook­ing Mini Tem­pu­ra, Sashi­mi, Cur­ry, Okonomiya­ki & More

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invent­ed Lin­coln Logs, “America’s Nation­al Toy” (1916)

Watch Bat­tered & Bruised Vin­tage Toys Get Mes­mer­iz­ing­ly Restored to Near Mint Con­di­tion

On Christ­mas, Browse A His­tor­i­cal Archive of More Than 50,000 Toys

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 David Hockney Paint with Light, Using the Quantel Paintbox Graphics System (1986)

in Art, Technology, Television | March 24th, 2022

Think of the tele­vi­sion graph­ics you remem­ber from the nine­teen-eight­ies — or, per­haps more like­ly, the nine­teen-eight­ies tele­vi­sion graph­ics you’ve seen late­ly on Youtube. Much of it looks cheesy today, but some exam­ples have become appeal­ing­ly retro over the decades, and cer­tain works remain gen­uine­ly impres­sive as pieces of dig­i­tal art. Nowa­days we can, in the­o­ry, repli­cate and even out­do the finest TV imagery of the eight­ies on our com­put­ers, or even our phones. But in the days before high-pow­ered per­son­al com­put­ing, let alone smart­phones, how did such bril­liant­ly col­ored, ener­get­i­cal­ly ani­mat­ed, and some­times gen­uine­ly artis­tic graph­ics get made? The answer, nine times out of ten, was on the Quan­tel Paint­box.

Intro­duced in 1981, the Paint­box was a cus­tom-designed dig­i­tal graph­ic work­sta­tion that cost about $250,000 USD, or more than $623,000 today. To major tele­vi­sion sta­tions and net­works that mon­ey was well spent, buy­ing as it did the unprece­dent­ed­ly fast pro­duc­tion of images and ani­ma­tions for broad­cast. ”It used to be that we had a staff of artists who drew and drew,” the New York Times quotes ABC’s direc­tor of pro­duc­tion devel­op­ment as say­ing in an arti­cle on graph­ics for the 1984 Olympics.

“But with the Paint­box an artist can come up with a graph­ic in fif­teen min­utes that used to take two days.” Its capa­bil­i­ties did much to influ­ence the look and feel of that decade, for bet­ter or for worse: look­ing back, design­er Steven Heller rues its prop­a­ga­tion of “shad­ow-rid­den, faux-hand­made eight­ies aes­thet­ics.”

As a cut­ting-edge piece of hard­ware, the Paint­box was beyond the reach of most artists, due not just to its cost but also the con­sid­er­able kn0w-how required to use it. (Skilled “oper­a­tors,” as they were called, could in the eight­ies com­mand a wage of $500 per hour.) But for David Hock­ney, who was already famous, suc­cess­ful, and known for his inter­est in bright col­ors as well as new tech­nol­o­gy, the chance came in 1986 when the BBC invit­ed him to par­tic­i­pate in a tele­vi­sion series called Paint­ing with Light.  A show­case for the cre­ative poten­tial of the Paint­box, it also brought on such lumi­nar­ies as col­lage artist Richard Hamil­ton and “grand­fa­ther of Pop Art” Lar­ry Rivers, sit­ting them down at the work­sta­tion and film­ing as they exper­i­ment­ed with its pos­si­bil­i­ties.

“You’re not draw­ing on a piece of paper,” Hock­ney explains in his episode. “You’re draw­ing, actu­al­ly, direct­ly onto this TV screen where you’re see­ing it now.” By now we’ve all done the same in one way or anoth­er, but in the eight­ies the con­cept was nov­el enough to be hard to artic­u­late. Hock­ney empha­sizes that the Paint­box pro­duces “hon­est” images, in that the elec­tron­ic medi­um in which the artist works is the very same medi­um through which the view­er per­ceives that work. The eager­ness with which he takes up its ground­break­ing pres­sure-sen­si­tive sty­lus (“a bit like a kind of old-fash­ioned ball­point pen”), some­times with a cig­a­rette in the oth­er hand, shows that Hock­ney’s pen­chant for draw­ing on the iPhone and iPad over the past decade or so is hard­ly an iso­lat­ed late-career lark. Even in 1986 he under­stood what you could do with dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, and could also sense one of its prime dan­gers: you’re nev­er sure when to stop doing it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Hockney’s iPad Art Goes on Dis­play

David Hock­ney Shows Us His Sketch Book, Page by Page

Andy Warhol Dig­i­tal­ly Paints Deb­bie Har­ry with the Ami­ga 1000 Com­put­er (1985)

Time Trav­el Back to 1926 and Watch Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Make Art in Some Rare Vin­tage Video

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

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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Marina Abramović Brings Back Her Iconic Performance Art Piece, The Artist Is Present, to Raise Money for Ukraine

in Art, Current Affairs | March 23rd, 2022

For a cou­ple of months in 2010, Mari­na Abramović spent her days word­less­ly and motion­less­ly sit­ting at a table in the atri­um of the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. Any vis­i­tor could sit in the chair oppo­site her, for as long as they liked. In response, Abramović said noth­ing and did almost noth­ing (even dur­ing vis­its from Lou Reed, Bjork, or her long-ago lover and col­lab­o­ra­tor, the late Ulay). The whole expe­ri­ence con­sti­tut­ed a piece of per­for­mance art, titled The Artist Is Present. As with many works of that form, to ask why Abramović did it is to miss the point. Noth­ing like it had been done before, and it thus promised to enter unchart­ed artis­tic, social, and emo­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry.

A dozen years lat­er, the artist will be present again, but this time with a high­ly spe­cif­ic motive in mind: to raise mon­ey for the besieged nation of Ukraine. “Abramović has part­nered with New York’s Sean Kel­ly Gallery and Art­sy to offer a per­for­mance art meet-and-greet… or at least meet-and-silent­ly-stare,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Sarah Rose Sharp.

“Through March 25, inter­est­ed par­ties can bid on one of two oppor­tu­ni­ties for a lim­it­ed restag­ing of Abramović’s epic per­for­mance The Artist Is Present.” These meet-and-silent­ly-stares “will be cap­tured by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Mar­co Anel­li, who doc­u­ment­ed almost all of the 1,500 par­tic­i­pants in the orig­i­nal per­for­mance.”

Pro­ceeds “will go to Direct Relief, which is work­ing with Ukraine’s Min­istry of Health to pro­vide urgent med­ical assis­tance as well as long-term aid to the many lives dev­as­tat­ed by the war.” Last month, when Rus­sia launched its inva­sion, Abramović released the video state­ment above. In it she explains hav­ing done some work in Ukraine last year, which afford­ed her an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get to know some of its peo­ple. “They’re proud, they’re strong, and they’re dig­ni­fied,” she says, and an attack on their coun­try “is an attack to all of us,” an “attack to human­i­ty.” If you feel the same way, have some mon­ey to spend, and missed out on the first The Artist Is Present — and if you think you can hold your own across from the for­mi­da­ble pres­ence glimpsed in the video — con­sid­er mak­ing a bid of your own.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed con­tent:

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

Mari­na Abramović and Ulay’s Adven­tur­ous 1970s Per­for­mance Art Pieces

Mari­na Abramović’s Method for Over­com­ing Trau­ma: Go to a Park, Hug a Tree Tight, and Tell It Your Com­plaints for 15 Min­utes

Per­for­mance Artist Mari­na Abramović Describes Her “Real­ly Good Plan” to Lose Her Vir­gin­i­ty

Advice to Young Aspir­ing Artists from Pat­ti Smith, David Byrne & Mari­na Abramović

Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online: 1,000+ Librar­i­ans Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­serve Arti­facts of Ukrain­ian Civ­i­liza­tion Before Rus­sia Can Destroy Them

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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Explore Rarely-Seen Art by J. R. R. Tolkien in a New Web Site Created by the Tolkien Estate

in Art, Literature | March 22nd, 2022

J. R. R. Tolkien man­aged to write the Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, which ought to be accom­plish­ment enough for one mor­tal. But he also wrote the The Hob­bit, the gate­way for gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren into his major work, as well as a host of oth­er works of fic­tion, poet­ry, and schol­ar­ship, many of them not pub­lished until after his death in 1973. And those are only his writ­ings: a life­long artist, Tolkien also pro­duced a great many draw­ings and paint­ings, book-cov­er designs, and pic­tures meant to delight his own chil­dren as well as the chil­dren of oth­ers.

Yet some­how more mate­r­i­al has remained in the vault, and only now brought out for prop­er pub­lic con­sid­er­a­tion. As report­ed ear­li­er this month by Art­net’s Sarah Cas­cone, Tolkien’s estate “has released a new web­site fea­tur­ing art­works, some pre­vi­ous­ly unseen,” all cre­at­ed by the man him­self.

“In addi­tion to a num­ber of detailed maps, the estate has released illus­tra­tions Tolkien cre­at­ed for The Hob­bit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Sil­mar­il­lion, as well as draw­ings he made for his chil­dren, land­scapes drawn from real life, and imag­ined abstrac­tions.”

Tolkie­nol­o­gists will also thrill to the new site’s “pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished pho­tographs of Tolkien and his fam­i­ly, includ­ing his son Christo­pher, who drew the final ver­sions of the Lord of the Rings maps for pub­li­ca­tion.” (Christo­pher died in 2020, and Tolkien’s last sur­viv­ing child Priscil­la died just last month.) Divid­ed into sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to his writ­ing, his paint­ing, his schol­ar­ship, his let­ters, his life, and relat­ed audio-visu­al mate­r­i­al, this online exhi­bi­tion presents Tolkien as not just a world-builder but a man in full. In his life and work, he estab­lished the mod­el for the mod­ern fan­ta­sy nov­el­ist, but also — as under­scored by a jour­ney across his full nar­ra­tive, intel­lec­tu­al, and artis­tic range — an ide­al unlike­ly to be equaled any time soon. Vis­it the site here.

via Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed con­tent

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J. R. R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

Dis­cov­er J. R. R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

The Largest J. R. R. Tolkien Exhib­it in Gen­er­a­tions Is Com­ing to the U.S.: Orig­i­nal Draw­ings, Man­u­scripts, Maps & More

Dis­cov­er J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lit­tle-Known and Hand-Illus­trat­ed Children’s Book, Mr. Bliss

J. R. R. Tolkien Sent Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from Father Christ­mas to His Kids Every Year (1920–1943)

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

in Art | March 8th, 2022

No car­toon Dutch land­scape omits a wind­mill. With their wood­en frames and large blades, those mechan­i­cal struc­tures have been used in the Nether­lands since at least the twelfth cen­tu­ry, first to pump water out of poten­tial­ly arable low­lands, and lat­er for such uses as saw­ing wood and pound­ing grain. Today, of course, there exist much more effi­cient tech­nolo­gies for those jobs, but the wind­mill nev­er­the­less remains a Dutch cul­tur­al icon. In the Nether­lands the wind itself also blows as strong as ever, just wait­ing to be har­nessed: if not by indus­try, then per­haps by art. Enter Theo Jansen, inven­tor of the strand­beest — Dutch for “beach beast,” an apt descrip­tion of its nature.

Elab­o­rate­ly con­struct­ed with off-the-shelf mate­ri­als like wood, PVC pip­ing, and sheets of fab­ric, Jansen’s large and fan­tas­ti­cal-look­ing strand­beesten walk through the sand as if mov­ing under their own voli­tion. In fact they’re wind-pow­ered kinet­ic sculp­tures, artic­u­lat­ed in such a way as to make their move­ments look whol­ly organ­ic.

Cre­at­ed for more than thir­ty years now through Jansen’s intel­li­gent design, the strand­beesten are also sub­ject to a process not unlike bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion. You can see it in the artist’s clip com­pi­la­tion at the top of the post and Taschen’s new book Strand­beest: The Dream Machines of Theo Jansen by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Lena Her­zog (wife, inci­den­tal­ly, of Wern­er Her­zog, a known appre­ci­a­tor of such “con­quests of the use­less”). You can also pur­chase mini mod­els of the Strand­beest online.

“I make skele­tons that are able to walk on the wind,” Jansen once said. “Over time, these skele­tons have become increas­ing­ly bet­ter at sur­viv­ing the ele­ments such as storms and water and even­tu­al­ly I want to put these ani­mals out in herds on the beach­es, so they will live their own lives.” His goals also include equip­ping future gen­er­a­tions of strand­beesten with a kind of mechan­i­cal arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, which would let them avoid the kind of dan­gers that got their ances­tors top­pled or stuck. But in their sheer uncan­ny mag­nif­i­cence, even the least intel­li­gent exam­ples have fas­ci­nat­ed the world. A few years ago Jansen and one of his cre­ations even appeared on The Simp­sons, sug­gest­ing that one day, car­toon Dutch land­scapes may be incom­plete with­out a strand­beest.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Exis­ten­tial Moments with Theo Jansen and His Amaz­ing Kinet­ic Sculp­tures, the Strand­beests

Behold the Kinet­ic, 39-Ton Stat­ue of Franz Kafka’s Head, Erect­ed in Prague

Metrop­o­lis II: Dis­cov­er the Amaz­ing, Fritz Lang-Inspired Kinet­ic Sculp­ture by Chris Bur­den

A Per­fect Spring­time Ani­ma­tion: The Wind­mill Farmer by Joaquin Bald­win

Alexan­der Calder’s Archive Goes Online: Explore 1400 Works of Art by the Mod­ernist Sculp­tor

Pen­du­lum Waves as Kinet­ic Art

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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A Digital Archive of Hieronymus Bosch’s Complete Works: Zoom In & Explore His Surreal Art

in Art | March 4th, 2022

Very lit­tle is known about the Dutch painter Hierony­mus Bosch. And I am going to sug­gest that is a good thing. Would it help to know that this man who cre­at­ed tru­ly inspired, end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing views of heav­en and hell, of crea­ture-filled gar­dens of debauch­ery, had a par­tic­u­lar point of view on human­i­ty? Or that he thought there was a “cor­rect” way to under­stand his paint­ings? Per­haps it’s the mys­tery of the man that brings us clos­er to these works, to study them in detail, and to delight in their play­ful hor­ror. And for those who real­ly want detail, the Bosch Project is the place to find it.

The Bosch Project (aka the Bosch Research and Con­ser­va­tion Project) began in 2010 as a way to bring togeth­er the artist’s 45 paint­ings “spread across 2 con­ti­nents, 10 coun­tries, 18 cities, and 20 col­lec­tions” for in-depth research, avail­able to every­one.

The year 2016 marked the 500th anniver­sary of Bosch’s death, with cel­e­bra­tions in the artist’s birth­place of Her­to­gen­bosch and a rev­o­lu­tion­ary exhi­bi­tion in Noord­bra­bants, which stirred con­tro­ver­sy when it dis­put­ed the authen­tic­i­ty of sev­er­al major works in the Pra­do Muse­um in Spain, added two new attri­bu­tions, and restored nine works.

Here is where the Bosch Project web­site shines. The “syn­chro­nized image view­ers” allow us to zoom in to the small­est brush­stroke to exam­ine Bosch’s detailed worlds and char­ac­ters. And in a nod to his use of trip­tychs, the oth­er two sides of the paint­ing zoom in as well. It makes for some inter­est­ing, but not essen­tial, jux­ta­po­si­tions. It’s also easy to move around in the work with just the scroll­wheel of the mouse. Oth­er paint­ings allow the view­er to exam­ine the infrared reflec­togram of the painting’s lay­ers, expos­ing Bosch’s cor­rec­tions and dele­tions. Clos­er exam­i­na­tion of his grand pan­els reveals Bosch’s car­toon­ish brush­work, his car­i­ca­ture, and his immense humor. For sure, the artist want­ed us to med­i­tate on greater mat­ters like our own sal­va­tion, but there’s so much fun in the way he paints ani­mals, or in the bac­cha­na­lia of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, you can be for­giv­en for think­ing he’d want to par­ty as well. Grab that scroll wheel and check out the Garden—there’s plen­ty of room. Enter the Bosch Project web­site here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

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

The Mean­ing of Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Explained

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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