The Black Isle

Mr. Krampus, king of the alpine campus!

There’s a great Charles Burchfield show on at the Hammer Museum in LA right now. And because his mad, magnificent watercolors of swamps and nightscapes don’t reproduce that well on computer screens or in newsprint, I’ve jotted down some of his notes to give you a sense of his vision. (This picture, the only one of this enormous watercolor I could find online, is piteously small. You have to squint hard to see the startling little blue bird nearly hidden in the center left of the frame. It’s a touch of brightness that David Lynch would very much admire.)

Song of the Telegraph Pole
Watercolor, painted 1917-1952

Listen long to the singing of the telegraph poles. It sounds more weird and beautiful by moonlight…

Each pole has a distinct tone. A steady throbbing sound — the poles, once trees, still are full of life which is expressed in this pulsating sound.

Seems a voice from the center of the earth.

Charles Burchfield
Salem, August 4, 1914

Orbigny, 1849
Common Rorqual, Fin Whale
Balaenoptera rorqual

Another print I’d like to own.

Takes a while to load, but CLICK HERE for sumptuous photos of libraries by the Turkish photographer Ahmet Ertug, now on show at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

These are but four of them, all copyright Ahmet Ertug:

My love affair with miniatures, and art involving miniatures continues…
Here are some works by Thomas Doyle.

Just because.

More prints from Charles-Henry d’ Orbigny (1806 – 1876), illustrating mammalian evolution in different species:

Cute –> Normal;
Normal –> Cute;
Normal –> Cute.

From Charles D’Orbigny’s Dictionnaire Universel d’Histoire Naturelle published in 1849 by Renard & Martinet, Paris:

I’m gonna collect ‘em all!

Saw a delightful show at the Hammer museum yesterday: THE DARKER SIDE OF LIGHT 1850-1900, with sub-sections entitled “Creatures,” “Obsession,” “Violence and Death.”

The Morphine Addicts
Albert Besnard, 1887

The Vampire II
Edvard Munch, 1895

The exhibition website says it best:
… draws the visitor into the intimate alcoves of Paris, London, and Berlin — a private world characterized by contemplative and melancholy subjects. The Darker Side of Light presents work one imagines being unveiled in the confines of the smoky interiors of a collector’s home or an artist’s studio. This was art for those who kept their prints and drawings under wraps, compiled in albums and portfolios; who stored bronze medals in cabinets, set a statuette on a table in a corner, or mounted it above the shelves in the stillness of the library. Such works of art were not an evident part of one’s day-to-day environment, like a picture on the parlor wall. Rather, they were subject to more purposeful study on chosen occasions, much like taking a book down from the shelf for quiet enjoyment.

Also delightful works by Käthe Kollwitz, Felix Bracquemond (whose hanging mole picture I posted here several weeks ago) and Max Klinger, including his best-known series of ten etchings called Paraphrases about the Finding of a Glove (1881), based on images that came to him in dreams after finding a glove at an ice-skating rink. View the sequence HERE.

Then there’s this stunner by Eugene Grasset (1841-1917) called The Acid Thrower (La Vitrioleuse) from 1894 with a green-skinned wench poised to hurl a saucer of acid at you. Beware!