Whales, out of their natural context

In light of the recent beached whale set to explode, memories of the 1970 planned explosion of a beached whale that, somewhat comically but also tragically, didn't work out so well, and the extra-gross whale that exploded when it was being cut open, I started thinking about other beached whales I had come across in prints and texts.

Jan Saenredam, Stranded Whale, 1602

One website provides the translation of the text:

“A large whale, thrown up out of the blue sea (gods, let it not be a bad omen!), washed up on the beach near Katwijk.  What a terror of the deep Ocean is a whale, when it is driven by the wind and its own power on to the shore of the land and lies captive on the dry sand.  We commit this creature to paper and we make it famous, so that the people can talk it about it.”

They were always considered omens, in this case one that coincided with a Spanish attack on the Netherlands.

I also came across this print, from a wildly different context:

Ida Bagus Nyoman Rai-Sanur, Indonesia, 1970s

And here's a whole slew of British ones.

Recently Slate had a story on how the great Blue Whale was suspended from the ceiling of the Natural History Museum in New York.

A second famous whale in the museum is shown fighting with a giant squid for its life. If you haven't seen either in person, the movie The Squid and the Whale does a good job of conveying the nostalgic feeling many have for them.

Presidential Dentures

NY Times story on Washington's dentures

An Art Historical Tour of Absinthe

On a trip to the Netherlands, I bought a tiny bottle of absinthe. My roommates and friends would have none of it. And honestly, I found it pretty foul. But I could no longer stand the taste of licorice after buying Dutch Drop Mentos--a compilation of mint and licorice that seems to be a regional delicacy:

Nonetheless, absinthe has always been advertised as an intoxicating and creativity-inspiring spirit due to its art historical past, especially with Van Gogh. It doesn't hurt that Poppy Z. Brite sprinkled references to it throughout her goth fiction anthology Wormwood and Nine Inch Nails featured it in their video for Perfect Drug.

Absinthe is distilled from wormwood, anise, fennel, and god knows what else. It's often green, which is why it (and/or its effects) are referred to as "the green fairy."

But much of the mythology started with painters. Which now leads to crap like this, obviously based on his most famous self portrait and reports of his imbibing:

But Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh, among others, depicted the beverage:

Toulouse-Lautrec

Van Gogh

Privat-Livemont

Oliva

Maignon

The Academic Obsession with Mad Men

First, I would like to point out that Mad Men has some amazing art historical conversations and images throughout. It's hard for an art historian to forget the scene when the underlings sneak in to Cooper's office to see the Rothko, when visitors catch sight of The Fisherman's Wife, etc. And the artworks themselves have spawned a blog just to keep track of them: http://artofmadmen.wordpress.com/

But both academics and libraries have combined a love of mad men with scholarly inquiry. Duke University Library's Rubenstein Rare Book Library has created Mad Men Mondays to use the show as a jumping off point for investigations into parts of collection that corroborate the ideas floating around in the 60s: http://blogs.library.duke.edu/rubenstein/tag/mad-men/

And Duke University Press came out recently with a volume called Mad Men, Mad World: Sex, Politics, Style and the 1960s, edited by Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Lilya Kaganovsky, and Robert A. Rushing

L'art français sur le film

A young Sacha Guitry made a film chronicling French artists, some of which were still alive, giving us sad yet beautiful footage of aging painters struggling against physical problems to persist in their artistic pursuits.

One is Monet, whose video I originally found through Open Culture, a site that has been scouring the recent videos made publicly available by British Pathé. This was filmed later in Monet's life when he was suffering from cataracts. But you can't tell. What you notice is his clean white suit somehow surviving next to his giant palette, his tiny dog, and the picturesque surroundings that he painted so often and so memorably.

Monet, Japanese Bridge, 1899, Princeton Art Museum

Another is Renoir, the video revealing the advanced state of his arthritis which deformed his hand greatly and likely caused him an immense amount of pain. But he paints nonetheless:

Renoir, Portrait of his son (Pierre), 1910

The Art of Menses

"Menstrala"

Zanele Muholi’s “Ummeli” (2011)

Here's a link to Salon's article on menstruation and contemporary art.

For some insight, see "Women wearing white: Discourses of menstruation and the experience of menarche" by Theresa Jackson

History of Lady Toys

Via the Chirurgeon's Apprentice:

Bitch Magazine's Oh Joy Sex Toy: A Comic About the History of Vibrators

And my favorite visual snippet from the larger comic:

The Art Historical Fantasy of Grand Budapest Hotel

Firstly, Boy with Apple may now be my favorite forgery of all time (with the forgery of the Northern Renaissance style triptych at the Palmer Museum of Art). This is partially everyone was meant to know it was fake--it was made for a movie--but also because it is convincing in its details. The Guardian delicately threw a few examples out there in their article Is The Grand Budapest Hotel's 'Boy with Apple' artwork plausible? See The Gallerist on this as well.

Boy with Apple, Michael Taylor

And this was one among many forgeries, others giving a nod to Gustav Klimt and Caspar David Friedrich as noted by the folks blogging for Sotheby's.

The most notable was Two Lesbians Masturbating, a nod by Rich Pellegrino to Egon Schiele.

Two Lesbians Masturbating, Rich Pellegrino

Portrait of Wally, Egon Schiele

But the movie was a graphic design whirlpool of Eastern European pre-war imagery. The Creative Review looks at many of the painstakingly rendered props in Designing for The Grand Budapest Hotel. And they look at more images of little details like keychains, perfume, etc. at The Warholian.

Victorian Tragedy

BBC's Ten Truly Bizarre Victorian Deaths

Brain Scoop

My new favorite thing: Brain Scoop

And this totally feminist themed video, well I have to agree:

Thanks CH!

Wandering Lonely as a Cloud

"You can never be nubilous," [John Constable] told his friend Archdeacon John Fisher in 1823. "I am the man of clouds." - from Slate

Constable did a number of cloud studies, as this one from 1821:

I am not one for the nostalgia of Romanticism, but I love clouds, largely due to a children's book of which I can no longer find any evidence that taught me about cumulus, cumulo-nimbus, stratus, cirrus, and even mythological deities like Zephyr. 

Not much later, the compound photographs of Gustav le Gray were created, layering negatives to make sure both land and sky would be evident in the final image even though they required different exposure times. Le Gray, like Constable, had his own cloud obsession:

If only Icarus had more cloud cover....

Pessaries

In this case, not the good-smelling kind that tempts the uterus to move or expel its liquids, but the kind that KEEPS YOUR UTERUS IN PLACE. (The German word for this is Mutterzäpfchen, which is like "mother suppositories" for lack of a modern translation. Granted, they got much smaller and ended up looking more like tampons [unlike the one below] later on.)

Some examples can be seen here, and I took one to show you what I'm talking about: