The Beast in the Oregano







This gorgeous wasp, almost two inches long, was in the oregano late this afternoon. If it had amber wings, instead of blue, it would have almost looked like a Tarantula Hawk.

The bumblebees were sipping nectar right beside it, blissfully unaware that this thing could rip their heads off and eat them with impunity, had it wanted.

Roman Funerary Art at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston

FUNERARY PORTRAIT RELIEFS

During the late Republican and Augustan periods (about 70 B.C.-A.D. 14), funerary reliefs with portraits of the deceased and members of their families were popular. Almost without exception the portraits are of freed slaves (liberti) and their offspring. The portraits are frequently accompanied by inscriptions that indicate the professions and family relationships of the people in the relief. Occasionally, a slave's former owner was also shown. The reliefs were inserted into the tombs that lined the roads leading out of Rome. This use of funerary portrait reliefs saw a resurgence in the second century A.D.
(from the display card for Funerary Relief of the Publius Gessius Family)

The MFA has many wonderful Roman antiquities. Here are some of the Funerary Portraits, Cinerary Urns, and Sarcophagi that they display.

long post, with complete transcribed display information, just keep scrolling





Funerary Relief of a Mother and Son
Roman, Imperial period, about A.D. 110-120
Marble

This panel came from a tomb that, as the inscription records, Petronia Hedone made for herself and her son as well as her fredd slaves and their descendants. The resemblance of Petronia's hair to that of Martiana (died A.D. 112), Emperor Trajan's sister, suggests the relief's date, though the use of drilled holes for the pupils of the eyes rarely occurs before the reign of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138).

Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 1899 99.348

Inscription
Petronia Hedone fecit sibi/et L(ucio) Petronio Philemoni filio/et libertis libertabusquae/posterisquae eorum

Petronia Hedone made [this] for herself and for Lucius Petronius Philemon, her son, and for [her] freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants





Sarcophagus with Triumph of Dionysus
Marble (from the island of Proconnesus, Turkey)

Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, was the god of wine and drama. He is one of the most frequently depicted gods in ancient art and is often shown in the company of mythological beings like satyrs, silens, and maenads as well as such animals as lions, panthers, and snakes. The inclusion of an elephant-drawn chariot and a giraffe in the procession identify the scene as the god's triumphal return from spreading his cult to India. Dionysiac imagery frequently occurs in Roman funerary art, and may reflect the beliefs of the deceased.

William Francis Warden Fund, 1972 1972.650







Funerary Relief of the Publius Gessius Family
Roman, late Republican period, about 50-20 B.C.
Marble (probably from Carrara, Italy)

The Latin inscription at the base identifies the central figure as Publius Gessius, a Roman citizen in military costume. He is flanked by Fausta Gessia, a slave whom he had freed, and by their son, R. Gessius Primus, also a freed slave. The inscriptions on the sides indicate that Fausta built the tomb that held this relief with money provided in Primus's will, a common practice in antiquity.

Archibald Cary Coolidge Fund, 1937 37.100

Inscriptions
Lower Edge:
Gessia P(ubli) l(iberta) Fausta/P(ublius) Gessius P(ubli) f(ilius) (tribu) Rom(ilia)/P(ublius) Gessius P(ubli) l(ibertus) Primus

Gessia Fausta, freedwoman of Publius/Publius Gessius, son of Publius, of the Romilian tribe/Publius gessius Primus, freedman of Publius

Left:
ex testam[ento]/P(ubli) Gessi P(ubli) l(iberti)/Primi

From the testament of Publius Gessius Primus, freedman of Publius

Right:
Arbi(tratu)/Gessia[e P(ubli) l(ibertae)]/Fausta[e]

Under the direction of Gessia Fausta, freedwoman of Publius




Cinerary Urn with Offering Scene
Roman, Imperial period, about A.D. 150
Marble (from the island of Proconnesus, Turkey)

In this scene of piety, a man pours an offering of wine over an altar while a woman raises her hands in prayer. A flute player provides music, a frequent component of ancient sacrifices. The side panels show the eagle of Jupiter and the peacock of Juno, each holding a victory wreath. Cinerary urns and sacrophagi were usually produced in workshops near quarries and shipped to urban centers of sale. The faces of this couple were prepared for portraits that were never carved, perhaps due to a sudden death and the need to use the urn immediately.

Museum purchase with funds donated in memory of Emily Townsend Vermeule, 2002 2002.25
(from the display card)




Cinerary Urn of L. Cassius Colonus Colonianus
Roman, late imperial period, about A.D. 200
Marble (from the Greek island of Thasos)

This urn held the ashes of Lucius Cassius Colonus Colonianus, a member of the social class known as the equites (roughly "knights"). The urn is densely covered with figures representing the death of Pentheus, king of Thebes, a story known from Euripides's play 'The Bacchae'. Pentheus opposed the presence of Dionysus in his city and spied upon the women celebrating the god's rites. This scene shows the play's climax, when the women of Thebes, driven into the ecstatic state associated with the worship of Dionysus, tear Pentheus apart. Dionysus, standing on the left, witnesses this scene, accompanied by his thiasos (entourage) of satyrs, silens, and maenads.

Benjamin and Lucy Rowland Fund, 1972 1972.356

Inscription
D(is) M(anibus) L(uci) Cassi Coloni Coloniani eq(uitis) R(omani)/vixit ann(is) XXXV
To the spirits of the dead of Lucius Cassius Colonus Colonianus, a Roman eques; he lived thirty-five years.

El Greco to Velázquez Art During the Reign of Philip III

at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through July 27, 2008

For any of you who are in striking distance of Boston, I highly recommend this exhibit. It is absolutely wonderful, has several paintings that I am familiar with from years of reading art history, but also many pieces I had never seen in print or otherwise. Much of the work by the two 'headliners,' El Greco and Velázquez, were real revelations in person. Even with modern high-quality reproduction, there is nothing like seeing the original, up close.

For this post, however, I'd like to focus on some of the still life paintings. These didn't seem to get the same attention from the viewers as the bigger and showier religious paintings. Yet these pieces are exquisite, and well worth the time and ticket to see just in themselves.

A few examples:



Felipe Ramírez Still Life with Cardoon, Francolin, Grapes and Irises, 1628
Oil on canvas, 28 X 36 3/16 in. (71 X 92 cm)
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid




Juan Sáchez Cotán Still Life with Fruit and Vegetables, about 1602
Oil on canvas 27 3/8 X 38 in. (69.5 X 96.5 cm)
Varez Fisa Collection, Spain




Juan Sáchez Cotán Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, about 1600
Oil on canvas 27 1/4 X 33 1/2 in. (69.2 X 85.1 cm)
San Diego Museum of Art




Juan Sáchez Cotán Still Life with Game Fowl, about 1600
Oil on canvas 26 11/16 X 34 15/16 in. (67.8 X 88.7 cm)
The Art Institute of Chicago


These pieces and about a dozen other still lifes and domestic paintings by other artists including Alejandro De Loarte, Juan Van Der Hamen Y León, and Velázquez could have held my attention for hours.

Add to that the many portraits, the religions works and mythological works, the previously mention opportunity to see all of these up close, and the exhibit provides an incredible view of art in Spain at the end of the 16th Century on into the 17th.

The show also includes several amazing wooden polychrome sculptures of Saints on loan from Spanish churches, and has a reconstruction of a "treasure room" of glassware, pottery, silver and objects of curiosity (sort of a "Cabinet of Curiosities" of the craftwork of men) originally set up by the Spanish Royalty to impress their visitors.

Again, I can not say enough how highly I recommend seeing this exhibition.


Images from El Greco to Velázquez, Art During the Reign of Philip III by Sarah Schroth and Ronni Baer, with essays by Ronni Baer, Laura R. Bass, Antonio Feros, Rosemarie Mulcahy, and Sarah Schroth MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Published in association with the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. © 2008 ISBN 978-0-87846-726-6 (hardcover) $65.00 (Museum Members get a discount).

I also highly recommend the book, which contains much useful information, and a catalogue of the show, for a total of 162 high quality color illustrations

The Library of the Mind


The repository that is the human mind is an amazing thing.


”Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images, that have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory: nothing can come of nothing: he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations” Reynolds, Discourse II


Our house is full of books. My studio is full of knickknacks. Both overflow so much that many of these things have been packed up into boxes in the attic, for lack of shelf space. Currently I am re-reading The Divine Comedy (Great Books series, Britannica), and reading for the first time Philosophy and Civilization of the Middle Ages (Maurice DeWulf, Dover Publishing) and Against the Idols of the Age (David Stove, Transaction Publishers, Edited by Roger Kimball). Among the books that I continually reference, just for the joy of the images, are The Prisons (Le Carceri) by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (out of print), Great Medieval Churches and Cathedrals of Europe (Jules Gailhabaud), Medieval Ornament (Karl Alexander von Heideloff) Sturgis’ Illustrated Dictionary of Architecture and Building (Sturgis et al. in three volumes, all these previously by Dover Publications), The Complete Encyclopedia of Illustration (J.G. Heck, Park Lane publishing, out of print) and various atlases, current, historical or antique.


A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. Luke 6:45


Please don’t get me wrong, I am neither a gifted scholar, nor even a particularly swift reader. Just given a choice between reading a book, and just about anything else, you will find me reading the book. In only the last couple of years I have read about church history, Winston Churchill, the expansion of European maritime empires, the Black Plague, the history of superstition, hieroglyphs, numerous artists, Africa, colonial era tools, the history of church vestments, the symbolic origins of the maze, theories on the inequalities in technology and material wealth between continents, the Black Plague, the condition of the environment, the Lord of the Rings and the life of its author, illuminated manuscripts, the Black Plague, pirates, oh… and did I mention the Black Plaque?

On top of all this, I spend inordinate amounts of time searching the Internet for images and information as references for my art, or simply for the joy of reading about one more thing.


”I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.” Confucius


Every artist I have ever known has their own fascinating history of exploration, reading, scholarship, apprenticeship, collaborations, in short, their own personal library of experience that they can then draw on as they create. Of course, the same principle holds true for any profession. The CPA and the plumber, the mechanic and business manager all must train and thoroughly understand their work. As an artist I have a freedom of exploration that I didn’t have when I worked in the corporate world, as I am unfettered by the necessities of keeping up with a single area of expertise. However, I have to say that I can’t hold a candle to the more brilliant people of my acquaintance, attorneys, psychologists, teachers, salesmen and others, in the scope and breadth of their intellectual seeking. Add to that the experience and wisdom of years (which I can’t yet lay claim to, if I will ever be so able) and the collected memories of an individual become a one-of-a-kind museum, never to be duplicated.


”From the age of six I could draw forms and objects. By 50 I had turned out an infinite number of drawings. But I am not happy about anything I did before 70. Only at 73 did I begin to understand the true form and nature of birds, fish and plants. By 80 I had made a lot of progress. At 90 I will begin to get to the root of it all. By 100 I will have reached a Superior State in art, undefinable, and by 110, every dot and line will be living.” Hokusai, (the 19th century originator of Japanese landscape painting, at age 83)


And so, we have here the joy of knowledge, the adventure of seeking, the amazement of the arcane an unusual, and it all becomes wrapped up and stored inside our own heads. Go to the museum, and dwell upon that painting. Sit back and close your eyes as you escape into that symphony. Seek out and dwell in the stories of your ancestors. Open a book and sit at the feet of the wisest who have walked the world. Build up the Cabinet of Curiosities that is within you.


"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind." Winston Churchill

Fossils in Shadowboxes



One Trilobite, 360 Kilobytes

Go Now and Read!

Jessica Palmer at Bioephemera has a wonderful post on Medieval Astrolabs


Quadrant, January 3 1775, "M. H.", Danvers, Massachusetts, inked paper over wood

I've had the opportunity to see and photograph some of the Octants, Quadrants, Astrolabes and Sextants at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem MA. (click here for Flickr photo set then scroll about halfway down the page) These are truly marvelous and elegant bits of history.

Go and read Ms. Palmer's post. For one thing, her images are clearer than mine.


Planespheric Astrolabe, mid 17th century, attributed to Maquim Muhammed (active 1644), possibly Lahore, Pajistan, brass

Bobby Does Not Read



I had previously blogged about the work of Len Cowgill. He is a wonderful artist, and a very generous man.

I am very grateful to be able to say that his work is far more amazing in person than in photos.



Hmmmm.... I guess this makes me a collector as well as an artist.

The Internet as One Vast Cabinet of Wonders


Crickets

I had a very privileged childhood. By that, I don’t mean that my parents were affluent, had influence or power, or were in any social sense important. On the other hand, I had an undoubtedly rich time growing up. My parents insulated me from a lot of the news and confusion of the ‘60s. (Unlike others my age that I have known, I have no idea where I was when JFK, or even RFK were shot, but I can remember Studebakers as new cars.)

The real richness was my parents’ love of all things printed and bound.

The old farmhouse that I grew up in was filled with books. These increased in number every year, covering history, biography, the classics, fiction, art, myth, and literature (as well as some of the more obscure areas of spiritualism, my Mom’s contribution). My kids now get to read from the “First Book” series that I had as a kid, which are copyrighted in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. As a kid, I got to read stuff that had been written and printed in the middle of the 19th Century. With the collections of different stuff, the craft projects, tools, and other fascinating sundries, the house I grew up in was something of a wall to wall Cabinet of Curiosities.

Now my wife and I share the same bibliophilic passions as my parents. We have been given (or given stewardship over) a good number of the 6000 plus books that were in the farmhouse. I had been accumulating art books and magazines for some time before our marriage, and my wife has been doing her level best to catch up. We have well over 1200 books easy to hand, and at least 1500 more in storage.

And now there’s that Internet thingie. I love books, there are usually three or four going at the same time. There are a few art and history books that get taken out and referred to at least once a month. But when I need info, especially visual info, where better to go than to the web, the greatest Wunderkammer of all time. You can search for images in overwhelming numbers. Are you doing research on Chartres Cathedral? A simple Google image search finds 41,000 images. Search under just the one word, “cathedral” and Google comes back with approximately 5,600,000 images!

Or, if like me, you like to collect things from the natural world, a search for “Coyote Skull” brings back about 91,300 images. Searching for a skull to put into your very own cabinet of curiosity? Searching “Coyote Skull Retail” brings back over 66,000 sites, but you may want to further qualify your search terms. As of my typing this, there are nearly twenty different human x-ray images for sale on eBay (over a dozen of them in eBay Stores). In fact, on eBay, you can find things like crocodile teeth, meteorites, or the disarticulated skeleton of various small mammals. Building your own Wunderkammer is just a PayPal account away....

Then there are the photo sharing sites. My two favorite are Pbase and Flickr. You can search for something and get caught up forever chasing link after link, as one photographer or artist may have another fascinating person making a comment, or as part of the first one’s contact list. I’ve already blogged about Len Cowgill. There is another artist who deals with assemblage (amongst other things), GODLOVESDEATH. Then there are people like Steffe in Sweden, who photo-documented an old Oxel tree in a field at Välsta for a year and he still periodically posts new photos of this lonely hardwood. And speaking of finding everything on the web, I found a former professor of mine on Flickr, with whom I had lost touch for over twenty years, Karen Marlene Larson, with her absolutely gorgeous photos, interesting essays, and all her faithful commenters.


Marionette by Karen Marlene Larsen

Searching amongst the public Flickr photo pools for “Cabinet of Curiosities” yields five different groups (actually, the search pulls up eight, but the last three really aren’t on topic… ed.) with up to 7000 images between them (depending on how many images are in more than one of the groups.) My favorite by far is Wunderkammer, which I am a part of.


Extinct Birds

Curiosity Cabinet- Handmade Specimens is also amazing, especially the artifice and imagination involved.

There are also many pools for images from museums around the world, two of which are At the museum and The Global Museum with tens of thousands of images between them.


Sexual Dimorphism in Insects

In fact, even The Library of Congress and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have a presence on Flickr, though the latter’s photostream is rather thin. A list of museum photo groups on Flickr (probably not exhaustive) can be found here.

Flickr is just one small part of the internet. I haven’t even had a chance to touch upon the many talented people who aggregate the unusual, the beautiful and the rare, like David Thompson’s Ephemera posts, Bioephemera, Shorpy Vintage Photos, BibliOdessey, Lines and Colors, or the Art Renewal Center.

So, go and play inside the largest Wunderkammer ever!

…Not that I have to tell you.

Assemblage Cabinets, Joseph Cornell and Len Cowgill



Over the summer, I went to an amazing exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem Massachusetts. It was a beautifully set up and presented retrospective of the life and work of artist Joseph Cornell.



Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall) 1945-46


Assemblage art can look deceptive simple to a non-artist. It is amazingly easy to do poorly. Anyone can (and often have) thrown a bunch of found junk together and labeled it art.

To produce something truly evocative by assemblage is quite difficult. To be able to create a whole body of work, of quality and of lasting interest and impact is frankly a terrifying and daunting task. I have always loved and been fascinated by assemblage. It is a technique and concept central to many styles of Theatre Design, which is the discipline in which I originally trained. Assemblage is not an area I would try to build a body of work out of, for frankly, I don't have what it takes for that.

Joseph Cornell (December 24, 1903 – December 29, 1972) is the dean of assemblage artists. His amazing work draws you in, and makes you yearn to touch, to explore, to be a part of the tiny universes he created.



Untitled (Soap Bubble Set) 1936




Untitled (Medici Prince) 1952




Untitled (Aviary With Watch Faces) 1949


My favorite pieces of Cornell's work are from the "Soap Bubble Set" and the "Medici Slot Machines", though all of his work is fascinating. Boxes and cabinets filled with small drawers or bottles. The contents of the clear bottles are there to see, and mark you itch to remove them and investigate them at leisure. The drawers, which were often closed in the exhibit, are opaque and mysterious, making you wonder what is inside.

If you ever have a chance to see his work, I would highly recommend it. As an alternative there is the excellent book Shadowplay Eterniday with essays and commentary by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, Richard Vine, Robert Lehrman, and Walter Hopps. Though the writing is rather wordy, it is enjoyable and is beautifully put together, with many gorgeous full color plates, and a DVD Rom giving insight into Cornell's work and life.


A current artist who is keeping the art of assemblage not only alive, but vibrant, is Len Cowgill. He has an excellent Flickr site showcasing his work. His work shows all the best and great potential that assemblage has. Small closed objects that demand opening.



THAT DAMNED VOICE INSIDE MY HEAD


Works large and small that present their own contained universes worthy of lengthy examination, with enough substance to reward long contemplation.



Myths of Childhood (open)


I strongly urge you to go poke around in his site, his work is wonderful!

top illustration, "Joseph Cornell" by Len Cowgill, from his work in progress.

UPDATE: I was remiss in not noting that Len Cowgill's artwork is available through the Tamarack Gallery


THAT DAMNED VOICE INSIDE MY HEAD, Myths of Childhood, and portrait of Joseph Cornell are all copyright by Len Cowgill, all rights reserved to the artist, and used here by permission.

Cabinet of Curiosities

While taking a brief and well deserved rest, Walking The Berkshires reminds us of the upcoming Cabinet of Curiosities carnival.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is probably the largest "cabinet of curiosities" that I have been to. Entrance is free on Sunday mornings, and if you are in the Boston area, it is well worth your time, especially if you have children.










Previous posts on the HMNH here and here

I've blogged on this before

...but as Walking the Berkshires has a new carnival, called "Cabinet of Curiosities" I thought it time to post this again. Besides, my Cabinet has changed a bit since moving my studio.



One part of it is contained in a miss-matched set of barrister book shelves, with a drop front desk halfway up. My parents had bought these at a junk shop before I was born. (Of course, now they are antiques.)

On the upper shelf, you can see on the left a glass jar with the finger-bones of a coyote, which I found along with its skull and much of it's skeleton in the woods. The skull is to the right (on top of the remains of a pull toy that had belonged to my mom, and may be from the 20's or before). On the second shelf, on the right, is a small jar of knucklebones from the same unfortunate beast, and one of its thigh bones is on top of a cast metal level that has passed down through the family from my great uncle. The books on the second shelf are all antiques from the library of the house I grew up in.

There are even two Halloween skull candles from when I was a little kid (some forty and more years ago).

This is the type of stuff I try to surround myself with in my office/studio.

For more notes, and related pictures, go here.

UPDATE: My wife pointed out an omission on my part. On the top shelf, right hand corner, in back, is a small Bell jar containing my ponytail from a couple of years ago.

I have long hair, it's in a jar in my office!

Amazing!

PK, over at BibliOdyssey, is having a book published based on the excellent, and very eclectic art history blog he has run for the last two years.

(gotta get me a copy....)