Ptak Science Books

The Devil's (Gun) in the Detail (1489)

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

When I went to research this phrase, above, I was surprised to learn that it is about half as old as I. Playing on a slightly older  expression, "Le bon Dieu est dans le détail" (the good God is in the detail), commonly attributed to Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), and of course "God in in the detail/s", the "devil" part seems to be only from the mid/late 1970's--a surprise.

Nevertheless, we are still left with a surprise in this devilish detail from the incunabulum of St. Augustus, De civitate dei....(this printed in Basel by Johann Amerbach on 13 February 1489).  It shows it in its two panel woodcut the illustrious saint at top, working away at his desk; and at the bottom a battle between the cities of Babylon (founded by Abel) and Zion ("Syon", by Cain).  In this battle Zion is defended by devils, and the devils are armed. 

The angels of Babylon appear sympathetic but unresponsive to the devil-play, while an angel at top left seems to be blessing its devil enemy who seems to be scaring/screaming at her. In any event this is a lovely and complex image coming in the fourth decade of moveable type printing. 

Now:  regarding Zion and Augustine, I really don't know why the writer is putting devils in charge of the defense of "the city of the living god". The many-times-mentioned Zion of the Old Testament,  "...Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth" (Psalms 50:2), doesn't seem to be calling for devils.  But then I don't know this history of Jerusalem during the Byzantine period, 4th/5th century.  So far as wars and savages launched against Jerusalem, it was destroyed twice, attacked 52 times, captured/recaptured 44 times, and beseiged 23 times--perhaps this representation wasn't too terribly much out of the ordinary. 

Henry Darger and Campbell Soups Kids Playtime Schoolroom, 1955

JF Ptak Science Books  Continuing Post 1081 from 2010

Somewhere in the past I got the idea that the defining icon and supremely outsider-y artist, Henry Darger¹, lived  his life twice.  One life he spent with the other people in his job as a quiet janitor; the other life he spent re-enacting his day in  miniature, a diorama of his workplace and his own apartment, reviewing his conversations real and supposed, revisiting shared-or-not visual clues, altering the day as it progressed with the possibilities of the actions-not-taken.

Maybe it is just this unshakable self-created image that colors the association of the Campbell Kids' Miniature Play School Room that makes it  seem so dark and dangerous, especially since we now what is going to happen to the little girls in Darger's red-tinged lexi-necessary art world. Here's a molecular-level example of Darger's fantastic output, featuring his Vivian Girls:

(The picture at the lef is Miss Elsie Paroubek, a  5-year-old girl murdered in Chicago in 1911 and who may have been the sympathetic  impetus for Darger's life work.)

And this is really just a child's toy--a delightful one, too, filled with details of the school day:  movable desks, toy books, bouncey pony tails, and a teacher speaking at the back of the heads of the kids.  (He's also carrying a stick by the way; maybe its just a pointer.)

I suspect that the disturbed nature of this toy lives just in my head with its created Darger visions or repetitive living. Or maybe not--it does looked inescapably creepy, complete with a child in dunce's hat.

Notes:

1. Henry Darger, 1892-1973, living form the Chicago World's Fair to Watergate,  posthumously became perhaps the recognized standard model for outsider art, his magnum opus a 15,000 page and hyper-illustrated  work The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion being the base of the interest.  It has its own magnificence to be sure, and I can instantly recognize the enormous effort and creativity, but I always come back to the redded-up girl's sexual organ additions, which are naturally upsetting, making the whole of the affair feel like a  monstrous mental health porn. And for as long as I’ve known about him, and which is also wholly unsupported by fact or reasonable supposition, I pictured Darger returning to his rooms at night after a day of cleaning, mopping, scrubbing, taking abuse for spills not cleaned, and then reliving the entire day at night in miniature.  In my own story, Darger created small figurines and puppets through which he re-enacted his day, complete with sets of the rooms in which he worked.  Perhaps he lost himself in these moments, finding a vindication in miniature stages in his second-story walk-up that he couldn’t in his daily life, allowing his creative, 20-million-word nighttime imagination to open up. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I made this imaginary life up.

Walker Evans' Indelible Images of The Great Depression

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1892

 

 The photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975) was an ultra-light and lyrical traveler, who didn't leave a footprint in the country he moved through, though the impact of his work--the result of the travel--fastened a famously indelible image on American history--indelible, and fast, being recognized for his work with a commanding exhibition at the new Museum of Modern Art in 1938.  

Evans possessed a crystaline lens which yielded both spectacular detail and subtle quietnesses. He could turn a tenement farmer's rough-hewn wooden kitchen drawer filled with roustabout cutlery into a photographic masterpiece, and then photograph the face of that farmer or that farmer's family and have it stand as an absolute testimonal to the expereince of the Great Depression in the American life. Evans made some of the core memories of that visual experience. He (along with some of the greatest photographers America has produced) worked for the government for a time during the Depression, answering to Roy Stryker at the Resettlement Administration and the Farm Security Administration, with the mission of taking photographs of America--which he did, establishing himself as one of the early and preeminent masters of documentary photography. 

I was thinking of him earlier today, adn thought that I'm make a selection Walker's photographs from the magnificent collection of Farm Security Administration images at the Library of Congress. (Also, see the Museum of Modern Art for a nice appraisal, here).

Shoeshine stand detail, Southeastern U.S.  1936

 

A Charming "First" Traveller's Guide to Rome in Full Text, 1600

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

I was very happy to find a full-text and nicely-navigable copy of this classic work online. Giorlamo Francini's Le
Cose maravigliose dell'alma citta di Roma, anfiteatro del mondo : con  le chiese, et antichita rapresentate in disegno / da Girolamo Francino ; con l'aggiunta del dottor Prospero Parisio (In Roma : Ad instanza di Gio. Antonio Franzini, & herede di Girolamo Franzini) was printed in 1600 and is considered an iconic work on travel writing, as well as one of the first sophisticated/modern "guide books" to the city of Rome. It was pocket-sized, and contained all manner of information about buildings and artists--useful info, if you had never been to the city before. It was also a distinct difference from books intended to the pilgrim; this book was definitely looking for a popular, general readership, looking to benefit in their stay in Rome by having a literary, artistic, and architectural key to the city. 

The illustrations are charming and lovely--even though small (less than two inches square),  they provide just enough detail for you to unmistakeably identify the principle structures.   The full text (with illustrations) is located here.

Black Sky and Morning Arrows

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

I've just written a short post on the beautiful key to iconography by Cesare Ripa, Iconologia overa descrittione d'imagini delle virtu, viti, sffetti, passioni humane, corpi celesti, Mondo e sue parti..., which was published in Padua in 1611.  The version I used was an 18th-century English translation with new illustrations--now though the translation was very appreciated, the images were not so.  As I pointed out, they do serve the purpose of illustrating the specifics in iconography, the images were not that pleasing.  I wanted to include here an example from the original, and in particular the imagery of "Dawn".

It is a gorgeous thing, a very striking, very strong woodcut showing the messenger of the new day coming, attacking the night with arrows of dawn. 

I enjoy he earlier, more robust images for this iconology, even though there are many variants to choose from--there were more than 40 editions of this work since its first non-illustrated edition in 1593--but given it all I much prefer the early 17th century flavor. 

The Life of Enormous Baroque Curves in Womens' Fashions

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

Theodore Andrea Cook wrote a lovely book called The Curves of Life, published by the admirable firm of Constable and Company in London in 1914, a book which is filled with all manner of marvels of insight in finding curves in natural and created situation. (I wrote a little about the book in an earlier post about stairs, here.) The beauty of spirals found in fero-concrete, geometries of Minoan clay seals, the beauty of the human laminae of cochlea of interval, the colon of the Dogfish, Maori war canoes, and so on, were all subject matter ripe for the discriminant picking of Mr. Cook as he explored the depths of curves.

One thing that perhaps escaped his grasp--at least in this book--was the curve in the costume of Baroque women oif semi-high (or at least non-ordinary) standing. As I've seen a number of times in some illustrated books, the trend towards the curvilinear is absoutely outstanding. The example that I came across tonight is an excellent example. Of course there was no great need to supply interesting bits of social life in these engravings of famous architectural achievenents outside of supplying a human scale to the structures, but as if often the case the artist (or engraver) went a little further than was really demanded by the artistic "needs" of the image and provided some interesting and at times very unexpected glimpes into somewhat-common street life

This image comes from Regles des cinq ordres d'architecture de Jacques Barozzio de Vignolle, which was originally written by Vignolla (1507-1573) in 1560. and published in 1680 or so.  The engraving of our interest here is "Elevation du Portail de la Cathedrale de St. Paul de Londres", and the main part of that is the 1% in the bottom quarter, showing a very roundish dress. 

An outstanding curve of high fashion, not seen in the Cook book.

This also reminds me a little of bombing fashinistas in an earlier post I wrote (here), showing parachuting (though they look a little like bombs) on this 1904 image. 

 

 

A Half-Alphabet of Color by Isaac Newton, and What the Colors "Naked" and "Dead" Are (1659)

JF Science Books   Post 1880 

All material quoted below is from the magnificent The Newton Project website, which contains transcriptions of Newton's writing in science, alchemy and religion, and also contains much correspondence. 

There isn't quite a complete alphabet here, but I think it is close enough, and it does organize (for my mind) some early thinking on color-making by Isaac Newton (1642-1727) when he as 17 years old.  There's much of interest on the construction of color here, not the least of which is some prosaic methods for coloring dead people and a general color for clouds.  Things would get more involved, of course, as Sir Isaac would later write perhaps the most important books ever written on optics (in 1704).

After the half-alphabet there is an installment of Newton's mechanisms of art, containing instructions on the instruments of drawing, and how to do emblem work, prepare bases, how to shadow, how to enlarge and copy work, how to draw a landscape, and more.

But first, here's his list of how to make color.

How to prepare your colours
Such colours as have need of grinding you must grind them with faire water, then put them on a smoth chalk stone, & let them dry. then grind them againe with Gum water & reserve them in muscle shels for your use.

B is for Blood

A blood red colour.
Sinaper, lake, & vermillion make a good red.

Another
Take blew Inde & steepe it in water & put to it a little Verditer.

Another
Take some of the clearest blood of a sheepe & put it into a bladder & with a needle prick holes in thebottom of it then  <6r>  hang it up to dry in the sunne; & disolve it {i}n allum water according as you have need.

Charecole black & seacole black
Grind charcole very small with water, let it dry then grind it with oyle. thus make seacole black.

Dorothea Lange, Imperial Valley, California, 1937. FSA Photographs

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1878

 

Dorothea Lange, a standard portrait photographer-turned-superb-documentarian, had a six-year-run of photographic success and inspiration and energy as few people have ever experienced in the history of photography From her 1936 Migrant Mother, which is perhaps the great photograph of the American Great Depression (which I wrote about in The Best Dollar the U.S. Government Ever Spent) to the wicked sharpness of her documenting the terrible business of relocating Japanese American citizens to concentration camps in 1942. Lange traveled the country recording the state of Americans in what may have been one of the great journeys of th 1930's. 

The period in which this was all happening was one of the most chaotic in modern history--at least in the West.  The Depression was full-bore-on, of course; as Germany strained its way into confrontation with the rest of the world, taking its calculated and inexorable steps towards world hemispheric chaos. The other images of these six years are almost a dada-kaleidoscopic  assembly of the believable and the not believable:  Sudetendland, Kristallnacht, Neville Chamerbalin, Austria, Poland, Nanking, Canton, War of the Worlds, Munich Agreement, WWII in Europe, Spanish Revolution, lynching, Jewish explusion, concentration camps, Pearl Harbor. In the United States, there was a certain right-wing element that ran deep into the national consciousness, the worst embodied in Father Coughlin's filthy radio diatribes on keeping America out of war wrapped in Jew-hating monologues, the ridiculous semi-levitating philosopher-fake and home-town-boy-gone-bad Charles Pelley and his Silver Shirts being part of his support; Henry Ford and his assault on Judaism and insistence on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Charles Lindbergh and America First, and so on., and for a divisive time until the crystalizing of Pearl Harbor.

The literature of this time, of this 1936-1942 period, expressing the soul of the country seems pretty full, with these few works standing as good examples of the work of the period:   John Steinbeck's beginning in "the Harvest Gypsies"/Their Blood is Strong, The Grapes of Wrath,  Faulkner's Absolom! Absolom! (1936), Pare Lorentz The Plow that Broke the Plains, Carey McWIlliams Factories in the Field (1939), Taylor/Lange's An American Exodus (1939), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), the New Masses,   Abel Meeropol’s anti-lynching poem "Strange Fruit", and so on, deeply on.

But perhaps in all of it, perhaps nothing else quite expresses the emotion of the period than Lange's Migrant Mother.  It seems to have everything, in one photograph.  In the vast result of Lange's work during this period it is interesting to have a look at her in Imperial Valley, California, in 1937--it seems less-often mentioned, though the work is very strong.  So I decided to post a few of the images with a link to the rest of the collection (below).

Lange worte:

"I was forced to switch from Nipomo to the Imperial Valley because of the conditions there. They have always been notoriously bad as you know and what goes on in the Imperial is beyond belief. The Imperial Valley has a social structure all its own and partly because of its isolation in the state those in control get away with it. But this year's freeze practically wiped out the crop and what it didn't kill is delayed--in the meanwhile, because of the warm, no rain climate and possibilities for work the region is swamped with homeless moving families. The relief association offices are open day and night 24 hours. The people continue to pour in and there is no way to stop them and no work when they get there."

Former tenant farmers on relief. LC-USF34T01

Other samples below but a fuller listing of images is available here.

Imperial Valley, California, February and March 1937
Resettlement Administration

Notes:

1. Lange was still very new to the FSA project when she made this photograph in the spring of 1936.  On the tail end of a month-long road trip she was nearing the end of her day when she spotted a hand-lettered sign "Pea-Pickers Camp" by the side of the road.  Lange briefly considered stopping but went ahead, questioning her judgment continuously for the next 20 miles, when she finally turned around to find the turn-off for the camp.  She drove down the dirt road and found a ramshackle assembly of tents, one of which contained "an exhausted mother sitting forlornly with her children".  Lange spent only 10 minutes with the woman, making five exposures.  She learned that "the crops had frozen, and the woman and children were living on vegetables scavenged from the fields, and the few birds that the children managed to catch.  The mother could not leave; she had sold the tires from her car".

The images were made using a Graflex camera. The original negatives are 4x5" film.

German Weimar-era Advert Artwork, 1923

 

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1857

The following ads appear in just three weekly issues of the LIFE-magazine-like Illustrirte Zeitung (Leipzig).  Generally the ads are crowded onto the 15-inch-tall pages--sometimes as many as 15 to a page.  Their design is remarkable, and artful, and effective.  Plus, they're chock-a-block full of smaller design elements.  For example, this one is one of my favorites for this period:

I actually used it for the "Open" sign for my store back in Georgetown so many years ago oh my brothers.  That was before I discovered that it has a major problematic problem--it was designed by one of the greatest German designers of the time, Ludwig Hollwein, who also happened to be "a" (and then "the") principle designer for propaganda/posters for the National Socialists, and that from the early period (1933) right on through the end of the war. 

There was more to worry about than simply selling Germany's oldest champagne, but of course many were immune to worry.  When this ad ran for Kessler champagne, hyperinflation had struck very deeply into thew Weimar Republic, with the U.S. dollar trading at 1:27,000 Marks. Even in January 1919 inflation wasn't bad, with the dollar at 1:9 Marks (up from 1:5 in January 1918), but the simple tale of a long story is that the Weimar Republic kept printing money, and things got completely out of control, with the dollar trading in December of 1923 at 1:1.2 trillion Marks, which was a fertile seeding bed for National Socialism. 

This one is actually quite large, about a half-page, trying to sell the idea of the Reichenberger Zeitung to both the privileged and the working classes (the newspaper, which began in 1860, would not survive the Nazis, going belly-up in 1935):

Well, I don't mean for this post to be very writer-y; I just wanted to post some of the images from these issues.  There's really a lot to choose from, but these twenty or so will have to do for now: 

This one is about an inch tall in the magazine:

Another tiny ad, this for a mechanical calculator:

Magritte-Like Disorienting Geometry in Found-Art Urban Design, 1925

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

These images "Traffic on Three Levels; Solving Street Congestion" from the Illustrated London News (15 August 1925) struck me as something much more--or much less?--than their appeal to urban design.  I think that it is very difficult to look at these images and not see them from the top, down. Even by the time you get to the fourth image at bottom right, the design still pulls attracts your eye to the top of the image and away from the traffic scene below.

They seem to have that sense of abstract art, achieving a type of geometry and disorientation, both at the same time, pulling you into the work and de-arranging it at teh same time.  And that to me makes it highly artful, if unintentional.  They are sort of hallucinating--I know that is a bit of a stretch--but their confusion of the expected with this sort of misty, unknown atmosphere, has a sense of Rene Magritte to them had he worked his magic in geometrical blocks. 

The Beautiful Inscrutable: Khunrath's Fabulous Alchemical Exploratorium, ca. 1600

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1846   Part of the Series on the Artistic Display of Information

I followed a link to the lovely website Res Obscura and found this great image from the work of Heinrich Khunrath, Ampitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (Hamburg, 1595, or in English  "The Amphitheater of Eternal Knowledge").  Khunrath (1560-1605) packed about as much perplexing, confusing, inscrutable and beautiful displays of not-verifiable alternative information into his very full 45 years as just about anyone. He was a  Paracelsian, John Dee-ophile, hermeticist/alchemist seeker of "eternal wisdom" via medico-magical-interpretative Christianity, a deeply physico-chemical-spiritual experimentorium, and the meaning of his work (outside of where it fits int he history of science) really pretty much escapes me--except that the illustrations are beautiful. Res Obscura has a lot to say about the interpretation of the images, as do the other links below. I have really nothing to add, as I really dont' know enough to say what is being represented in these very complex displays. 

One thing that does seem obvious to me: the meanings and interpretation of this work is extremely fluid.

[Image is greatly clickable]

[Source: http://resobscura.blogspot.com/]

Transcription of the text surrounding the Hermaphodite (that someone refers to as the Hermaphrospehere, is available here from the Special Collections Department at the University of Wisconsin.

And other very complex symbolist allegorical somethings:
..

which is an English version of the Latin of Amhitheatrum Sapientae Aeternae (from 1606) and available here along with other in-English goodness.

A Prehistoric Rayograph--a Proto-Example of Man Ray from 1810

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1843

“I have never painted a recent picture." Man Ray, 1966

“Unconcerned but Not Indifferent”—1976, Man Ray’s epitaph.

Emmanuel Radnitzky (1890 –1976) removed the “Emm_uel”  and the “__dnitzk” from his names to become Man Ray, a South Philly-born, Brooklyn- and Manhattan-bred Parisian ex-Pat artist became (by the early 1920’s) perhaps the most influential of the Dadaist/modernist photographers. No offense to his given name, but “Man Ray” is superior.

 

And Man Ray was far more than a photographer, as he worked across many different art forms, not the least of which was motion pictures.  But what comes to my mind first with his name is his self-titled “rayograph”, a photographic process which was actually a photogram, which was the direct exposure of an object placed upon a photosensitive paper.  This is also the earliest form of photography, something employed by Fox Talbot who called it “photogenic drawing”) as early as 1834.  (I wrote a little bit about this process in a post "Things That Almost Were But Weren't".) But Man Ray’s rayographs stand clear and distinct to me, different even from his contemporaries’ works (including Susan Derges, Max Ernst, Raoul Hausmann, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Alexander Rodchenko).  

 Of course my antiquarian pretender (the image on the above right) to the rayograph isn’t one—it just had the look and feel of one, contained that shock of recognition that I had seen it before, and the palce where I would’ve seen it was with Man Ray.  All I did with this engraving—an image of clockworks published in Abraham Rhee’s Encyclopedia of 1810--was to solarize it.  So it isn’t even a rayograph, but just looks like one, though Man Ray did work quite a bit with the solarized image.  I just like it. 

This is the engraving in its "before" (and superior) state:

 

Bits Towards an Alphabet of the Language of Flowers--Some Definitions of Flower Symbols

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

I've put together a quick-and-dirty list of some interpretations of what the appearance of flowers may "mean"--say in the hands of the subject of a painting, or as a gift, or a reference in a poem or piece of literature.  This in some ways reminds me of an earlier post on this blog, "An Unkindness of Ravens and a Murder of Crows", here.

Here's a short list for further reading on the language of flowers:

• Connolly, Shane. The Secret Language of Flowers, New York: Rizzoli International, 2004.

• Edgarton, Miss S. C. The Flower Vase: Containing The Language of Flowers and Their Poetic Sentiments, Boston: Samual M. Dickinson, 1843
• Greenaway, Kate. Language of Flowers, London: George Routledge and Sons, 1864.
• Hale, Sarah. Flora's Interpreter, and Fortuna Flora, Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey and Company, 1850.
• Latour, Charlotte de.  Le langage des fleurs, 1830.
• Lehner, Ernst. Folklore and symbolism of flowers, plants and trees, New York: Tudor Publishing Co. 1960.
• Miller, Thomas. The Romance of Nature; or the Poetical Language of Flowers, New York: J.C. Riker, 1860
• Powell, Claire. The Meaning of Flowers, Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications, 1979.
• Shoberl, Frderic. The Language of Flowers: With Illustrative Poetry; to which is Now First Added, the Calendar of Flowers  1830
• Phillips, Henry. Floral Emblems, 1825.
• Waterman, Catherine H. Flora's lexicon: an interpretation of the language and sentiment of flowers : with an outline of botany, and a poetical introduction. 1855
• Wirt, E.W. Flora's Dictionary, Baltimore, 1855.

and an overall history

• Beverly Smeaton, The Language of Flowers--a very interesting book where Smeaton compares the various meanings for flowers among the five early and integral 19th century flower-symbolism folks, beginning on pp 167.  A link to a free read is here.

Some samples of the very rich descriptions of the meaning of flowers:

Almond, flowering - Concealed love.
Althea, Frutex - I am deeply in love.
Amaranth - Immortality, or piety.
Anemone - Fading hope.
Arbor-Vitae - Unchanging friendship.
Auricula, Scarlet - Pride. You are proud.

36 Great Anatomies, 1390-1899: Great Image Base from the NLM

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1835

This table is pulled directly from the National Library of Medicine pages for anatomies on the web--all I did was place the records in a table so that they could be listed chronologically.  The references in the first left-hand column are clickable and will take you directly to the images of the work at the NLM site.  This is just a sampling of anatomies, though it may prove to be highly useful for folks in the science and the arts.  Enjoy. 

[Image: Hans Gersdorff, Feldtbůch der Wundartzney : newlich getruckt und gebessert, published in 1528.]

Chronological list.

A Short Note on Anonymous Art in the Renaissance

JF Ptak Science Books    Quick Post  [Part of the series on Blank, Empty and Missing Things]

There was an anonymous painter,

in an anonymous room,

painting an anonymous woman,

in an anonymous gloom...--By Anonymous

I wondered about when it was that anonymous portraits appeared.  Not just depictions of people in large battle scenes, or some unidentified spectator of some miraculous something, or wardens of the unknown in some sort of religious icon,  but single subjects seated for a singular purpose of having their likeness rendered.  And at the end of that process, the sitter would be anonymous--not their names-lost-to-history-anonymous after having the title of the painting lost to time, but always-and-forever anonymous.  It seemed to me a luxury for a painter to paint for the sake of painting, that they would paint perhaps for pleasure or for practice, as the practice of purchasing anonymous portraits was not one of high popularity.

 Anonymous portrait of an anonymous woman, ca. 1475