Ars et Natura

Selwyn Image (1849-1930) graphic art: Left: The Tragic Mary (1890); Center: The Century Guild Hobby Horse (1884); Right: Representative Painters of the Nineteenth Century (1899); The sphere of art is in the region of the imagination, and the office of the imagination is to render us sensitive to the most exquisite pleasures of which our nature is capable.  ~ Selwyn Image (1884) Notes:                     The Century Guild was established by the architect and designer Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851 – 1942), and his assistant, Herbert Percy Horne (1864 – 1916), in close collaboration with designer Selwyn Image (1849 – 1930). They aspired to elevate crafts to the status of art, integrate both art and crafts in domestic interiors, and democratize good design. Hobby Horse was their publication. ( William Morris Gallery )

Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (1861–1875), Morris & Co. (1875–1940) Left: Golden Lily  (1899, J.H. Dearles) on wallpaper in indigo Right: Sunflower (1879, William Morris) on velvet in saffron/vellum                     You have heard, I think, a few of you, of two flowers connected with the æsthetic movement in England, and said (I assure you, erroneously) to be the food of some æsthetic young men.  Well, let me tell you that the reason we love the lily and the sunflower, in spite of what Mr. Gilbert may tell you, is not for any vegetable fashion at all.  It is because these two lovely flowers are in England the two most perfect models of design, the most naturally adapted for decorative art—the gaudy leonine beauty of the one and the precious loveliness of the other giving to the artist the most entire and perfect joy.  And so with you: let there be no flower in your meadows that does not wr...

Nocturne: Black and Gold — The Falling Rocket (James McNeill Whistler, 1875) Nocturne: Black and Gold — The Fire Wheel (James McNeill Whistler, 1875)                     Scarcely so much can be said for any other pictures of the modern schools: their eccentricities are almost always in some degree forced; and their imperfections gratuitously, if not impertinently, indulged. For Mr. Whistler’s own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay [founder of Grosvenor Gallery] ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face. John Ruskin “Letter LXXIX, June, 1877” from  Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of...

Albert Moore (1841-1893); Left: Azaleas (1868);  Right (top to bottom): Dreamers (1882), Apples (1875), A Musician (1867)  On the paintings of Albert Moore:                     His painting is to artists what the verse of Théophile Gautier is to poets; the faultless and secure expression of an exclusive worship of things formally beautiful. That contents them; they leave to others the labours and the joys of thought or passion. The outlines of their work are pure, decisive, distinct; its colour is of the full sunlight. This picture of  “ Azaleas ”  is as good a type as need be of their manner of work. A woman delicately draped, but showing well the gentle mould of her fine limbs through the thin soft raiment; pale small leaves and bright white blossoms about her and above, a few rose-red petals fallen on the pale marble and faint—coloured woven mat before her feet; a strange and splendid vessel, inlaid with ...

Roman Empire at its greatest extent (under Trajan) The Empire, as it was finally shaped by Augustus, included Spain, Gaul, Italy, and the Balkans, the north coast of Africa, Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor. The Mediterranean was a Roman lake. Every people who had contributed to the sum of Western civilization was now subjected to Rome. H.A.L. Fisher A History of Europe  (p. 85) Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1935

Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe's Dreamland (1902, Francis Simpson Coburn) Edgar Allan Poe Pompas del mármol, negra anatomía que ultrajan los gusanos sepulcrales, del triunfo de la muerte los glaciales símbolos congregó. No los temía. Temía la otra sombra, la amorosa, las comunes venturas de la gente; no lo cegó el metal resplandeciente ni el mármol sepulcral sino la rosa. Como del otro lado del espejo se entregó solitario a su complejo destino de inventor de pesadillas. Quizá, del otro lado de la muerte, siga erigiendo solitario y fuerte espléndidas y atroces maravillas. — Jorge Luis Borges ☙❧  ☙❧  ☙❧  ☙❧  ☙❧  ☙❧  ☙❧  ☙❧ Translation: Splendor of marble, black anatomy  horrified by graveyard maggots— the triumph of death he congealed with glacial symbols—he feared not, but feared of other shades, of love,  of other people's common lot. He was not deceived by gilded metal,  nor the tomb’s marble, but the rose. As if from the other side o...

Left: Petrarch (1304-74) Right: Vitruvian Man (1490, Leonardo da Vinci)                          In discussing the transition from classical antiquity to the Middles Ages, we were able to point to a great crisis — the rise of Islam — marking the separation be tween the two eras. No comparable event sets off the Middle Ages from the Renaissance. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to be sure, witnessed far-reaching developments: the fall of Constantinople and the Turkish conquest of southeastern Europe; the journeys of exploration that led to the founding of overseas empires in the New World, in Africa and Asia, with the subsequent rivalry of Spain and England as the foremost colonial powers; the deep spiritual crisis of Reformation and Counter Reformation. But none of these events, however vast their effects, can be said to have produced the new era... Perhaps the only essential point on which most experts ag...

Kingston, Canada                          Christmas 2005: Montreal, Québec City, Mont Tremblant, Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto… Sightseeing has become a wearisome parade of old churches, historic monuments, and kitschy souvenir shops. Even Niagara Falls seemed lackluster, as much from the grey winter light as from the hotel/casino perched right on its banks. It is Nature drained of the Kantian sublime, completely incorporated within the city, and turned into an urban spectacle like some Las Vegas attraction. Niagara Falls                         We live  in an immigrant ghetto of Montreal, a hub where Filipinos come to roost after caring for the young and elderly of posh French and Jewish neighborhoods. It’s quite disorienting to pick up Tagalog and Bisaya, or even more obscure Philippine dialects, dislocated from their sun-drenched origins. T...

Hôtel Biron (undated, after 1908), now Musée Rodin                         T he old Beaux Arts train station, now Musée d’Orsay; the broad gardens of the Tuilleries and the bridges of the Seine; and, of course, the Eiffel Tower viewed from Trocadéro, where dusk reduces it to pure geometric lines before it’s lit up. The shock of Paris seen for the first time. The L’Orangerie near the Tuilleries now shelters the Nymphèas of Monet — overwhelming in their hugeness, you could almost tilt and dip into the water.                          Around the Hôtel Biron, the well-kept gardens are littered with Rodin’s seemingly pulsating bronzes. This is where Rilke discovered his new voice. In response to Rodin’s aesthetic of “living surfaces,” he began to write what became his “thing-poems,” and, like one who gazes at the archaic torso of Apollo , ...

Left: Coronation of Roger II, robed in Byzantine splendor Right: Monreale Cathedral                          So under the full glow of papal benediction these freebooters of the North laid the foundations of a civilized state in Mediterranean waters. With Norman flexibility the descendants of Tancred organized government under new and difficult conditions and on original lines. In the kingdom of Roger II, who united the Norman territories on either side of the Straits of Messina, Europe witnessed a polity half Oriental, half Western, providing a shelter for Greek, Latin, Moor, and Jew, and better organized, seeing that it preserved the tradition of its Greek and Saracen past, than any other European government of that age. Among the orange groves of Palermo, Roger, the descendant of the Vikings, sat upon his throne, robed in the dalmatic of the apostolic legate and the imperial costume of Byzantium, his ministers...

The Course of Empire: Desolation (1833-36, Thomas Cole) Wealth, vice, corruption––barbarism at last. ~ Lord Byron Fall of the Western Roman Empire, A. D. 476                           From this moment, the germanization of the West steadily proceeded. Ostrogoths poured into the Balkan peninsula, creating by their restless and turbulent activities a problem similar to that which had taxed the resources of the Eastern Empire a century before. In Italy a succession of phantom and ephemeral emperors reached its close with a pathetic figure, named by the supreme irony of providence, Romulus Augustus, who was deposed by Odovacar, the East German master of the troops (476). Military revolutions were no novelty in the annals of the Roman Empire, and the act of Odovacar had many precedents… It is true that he deposed Romulus, but the lad was a usurper, unrecognized in Constantinople, and the deed condoned by the best...

Illustrations by J. C. Leyendecker (1874-1951) Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.  ~ Thorstein Veblen

Sears-Roebuck mail-order catalog You could understand the entirety of American life from the Sears-Roebuck catalog.      ~ Yasuhiko Kobayashi                          The Heibon Planning Center [1] team all grew up devouring discarded American mail-order catalogs—a medium they believed was the ultimate representation of life in the U.S. As Kobayashi [2] explains it, “You could understand the entirety of American life from the Sears-Roebuck catalog.” They imagined American families snuggled around the fireplace, flipping through the pages and dreaming of a better life. Since Japan lacked a culture of mail order, making such a catalog felt magical and foreign—like Americans producing a book of ukiyo-e woodblock prints...                          Made in U.S.A. [3] arrived in bookstores in June 1975 with its cover displaying ...

Left: Brooks Brothers Ivy League school blazer and repp tie Right: Cary Grant in trousers with the “Hollywood” waistband                          Also called “Brooks Brothers model,” this is one of America’s leading styles. Sometimes called “university model” since so many of the devotees are college students or college graduates. Straight hanging. Shoulders are narrow and extremely natural, with either no pads or very little padding. Three or four buttons on the jacket; there are no two-button versions. Pants are slim and slightly tapered, commonly with no pleats. Cutting-edge, but the aim is intensely conservative—the very opposite of the equally popular “Hollywood model.” These two models form the two extreme poles of current American fashion. In America, the Ivy League model is urban, often described as “the clothes worn on Madison Avenue.” from the “Dictionary of Men's Fashion Terms” in Otoko no Fukushoku qu...

The Miyuki-zoku, a 1960s Japanese youth movement that revolved around Ivy Style clothes (Source: www.putthison.com )                          In the United States, Ivy League style was steeped in tradition, class privilege, and subtle social distinctions. No one read manuals on the style—they just imitated their fathers, brothers, and classmates. In Japan, VAN [1] needed to break down Ivy into a distinct protocol so that a new convert could take up the style without having ever seen an actual American. The resulting pedantry, however, risked turning Ivy’s youthful energy into sheer tedium. Back in the U.S., the best part of collegiate fashion was its unconscious cool . Men’s Club often gave the same styles the fun of filing taxes.                          Yet Men’s Club readers ate it up, and their demand for instruction only resulted in...

The Temptation of St. Anthony (1480-90, Engraving, Martin Schongauer)                          Our earliest printed books in the modern sense were produced in the Rhineland soon after 1450 (we are not certain whether Gutenberg deserves the priority long claimed for him). The new technique quickly spread all over Europe and developed into an industry that had a profound effect on Western civilization, ushering in the era of general literacy. Printed pictures [e.g., woodcuts and engravings], however, had hardly less importance, for without them, the printed book could not have replaced the work of the medieval scribe and illuminator so quickly and completely. The pictorial and the literary aspects of printing were, indeed, closely linked from the start…                          Martin Schongauer might be called the Rogier van der Weyden of e...

Altarpieces of Michael Pacher Left: Coronation of the Virgin Mary (1471-81, St. Wolfgang Altarpiece) Right: St. Augustine and St. Gregory (1483-84, Altarpiece of the Four Latin Fathers)                          The most characteristic works of the “Late Gothic” carver are wooden altar shrines, often large in size and incredibly intricate in detail. Such shrines were especially popular in the Germanic countries. One of the richest examples is the Coronation of the Virgin by the Tyrolean sculptor and painter Michael Pacher, in St. Wolfgang, Austria. Its lavishly gilt and colored forms make a dazzling spectacle as they emerge from the shadowy depth of the shrine under spiky flamboyant canopies; we enjoy it—but in pictorial rather than plastic terms. We have no experience of volume, either positive or negative; the figures and setting seem to melt into a single pattern of agitated, twisting lines that permit...

The Merode Altarpiece (1425-28, The Master of Flémalle, or Robert Campin?)                          If we compare the Merode Annunciation with those of earlier panel paintings, we see vividly that, all other differences aside, its distinctive tonality makes the Master of Flémalle's picture stand out among the rest. The jewel-like brightness of the older works, their patterns of brilliant hues and lavish use of gold, have given way to a color scheme far less decorative but much more flexible and differentiated. The subdued tints—muted greens, bluish or brownish grays—show a new subtlety, and the scale of intermediate shades is smoother and has a wider range. All these effects are essential to the realistic style of the Master of Flémalle; they were made possible by the use of oil , the medium he was among the first to exploit.                      ...

Caricature of Honoré de Balzac, Frédérick Lemaître and Théophile Gautier (1840, Watercolor, J. J. Grandville) To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live....       ~ Honoré de Balzac  

The Lamentation (1305-06, Giotto, Fresco, Arena Chapel, Padua) Giotto restored to light this art which has been buried for many centuries...      ~ Boccaccio (Decameron)                          A single glance at Giotto's Lamentation will convince us that we are faced with a truly revolutionary development... a work of such intense dramatic power...                          The tragic mood of The Lamentation is brought home to us by the formal rhythm of the design as much as by the gestures and expressions of the participants. The very low center of gravity and the hunched, bending figures communicate the somber quality of the scene and arouse our compassion even before we have grasped the specific meaning of the event depicted. With extraordinary boldness, Giotto sets off the frozen grief of the human mourners agains...

Christ Entering Jerusalem , a comparison (Left: 1308-11, Duccio, back of the Maestà Altar , Cathedral Museum, Sienna; Right: 1305-06, Giotto, Fresco, Arena Chapel, Padua)                          The two versions [of Christ Entering Jerusalem ] have many elements in common, since they both ultimately derive from the same Byzantine source; but where Duccio has enriched the traditional scheme, spatially as well as in narrative detail, Giotto subjects it to a radical simplification. The action proceeds parallel to the picture plane; landscape, architecture, and figures have been reduced to the essential minimum... Yet Giotto's work has far the more powerful impact of the two; it makes us feel so close to the event that we have a sense of being participants rather than distant observers. How does the artist achieve this extraordinary effect? He does so, first of all, by having the entire scene take place in the foreg...

Parisian City Strollers and Covered Passages                          Two well-dressed young fellows—slim of body and with arms as round as those of a pavier's daughter, with boots of the very latest fashion—met one day on the boulevard, at the end of the Passage des Panoramas.                          “Why, it's you!”                          “Yes, my friend. Don't I take after myself?”                          And they made merry together, more or less humorously, their wit on a level with the witticism which opened the conversation.                          When they had looked one another over with the care and cur...

The Embarkation for Cythera (1717, Jean-Antoine Watteau) Un Voyage à Cythère Mon coeur, comme un oiseau, voltigeait tout joyeux Et planait librement à l'entour des cordages; Le navire roulait sous un ciel sans nuages; Comme un ange enivré d'un soleil radieux. Quelle est cette île triste et noire?—C'est Cythère, Nous dit-on, un pays fameux dans les chansons Eldorado banal de tous les vieux garçons. Regardez, après tout, c'est une pauvre terre. —Île des doux secrets et des fêtes du coeur! De l'antique Vénus le superbe fantôme Au-dessus de tes mers plane comme un arôme Et charge les esprits d'amour et de langueur. Belle île aux myrtes verts, pleine de fleurs écloses, Vénérée à jamais par toute nation, Où les soupirs des coeurs en adoration Roulent comme l'encens sur un jardin de roses Ou le roucoulement éternel d'un ramier! —Cythère n'était plus qu'un terrain des plus maigres, Un désert rocailleux troublé par des cris aigres. J'entrevoyais pourt...