Ars et Natura

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...

Walter Benjamin at the Bibliothèque nationale (Paris, 1937, Gisèle Freund)                          Flânarie could hardly have assumed the importance it did without the arcades. “These arcades, a recent invention of industrial luxury,” says an illustrated guide to Paris of 1852, “are glass-roofed, marble-paneled corridors extending through whole blocks of buildings, whose owners have joined together for such enterprises. Lining both sides of the corridors, which get their light from above, are the most elegant shops, so that the passage is a city, a world in miniature.” It is in this world that the flâneur is at home; he provides the arcade — “the favorite venue of strollers and smokers, the haunt of all sorts of little métiers ” — with its chronicler and philosopher... The arcades are something between a street and an intérieur . If one can say that the physiologies [1] employ an artistic device,...