Welcome GER 308: Topics in German Film History and Theory

Thanks to Professor Thomas Y. Levin for bringing his class, “Topics in German Film History and Theory – Cinema Philosophy: Aesthetics and Politics” to visit the Graphic Arts Collection.

“Conducted in English, this theory seminar explores issues of narration, representation, spectatorship, the historicity of perception, semiotics, etc. of importance to students in art history, visual arts, literature, music, history, philosophy, sociology and psychology as well as film and media history and theory.”

For more information on Princeton University’s film studies, courses, screening, and other special events see: http://filmstudies.princeton.edu/

For other posts involving our optical devices see: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/category/pre-cinema-optical-devices/

An anamorphic print. Look into the cylinder and see Jules Verne.

Praxinoscope gif

The Palace the N–H Built

“These are the wings which by estimate round
Are said to have cost forty thousand pound,
And which not quite according with Royalty’s taste,
Are doom’d to come down and be laid into waste.”

Attributed to Joseph Hume, The Palace that N–h Built: a Parody on an Old English Poem ([London]: Thomas McLean, [1829?]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX in process

“This parody of the popular nursery rhyme ‘The House that Jack built’ is a satire on George IV’s huge expenditure of public money on the conversion of Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace (begun 1825), and the apparent venality and incompetence of John Nash, the architect responsible. Although a Select Committee of the House of Commons had exonerated Nash of any professional misconduct in 1828, the issue of the spiraling costs of George IV’s new palace remained a national scandal until the King’s death in 1830 and Nash’s replacement by Edward Blore in 1832.

The pamphlet is printed in the style and format of a typical children’s rhyme book of the period. ‘I. Hume’ has not been identified and may be a pseudonym. [British Architecture Library’s] Early Printed Books suggests that either the author may have been Joseph Hume (1767–1843), a clerk at Somerset House who translated Dante’s Inferno (1812), or that the attribution is a topical reference to the well-known radical politician Joseph Hume MP (1777–1855), a prominent and outspoken critic of government overspending. The latter possibility seems more likely. The satirical illustrations are etched in the manner of George Cruikshank; most are just legibly signed ‘G. Davies’.” — From the John Soane Museum http://collections.soane.org/b10093

W. L. Davis

Wayne Lambert Davis (1904-1988), By Way of Explanation on the Flight of the Autogiro, 1931. Drypoint. Edition: 5/25. Graphic Arts Collection GC014.

Wayne Lambert Davis (1904-1988) studied at the Art Student League in New York with Joseph Pennell, whose influence is apparent in Davis’s early drypoints. He completed a number of commissions, includes a large mural in the stairway of the former First National City Bank on 53rd Street in New York City. This is believed to have been destroyed but I have not been able to confirm that.

The Graphic Arts Collection has a small group of drypoints by Davis from the 1930s and 1940s, presumably acquired by Elmer Adler while he was at Princeton University.

Wayne Davis has felt the thrill and excitement of aviation and has chronicled various phases of flying for several years in sketchy, nervous water-colors packed with excitement and action. Planes rising from the deck of a carrier or circling through clouds with earth showing brokenly beneath; these he paints vividly if at times illustratively. Twoscore of his recentl papers may be seen this month at the Schwartz Galleries. Howard Devree, “A Reviewer’s Notebook,” New York Times December 6, 1936.

Here are a few more of Davis’s early prints in the collection.

The Republican Goose at the Top of the Poll

James Gillray (1756-1815), Election Candidates, Or the Republican Goose at the Top of the Pol(l)e. —the Devil Helping Behind! vide Mr. Paull’s Letter, article Home Tooke. Also an exact representation of Sawney M’Cockran (Lord Cochrane) flourishing the Cudgel of Naval Reform, lent him by Cobbett, and mounting triumphantly over a small Beer Barrel, together with an old Drury Lane Harlequin trying in vain to make a spring to the top of the pole, and slipping down again; and lastly, poor Little Paull, the Tailor done over! wounded by a Goose, and not a leg to stand on. May 20, 1807. Etching with hand color. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.01406

In this caricature, Gillray presents the five candidates for the Westminster election of 1807. The goose at the top of the election pole (poll) is the Republican Sir Francis Burdett (1770-1844) seen with a wounded leg but still in the winning position. This is one of at least seven caricatures that relate Burdett with a goose.

Beneath him is Lord Thomas Cochrane (1775-1860) with a ‘Reform’ club. The three losers at the bottom of the pole are the Tory John Elliot (active 19th century), Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), and finally James Paull (1770-1808). The writer John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) is represented as a Devil who supports Burdett with his pitchfork.

“[Tooke] was the only man in England to be imprisoned for supporting the American Revolution; his enthusiasm for the French Revolution landed him in court; he was a principal agitator for parliamentary reform . . . . He was a close associate of the greatest radicals of the time, including Burdett, Godwin and Tom Paine, and an unrivalled polemicist and brilliant conversationalist.” Christina Bewley, Gentleman Radical: Life of John Horne Tooke, 1736-1812 (DA506.T6 B49 1998)

Gillray locates the scene at the husting or meeting at which the candidates address the voting public at Covent Garden. The election results: Burdett 5,134, Cochrane 3,708, Sheridan 2,645, Elliott 2,137, and Paull 269 (who withdrew on 13 May). The new parliament assembled on Friday, June 26, 1807.

Austin Lee’s New Shoes

http://www.postmastersart.com/archive/lee15/images/newshoes.gif

Austin Lee, Spheres. Designed by Philippe Karrer, printed by Musumeci SpA (Basel: Spheres, 2015). Essay by Joel Holmberg, as well as the transcript of a conversation between Austin Lee, Kati Gegenheimer, Benedikt Wyss, and Philippe Karrer. A free augmented reality app animates Lee’s images. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2016- in process

“Spheres is an artists’ book series developed in a year-long, close collaboration between one young artist and Swiss graphic designer Philippe Karrer. As a result, each book takes on a radically different form from the one that preceded it. The latest in the Spheres series, by painter Austin Lee, features Lee’s cartoonish, neon-colored iPad drawings and integrates an augmented reality app. Viewing the pages of the book through the app reveals digital animations and 3-D elements—a fun, if highly mediated book experience.”

Sample spread with app view of Austin Lee, Spheres. Courtesy of Spheres Publication.

Printers Unite!

Birmingham City University, Marx Memorial Library, Newman University, The Centre for Printing History and Culture and the University of Birmingham are jointly sponsoring an interesting conference in November entitled: Printers Unite! Print and Protest from the Early Modern to the Present. To register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/printers-unite-tickets-27724132627

‘Printers Unite!’ is a phrase that evokes the historic solidarities and struggles of printers and their eventual consolidation into a single trade union, Unite. On the 90th and 30th anniversaries of the General Strike and the Wapping Dispute, this two-day conference at the Marx Memorial Library will explore the role of printers and print as agents and vehicles of protest.

The General Strike, which was triggered by an unofficial strike by printers at the Daily Mail, and the Wapping Dispute, in which 6000 printers were sacked by News International, represent only one of the themes that emerges out of an examination of ‘print and protest’: that of the labor history of printing.

The keynote address will be delivered by Andrew Pettegree, University of St Andrews, author of The Invention of News and Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion.For more information see: http://www.cphc.org.uk/events/2015/11/10/printers-unite

A long list of papers includes
Dr Marie-Céline Daniel, Paris-Sorbonne University, London Printers v. Elizabeth I: How a group of London stationers tried to lobby in favour of a change in Elizabethan diplomacy, 1584-1589;
Kat Lowe, University of Manchester, The importance of female education to public health in the prefaces of Richard Hyrde;
Sally Jeffery, Independent researcher, Art and mystery: descriptions of seventeenth-century printers’ working practices;
Dr Lucy Razzall, Queen Mary, University of London, ‘Thrust into the trundle-bed of the last two lines’: printing theological debate in the 1640s;
Dr Bess Frimodig, Independent researcher, Domestic upheaval: women wallpaper printers and the French Revolution;
Eva Velasco Moreno, King Juan Carlos University, Censorship and the control of printing in eighteenth-century Spain;
Brian Shetler, Drew University, Advocate and abuser: John Wilkes’ relationship with his printers;
Karenza Sutton-Bennett, University of Ottawa, Hogarth’s act: a printer’s protest of society’s consumerism;
Julie Mellby, Princeton University, Edward Osborne and the Jamaica Rebellion broadside;
Dr Patricia Sieber, Ohio State University, Peter Perring Thoms (1755-1855) and the Radical opposition to the Opium War (1839-42);
Catherine Cartwright, Absence and Presence (evening exhibition);
Dr Anil Aykan, Independent researcher, Deeds and printed words;
Martin Killeen, University of Birmingham, Between the war zone and the Home Front: cartoons in military hospital magazines;
Alison Wilcox, University of Winchester, Defiant, dissenting, and disobedient women of the Great War;
Professor David Finkelstein, University of Edinburgh, Irish Typographical Union networks and the Great Dublin Strike of 1878;
Alexandra Heslop, Royal College of Art and V&A Museum, ‘Open Shop’: A re-assessment of London’s Printing Trades, 1980-1992;
Dr Patricia Thomas, Massey University, Lockout: insubordinate print and the New Zealand 1951 Waterfront Dispute;
Anthony Quinn, Independent researcher, Duplicating machines, dashes across Europe and nunneries: how emergency issues were produced by newspaper and magazine managements in response to strikes (1926-56);
Jessica Baines, London School of Economics and London College of Communication, Radical printshops, 1968-98;
Mark Dennis, Coventry University, Art & Language’s ‘Support School Project’ and inter-college networks through posters and pamphlets, 1974-79;
Dr Cathy Gale, Kingston University, Collective protest in print;
Dr Ian Horton, London College of Communication, The Grafische Werkplaats, hard werken and cultural protest;
David Sinfield, Auckland University, The serigraphic voice of the worker: stories of the underpaid worker through serigraphic printed posters;
Dr Mark Johnson, Independent Researcher, The work of Jamie Reid – prophet, provocateur and protester.

Nixon meets with Haldeman and Erlichman

Artist and reporter Franklin McMahon produced a series of documentary films in art that were aired on WBBM Television, Chicago and nationwide on CBS and PBS. The Portrait of an Election was a series of one-hour films using art and sound to document the national primaries, the Democratic and Republican conventions, and the presidential political campaigns.

McMahon’s painting seen above, now in the Graphic Arts Collection, was used in Portrait of an Election 1972, which received an Emmy for editing and an Emmy for best documentary. The entire series won a Peabody Award for McMahon.

During Richard Nixon’s successful 1968 presidential run, Franklin also drew the “unelected White House guys” (H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John N. Mitchell), that he correctly predicted would surround Nixon. This was one.

Franklin McMahon (1921-2012), President Richard M. Nixon meets with Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs John Erlichman. The White House, Washington, D.C., 1969. Provenance: from the collection of Margot McMahon. Graphic Arts Collection 2015- in process

Emily Preston, Bookbinder and Spiritualist

The artisan bindings of Emily Preston (1867-195?) were already being reviewed in the November 22, 1901 issue of the Brooklyn Eagle, barely a year after she opened a studio in New York City. Born in Chicago, Preston was recently returned from 15 years in Europe where she studied bookbinding in Switzerland, London, and France.

The New York Sun ran a long profile of Preston that was reprinted on January 3, 1902, in the Boston Evening Transcript under the heading “Among the Bookbinders, Some Studies with Masters of the Craft.” It mentions that her first studio was at 127 East 23rd Street, but within a few years Preston opened a bindery with Helen Haskell (Noyes, 1864-1940) in the luxury apartment building known as the St. George at 223 East 17th Street. Each floor at the St. George had only two vast apartments with an elevator between them (later converted to 44 single apartments).

According to ancestry documents, she and Haskell lived and traveled together until Helen’s death in 1940, with the exception of a few years when Helen was married to Charles William Noyes (1854-1921). By the 1920 census, Charles is renting a room on his own.

Both Preston and Haskell studied bookbinding at the Hammersmith shop of T.J. Cobden-Sanderson (1840-1922), although at different times. “I didn’t plunge into the Dove’s Bindery at the start,” Preston told the New York Sun reporter. “I began work in Vevay, Switzerland. I hadn’t the faintest idea of making bookbinding a profession, you know. I only took it up to keep from being bored.”

After a few weeks learning the Swiss technique, Preston went on to London and was surprised by Cobden-Sanderson’s insistence that she stay at least one year. But she agreed, paying 500 guineas for tuition. Although there was room for up to three students each year, Preston was alone during her first six month.

“I stayed at the bindery longer than any of the other pupils,” she commented. “At the end of the year I fitted up a studio over the Dove’s Press, which was just being installed [1893], and spent six months there, having special evening lessons from the bindery teachers.”

By 1900, Preston was in New York City, helping to establish an Arts and Crafts Society (Guild of Arts and Crafts) based on the London organization. She agreed to serve as its first president. Several years later, the Society’s division of bookworkers met in Preston’s apartment and voted to form a separate, national Guild of Bookworkers.

In 1916, both Preston and Noyes were introduced to spiritualism after reading Sir Oliver Lodge’s Raymond, or Life and Death (New York: G.H. Doran, 1916). [Firestone BL1261 .L82 1916]. By 1920, they were practicing spiritualists, communicating with dead relatives through automatic writing. Their book, The Voice from Space: to Emily Preston and Helen Haskell Noyes (New York: Irving Press, 1920), transcribes seven lessons received from “a master,” including text unusually close to Helen’s father’s theories on the benefits of fasting and Emily’s theories on female independence.

Here is a bit of Preston’s introduction:
Preston continued to bind books by hand into her 70s, although none are identified in OCLC or at Princeton.

The Medium Exposed? Or, a Modern Spiritualistic Séance (1906) | BFI.

The London Bridge Falling Down and Photographed

The iconic London Bridge has been built and rebuilt many times, beginning in 1176 with the first construction of a stone bridge approximately 24 feet long. Changes and complete reconstructions were made in 1281, 1309, 1425, 1437, 1580s, 1762, and 1831, among many other important dates. http://oldlondonbridge.com/history.shtml

Between 1968 and 1971, the facing stone of the 1831 Bridge, designed by John Rennie, was dismantled and shipped to Arizona, where it was reconstructed in Lake Havasu City. http://www.golakehavasu.com/about-us/london_bridge1.aspx. A completely new London Bridge was built to replace the Rennie bridge, opening to the pubic in 1972.

The Graphic Arts Collection is the fortunate new owner of a three volume set of albums (12 x 14 ½ inches) photographically documenting the dismantling and reconstruction of the 1972 London Bridge, now on deposit at Princeton University thanks to Bruce Willsie, Class of 1986.

Prepared by the London construction firm of John Mawlem & Company, Ltd. and labeled “Chairman’s Copy,” presumably as a presentation set, the albums include a combination of commercial photographs and personal prints, some hand-labeled and each sequenced for these volumes in particular.

There are approximately 200 black and white gelatin silver prints, each one annotated in the lower right hand corners and dated. In great detail they show every phase of the dismantling of the old 1830s bridge and the building of the new bridge in the same location. The excavation of the site reveled several skeletons, documented in these photographs.

These albums are now available for researchers.

Cuban Baseball Cards

Unlike the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Princeton’s Graphic Arts Collection does not collect contemporary, machine printed baseball cards. However, a box of “Cuban Select Series Baseball Cards” from 1994 somehow made its way into our vault. We have one carton of 132 randomly sorted cards. Here are a few pictures.

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