Vogel Totentanz


Sarah Horowitz, Vogel Totentanz. Etchings and design by Sarah Horowitz (Washington: Wiesedruck, 2018). Copy 15 of 40. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

 

The artist writes, “Vogel Totentanz is a bird dance of death alphabet book inspired by Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death woodcut alphabet. After the Black Plague ravaged Europe in the late 14th century, death as inevitable regardless of status or age became a pervasive motif in art and literature.”

“My present-day Totentanz is a reflection of that idea in context of our environmental crisis. Birds are indicator species for overall environmental health and human well-being. The etchings were drawn from specimens at the Cashmere Museum, the Wenatchee Valley College collection, and the Burke Museum in Washington State along with other found remains. Diotima types were used throughout.”

 

“The text was letterpress printed on Zerkall Book paper by Arthur Larson of Horton Tank Graphics. Claudia Cohen boxed and bound the book. The edition numbers forty, including five deluxe copies. The regular edition is bound in a bird-footprint-etching printed blue paper and housed in a slipcase. The deluxe is bound in full leather, enclosed in a box and includes an additional suite of the etchings.”

Der Totentanz by Hans Ganz and Hans Holbein: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23775

William M. Ivins, “Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death”: https://www.metmuseum.org/pubs/bulletins/1/pdf/3254072.pdf.bannered.pdf

Happy Birthday Walt Whitman

“When Whitman finally died, among those first notified by his secretary-friend Traubel, was Eakins himself. He and a former student, [Samuel] Murray, came a final time to 328 Mickle Street. They’d arrived equipped to make Walt’s plaster death mask. Afterwards, the loyal secretary-disciple surveyed the old man’s body. He noted how, though the snowy drift of beard had been caked and disarrayed by Eakins’ work, there was no more damage than a slight reddening at the bridge of Walt’s nose. Such care had Tom taken. Whitman had requested that his young painter-friend be pallbearer at the funeral attended by thousands.”—Allan Gurganus, “The Lessons of Likeness.” This lecture was originally delivered on March 8, 2008, as part of the “American Pictures” program sponsored by Washington College, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Samuel Aloysius Murray (1870-1941) assisted by Thomas Cowperthwaite Eakins (1844-1916), Walt Whitman death mask, May 31, 1819. Plaster. Laurence Hutton Collection

Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

1

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

2

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded
with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation,
it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and
naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.


The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the pass-
ing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies
of the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs
wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from
bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d
the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

Which is larger: Double Elephant or Grand Eagle?

Size is relative. John James Audubon (1785-1851) liked to include insects and other small animals to put the size of his birds in context, such as this White Heron and red lizard.

 

It is often written that Audubon used the largest paper available for his Birds of America but in fact, the “double elephant” was only one of several Imperial size papers made at that time.

Below this plate from Birds is compared to a plate from the Description de l’Égypte and suddenly, it’s not quite so big.

 

It is a tragedy that libraries only measure and record the binding size, with no regard to the paper size (except for a note that the edges have been trimmed). Prints and drawings curators, on the other hand, measure the plate mark, the sheet, and the support (meaning a binding, a mat, or a frame). While many collections around the world regard both Birds and Description as “Double Elephant,” in fact the atlas of Description is closer to the “Grand Eagle” size.

Here are two of the many charts delineating paper sizes:


https://paper-size.com/c/imperial-sizes.html

 

By the way: While both Birds and Description were created in the early 19th century, both were acquired by Princeton in the early 20th century:

Description de l’Égypte, ou, Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l’expédition de l’armée française, publié par les ordres de Sa Majesté l’empereur Napoléon le Grand (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1809-22). 8 v. in 9: 41 cm; and atlas of 14 v. (73-110 cm.). Rare Books Oversize EX 1821.358e. The Princeton copy is “… the deluxe printing. Penciled in the margins of several of the astronomical line drawings is the name, comte de Pourtalès. …[I}n 1865 [this copy] was sold. Together with other works on Egypt and the ancient Near East, the set was presented to Princeton University in 1921 by the sons of Ralph E. Prime, Jr., of the Class of 1888, after the latter’s death. He had inherited it from a great-uncle, William Cowper Prime (1824-1905), of the Class of 1843. It was evidently he who acquired [this copy] at the Pourtalès sale or soon afterwards.”– Charles C. Gillispie, Monuments of Egypt (1987), p. 42.

John James Audubon (1785-1851), The Birds of America: from original drawings by John James Audubon ... (London: Pub. by the author, 1827-38). 4 v. CCCCXXXV col. pl. 100 cm. Rare Books Oversize EX 8880.134.11e. The Princeton copy “was presented … in 1927 by Alexander van Rensselaer (Princeton, class of 1871), a charter trustee of the University. It had formerly belonged to Stephen van Rensselaer (Princeton, class of 1808) of Albany, New York, one of the original subscribers to the work. The latter’s name appears as no. 32 in Audubon’s list of subscribers.” — Howard C. Rice, An Aububon Anthology, page 16.

 

Trumpeter Swan

This Swan feeds principally by partially immersing the body and extending the neck under water, in the manner of fresh-water Ducks and some species of Geese, when the feet are often seen working in the air, as if to aid in preserving the balance. Often however it resorts to the land, and then picks at the herbage, not sidewise, as Geese do, but more in the manner of Ducks and poultry. Its food consists of roots of different vegetables, leaves, seeds, various aquatic insects, land snails, small reptiles and quadrupeds. The flesh of a cygnet is pretty good eating, but that of an old bird is dry and tough.

—https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/trumpeter-swan

Virginia Zabriskie, 1927-2019

In 1954, Virginia Zabriskie paid one dollar to assume the lease of the gallery space on the second floor of 835 Madison Avenue.

My favorite story about the art dealer Virginia Zabriskie (1927-2019) involves her continuing concern and support for her aging colleague, the American art dealer Charles Daniel (1878-1971), who ran the Daniel Gallery in New York City from 1913 to 1932.

During the 1950s and 1960s few members of the art world even knew that Daniel was still alive, let alone cared how he survived. The exceptions were Zabriskie and the painter Rachael Soyer (1899-1987), who was given his first one-man show at the Daniel Gallery in the 1920s. Working together, Zabriskie and Soyer came up with a plan to quietly provide the impoverished Daniel with a small income.

Every so often, Soyer would invite Daniel to visit him in his Second Avenue apartment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. After coffee and cigarettes, Soyer would casually hand Daniel a few drawings, “just in case he might know someone who would be interested.”

Daniel would immediately go up to see Zabriskie, who handled Soyer at her Madison Avenue gallery, just ten blocks north of where the Daniel Gallery once displayed his work. She would pretend to barter with Daniel, eventually settling on $25 or $30 for each sheet. Both the artist and the dealer understood the arrangement, kindly allowing Daniel this ritual and much needed financial support.

Charles Daniel died in 1971 at the age of 92 years old. Virginia Zabriskie recently passed away two months short of her 92nd year. Perhaps it was their love of art and sincere patronage of the New York art world that kept them both alive so long.

See also: https://www.nysun.com/arts/handmaiden-of-the-arts/10389/

Italy: a Poem


The Graphic Arts Collection holds 25 engravers’ proofs for: Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), Italy: a Poem (London: Cadell, Jennings and Chaplin, Moxon, 1830). Graphic Arts Collection 2006-0971N; Rare Books PR5234 .I7 1830; RHT 19th-398.

The steel engravings are equal in size (plate mark: 259 x 141 mm; paper: 295 x 185 mm) and description to the set of proofs in the British Museum, some finished with engraved captions, some without. The scenes were designed by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) and Thomas Stothard (1755–1834); and engraved by Edward Goodall (1795–1870), Robert William Wallis (1794–1878), W. R. Smith (active 1826–1852), Henry LeKeux (1787–1868), William Bernard Cooke (1778–1855), and John Pye (1782–1874). Book pages were printed by Thomas Davison.

 

 


“Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) first achieved fame with the publication in 1792 of “The Pleasures of Memory.” After Italian travels, during which he met Shelley and Byron in Pisa, Rogers produced a first version of “Italy” in 1822 and issued a sequel in 1826, both of which sold poorly.

He destroyed the unsold copies, revised the poems, and published them at his own expense in the present edition of 1830 embellished this time by illustrations.

These were the work of two artists with very different propensities–Stothard (1755-1834), who did demure figure scenes, and Turner (1775-1851), who provided landscape vignettes.”

 

 

IF thou shouldst ever come by choice or chance
To Modena, where still religiously
Among her ancient trophies is preserved
Bologna’s bucket (in its chain it hangs
Within that reverend tower, the Guirlandina),
Stop at a palace near the Reggio gate,
Dwelt in of old by one of the Orsini.
Its noble gardens, terrace above terrace,
And rich in fountains, statues, cypresses,
Will long detain thee; through their archèd walks,
Dim at noonday, discovering many a glimpse
Of knights and dames, such as in old romance,
And lovers, such as in heroic song,
Perhaps the two, for groves were their delight,
That in the springtime, as alone they sat,
Venturing together on a tale of love,
Read only part that day.—A summer sun
Sets ere one half is seen; but ere thou go,
Enter the house—prythee, forget it not—
And look awhile upon a picture there.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044011790979;view=thumb;seq=11

“Dear Son, My Beloved” will be acquired in 2114


As announced in The Korean Times ( http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/art/2019/05/142_269542.html) “Prize-winning South Korean novelist Han Kang has handed over a novel to the Norwegian public arts project “Future Library,” with her writing to remain unpublished and unread for nearly a century. The 2016 winner of the Man Booker International prize for her novel “The Vegetarian” has been chosen as the fifth writer for the Norwegian project along with 99 renowned authors including English writer David Mitchell. Their works will be kept in secret and published a century later on paper made from the trees of a special forest cultivated for the project.”

“At the ceremony held at a forest on the outskirts of Oslo, Norway, on Saturday, the writer handed over a manuscript covered with a white cloth to Scottish artist Katie Paterson, who initiated the “Future Library” project in 2014. . . . The novel, titled “Dear Son, My Beloved,” will be held in the Deichman Library in Oslo until its scheduled publication in 2114.”

“It’s like my script marrying the forest, or like a funeral where this script longs for a rebirth, or like a lullaby for a century-long sleep,” said Han, explaining what the white cloth refers to. She added that a piece of white fabric is used for side snap shirts for infants, mourning clothes and bedding in South Korea. “This is time to say goodbye,” the 48-year old novelist said, closing her speech.

Future Library 5th handover ceremony 25 May 2019.Framtidsbibliotekets 5. overrekkelse 25. mai 2019 from Future Library on Vimeo.

She also read a message that she wrote about the project last month. “So finally in the moment I write the first sentence, I have to believe in the world one hundred years from now, the unlikely possibility that there would still be people who will read what I write … as well as the thinly founded hope that this globe will have not yet become a massive ruin,” she said. “If we can call the moment when we have to take one step toward the light despite all the uncertainties a prayer, this project would probably be something close to a one-hundred-year-long prayer.”

She said she used the term “one-hundred-year-long prayer” to represent the efforts by people to get out of uncertainly over the course of a century. “If we say a prayer is a struggle in the midst of uncertainty, this project is a prayer and something that many people born and dying keep doing over 100 years,” she noted.

https://www.futurelibrary.no/

Race, Gender, and Anatomy

Most early anatomies focused their attention on the white male body, with female dissection included only to illustrate the stages of childbirth. Non-white cadavers might have been less expensive but were not considered proper models for published medical atlases.

When the practice of hands‐on anatomical dissection became popular in United States medical education in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, demand for cadavers exceeded the supply. Slave bodies and thefts by grave robbers met this demand. Members of the public were aware that graves were being robbed and countered with various protective measures. …Slave owners sold the bodies of their deceased chattel to medical schools for anatomic dissection. Stories of the “night doctors” buying and stealing bodies became part of African American folklore traditions. The physical and documentary evidence demonstrates the disproportionate use of the bodies of the poor, the Black, and the marginalized in furthering the medical education of white elites.

–Halperin EC. “The Poor, the Black, and the Marginalized as the Source of Cadavers in United States Anatomical Education,” Clin Anat. 2007; 20:489–495.

 

One significant except was Joseph Maclise’s Surgical Anatomy, first published in 1851 with 35 partially colored lithographic plates, followed by a revised and enlarged second edition in 1856, containing 52 plates. The lithographs were printed by M. & N. Hanhart lithographers, founded by Michael Hanhart, and the volume published by John Churchill, a medical bookseller in Soho.

Two plates [above] feature an adult African Englishman, “Two heads of men, showing dissection of muscles and blood-vessels of the subclavian region of the chest” and “Dissection of the trunk of a seated black man, showing major blood-vessels.” Although female models are illustrated, their faces are always obscured.

 

The Irish artist, Joseph Maclise (ca.1815-1880) was a younger brother of the painter Daniel Maclise (1806-1870), with whom he sometimes shared a house in Bloomsbury and Chelsea when they were both in London. Joseph was both a professional surgeon and artist, illustrating a number of medical texts.

 


Joseph Maclise (ca.1815-1880), Surgical Anatomy (London: Churchill, 1856). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

Boundaries


The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired Boundaries, a collaborative project between presidential inaugural poet Richard Blanco and contemporary landscape photographer Jacob Bond Hessler. The project was first presented at the Coral Gables Museum, Florida, in Fall 2017 where the exhibition was accompanied by a limited edition book published by Two Ponds Press in an edition of 300.

The prospectus states:

“Blanco’s poems and Hessler’s photographs together investigate the visible and invisible boundaries of race, gender, class, and ethnicity, among many others. Boundaries challenges the physical, imagined, and psychological dividing lines—both historic and current—that shadow America and perpetuate an us vs. them mindset by inciting irrational fears, hate, and prejudice.

In contrast to the current narrowing definition of an America with very clear-cut boundaries, Blanco and Hessler cross and erase borders. As artists, they tear down barriers to understanding by pushing boundaries and exposing them for what they truly are—fabrications for the sake of manifesting power and oppression pitted against our hopes of indeed becoming a boundary-less nation in a boundary-less world.”

Jacob Hessler is a fine art photographer specializing in the contemporary landscape. He is a graduate of the Brooks Institute of Photography, Santa Barbara, CA, and attended Parsons, The New School for Design, NYC. He lives in Camden, ME, and is represented by Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, ME.

Richard Blanco is the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history—the youngest, first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban exiled parents and raised in Miami, the negotiation of cultural identity and place characterize his body of work. In 2015, the Academy of American Poets named him its first Education Ambassador. Blanco lives in Bethel, ME.

 

Hulu Selam (Peace Only)


Peter Bogardus, Ba Suri A-Challi!! (New York: Khelcom Press, 2013). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process
Peter Bogardus, Meskel Demera (New York: Khelcom Press, 208). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

In 2012, Peter Bogardus was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography to “make limited-edition books that are handprinted, and include photogravures, text printed from metal type or xylographically, and sometimes color woodcuts.”

The application essay continues, “The photogravures I make from black-and-white photographs that I have taken in the field. The text in certain volumes is accomplished through collaboration, while in others I have composed it. Setting out on the course of an artistic career, I preferred to attend a liberal-arts college, in this case Hampshire. This allowed me a broad education in the humanities, ranging beyond fine art per se to such pursuits as anatomy, English literature, theology, and anthropology, all under the aegis of my tutor, Leonard Baskin, the coordinator of the “alembic” constituting artistic development.”

“… I returned to photography, the earliest artistic pursuit of my life, which I had studied under Nik Millhouse at St. Bernard’s School. Happily I was able to attend the International Center of Photography to learn about large-format and documentary photography, and then study photogravure with Lothar Osterberg and Jon Goodman, finally returning to the bookmaking I had begun at college. Living in New York has provided a great springboard for the research undertaken in Africa. Leaving the sanctuary of my studio with a camera and the hope to learn from other people and cultures has led to innumerable encounters, which have engendered the books made to date as well as the proposed volumes.”


As an early example of work, Bogardus provided Meskel Demera (2008), and proposed this as part one of a trilogy titled Hulu Selam (Peace Only) featuring different aspects of spiritual life in Ethiopia. Volume two of the trilogy, Ba Suri A-Challi!! came in 2013 thanks to the Guggenheim fellowship and number three is scheduled to appear late 2019 or early 2020.

 

“Hulu Selam (Peace Only) is the title of a trilogy of hand-printed books inspired by spiritual life in Habesha, Ethiopia. The three major religions of Semitic origin came early to the only never-colonized nation of Africa. …Peter Bogardus has visited this mountainous land over the last twelve years…witnessing ritual gatherings and making photographs…” https://ateliercontakos.com/library/ba-suri-a-challi/



In the Aberlian manner

Johann Heinrich Meynier, Die Kunst zu Tuschen und mit Wasserfarben: sowohl in Miniatur, als in Gouache und in Aberlischer-oder Aquarell-Manier, Landschaften, Porträte, und andere Gegenstände zu mahlen: nebst Vorausgeschickten Bemerkungen über die Kunst zu zeichnen (Leipzig: Bey Heinrich Gräff, 1799). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

As an added incentive to the young artists using this late-18th-century painting manual, a final hand-colored plate purports to offer 784 different color options. This is particularly interesting because Meynier’s text promoted coloring “in the Aberlian manner.” The technique was made famous by the Swiss painter Johann Ludwig Aberli (1723-1786) who designed line etchings printed in black ink and then, hand colored the scene to make each print seem unique. The method was quick and easy, not unlike modern color by numbers. These paintings were promoted to the popular print market.

Meynier went on to write and published a number of dictionaries, grammars, and training manuals. Sources indicate he wrote under various pseudonyms that included the surnames Jerrer, Sanguin, and Renner.

See also: Johann Heinrich Meynier, Erzählungen für Kinder : zur Erweckung eines feineren moralischen Gefühls und zur Bildung milderer Sitten (Nürnberg: bei Friedrich Campe, 1817). Cotsen Children’s Library Euro 18 46196