Photographs of flowers by Katinka Matson
Three Parrott Tulips
Water Lily and Leaf
See more of Katinka’s work here.
Her work alludes to Dutch still life painting of the 17th and 18th centuries. Here are a couple of examples:
BOLLONGIER, Hans
Still Life with Flowers
1639
BOSSCHAERT, Ambrosius the Younger
Still-Life
1627
For Gregory Crewdson, a graduate lecturer at Yale School of Art and mentor to a whole generation of young (and, coincidentally, mainly female) photographers, the dying light is singularly suited to his spooked vision. “My photographs are about the moment of transition between before and after,” he explains. “Twilight is evocative of that. There’s something magical about the condition.” The eerie effect of twilight crossed with strong artificial light – street lights, house lights, lights from the sky – is exaggerated by Crewdson’s choice of backdrop, which is almost always nondescript suburban America. “I have motifs I work and rework,” he says. “I have created a kind of iconography for myself, but I’m not sure how it all adds up – and maybe I don’t want to know.”
Crewdson is one of eight artists featured in a group show at the V&A later this month, Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour, which also includes work by Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Boris Mikhailov. He is not the first photographer to be drawn to twilight – “nature at its most impressive”, according to the exhibition catalogue – but his images are uniquely tense, pregnant with atmosphere.
‘I have always been fascinated by the poetic condition of twilight. By its transformative quality. Its power of turning the ordinary into something magical and otherworldly. My wish is for the narrative in the pictures to work within that circumstance. It is that sense of in-between-ness that interests me.’ Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson reworks the American suburb into a stage-set for the inexplicable, often disturbing, events that take place at twilight. In creating what he calls ‘frozen moments’, he has developed a process akin to the making of a feature film. Operating on an epic scale, he uses a large crew to shoot and then develop the images during post-production.
Every detail of these images is meticulously planned and staged, in particular the lighting. In some instances, extra lighting and special effects such as artificial rain or dry ice are used to enhance a natural moment of twilight. In others, the effect of twilight is entirely artificially created.
All the images propose twilight as a poetic condition. It is a metaphor for, and backdrop to, uncanny events that momentarily transport actors from the homeliness and security of their suburban context.
For more on Crewdson, click here.
For more on the Twilight exhibition at the V & A Museum, click here.
Ulissi Aldrovandi (Aldrovandus) (1522-1605) graduated from Padua and Bologna Universities with degrees in law, philosophy and medicine and taught logic to supplement the occasional patronage bestowed on him by his cousin, the Pope.
During nearly a year of confinement in Rome while fighting a heresy charge, Aldrovandi developed a strong interest in the natural world. He began to collect all manner of specimens which apparently came to constitute a formidable natural history museum for those that visited him.
Source: Bibliodyssey
Traveller next to the road
Pierre Amédée Varin (1818-1883) was the eldest of three engraver brothers from the Champagne region of France. He came from a long family line of artist/engravers that stretched back to the 17th century. Most of his engraving work was done in partnership with his brother, Eugene.
The anthropomorphic illustration above come from a 2-volume set: ‘Papillons – Metamorphoses Terrestres Des Peuples De L’Air’, published by Gabriel de Gonet in 1852.
Source: BibliodysseyÂ
Durer, Fortuna 1502 engraving
Rota Fortuna
No mortal power may stay her spinning wheel.
The nations rise and fall by her decree.
None may foresee where she will set her heel:
She passes, and things pass.
Man’s mortal reason cannot encompass her
She rules her sphere as the other gods rule theirs.
Season by season her changes change her changes endlessly,
and those whose turn has come press on her so,
she must be swift by hard necessity.
Dante, Inferno VII 82-90
Fortune’s Wheel
From Wikipedia: The concept of Rota Fortuna arose in antiquity. The Wheel originally belonged to the Roman goddess Fortuna, whose name seems to derive from Vortumna, “she who revolves the year”. Fortuna eventually became Christianized: the Roman philosopher Boethius (d. 524) was a major source for the medieval view of the Wheel, writing about it in his Consolatio Philosophiae:
“I know how Fortune is ever most friendly and alluring to those whom she strives to deceive, until she overwhelms them with grief beyond bearing, by deserting them when least expected … Are you trying to stay the force of her turning wheel? Ah! dull-witted mortal, if Fortune begin to stay still, she is no longer Fortune.”
~ Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
The Wheel was widely used as an allegory in medieval literature and art to aid religious instruction. Though classically Fortune’s Wheel could be favourable and disadvantageous, medieval writers preferred to concentrate on the tragic aspect, dwelling on downfall of the mighty – serving to remind people of the temporality of earthly things.
From an edition of Boccaccio’s “De Casibus Virorum Illustrium” (Paris, 1467) MSS Hunter 371-372 (V.1.8-9). Image (vol. 1: folio 1r)
Fortune’s Wheel often turns up in medieval art, from manuscripts to the great Rose windows in many medieval cathedrals, which are based on the Wheel. Characteristically, it has four shelves, or stages of life, with four human figures, usually labeled on the left regnabo (I shall reign), on the top regno (I reign) and is usually crowned, descending on the right regnavi (I have reigned) and the lowly figure on the bottom is marked sum sine regno (I have no kingdom). For a largely illiterate population, visual imagery like this was a much more effective teaching method.
The Wheel of Fortune motif appears significantly in the Carmina Burana (or Burana Codex), over one thousand poems and songs — often profane in content — written by students and clergy in the early 13th century. Excerpts from two of the collection’s better known poems, “Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune, Empress of the World)” and “Fortune Plango Vulnera (I Bemoan the Wounds of Fortune),” read:
O Fortuna O Fortune,
velut luna like the moon
statu variabilis, you are changeable,
semper crescis ever waxing
aut decrescis; and waning;
vita detestabilis hateful life
nunc obdurat first oppresses
et tunc curat and then soothes
ludo mentis aciem, as fancy takes it;
egestatem, poverty
potestatem and power
dissolvit ut glaciem. it melts them like ice.
Sors immanis Fate – monstrous
et inanis, and empty,
rota tu volubilis, you whirling wheel,
status malus, you are malevolent,
vana salus well-being is vain
semper dissolubilis, and always fades to nothing,
obumbrata shadowed
et velata and veiled
michi quoque niteris; you plague me too;
nunc per ludum now through the game
dorsum nudum I bring my bare back
fero tui sceleris. to your villainy.
Sors salutis Fate is against me
et virtutis in health
michi nunc contraria, and virtue,
est affectus driven on
et defectus and weighted down,
semper in angaria. always enslaved.
Hac in hora So at this hour
sine mora without delay
corde pulsum tangite; pluck the vibrating strings;
quod per sortem since Fate
sternit fortem, strikes down the string man,
mecum omnes plangite! everyone weep with me!
Fortune plango vulnera (I bemoan the wounds of Fortune)
Fortune plango vulnera I bemoan the wounds of Fortune
stillantibus ocellis with weeping eyes,
quod sua michi munera for the gifts she made me
subtrahit rebellis. she perversely takes away.
Verum est, quod legitur, It is written in truth,
fronte capillata, that she has a fine head of hair,
sed plerumque sequitur but, when it comes to seizing an opportunity
Occasio calvata. she is bald.
In Fortune solio On Fortune’s throne
sederam elatus, I used to sit raised up,
prosperitatis vario crowned with
flore coronatus; the many-coloured flowers of prosperity;
quicquid enim florui though I may have flourished
felix et beatus, happy and blessed,
nunc a summo corrui now I fall from the peak
gloria privatus. deprived of glory.
Fortune rota volvitur: The wheel of Fortune turns;
descendo minoratus; I go down, demeaned;
alter in altum tollitur; another is raised up;
nimis exaltatus far too high up
rex sedet in vertice sits the king at the summit -
caveat ruinam! let him fear ruin!
nam sub axe legimus for under the axis is written
Hecubam reginam. Queen Hecuba.
Codex Carmina Burana manuscript
A fantastic illustration of this theme is the great marbled floor in the Siena Cathedral:
For more information on this and related concepts, click here.
The Mirror of Human Salvation 4
The anonymous ‘Speculum Humanæ Salvationis’ was written at the beginning of the 14th century and several hundred versions were produced in all major european languages up to the end of the 15th century. The images above come from a 1430 german version.
“In its text and pictures the Speculum contains a vivid account of the religious and artistic forces at work in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the lessons in piety, the allegories, and all of the arts were devoted to instilling in the minds of the people the need for salvation and the dread of eternal damnation. The Speculum is entirely concerned with the Fall and Redemption and with their prefiguration in the Old Testament.”
The Mirror of Human Salvation 38
In addition to its widespread popularity over a few centuries, ‘Speculum’ is one of the most important works in the history of printing. It is the only book from the middle ages that exists in illuminated manuscript, blockbook and incunabula form.
Courtesy Bibliodyssey. Read more here.
Etching by Francois Callot, 1635
Nightblowing Cereus
The grandiose vision of botanist Dr Robert Thornton (1768-1837) was to restore Britain to her rightful artistic place, ahead of France and Germany, with the release in subscription form of his opus, The Temple of Flora, over a few years at the beginning of the 19th century.
Thornton inherited the family fortune in 1799 which allowed him to leave medicine and concentrate on his botanical interests. Royal patronage, world exploration and specimen collection and a quest for scientific knowledge encouraged an expansion in botanical illustration.
The Large Flowering Sensitive Plant
Courtesy Bibliodyssey. Read more here.
