thinking through time*

Charlie Chaplin's 'Work' 1915

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Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum under construction in New York in 1958

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Map of Antwerp, 1624

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Puyi and Wanrong

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puyi

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Liberty

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Erewhon covers

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'Erewhon' by Samuel Butler (1872)

Dostoyevsky's notes for Chapter 5 of 'The Brothers Karamazov' (1880)

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The Easter Proclamation of 1916

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Thaumatropes

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Pie Charts

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The earliest known pie chart is credited to Scottish engineer and political economist William Playfair's 'Statistical Breviary' (1801)

One of William Playfair's pie charts in his Statistical Breviary, depicting the proportions of the Turkish Empire located in Asia, Europe and Africa before 1789:

"Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East" by Florence Nightingale:

Minard's map using pie charts to represent the cattle sent from all around France for consumption in Paris (1858).

Unknown (Playfair?):

Kabuki: Masks and Stages

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Before the Beginning

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Oracle Bones

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone

.

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Electric Fan by Thomas A. Edison, c. 1898

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Rabbinical Bibles

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Dear Friends,

The most marvelous thing happened to me on the subway the other day, I met a rabbi, well, a rabbi in training. He was sitting and I was standing above him and saw this book, this gigantic book, open on his lap. Each page looked like a puzzle and the spaces between the segments of text looked like a maze. The cover was bound in thick red leather and printed on the sides of the pages was a swirling black and red marble design. As I got off the train I asked him what sort of book he was reading and he responded, a Rabbinical Bible. He also told me that the central text, the text which the other texts bracketed were scriptures from the old testament. The texts which encircled the central text were various historical interpretations of this text. What an interesting format, I thought, this idea that the translations held an equally valuable and informative weight as the primary text, not relegated to the back of the book or a separate edition entirely, these texts operated on a simultaneous level to the primary text, to be read on the same page, and at the same time.

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The Conjuring of a Woman at the House of Robert Houdin by Georges Melies

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Edward Hopper 'House by the Railroad' 1925

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André Kertész "Distortions" 1933

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Candle Clocks

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Hollis Frampton "Gloria!" (1979)

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(re)Starting

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Finally getting back into the swing of things with a few Guillaume Apollinaire poems. I hope to continue the earlier thematic of focusing on documenting and uploading previously non digital materials as well as presenting pre digital things I come across online or elsewhere.

The Fishing Archives : Part 2

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Fishing Lures taken from a tackle box belonging to my great grandfather:

The Fishing Archives : Part 1

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for robbie

2009-01-29T15:38:00.001-08:00

Sigmar Polke's photo works

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I stumbled upon Sigmar Polke's photographs rather indirectly while trying to find some information on another non-painting work I saw at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam this summer. It is a video work called Ohne Titel 1969 a 16mm film of humourus vignettes of the artist playing around with things in his studio and his home. One memorable clip features the artist fanning a photograph of a beautiful actress, high on the wall of his studio, with a broom attached to another stick. Another vignette features the artist sloshing around his bathtub with an assortment of fruits and vegetables bobbing in midst.

Here are some photographs I scanned from a book of his photography, I'm still working on getting some more info on the video.

evidence

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bookmarks

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Felix Gonzalez-Torres Catalogue Raisonné

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Book jacket:

This photograph is really stunning and also the jacket for another book of his:
This is a photograph I took of that book with a geode on top of it:

Vintage

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Vintage Books, V-30, V-155, V-223

Changes

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I think the blog will be changing a bit in hopes that I will post more often. Less chit chat and more stuff. It would be great if this space could function as a a visual chronology of sorts and/or a catalog of interesting things I stumble upon that I think are worth sharing, with a concentration on things found outside the digital realm.

I found these (poems) in a book about Marcel Broodthaers:

Louis Aragon. Suicide. 1924
Man Ray. Untitled Poem. Paris, May 1924.

Marcel Broodthaers, Un coup dés jamais n'abolira le hasard. Image (translucent version). 1969

Wolfgang Tillmans

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First, a recent interview with Tillmans in Frieze, which is definitely worth reading:

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/look_again/

One of the most memorable exhibitions i saw in Europe this summer was curated by Tillmans at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Some of my favorite shows in recent memory have involved museums allowing artists to curate shows composed of works from the permanent collection (check out Baldessari at the Hirschhorn).

Tegenwoordigheid van Geest / Presence of Mind
A choice from the collection by Wolfgang Tillmans
"The Stedelijk Museum regularly invites artists to present a choice of works from the collection, coloured by their own artistic vision. The presentation is invariably linked to a new acquisition. In this exhibition, German artist Wolfgang Tillmans (b. 1968) expresses his personal view of the collection and simultaneously provides a new and surprising context in which to see his work."

http://www.stedelijk.nl/

just in case you forgot

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Dori quoted Guy Debord today:
"What is writing? The guardian of history....
What is man? A slave of death, a passing trav-
ler, a guest on earth....What is friendship?
The equality of friends."

Bruno Taut's Glass Pavilion

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This Prismatic glass dome was created for the Cologne Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition of 1914. I guess the building was destroyed soon after the exhibition because it had no practical use (besides being a crowning modernist architectural and artistic achievement).

Wikipedia:

"There were glass-treaded metal staircases inside that led to the upper projection room that showed a kaleidoscope of colors. Between the staircases was a seven-tiered cascading waterfall with underwater lighting. The interior had prisms producing colored rays from the outside sunlight. The floor-to-ceiling colored glass walls were mosaic. All this had the effect of a large crystal producing a large variety of colors."

Paul Scheerbart described both as a "German fabulist" and "anarcho-socialist" contributed a number of aphorisms to the frieze on the interior of the structure. Scheerbart was recently the subject of an interesting exhibition by Josiah McElheny entitled "The Light Club of Batavia" named after a short story written by Scheebart in 1914 and described in the press release as:

"an ambitious woman's unlikely plans for an underground light spa--a refuge for a modern illness she calls 'Light Hunger.' Her plan is realized by a motley crew of architects, artists, and foreign patrons after many long-winded speeches and romantic pledges; 'Das Lichtklub von Batavia' (The Light Club of Batavia) is a melodramatic tale that on its surface is a 'Ladies Novelette' but at its heart is a critique of the conditions of the modern age."

Josiah McElheny at Donald Young