the silent woman

While re-reading Gene Wolfe's excellent noir tale, An Evil Guest, I was particularly intrigued by a scene taking place at an otherworldly pub (where the waiter has sharp and hairy ears) called "The Silent Woman."  Cassie remarks as they leave,

"I saw their sign as we left... It's a woman with no head, and it ought to scare me.  Why doesn't it?"

"Because it assures you that women should talk as long as they're able to."

Curious, I looked up "The Silent Woman" in Google and came across this wiki entry.  The Silent Woman is a name commonly given to pubs and taverns in the UK, and the pub-sign associated with these establishments often depicts a decapitated woman holding her own head and/or serving refreshment.

The meaning of the sign is unclear, although at first glance, seems distinctly misogynistic.  "Come gather here, ye men, and avoid the incessant nagging of your wife!"  Or perhaps, a place where men can safely objectify the bodies of women whilst ignoring the unfortunate presence of feminine mind and emotion.  A sort of Bizarro-world Boxing Helena.

The legend on one sign says, "Since the woman is quiet, let no man breed a riot."  Implying that male-male conflict typically results from the sinister influence of women - their capacity to breed jealousy and rage, perhaps, or their evil machinations.

The wiki piece mentions the possibility of the Silent Woman being a martyred saint, but I could find no further research on this topic.  Please post a comment if you know anything about this.

gustave baumann

I was already rather in love with the woodblock prints of Gustave Baumann. Then I took a printmaking class and realized just how time consuming and exacting multi-colored block printing can be. He spent years on some of his prints.


He lived much of his adult life in Santa Fe, NM, and his prints from the southwest make me homesick. He captures the light and spaciousness just right.

Here are some examples of his work:






The book Gustave Baumann: Nearer to Art showcases nearly all of his work, including his era in Indiana:



He also carved marionettes for family and community puppet shows:

monster anatomy

Aili and I found this while putzing around Drawn!

Yōkai Daizukai, an illustrated guide to yōkai authored by manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, features a collection of cutaway diagrams showing the anatomy of 85 traditional monsters from Japanese folklore (which also appear in Mizuki’s GeGeGe no Kitarō anime/manga).

The Makura-gaeshi (”pillow-mover”) is a soul-stealing prankster known for moving pillows around while people sleep. The creature is invisible to adults and can only be seen by children. Anatomical features include an organ for storing souls stolen from children, another for converting the souls to energy and supplying it to the rest of the body, and a pouch containing magical sand that puts people to sleep when it gets in the eyes. In addition, the monster has two brains — one for devising pranks, and one for creating rainbow-colored light that it emits through its eyes.

More to be found at Pink Tentacle.

teri's pollock

Aili and I watched the documentary Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? (2006) last night and were intrigued enough to seek follow-up information. Briefly: 73-year old eccentric & former long-haul trucker Teri Horton buys a painting for $5 at a local thrift store. It is, ostensibly, ugly and she buys it primarily as a joke to cheer a friend up. Later, when trying to re-sell it in a garage sale, an art teacher informs her that it might well be a Jackson Pollock. She embarks on a mission to authenticate and sell the piece for what she believes is its true worth (something around 50 million dollars). Given that there is no signature on the painting and no provenance, the art-world is decidedly unimpressed. Here is the piece:

For general comparison sake, here is a genuine Pollack:

Side note: in my younger years, I used to find Pollocks as ugly as Teri Horton does, and as pretentious as Mondrian. I think that I now actually like these things. At least for museum walls - nothing I'd want hanging over my bed.

I won't relate the entirety of the docu-drama but will say that the saga continues to this day. Horton has apparently turned down offers of 2 and 9 million dollars, feeling insulted by them. Last winter, her piece was, for the first time, exhibited at a Toronto gallery which accepted its unusual authenticity:

They also placed it on sale for $50 million. Thomas Hoving, a self-declared "effete, nose-in-the-air art expert" (who makes an unforgettable appearance in the documentary) has argued repeatedly that the painting is not genuine for the following reasons:

"* It is too neat and too sweet, using soigné colors that Pollock never used.
* Some lines are perfectly straight. It’s hard to drip straight lines.
* The canvas is commercially sized, which means that paint does not come through the back of the canvas. All real Pollocks are unsized and his paint patterns can easily be seen from the back.
* The thing is painted with acrylics. Pollock never used acrylics."

You can read more of his response to the painting being exhibited here. Overall, I have to admit to being less than convinced myself, mostly due to the clear scientific bias that has gone into "proving" the piece is a Pollock. The individuals involved, in particular the forensic expert Paul Biro, seem determined to find evidence that establishes the authenticity of the painting. It certainly seems possible that the painting is a masterly "look-alike," perhaps even generated by this man, Francis Brown:

Ultimately, of course, the painting is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. And in this case, if you're a fan of wealth-redistribution, you can certainly root for Ms. Horton.

pixel city

This is quite lovely. Simon Parker (whose blog, Chewing Pixels, is fun reading if you're into games and such) has created a procedural city-generator. Here's a video, coming soon to a screensaver near you...



If the math/programming of this intrigues you, here's an extensive developer-diary to quench your curiosity.

steampunk star wars

For some reason, steampunk and Star Wars sound like they'd go together like peanut butter and chocolate. I suppose it's because both genres mix old world themes and ideals with new world technology. In the case of Star Wars, the throwback is further than Victorian era England - more like 12th century France. From a child's perspective, the overwhelming coolness of the Star Wars universe was based upon its success in melding Medieval fantasy (sword fights, princesses, magic) with futuristic sci-fi (lasers, spaceships, robots). Darth Vader was black knight, sorcerer, shaman, and mad scientist all in one. How can a 7 year old boy possibly resist?

Steampunk similarly melds 19th century style (petticoats and parsols) with alternate history mechanistic invention (clockwork robots). And thus perhaps it doesn't stretch the imagination much to re-paint the Star Wars universe in a steampunk veneer:

(by Eric Poulton)

I absolutely love this vision of Obi-wan Kenobi by Marcel Mercado...


Everyone's favorite bounty hunter, Boba Fett, as imagined by Bjorn Hurris:
Another by the same artist - this time, Yoda:


And finally, a series of Darth Vader reinventions:

(Eric Poulton; a clockwork Vader - love it!)

(Marcel Mercado)

(Alister Lockhart)

(Daniel Helzer; truly, more machine than man)

the arrival

I've been meaning to blog about this book for about a year now. Hassan gave me a copy, my first introduction to the astoundingly great illustrator Shaun Tan.

The Arrival is a wordless telling of the immigrant experience. Using beautifully rendered sepia-toned drawings, Tan combines the mood of Ellis Island era photographs with fantastical landscapes unlike any we have ever imagined.




We join our nameless protagonist as he seeks a better life, away from the shadowy monsters bringing grief to his homeland. Like every immigrant before us, we leave behind everything familiar and beloved, seeking opportunity and a better life.


We enter a world unfamiliar. Day-to-day objects are new to us, language unintelligible, the creatures and foods perhaps a little frightening.

What can we do for work in this strange new land, without language? The skills we came here with are useless in this new place, where everything must be learned from the beginning.

We miss our family and the comforts of home.

Our protagonist is shown the ways of his new home by a series of strangers, each of whom has their own immigration story to tell. Each of these side-stories are achingly familiar and yet other-worldly:

As every immigrant has hoped and will hope, our family is eventually reunited. This new land does become our home. The day-to-day objects of our new life merge with those of the cultures we come from.


This picture book does more to express my sentiments on human kindness and struggle than any other book I've encountered. Tan clearly put enormous effort into making his story both timeless and universal. It is at once the story of Hassan's parents, my Finnish ancestors, Tan's own father (who immigrated from Malaysia to Australia), and the countless strangers who leave their homes and cross borders everyday all over the world.

Side note: check out the cute stuffy based on Shaun Tan's new-world creature:

You can read about him here.

banksy

Been spending the last couple days scouring the web for anything Banksy. Briefly, he's an infamous British graffiti artist, who's work ranges from the playful to darkly political. For his outdoor pieces, he primarily makes use of stencils, brilliantly incorporating aspects of the "canvas" into his creation. Here are some of my favorites, somewhat organized by content:

Playful


Subversive

(read more about Banksy's anti-Paris Hilton prank, here)

"The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little." —Banksy


Political/Social Commentary


This is just a sampling, you'll find many more strewn throughout the www...

Visit here, for some of the images he painted on the Israeli/West Bank barrier.

Read here about the fake blow-up doll Guantanamo detainee he put on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland.

Go here to see the murals he painted in derelict New Orleans, post-Katrina.

And watch Children of Men again, looking for two of his pieces in-film.