{black and white} – Page 69

Vedute di Roma

Three views of the Ponte Sant’Angelo with St Peter’s basilica in the background and the Castel Sant’Angelo (Hadrian’s Mausoleum) to the right. All from this site, a very thorough guide to Rome’s historic buildings with different views through the ages to the present day. Dover Publications had a book available for a while (now out of print) showing Piranesi’s views of Rome beside photographs of the modern city. In a similar vein, there’s the fascinating Now and Then pool on Flickr, the same idea applied to different places (and people!) around the world.

Giuseppe Vasi.

Piranesi.

Luigi Rossini.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Cult of Antinous

The recurrent pose 2

Solitude (?) by Hans Thoma (no date).

A couple more examples of the Flandrin pose. There are other versions around but most are poor copies of the original. Hans Thoma (1839–1924) was a very conventional German artist whose work occasionally skirts the homoerotic, perhaps unintentionally. I may post some of his prints later. He produced another variation on the Flandrin pose entitled The Prodigal Son with the figure reversed.

An uncredited and undated photograph from a collection of vintage male nudes on Flickr. That looks like a Union flag so we can guess that photographer and model were British.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive

Frans Masereel’s city

Pages from Die Stadt (1925), a “novel in woodcuts” by anarchist artist Frans Masereel (1889–1972). See the other ninety-six pages here. And by the same artist, Die Idee.

A pacifist in World War I, he tried to make his art accessible to the ordinary man. His works were banned by the Nazis and widely distributed in Communist countries. But he rejected “political” art and party affiliation, condemning all enslavements, oppression, war and violence, injustice, and the power of money.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive

The art of Stephen Aldrich

Take Me to Your Leda (2000).

The City at the End of Time (2005).

I wrote about the history of the engaving collage in Sandoz in the Rain: the Life and Art of Wilfried Sätty, an article for Strange Attractor #2 (2005). I hadn’t come across Stephen Aldrich’s work at the time, if I had I would have mentioned him as being one of the artists continuing in this style after Sätty. You can see more of Aldrich’s work at the Foley Gallery, New York, and on Artnet.

Stephen Aldrich was born in Westfield, MA in 1947. In 1989 Aldrich began to explore the possibility of making collages from 19th Century illustrations and (Fredrick) Sommer, always one to “master the advantages”, asked Aldrich to cut engraved illustrations from text books in anatomy. This made it possible for Sommer to create hundreds of collages, and the medium became his principle form of artistic expression throughout the last decade of his life. During that time Aldrich continued to make his own collages with Sommer’s enthusiastic support and encouragement, and joined in a collaborative partnership with photographer Walton Mendelson to produce “collagraphs” (collages photographed) which were first exhibited at Turner/Krull Gallery in 1992. The partnership with Mendelson ended in 2002.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Shinro Ohtake

Charles Le Brun’s physiognomies

L: Relationship of the Human Figure with that of the Eagle.
R: Relationship of the Human Figure with that of the Ram.

From Dissertation sur un Traité de Charles Lebrun concernant le apport de la Physionomie Humaine avec Celle des Animaux (1806), in which the First Painter to Louis XIV attempted to demonstrate a correlation between the souls of men and the appearances of animals. See the complete set of engravings (by L-J-M Morel d’Arleux) here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive