Still Warm Sand (2003).
Iron Grasshopper (2006).
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive
Category: {sculpture}
Sculpture
Sculptural collage: Eduardo Paolozzi
Michelangelo’s ‘David’ (1987).
In a similar vein to the dismembered Soviet monument in the previous post, there’s the sculpture of the late, great Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005). The giant head of Invention is especially impressive when seen in situ outside London’s Design Museum, its pieces separated by the words of a Leonardo da Vinci quotation: “Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.”
It should be noted, in light of another recent post, that Paolozzi was associated with New Worlds when the magazine was at its height, credited (jokingly) as “Aeronautics Advisor” even though he had little or nothing to do with the publication aside from being friends with contributor JG Ballard. There’s a great Studio International discussion here from 1971 between Paolozzi, Ballard and critic Frank Whitford, in which they talk around the subjects of Surrealism, violence in life and the arts, and other typically Ballardian concerns.
Invention.
Portrait of Richard Rogers (1988).
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Revenant volumes: Bob Haberfield, New Worlds and others
• JG Ballard book covers
• Ballard on Modernism
Dead monuments
Anyone who’s seen a Soviet film from 1947 onwards will recognise the logo of the Mosfilm studio which featured a model of Vera Mukhina’s Worker and Kolkhoz Woman monument. This 24-metre tall steel-plate statue proved surplus to requirements after the collapse of the old order, like so many monuments of that period. English Russia has a series of moody photographs of the structure lying in pieces whilst being dismantled.
Poor Vera, who died in 1953, must have thought her work would last a very long time; these pictures are a poignant reminder of the ephemeral nature, not only of art, but of whole ideologies. They’re also reminiscent of the deliberately degraded sculptures made by Igor Mitoraj (below) which trade for their effect on exactly this disjunction between delusions of permanence and the ravages of history.
And on these Flickr pages you can see one of Mitoraj’s influences from a ravaged past, the fragments of the Colossal Statue of Constantine in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Stalker meme
• The art of Igor Mitoraj
• Enormous structures II: Tatlin’s Tower
• Solaris
Insect Lab
Euchrona Gigantea.
Mike Libby hybridizes insects and clockwork parts to create sculptures that look something like the vampiric mechanism from Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos. Via Boing Boing.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Jessica Joslin
• The Museum of Fantastic Specimens
The glass menagerie
Not the play by Tennessee Williams, rather the glass sculptures of sea creatures by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.
Leopold (1822–1895) and Rudolf (1857–1939) Blaschka were a father and son partnership, originally from Bohemia. Their work making spectacular glass models of natural history objects began in 1857, in Germany. Rudolf joined his father in business in 1876 and after 1880 there were so many orders for their glass models that this became their sole business.
The Blaschkas are best known for their glass flowers, made from 1886 to 1936. Many of these are now displayed in the Botanical Museum of Harvard University. After his father’s death in 1895, Rudolf continued to make glass flowers. However, during their lifetimes they also made many accurate models of mainly marine animals. Dying with no children, their glass-working secrets were not passed on.
(More photos like this here.)
Looking at these sculptures I was curious to know whether they worked from real specimens or not. They may have used some for reference but I suspected many of their works were based on the famous colour plates of sea creatures, radiolaria, and so on, in Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur (1899–1904). A quick search confirms this, Haeckel was consulted, as were earlier scientific studies such as Philip Gosse’s Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast (1853) and GB Sowerby’s Popular History of the Aquarium of Marine and Fresh-Water Animals and Plants (1857).
(More photos like this here.)
Nancy Marie Brown writes about the Blaschka’s glass flowers (and what’s known of their working methods) here.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Bowes Swan