Wonder Cabinets:
Category: Museum Lust
Under glass, a bare forest of pins held down an army of insects in ragged rows. . . --"The Expression of Emotion in Man and Insects," by Debora Greger (read the full poem at the Atlantic)...
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Posted by Jessica Palmer at 8:46 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Artists & Art
L'Automaton #06, 2010 Paolo Ventura (zoom view available here) Artist-photographer Paolo Ventura constructs and photographs miniature, dreamlike scenes. His Winter Stories represent the reminisces of an old circus performer. Above, a scene from the Automaton series captures a mysterious,...
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Posted by Jessica Palmer at 11:44 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
From 1810-11, architect and amateur naturalist George Perry published The Arcana, a lavishly illustrated, serial natural history magazine. Although Perry intended for the serial issues to be assembled by his subscribers into a book, only thirteen complete copies are...
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Posted by Jessica Palmer at 9:44 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books & Essays
This little video from Abebooks is the closest I've ever gotten to flipping through a copy of the Codex Seraphinianus. What a truly weird book. I particularly love it when the staid narrator reveals his "favorite" illustration - a roller...
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Posted by Jessica Palmer at 10:15 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Artists & Art
Nick's Luncheonette Randy Hage Via the eye-candy blog How to Be a Retronaut (thanks Miles for first sending me a link there), the painstakingly accurate miniature Manhattan streetscapes of LA artist Randy Hage are half-toy, half-historical document - a...
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Posted by Jessica Palmer at 12:41 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books & Essays
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as...
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Posted by Jessica Palmer at 11:01 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Artists & Art
in the 1760s, Honore Fragonard - cousin of the famous rococo painter - was stripping, dying, and drying bodies into anatomical sculptures that still survive today. A new book explores his world
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Posted by Jessica Palmer at 9:47 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
Animated Anatomies, a new show at the Perkins Library at Duke University, explores the tradition of fold-out or pop-up paper anatomical diagrams: Animated Anatomies explores the visually stunning and technically complex genre of printed texts and illustrations known as...
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Posted by Jessica Palmer at 1:29 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Artists & Art
Alienation often accounts for a macabre sense of the marvellous. At the entrance to "Savage Beauty," there is an evening gown conjured entirely from razor-clam shells. Antelope horns sprout from the shoulders of a pony-skin jacket, and vulture skulls serve...
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Posted by Jessica Palmer at 11:03 PM • • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Ephemera
Through the end of May, UMBC's Albin O Kuhn gallery is hosting a large exhibition of postmortem daguerreotypes, death masks, coffin plates, etc. from the collection of Dr. Stanley Burns. Medical ephemera always have an emotional valence, because they...
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Posted by Jessica Palmer at 1:55 PM • • 0 TrackBacks