Month: June 2015

Bakongo Nkondi Nail Fetish

Magical Objects: Africa: Congo Region: Bakongo Nkondi Nail Fetish

The various attempts to influence the fearsome powers of the supernatural through the mediation of statues or fetishes have acquired particular intensity in the regions round the mouth of the River Congo, home of the Kongo, Yombe and Vili tribes, and this is also the case in the east of Zaire, among the Songye.

Magical objects were for many years little known in Europe, as Christian missionaries working in Africa tracked them down and had them burnt. Certain statues which were brought back to Europe by religious men, allegedly for documentation, were kept in secret and could not be studied. They were much feared for they seemed, even to European eyes, to have real power, a belief almost universally accepted in 17th-century Europe. Olfert Dapper was the first to look dispassionately at these “fetish” objects and to dare to describe them.

Recent work has led to a better understanding. They are wooden carvings, either anthropomorphic or zoomorphic, which are covered with a variety of objects such as nails or metal blades. The cavities in their back or stomach contain “medicines” – grains, hairs, teeth or fingernails – which are held together with various binding materials. Pieces of fabric, feathers or lumps of clay are sometimes present. Finally, bits of mirror, shiny metal or shells are used to close the cavities or to mark the eyes.

Very often the faces alone are carved in detail, while the rest of the body – destined to be hidden under these various additional features – is sculpted more summarily. The figure’s genitals may even be missing, either because they have never been carved or because they have been removed by a zealous missionary.

George Platt Lynes, “Yul Brynner”

George Platt Lynes, “Yul Brynner”, 1942 Photo Shoot, Silver Gelatin Prints

From the late 1920s until his death in 1955, George Platt Lynes was one of the world’s most successful commercial and fine art photographers.

In 1932, Lynes’s work was included in one of the first exhibitions to showcase photography at the Museum of Modern Art. He also showed at New York City’s extremely popular Julien Levy Gallery, which in the 1930s and 1940s was a major destination for Surrealistic art, photography, and experimental film. Lynes’s photographs for Vogue and Bazaar, his shots of dancers at the School of American Ballet and his portraits of some of the most important creative figures of his era were praised for their innovative use of lighting, props and posing.

George Platt Lynes felt that his most important body of work was his nude photographs of men; however, during Lynes’ lifetime, few people knew of their existence. Because of prevailing attitudes toward homosexuality, which included its criminalization and the passage of strict obscenity laws,  Lynes, who was a gay man, kept this influential and important body of work from public view. 

These photographs of the male form led to a friendship between Lynes and Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, the founder of the Institute for Sex Research, now named Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute. Upon his death, Lynes gifted over 2,300 negatives and 600 photographs to the Institute for Sex Research.

Jean Frederic Bazille

Jean Frederic Bazille, “Scène d’Été (Summer Scene)”, 1869, Oil on Canvas, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Jean Frederic Bazille’s “Scène d’Été”, completed in the summer of 1869 one year before his death, was one of the painted that gained acceptance in the 1870 Salon in Paris. The impressionist painting epicts young men dressed in swimsuits having a leisurely day along the banks of Lez river near Montpellier. Bazille achieved the look for the painting by first drawing the human figures in his Paris studio and then transporting the drawings to the outdoor setting. Like his earlier 1850 “Réunion de Famille”, his painting captured friends and family members in the outdoors

Beth Cavener Stichter and Alessandro Gallo

Beth Cavener Stichter and Alessandro Gallo, “Tangled Up in You”, Ceramic, 2014

Beth Cavener Stichter’s sculptures have an intensely-visceral quality. The ceramic animals she hand-builds demonstrate an human-like sense of understanding with their sensitive gazes and anthropomorphic eyes. But despite their thoughtful countenances, these characters are also perfectly at home in their animal skins. Cavener Stichter’s work does not shy away from the brutality of the animal world, from its untamed sexuality to its endless cycle of predator and prey.

Stichter recently collaborated with Italian artist Alessandro Gallo, who embellished her latest sculpture, “Tangled Up in You”, with painted tattoos reminiscent of traditional Japanese tattoo art. The 65-inch-tall sculpture (15 feet total, from the top knot of the rope to the floor) shows a lanky rabbit intertwined with a snake in mid-air. It is unclear whether the two figures are caught in a struggle to the death or a passionate embrace.

Francois Schuiten

Illustrations by Francois Schuiten

Baron François Schuiten is a Belgian comic-strip artist and scenographer descending from a family of architects. As Francois Schuiten was just 16 years old, the comic magazine “Pilot“ published his first comic. In addition to his first publications, he enrolled at the Institute Saint-Luc, where he studied under Claude Renard.

Together with the scenographer Benoît Peeters, Schuiten created his most well-known work of art: the series “Les Cités Obscures“ (The Mysterious Cities) which numbered 17 volumes. Influenced by the literary genre “Steam-Punk”, the content of the series centers about parallel urban worlds and the destruction of the historic cityscape of Brussels.

Francois Schuiten designed subway stations “Arts et Metiers” in Paris and “Porte de Hal” in Brussels. In addition, he was the designer for several Worlds Fairs pavilions : Luxembourg pavilion in Seville, “Planet of Visions” in Hanover in 2000, and the Belgian pavilion in Aichi (Japan) in 2005.

He has just published a Lonely Planet Guide about Brussels and is currently working on the design of future railway museum in Belgium.

Kawashima Shigeo

Four Sculptures by Kawashima Shigeo, Sliced Bamboo Held Together with  Cotton Twine.

Top to Bottom: “Ring” at the Kennedy Center;  “Universal Circle”, 2008; “Dancing to the Sky”, 2003:  Model for Funabashi Shore Park Exhibition, 1999

The Japanese have a long and deep relationship with bamboo, and their culture has produced the most beautiful art in this medium. Shigeo Kawashima’s sculptures take bamboo as an artistic medium to a new level.