Author: ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon

https://www.instagram.com/wolvesofgray This blog is a refugee and a survivor of the Great Tumblr Inquisition of December 17th, 2018. I am gay artist, who received training at the Rhode Island School of Design, and now, a retired high-end fine art framer living in Maryland, USA. My interests and studies in life run a wide gamut from art to history and from the scientific to the esoteric. I have been building this blog of images and texts for the last eight years. My wish is that my posts pique the interest of viewers and encourage them to experience more.

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, “A Young Bowman Sharpening His Arrow”, Detail, 1812

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg was a Danish painter. He was born in Blåkrog in the Duchy of Schleswig (now in Aabenraa Municipality, in the southern part of Jutland in Denmark), to Henrik Vilhelm Eckersberg, painter and carpenter, and Ingeborg Nielsdatter. He went on to lay the foundation for the period of art known as the Golden Age of Danish Painting, and is referred to as the Father of Danish painting.

In 1786 his family moved to Blans, a village near the picturesque Alssund, where he enjoyed drawing pictures of the surrounding countryside, and taking sailing tours in his fathers boat. After confirmation he began his training as a painter under church- and portrait painter, Jes Jessen of Aabenraa (1797–1800). He continued his training at 17 years of age under Josiah Jacob Jessen in Flensborg, where he became an apprentice in May 1800. He, however, had his sights set on being accepted at the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) in Copenhagen.

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg’s greatest contribution to painting was through his professorship at the Danish Royal Academy of Art. He revitalized teaching by taking students out into the field, where they were challenged to do studies from nature. In this way it was he who introduced direct study from nature into Danish art. He also encouraged his students to develop their individual strengths, thus creating unique styles.

Eckersberg developed an increasing interest in perspective on account of his marine paintings. He wrote a dissertation on the subject called “Linear perspective used in the art of painting” (Linearperspektiven, anvendt paa Malerkunsten), published in 1841, and taught classes on the subject at the Academy. He made a small number of etchings that combine daily life observations with classical, harmonious principles of composition. This led the way to the characteristic manner in which Golden Age painters portrayed common, everyday life.

The Apoxyomenos from Croatia

The Apoxyomenos from Croatia

Apoxyomenos (the “Scraper”) is one of the conventional subjects of ancient Greek votive sculpture. It represents an athlete caught in the familiar act of scraping sweat and dust from his body with  a strigil, the small curved instrument used in Roman baths.

This substantially complete bronze Apoxyomenos, who strigilates his left hand held close to his thigh, was discovered by René Wouten. He found this bronze statue fully covered in sponges and sea life. No parts of the statue were missing, though its head was disconnected from the body. The bronze figure was recovered in 1996 from the northern Adriatic Sea between the Vele Orjule and Kozjaki inlets, near the Croatian city of Lošinj.

At 192 cm in height, this Apoxyomenos is currently thought to be a Hellenistic copy of sculptor Lysippos’ Apoxyomenos from the second or first century BCE. It is currently conserved, as the Croatian Apoxyomenos, in Zagreb’s Mimara Museum. The Apoxyomenos is similar to an Ephesus bronze votive figure in several ways: the almost portrait-like individuality of the face and a non-Classical form with a broad, fleshy jaw, short chin and hair made rough and unruly by sweat and dust.

Peter Clines

Peter Clines, The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe, Permuted Press, 2010

Recently discovered amidst the papers of the 20th century writer and historian H. P. Lovecraft is what claims to be the true story of Robinson Crusoe. Taken from the castaway’s own journals and memoirs, and fact-checked by Lovecraft himself, it is free from many of Defoe’s edits and alterations. From Lovecraft’s work a much smoother, simpler tale emerges–but also a far more disturbing one.

Here Crusoe is revealed as a man bearing the terrible curse of the werewolf and the guilt that comes with it–a man with no real incentive to leave his island prison. The cannibals who terrorized Crusoe are revealed to be less human than ever before hinted–worshippers of a malevolent octopus-headed god. And the island itself is a place of ancient, evil mysteries that threaten Crusoe’s sanity and his very soul.

This version of the classic tale, assembled by two legends of English literature and abridged by Peter Clines, is the terrifying supernatural true story of Robinson Crusoe as it has never been seen before.

Nicolas

Photographer Unknown, “Nicolas”

“Think of how exposure to a foreign culture can be both a bracing and a reassuring experience. What starts as a heightened sensitivity to differences in attire, smells, appearances, customs, rules, norms, and laws yields to the recognition that we are similar to our fellow human beings in numerous fundamental ways. All people find meaning in the world, love their families, enjoy the company of friends, teach one another things of value, and work together in groups. In my view, recognizing this common humanity makes it possible for all of us to lead grander and more virtuous lives.”
― Nicholas A. Christakis, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society 

John William Waterhouse

John William Waterhouse, “Ulysses and the Sirens”, 1891, National Gallery of Victoria

Ulysses and the Sirens, 1891, by John William Waterhouse was purchased for the National Gallery of Victoria by Sir Hubert Herkomer, for £1200, in June 1891. The picture had recently been exhibited at the Royal Academy in London and had been reviewed at length in the British press. The critical interest centred on the artist’s interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey. At the forefront, seemingly, of most critics’ minds was one question: how far had Waterhouse stretched his artistic licence?

Once the Ulysses reached Australian shores, Melbourne critics were quick to pounce on Waterhouse’s wayward interpretation of the Greek legend, holding the picture as evidence of the Gallery Trustees’ misuse of public funds. The critics were passionate in questioning the literal accuracy of the picture, and were insistent that there had been foul play with respect to its acquisition.

Man Himself is Music

Photograper Unknown, (Man Himself is Music)

“Is the beauty of the Whole really enhanced by our agony? And is the Whole really beautiful? And what is beauty? Throughout all his existence man has been striving to hear the music of the spheres, and has seemed to himself once and again to catch some phrase of it, or even a hint of the whole form of it. Yet he can never be sure that he has truly heard it, nor even that there is any such perfect music at all to be heard. Inevitably so, for if it exists, it is not for him in his littleness. But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man.”
― Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men

 

Breaking Waves

Hypersonic and Plebeian Design, “Breaking Wave”, Biogen Idec Headquarters

To create its monumental, generative sculptures and installations, New York City-based design studio Hypersonic has collaborated with robotics firms including Amorphic Robotic Works, theoretical physicists like Janna Levin, and tech-art studio Sosolimited. Its work with the latter studio and Plebian Design, for example, led to the creation of Patterned By Nature a giant, ribbon-like hanging sculpture of LCD glass tiles that snakes its way down five stories of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences’ Nature Research Center.

For their most recent project, Breaking Wave, Hypersonic once again teamed up with Plebian Design to create a standalone system of 804 orange spheres which rise and fall in a concerted visual representation of how, within the perceived chaos of data sets, natural patterns eventually reveal themselves.

Like Patterned By Nature before it, Breaking Wave adheres to a set of qualities common throughout Hypersonic’s history of tech-monuments: it’s a sculpture whose activity is autonomous and follows patterns programmed from sets of data derived from nature. Housed in the lobby of world-class biotechnology company Biogen-Idec’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it stands as the all-engrossing centerpiece of the biotechnology-leading institution.

If you’d like to visit in person, Breaking Wave runs Monday through Friday, 8am to 8pm at 255 Binney St. in Cambridge, MA. The sculpture is viewable from the street, or from inside the lobby.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)