This photograph does not describe what Otto Umbehr saw when he looked out his window in Berlin, but what he discovered when he turned his overhead view of the street upside-down. His simple inversion (indicated by his signature "Umbo" in the lower right corner) posits an unsettling world in which the insubstantial dominates the substantial, and imagination intercepts cognition.

-The met

De Meyer photographed the dancer Nijinsky and other members of Diaghilev's troupe when "L'Après-midi d'un Faun" was presented in Paris in 1912. It has been suggested that this photograph, the only nude by de Meyer, has some connection to the Russian ballet, but if so, it remains mysterious. It has been suggested that this photograph, the only nude by de Meyer, has some connection to the Ballets Russes, but the nature of that link remains mysterious. The image vibrates with an uneasy erotic tension, a product of the figure’s exposed torso, startled body language, and disguised identity.

-the met

Bodhisattva as the lotus-bearer Padmapani was a favored form of Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of Buddhist compassion. His identifiers are the lotus (padma) held in his left hand, and the small figure of the Buddha Amitabha atop his head. In this early representation, he sits in royal ease, with one leg pendant and a hand poised as if gesturing contemplation. The antelope skin over his shoulder is a reminder of his ascetic nature, akin to Shiva.

-The Met

Although he studied drama in Paris in the mid-1870s and was an itinerant actor for some years thereafter, Eugène Atget's theatrical sensibility found its best outlet in a more deliberate, contemplative, and purely visual art form. In 1898 he began to photograph old Paris, and within a decade he had made a name as an assiduous documenter of the art and architecture of the ancien régime. Except for a brief attempt to capture life in the streets early in his career, Atget rarely photographed people, preferring the streets themselves as well as the gardens, courtyards, and other areas that constituted the cultural stage.

After the Great War, Atget frequently focused on mannequins, statues, and other "substitute" actors. At Versailles, where he had worked since 1901, he came to see the sculptures not as felicitous ornaments but as characters in an immemorial play. In this picture, which represents Michael Mosnier's replica of the "Dying Gladiator" in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, Atget contrasts human pain and artistic beauty, mortal man and the immortal soul. Drawing on his long experience relating near and far objects and vistas in the gardens of Versailles, the photographer juxtaposed the statues so that the figure of Apollo in the background seems to rise like the living spirit escaping the body at death.

-The Met

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7576638

These meltingly carved busts of father (1993.332.1) and son are surely the finest examples of the portrait style of G. B. Foggini, the leading sculptor of the Florentine Baroque. While strong echoes of Bernini date the creation of the pair to shortly after the younger artist's return from Rome, they already exhibit Foggini's talent for the depiction of material opulence that earned him the post of Medici court sculptor. Dynamic contrasts abound: the fragile lace cravats and lavish mantles (emulating modes of the contemporary French court) set off the realistically depicted faces. They in turn provide their own study in contrasts: the commanding pose and classic Habsburg physiognomy of the balding father serve as counterpoint to the sweet, somewhat unformed face of the youth, overwhelmed by a delirious cascade of curls. Foggini's artistic genius inaugurated the final flourish of Medici patronage. These busts, modeled from life, were followed by a series portraying other family members, all intended to promote the political aspirations of the fading dynasty. Their acquisition served to link our major series of Roman Baroque portrait busts to a growing collection of stunning small-scale Florentine sculptures of that period.

-The Met

This photograph was made at the Bucks County, Pennsylvania, home that Sheeler shared with fellow painter and photographer Morton Schamberg. The spare geometry of the eighteenth-century Doylestown farmhouse proved an irresistible subject for an artist eager to explore with a camera the radical formal ideas that had impressed him in the paintings of Cézanne, Picasso, and Braque.

The Met

This figure of a seated man playing a harp is among the earliest of the few known Cycladic representations of musicians. With its balanced proportions and engaging sense of movement, it is one of the most accomplished examples. The artist used the limited tools available with great technical skill. The harp’s extremely delicate arch was achieved by gently grinding down the stone with natural abrasives such as sand, pumice, and emery.

The met.

^^

With his large-scale color photograms of water, babies, or, in this case, rabbits, Adam Fuss has breathed new life into the cameraless technique that became the hallmark of such modernist photographers as Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s. Fuss made this image by placing two slaughtered and eviscerated rabbits on a photosensitized sheet of paper and exposing it to light. The spectacular color effects result from the chemical interactions between the rabbits' viscera and the properties of the printing paper. Combining the expansive gestures of Action Painting with the composed symmetry of a heraldic seal, Fuss turns this traditional symbol of fertility into an emblem of the rapturous, often gut-wrenching intertwining of two selves united in love.

The Met

"Cassell’s Natural History" is a multi-volume late-Victorian encyclopedic natural history of animals designed for general readers and amateur naturalists. It presents zoological knowledge of the time in clear, descriptive prose with extensive illustrations, combining facts about animal form, behaviour, habitat, and classification. Rather than opening with abstract taxonomy, the work introduces animals by describing their appearance and habits first, then situates them within broader scientific groupings. It aims to bridge zoology and comparative anatomy, explaining how internal structure relates to external form and lifestyle. The set covers major animal groups across six volumes, with contributions from several naturalists and detailed accounts of mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, and other taxa, interweaving anatomical explanation with observations of behaviour and distribution.

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010668362

The artist for this panel seems to be "C.B.," but that's all I've got for now.

The books are available on Project Gutenberg and similar sources. Here's some more examples of the art: [Google Images Collection]

Btw, I poached this one from a great Tumblr stream. Check it out!
https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/vintage%20illustration

Hey, I built a platform called Artalyr to help artists document their work over time.

The goal is to give artists one place to keep track of their pieces, series, exhibitions, and context, instead of everything being spread across folders, drives, emails, and old websites.

Right now it includes things like:

• artworks and portfolios management

• export to PDF

• control over what’s public vs private

---> artalyr.com

I’m trying to figure out if this is actually useful, so I’d really like to hear:

• How do you document your work right now?

• What do you like / hate about your current setup?

• What is your first impression about the project at this stage?

• What would you want to see (or not see) in a tool like this?

Thank you for your inputs, be it good or bad. It will be helpful in the end.

Have a nice day!

We will NOT be taking about the dick cap and that is non negotiable folks

He studied the old masters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and draws on influences from Velázquez, Whistler, Sargent, and Japanese ukiyo-e prints, which inform his use of negative space, tonal harmony, and compositional balance.

Before their debut album Homework, the electronic music duo experimented with various looks to conceal their identity, before settling on their signature robotic helmets in 1999.