The Amsterdam City Archive shows an extensive selection of the drawn diary of the Amsterdam artist Christiaan Andriessen (1775-1846). He drew in his diary nearly every day until 1 janury 1807, after which he made one drawing a week. You can follow the artists family life as well as his professional accompishments with his use of the camera obsura. Besides the Brothers Sandby´s Views of Windsor, which were painted in watercolours and Daniel Chodowiecki´s drawn record of his travel to Gdansk in 1773, this egodocument of Andriessen belongs to the very early milestones of graphic reportage reflecting every day life.
On her website the Amsterdam City Archive provides a reconstruction of the diary in chronological order.
Alexander Roob’s “History of Press Graphics. 1819-1921. The Age of Graphic Journalism” is out now. (Taschen Cologne, Hardcover, 24.6 x 37.2 cm). In over 600 pages, this far-reaching compendium presents press illustration and graphic journalism as a distinct and unique genre and a laboratory for developing avant-garde aesthetics. The images are largely taken from the […]
What sails here under the flag of caricature is nothing other than an early form of blunt and bleak social realism. The group makes a powerful and monumental impression, misery in the dimension of a history picture, and that’s exactly how it was meant to be. The publisher of La Caricature, Charles Philipon, like most […]
Heavenly Zo / INRI becomes ISO / Swabian and Lorraine Somnambulism Heavenly Zo Richard’s emblematic sexual symbolism originated in the theurgic Neoplatonic geometry of Alexandrian late antiquity and had found its way from there into Jewish mysticism and Hermeticism. The most famous example was the Seal of Solomon, the hexagram, which consisted in the interpenetration […]