Amar Priganica´s Sound Archive explores the acoustic vibrations of the sacred – from organ drones and sound experiments to recordings in religious spaces. It gathers works where resonance becomes both a spiritual and corporeal experience. The pipe organ stands as a unique phenomenon in the history of music, uniting sound, religion, and technology in ways […]
Decades before the French Revolution, the Enlightenment witnessed an outbreak of national-mythical and folkloristic enthusiasm whose force, as cultural philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder observed, resembled the epidemic arrows that open Homer’s Iliad. Alexander Roob’s image-text essay traces this attraction to a newly discovered “primitivist” Homer – from the cult surrounding his Nordic counterpart Ossian to […]
I Classic / Anti-Classic Decades before the French Revolution, a culture of intoxicating affects burst into the heyday of the Enlightenment, increasingly boosted by national-mythical and folkloristic enthusiasm. The cultural philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder compared its impact to the epidemic projectiles that marked the beginning of Homer’s battle epic Iliad. Terms such as the ‘Age […]
III Blind Visionaries –True Homers Paintings Gallery The dismantling of noble Homer had already begun in the 1730s, in the cultural-anthropological milieu of the Scottish Enlightenment, which was characterised by approaches based on early cognitive science and evolutionary theory. The atavistic portrait bust, which on a self-portrait of the Edinburgh barber and graphical chronicler John […]
V Companionship of the Afterlife. Departure to the Past Exhibit Gallery The mesmerist influence on the Romantic generation was highlighted ideal-typically by several heads of a book of portraits that Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, a main proponent of the Brotherhood of St Luke, created between 1816 and 1824 in Rome. Their gazes to the afterlife […]
This large-format etching in the collection of the Melton Prior Institute, executed by E. S. Henne after a lost grisaille painting by Heinrich Füssli, documents a key event in the culture of Enlightenment friendship in the German-speaking world. Depicted is the visit of the three young Zurichers Johann Caspar Lavater, Felix Hess, and Heinrich Füssli […]
The work, featuring over 100 wood-engraved illustrations by its author and editor, drifts like a phantom through Linton’s bibliography. This compilation, consisting predominantly of his own poetic texts, is not recorded in any library and was described by F. B. Smith – otherwise a highly reliable biographer of Linton – as a collection of works by […]
Too beautiful! The English Gaze on the Rhine , Mittelrhein-Museum Koblenz, 10 May – 7 September 2025 After the end of the Continental Blockade, the Middle Rhine Valley became a major attraction for English travellers. The exhibition presents paintings, watercolours, prints, photographs, caricatures, and travel objects of this early form of tourism. Central to the popularisation […]
An exhibition of the Art Collections of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in co-operation with the Exhibit Gallery, curated by Alexander Roob 7.3.–25.5.2025 Paintings Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz 3, 1st floor, 1010 Vienna Opening: 6.3.2025, 19–22 h Opening hours Daily except Monday: 10–18 h Song recital with lesson: Atelierhaus, […]
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 […]
Primal Catholicism / Marian Magic / Evadah / A throw of the dice Primal Catholicism As a graphic practitioner, Richard was a farmer and gardener through and through, one who furrowed lines with sigil-magical ploughs into which he spread evocative seeds, only to have them emerge in the end into a colourful talismanic sea of […]
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 […]
The Ichts / The Sator Arepo mechanism / Two Evas The Ichts When looking through these magic books, one is quickly confronted with the question of whether there was a system here that was comprehensible and decipherable, at least in parts, or whether it was an entirely idiosyncratic construct, a blooming nonsense, a crazy simulation […]
From Alsace to Lorraine / The research / The book In 2010, three graphic grimoires from rural Lorraine popped up at a Strasbourg bookseller’s, whose peculiarity and intensity were astounding. A Richard from Kédange, today Kédange-sur-Canner, a town not far from the border with Saarland and about 30 km north of the capital of Lorraine, […]
2. Schildermalerei Der hervorragendste Interpret dieser demokratischen Emblematik war der Herausgeber von Ainsworths Jack Sheppard–Roman, der ausgebildete Parlamentsstenograph und Gerichtsreporter Charles Dickens.[29] Dickens hatte eine ähnliche Sozialisation wie Hogarth erfahren, mit einem Vater, der als Schuldner inhaftiert war, dem entsprechenden sozialen Abstieg und der Notwendigkeit, früh zum Unterhalt der Familie beizutragen. Die große Schnittmenge zwischen […]
Not translated: I. Das Porträt Fünfundsiebzig Jahre nach seinem Tod tauchte William Hogarth als Akteur in dem Dokumentarroman Jack Sheppard von William Harrison Ainsworth auf, der ab Januar 1839 als Fortsetzungsgeschichte in dem vom jungen Charles Dickens herausgegebenen Literaturmagazin Bentley´s Miscellany abgedruckt wurde. Auch in The Portrait , einer der Illustrationen des Romans, die von […]
Not translated: 5 LITHOGRAFIE OHNE DRUCK 9. Mai – 6. Juni 2014 SSG, Solnhofen Firma Friedel, Solnhofen „Die sensa sind nicht nur eine mehr oder weniger genaue, mehr oder weniger angenehme oder kohärente Form, uns über die äußere Umgebung zu belehren, oder ein Mittel, um darin handeln, existieren, das heißt manch- mal auch herrschen zu […]
Not translated: 3 ZU DEN STEINEN GEHEN 2. November 2013, Steinbruch Solnhofen „Travel and travelers are two things I loathe–and yet here I am, all set to tell the story of my expeditions. (…) Anthropology is a profession in which adventure plays no part; merely one of its bondages, it represents no more than a […]
Not translated: 1 EINLEITUNG MIT DEM STEIN ARBEITEN Dao – erzeugt eins Eins erzeugt zwei Zwei erzeugt drei Drei erzeugt alle Wesen Laozi, Daodejing Schon sehr lange habe ich mich vor allem mit zwei traditionellen künstlerischen Techniken beschäftigt – mit der Zeichnung und mit der Druckgrafik. Obwohl beide den grafischen Künsten zugerechnet werden, weisen sie […]
Not translated: Das Feature zu Henry James´ gesammelten Essays zur Illustrationskunst, die 1893 unter dem Titel Picture and Text im Verlag Harper & Brothers in New York erschienen sind, gibt ausschnitthaft und in collagierter Form einige Passagen aus der kommentierten deutschen Erstübersetzung wieder, die jetzt im Piet Meyer Verlag erschienen ist. Das Vorwort stammt von […]
Not translated: Das Feature zu Henry James´ gesammelten Essays zur Illustrationskunst, die 1893 unter dem Titel Picture and Text im Verlag Harper & Brothers in New York erschienen sind, gibt ausschnitthaft und in collagierter Form einige Passagen aus der kommentierten deutschen Erstübersetzung wieder, die jetzt im Piet Meyer Verlag erschienen ist. Das Vorwort stammt von […]
The following commented image show was inspired by the exhibition Technische Paradiese. Die Zukunft in der Karikatur des 19. Jahrhunderts of the museum LA8 in Baden-Baden. The pictorial departs from the selection of this exhibition and combines it with other materials, mostly from the archive of the Melton Prior Institute. Bernard Picart, Monument consacré à […]
Not translated: Der nachfolgende historische Beitrag von Sylvester Rosa Koehler wurde verfasst für Carl von Lützow´s Monumentalwerk „Der Holzschnitt der Gegenwart in Europa und Nord-Amerika“, Wien 1887. Koehler, geb. 1837 in Leipzig, war lange Zeit Chefkurator für Druckgrafik am Museum of Fine Arts in Boston und einer der wichtigsten amerikanischen Kunstschriftsteller des 19. Jhds. Sein […]
Not translated: Einleitung: Wie kein anderes Kulturlabel hat sich die Marke Andy Warhol als Inbegriff einer produktiven Symbiose von Kunst und Kommerz, von Gebrauchskunst und Kunstkunst durchgesetzt. Er hatte sich in seiner frühen Pittsburgher Studienjahren vor allem an den Arbeiten seines künstlerischen Idols, des amerikanischen Malers und Fotografen Ben Shahn orientiert. Der gemeinsame polnische Migrationshintergrund […]
Only a few month after the publication of Nicolas Foulkes´comprehensive and well researched study Bernard Buffet: The Invention of the Modern Mega-artist a retrospective exhibition of this most hated and best forgotten popular artist of the 20th century opens in the French capital, this former lion´s den of canonisation and condemnation. Alongside his favourite subjects […]
The annual party conferences provided lots of opportunities for physiognomy-analyst Steve Bell to study the leading characters of British politics bodily. In Liverpool he captured Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Labour Party, and his opponent Tom Watson. > Video: The Guardian During the Tory conference in Birmingham Bell detects that Prime Minister Theresa May […]
Not translated: 5) Die dritten Männer In Dorés Illustrationswerk wurde die gnostische Befindlichkeit der Entfremdung und Dislokalität erstmals als eine grundlegende Erfahrung des urbanen Lebens ins Bild gesetzt. Und die grafischen Mittel, die er dabei zum Einsatz brachte, waren ungleich komplexer und subtiler als die der Künstler des Expressionismus und Futurismus, die ihm in dieser […]
Not translated: 3) Die Scheußlichkeiten von Paris 4) Praetorium 3) Die Scheußlichkeiten von Paris Die Idee, Dantes Pilgerfahrt auf zeitgenössische urbane Verhältnisse umzumünzen, war allerdings so neu nicht. Dorés Londoner Inferno hatte seine Entsprechung in Honoré de Balzacs literarischem Monumentalopus La Comédie humaine, das die Hölle Dantes in Paris lokalisierte. Der französische Dichter stellte […]
Not translated: 1) Einleitung 2) Die Hölle London 1) Einleitung An dem Porträt der britischen Metropole London. A Pilgrimage hat Gustav Doré auf Einladung seines Freundes, des englischen Publizisten Blanchard Jerrold, insgesamt fünf Jahre lang gearbeitet von der ersten Projektierung 1867 bis zur Drucklegung, die erst Ende 1872 abgeschlossen war.(1) Auch im angelsächsischen Sprachbereich stand […]
Not translated: Im Mittelpunkt dieser phantastischen Ausstellung der Berlinischen Galerie mit dem Titel Visionäre der Moderne, die von Annelie Lütgens kuratiert wurde, stehen Architekturvisionen und Zeichnungen dreier Utopisten des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts. Paul Scheerbart: Ein Zukunftskind, ca. 1912 (Abb. Katalog) Der Schriftsteller, Dichter und Erfinder Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) konnte um 1914 den jungen Architekten Bruno […]
Jan Vegter´s sensitive drawing series Meppel, een raar jaar (‘Meppel, an odd year’) covers the beginning of WW II in the Netherlands, the German invasion, the bombardment of Rotterdam and the first days of the occupation. This brillant biographical body of work, consisting of fifty-one plates, is on show for the first time in the […]
Preliminary Note: This is a kind of virtual essay on „Painting and Illustration” from the perspective of my studio and my teaching. Thus I hope you will understand that next to assured facts, this essay will be influenced by personal bias and opinion. Antoine Watteau, Billboard of the Art Dealer Gersaint, 1720 / 21 (Source) […]
Not translated: Ein Zeichnungsheft (vor dreißig Jahre in Straßburg erworben, aber aus Paris), das eine Badereise von Paris nach Aix-Les-Bains hin- und zurück beschreibt, gibt viele Rätsel auf. Beim Durchblättern fallen etliche Besonderheiten auf, so dass sich eingangs die Frage stellt: Mit was hat man es hier eigentlich zu tun? Mit einem phantastischen Buch, das […]
Not translated: Die Staatsgalerie Stuttgart besitzt ein relativ kleines Bild von Giambattista Tiepolo: „Die Ruhe auf der Flucht nach Ägypten“. Für einen ausgezeichneten Hof- und Freskomaler ist die Größe von nur 55,5 x 41,5 cm tatsächlich ungewöhnlich, zumal es sich hier nicht um einen Bozzetto, einen Fresko-Entwurf handelt, sondern um eins von vier überlieferten Gemälden […]
Abriged version. For footnotes please see the more detailed German version. 6) Inner Africa For Smith, the street cries pictures had a decisive advantage in comparison to the costume book. It was a speaking medium associated with the acoustic notion of original sound meant to suggest directness and authenticity. Every vendor was attributed a unique […]
The Essay is based on Hazem Alhamwi´s latest documentary “From my Syrian Room”, Syria, France, Germany, Lebanon and Qatar, 2014 , 70 minutes. All images are stills taken from this film. Prima facie, there is no obvious close connection between the satirical black humour of Syrian artist Hazem Alhamwi, which is found in his cartoons, […]
Abriged version. For footnotes please see the more detailed German version. 5) The Cries of London In Great Britain, the years after Waterloo were characterised by a deep economic depression. Big cities were flooded by jobless persons, war invalids and discharged soldiers. While visiting London in 1820, Théodore Gericault captured the descending social misery in […]
Not translated: Das Charlie Hebdo-Massaker hat viele Kommentatoren der internationalen Feuilletons in die Bredouille gebracht. Wie sollte man auf die Schnelle dieses offenbar speziell französische Phänomen eines auf äußerte Konfrontation gerichteten politischen Cartooning erklären, zu deren Drastik sich die übrigen nationalen Karikaturschulen offenbar wie Messdiener zu einer Bande bekiffter Hells Angels verhalten? Wie Licht in […]
“ Liberation called me and said, `Crumb, can you do a cartoon for us? About what you think about this, you know, you are a major cartoonist, and you live in France.´ So I thought about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I’m doing the dishes, or whatever, I was thinking, […]
In February 2006 “Charlie Hebdo” was among the few papers, which avowed “Je suis Jyllands-Posten” and courageously decided to reprint the excommunicated Muhammad cartoons of the Danish journal. A month later the cartoon magazine published the much disputed manifest of twelve noted writers against Islamism, among them Salman Rushdie and Philippe Val, the former chief […]
The caricaturists Stéphane Charbonnie aka Charb, Jean Cabut aka Cabu, Georges Wolinski and Bernard Verlhac aka Tignous are among those numberless victims of a rising Islamic totalitarism. The new theocratic fascism has struck the culture of enlightenment at its traditional artistic core. Chief editor Charb after the petrol bomb attack on November 2011 Georges Wolinski […]
The Melton Prior Institute is represented in the exhibition “Turning Points. The Twentieth Century through 1914, 1939, 1989 and 2004 ” at the Hungarian National Gallery Budapest with an extensive installation. The arrangement “Gondolj Horthyra / Think about Horthy” which opens up this display of contemporary artworks reflecting the complex history of the 20th century […]
Abriged version. For footnotes please see the more detailed German version. -3) Republican Palaces -4) Digression I: Blake’s Cottage 3) Republican Palaces Remarks on Rural Scenery is Smith’s shortest publication. It consists of a sequence of twenty etchings that were all made “after nature” and depict the most various kinds of rural housings for […]
Abriged version. For footnotes please see the more detailed German version. – 1) Introduction – 2) Real views 1) Introduction The beginnings of investigative social reportage are usually sought in the Victorian age, in the 1840s, the founding period of illustrated magazines dedicated to daily politics. But graphic social journalism had already been formulated decades […]
Jan Vegter was born March 29, 1927, in Voorburg (The Netherlands). He died there in 2009. Almost his entire life he lived in this small town near The Hague. Jan got his education as an artist at the Royal Academy at The Hague from 1945 till 1950. One of his teachers was Willem Rozendaal (1899 […]
Special artist Melton Prior plays a leading role in a new novel by distinguished South African writer Manu Herbstein. Composed in the form of a fictitious diary, the historical background of the adventurous story is provided by the second campaign of the British Empire against the powerful Asante nation, located in the regions of present-day […]
Adapted (05/2014) with permission from the chapter of the same title: p. 205-232 of Stephen J. Rockel and Rick Halpern (ed.s) Inventing Collateral damage: Civilian Casualties, War, and Empire Between the Lines Press, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2009. ISBN 978-1-897071-12-0 This paper discusses some evidence of how overseas imperialism looked to imperialists at home, as the […]
Jan Sundström has worked for 40 years as a director and producer at The Swedish Television Company (SVT). He did all kinds of productions – from art documentaries to multi-camera productions for sports events to entertainments. After his retirement he replaced the camera with the pen and started a column in a local Swedish newspaper […]
One rainy afternoon at a friend’s house in Amsterdam I saw a book with a series of colour woodcuts. In the woodcuts the rooms, garden and façades of a former private hôtel in Paris were depicted. In the first print I saw the front door, in the second I entered the building. I saw a […]
The exhibition on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Hubert Herkomer, which runs at present in the City Museum Landsberg in Germany and which subsequently will be at display in Bushey near London, should actually be shown at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, at the Pinakothek in Munich and at the Tate Britain. […]
Not translated: Fünfundsiebzig Jahre nach seinem Tod tauchte William Hogarth als Akteur in dem Dokumentarroman Jack Sheppard von William Harrison Ainsworth auf, der ab Januar 1839 als Fortsetzungsgeschichte in dem vom jungen Charles Dickens herausgegebenen Literaturmagazin Bentley´s Miscellany abgedruckt wurde. Auch in The Portrait , einer der Illustrationen des Romans, die von George Cruikshank besorgt […]
The profession of illustration and the disrepute it got into are both a product of 19th century industrialized journalism. The business´ high altitude flight as well as it´s crash are manifest in the work of one single person, the Alsatian graphic artist, painter and sculptor Gustave Doré (1832-1883). Along with Gustave Courbet he was the […]
Not translated: Zur Ausstellung “Esprit Montmartre. Die Bohème in Paris um 1900” in der Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. Das geballte Medienecho zur Ausstellung in der Schirn Kunsthalle klingt verheißungsvoll. Die Pariser Bohemekultur um die Jahrhundertwende erscheine hier in einem völlig neuen Licht, nicht länger in der realitätsfernen Weichzeichnung touristischer Projektion, vielmehr zeige sich der Montmartre hier, […]
In a situation in which museums, put under pressure by the market, are increasingly withdrawing from their core business of basic historical research on the state of present-day art, it can happen that precisely in this regard they are overtaken by extraordinary initiatives of the market itself, by galleries, for instance, which are now taking […]
As a gallerist Maurice Garnier, who has died at the age of 93, was as unique as that artist, whom he has dedicated more than six decades of his long life, Bernard Buffet. He first had met him in 1948 by the mediation of his mentor, the renowned art dealer Emmanuel David. David had signed […]
An exhibition from the Melton Prior Institute for Reportage Drawing and Printing Culture in Düsseldorf, organized by Clemens Krümmel for Kunstsaele Berlin, Bülowstraße 90, D-10783 Berlin, November 1, 2013 – January 11, 2014 Included is an interview with Andreas Siekmann on his picture cycle “Die Exklusive. Zur Politik des ausgeschlossenen Vierten” (A film by Clemens […]
A picture spread with material from the archive of the Melton Prior Institute, Düsseldorf, in cooperation with the exhibition “Im Zeichen des Protests / Drawing Protest”, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, 19.10.2013 – 09.01.2014, curated by Olga Vostretsova 01) Barthel Beham, “Der Welt Lauf” (The course of the world), copper engraving, Nuremberg 1525 The artist […]
Beginning with elections to the Russian State Duma, in December 2011, and ending with the third so-called March of the Millions, in September 2012, I kept a graphical Chronicle of Resistance, meaning that I sketched all the major opposition rallies and protest events in Moscow. —————————————————————————— Excerpts of Victoria Lomasko´s Chronicle of Resistance: December 10, […]
The exhibition “The New Flesh” was compiled by Clemens Krümmel and took place from September 13 till October 18 in the exhibition space “after the butcher” (Spittastraße. 25, 10317 Berlin). It was planned long beforehand – based not only on an affinity to the work of one of the space’s organizers, Thomas Kilpper, an artist […]
Summary of an interview with the xylographer Rudolf Rieß who was born in Nuremberg in 1935. The interview was conducted on 01/18 and 01/19/2013 during a xylographic workshop of the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design in Bodman. Rudolf Rieß is the last practicing xylographer who learnt the craft of xylography as a skilled […]
Reportage Drawing, Graphic Journalism, Observational Cartooning and Documentary Illustration: all these terms are used to describe journalistic projects where the comic or graphic artist acts as reporter. Each of these names refers to specific angles and techniques, but what they have in common is their simplicity: the world reduced to lines on paper. Before the […]
In the exhibition Porter/Re-porter, on view from 4 May to 22 September in the frame of “Cube. Sparda Art Award” at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Alexander Roob combines materials from the collection of the Melton Prior Institute with works of his own, including a longer excerpt from the eponymous CS drawing series created in London in […]
“The eyes of the world are upon us! … Misfortune has its heroism and its fame.” (Napoleon Bonaparte, St. Helena, Nov. 1815) “The Napoleonic idea broke forth from St. Helena like the moral doctrine of the Gospel, which had risen, certain of victory, from the agonies of the Calvary.” (Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, L´Idée Napoléonienne, 1840) In […]
Cliché-verre is an ambivalent thing, an inanity, the zero point in the graphic arts of the second half of the 19th century, to cite the opinion of Roland Barthes.(1) The wide variety of terms used to describe this phenomenon in itself speaks volumes: “dessin sur verre pour photographie”, “photogenic drawing”, “dessin héliographique”, “Hyalographie” (glass print), […]
Not translated: Julia Schmid (*1969) ist mit hyper- oder gar metarealistischen Bildern von Pflanzensammlungen bekannt geworden, die sie an oft eher unscheinbaren Orten ihres jeweiligen Aufenthalts vornimmt und dabei keinen Unterschied zwischen Unkraut und Blume macht, – in Kleingärten (Hannover 2002), auf Spaziergängen in der Stadt (New York 2004-05), auf Straßenabschnitten (Hannover 2008, Braunschweig 2010) oder Plätzen (Rudolfsplatz […]
Exhibition Film. Click on the image to play. . Fletcher DuBois performs the “Vogelmen Diaries” at the opening. Main Hall, Southern Wall: Thomas Nast, “Our System of Feathering Nests ..” Main Hall, Northern Wall: Thomas Nast, “Let Us Prey!” > Faits Divers – Illustrations: Crashes and Collapses > Thomas Nast: “Dead Men´s Clothes Soon Wear […]
Mit „Vogelmen Diaries” wird erstmalig die breite Forschungsarbeit des Melton Prior Instituts auf dem Gebiet der Reportagezeichnung im Rahmen einer Ausstellung vorgestellt. Zentrales Thema ist das zukunftsweisende künstlerische Selbstverständnis vieler früher Pressegrafiker. Die multiplen Rollen, die sie einnahmen, changierten zwischen nüchterner grafischer Berichterstattung, karikaturesker Polemik und fiktionaler Illustrationskunst. Viele waren auch, wie z.b. der einflussreiche […]
I Thomas Nast The pictorial journalism of Thomas Nast marked the peak of graphic art as far as its influence and popularity in the 19th century is concerned. No artist was ever more successful in regard to the intensity, scope and lastingness of his political impact than this North American draughtsman – not Dürer, not […]
11/12/08 Henri Michaux on UbuWeb This contribution on the famous Belgique draughtsman includes the astonishing document “images du monde visionnaire”, an educational film by Henri Michaux and Eric Duvivier which was produced in 1963 by the film department of Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz “in order to demonstrate the hallucinogenic effects of mescaline and hashish. ———————————————————————————————————————– […]
“With the new school nothing is theoretically impossible, and no means are illegitimate.” (Frederick Juengling, 1880) Wood engraving, actually a product of early English Romanticism, experienced its breakthrough with the rise of the illustrated press. Its phenomenal success owed to its hybridity, for it combined the fine mechanical quality of copper engraving with the advantages […]
Gabriel Campanario is one of the most distinguished and prolific contemporary special artists, combining visual and written journalism. His career spans two decades, working for newspapers in Barcelona, Lisbon, California, and Virginia. At present he is working as a staff artist, at The Seattle Times, where he is publishing the very lively weekly column “Seattle […]
It really cannot be said that the Kölnische Stadtmuseum is concerned too little with one of its most significant artistic treasures, the oeuvre of the Rhenish historical painter and graphic artist Wilhelm Kleinebroich, quite to the contrary. In 1999 the brilliant monograph “Die Revolution des Malers Kleinenbroich” by Bonn-based historian Horst Heidermann was published there. […]
Hubert Herkomer (1849–1914) was a main exponent of the British social realism in the nineteenh centruy and the central artistic role model of young Vincent van Gogh. He started his career as a special artist for the illustrated weekly The Graphic and finally ascended to the rank of a successful society painter. Besides he was […]
Since I read Joe Sacco ’s Palestine Special Edition, and its preface entitled ‘Some reflections on Palestine’, in which the author explains the process of producing the masterpiece of his youth, I started to wonder about the relation between Sacco’s comics and my own work. But there is another circumstance. When Sacco came to Brazil in […]
The three months which 25-year-old Marcel Duchamp spent in Munich from the end of June to the end of September 1912 are judged by researchers as both the most enigmatic and momentous episode in the artist’s career. In a lecture from 1964, Duchamp himself called his stay in the Bavarian capital, which was a culturally […]
Daniel Zalkus, a renowned illustrator, who himself works as an artist-reporter from time to time, has put together an excellent commented series of historical drawings on-the–spot, representing a golden era of graphic reportage in the American magazines from the 1950’s and 60’s. Zalkus´ series Visual Journalism. The Artist as Reporter was publised recently in five […]
Lintoniana IX God send the Indian luck! / Success to the buck! / May his scalps be many and quick! / Guard his war, O Lord! through the thick / Of his foes! Give him luck! (W.J. Linton, 1871) In 1866 William James Linton moved to New York because, as he confessed in his autobiography, […]
The Black.Light project, which was initiated by war photographer Wolf Boewig and his companion, the travel writer Pedro Rosa Mendes, togehter with the graphic designers Henning Ahlers and Christopher Ermisch, is in many respects an adventurous one and, when it comes to openness and extension, without precedent: Ten comic artists, which are renowned for their fictitious work […]
Lintoniana VIII Infinite Spaces. On William James Linton’s Vignette Art “With the separation of draftsman and engraver began the decline of engraving as an art (…) began a system of special employment; and having to depend on draftsmen, engravers ceased to draw, ceased to rely on themselves. Wanting the wider power, the enevitable course was […]
Not translated: Als eine weitere von letztlich sechs Stationen ist die von dem Kunsthistoriker und Künstler Alexander Braun im empathischen Alleingang kuratierte Ausstellung über das beachtliche Werk des Zeichners und Pioniers von Comic-Strip und Animationsfilm Winsor McCay (1869 – 1934) nun treffsicher am vielleicht wichtigsten und am besten passenden Ort der Tournee gelandet: im Wilhelm-Busch-Museum in […]
29/2/12 Kairo-Reportage von Olivier Kugler In der neuen Printausgabe der Wochenzeitung Der Freitag erscheint eine Kairo-Reportage des in London lebenden Zeichners Olivier Kugler. Kugler hatte jüngst drei Wochen dort verbracht und neben dem Jahrestag der aegyptischen Revolution auf dem Tahrir Platz auch die blutigen Ausschreitungen rund ums Innenministerium (nach dem Desaster im Fussballstadion von Port […]
Not translated: Russland galt lange Zeit als eine Nation von Bücherwürmern. Menschen mit dicken Klassikern der russischen Literatur unter dem Arm prägten das Stadtbild, selbst in der vollen Metro konnte man ihnen begegnen. Verlage brachten ihre Bücher in Millionenauflage heraus und durften auf ein treues Lesepublikum vertrauen. Auch die bildende Kunst hatte ihren Platz im […]
„We shared a lot of ideas and we liked a lot of the same things. (…) We had quite a bit in common beside from the fact that we were friends.“ (Saul Leiter) I: Street Scenes in Slumberland. II: On Robert Weaver. Alexander Roob in conversation with Saul Leiter. III: Robert Weaver: The Vogelman Diary […]
4.9.2009 Josh Neufeld´s Hurricane Katrina Report Josh Neufeld is known as a long-time contributor to Harvey Pekar’s autobiographical “real life” series American Splendor. In his graphic novel A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge he tells the story of hurricane Katrina and its aftermath „from the perspective of real people still dealing with the storm each and […]
In order to explore the options for graphic journalism in the digital area, Berlin based illustrator Bo Soremsky created an interactive court report on the legal proceedings against the popular weathercaster Jörg Kachelmann. Drawn reportages require an interesting topic which is told in an authentic and exciting way. Of course this can be achieved by […]
25.1.2011 Ballpoint Memories from Afghanistan The English Russia blog presents an anonymous Ballpoint Soldier: “He was on a few wars, in Afghanistan, in Tajikistan and then in Chechnya. He got in real battles and lost many of his friends in action, that´s a true story true soldier. Everywhere he went he took one thing with […]
Not translated: Dass die Mysterien der Gegenwart am Hauptbahnhof stattfinden ist nicht erst seit Beuys und Stuttgart 21 klar. Zu Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts wurde er als Emanation des technischen Fortschritts und Brennpunkt großstädtischer Betriebsamkeit wahrgenommen, als Zentrum eines halluzinogenen “Reichs der Kraft.” So lautete der Titel einer populären Publikation von Artur Fürst von 1926, […]
Pictorial Reports from the Algerian Guerrilla War II After a series of devastating defeats against the insurgent Arab militias led by Abd el-Kader, the French tried to gain valuable time through the Treaty of Tafna to consolidate their military. The agreement, concluded in May 1837, granted Abd el- Kader sovereignty over the largest part of […]
On the Formations of Political Art and Wood Engraving William James Linton has left behind an immense body of artistic work. He executed thousands of commissioned and autonomously conceived engravings, a number of paintings and watercolours; moreover, he served as editor to several journals, ran his own private presses, contributed hundreds of poems and polemics […]
In a second-hand bookstore in Baku, Azerbaijan a group of international artists named Slavs and Tatars came across some volumes of the once wide spread historial Azeri magazine Molla Nasreddin. “It was bibliophilia at first sight. Its size and weight, not to mention the print quality and bright colors, stood out suspiciously amongst the meeker and dusty […]
In August 2011, Ali Ferzat, the well-known Syrian cartoonist, was molested in Damascus. Returning home from work in the middle of the night, he was dragged from his car, beaten up and dumped along the airport road outside of town. His attackers especially targeted his head, eyes and hands. On YouTube one could see photographs […]
9.10.2011 Damascus I: The invisible insurrection Dutch artist Theo de Feyter recently published some of the paintings and drawings which he created in April this year in the streets of Damascus. “The situation was very tense due to the demonstrations that took place allover the country.” ——————————————————– 14.10.2011 Damascus II: Portrait Studio From September 18th […]
21.3.2011 The Power of Image – International Conference on Caricatures in Egypt Caricatures as vehicles of political and social propaganda are the subject of an international conference organised in Egypt by Heidelberg University’s Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”. It is organised by research project B1 “Satire”, supervised by Prof.D. Hans […]
Pictorial Reports from the Algerian Guerrilla War I The occupation of Algeria was initiated by Charles X in June 1830 with the capture of Algiers, just a few weeks before the collapse of the Bourbon Restoration regime. At first, the bourgeois July Monarchy under Louis-Philippe had a bit of a hard time warming to this […]
Hier ist nun einer im Museum (an-)gelandet, der wohl kaum je darauf abzielt hat, dortin zu gelangen. Weil er womöglich gar nicht wirklich wusste, was ein Museum ist: der taub geborene, “self-taught artist” James Castle ( geb.1899 in Garden Valley/ Idaho – gest. Boise/Idaho 1977), von dem wir nicht wissen, ob er sprechen, lesen konnte […]
Souvenir postcards are a major source of visual documentation, in some cases the only surviving images of places and things.There are several souvenir albums online published by Louis Glaser from Leipzig in the last decades of the 19th century. The Catskill archive explains that these views were made to simulate photographs in texture and tone, […]
Informational Graphics and Art in Dierk Schmidt’s “Die Teilung der Erde” The essay is part of the comprehensive project documentation “Dierk Schmidt: The Division of the Earth – Tableaux on the Legal Synopses of the Berlin Africa Conference.” Edited by Lotte Arndt, Clemens Krümmel, Dierk Schmidt, Hemma Schmutz, Diethelm Stoller, Ulf Wuggenig, Cologne 2010. Dierk […]
Not translated: 8.7. 2011 Kommentar Deutsche Michel-Republik IV Nach Michels idealpolitischer Antwort auf das dringende Hilfsersuchen der libyschen Rebellen, nun sein realpolitischer Beitrag zur “Stabilisierung” der “gesamten Region”. ——————————————————————————————————————————- 18.4.2011 Originalton Deutsche Michel-Republik III: Noch mehr Pumpe Mehr “Wohlfeiles” von Ritter Roth zum Prinzip Aufklärung, bzw. den Segnungen der “Geheimdiplomatie” und der Schändlichkeit […]
16.6.2011 The Collections of the National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives include the Smithsonian’s earliest attempts to document North American Indian cultures, begun in 1846. Among the earliest ethnographic collections are the diaries of John Wesley Powell, which recount his exploration of the Colorado and study of the region’s Indians, and the pictographic histories […]
Lintoniana VI What had laid the foundations for Linton’s reputation as a leading proponent of artistic xylography in the 19th century was the extraordinary intensity of his landscape depictions and the graphic freedom that he allowed himself to this end. The apex of his decade-long landscape work was marked in the mid 1860s by the […]
Not translated: Offensichtlich wurde diese Kriegs – Ausstellung der Staatsgalerie Stuttgart um das reichhaltige Konvolut von exzellenten Grafiken und Originalzeichnungen von Käthe Kollwitz herum konzipiert, das sich in der hauseigenen Sammlung befindet. Mehr als ein Drittel der Ausstellungsfläche ist ihrem Werk gewidmet; darunter befinden sich auch die beiden grafischen Zyklen Ein Weberaufstand (1897) und Bauernkrieg […]
After a conversation on archaeology and drawing, which took place in the MePri in 2006, this rather historical contribution is a second inquiry in the relationship between art, visual documentation and archaeology. I. Drawing an excavation In a series of drawings of the archaeological work at the ancient hill of Munbaqa in Syria I tried […]
Lintoniana V “Never did corpse of hero on the battle-field, (…) exite such emotions as the stern simplicity of that hour, in which the principle of utility triumphed over the imagination and the heart.“ (The Monthly Repository, 1832) What did Linton actually mean when, at the end of his conversation piece Cetewayo and Dean Stanley, […]
Dutch artist Jan Rothuizen has developed a very special and entertaining kind of topographical journalism, which allows him to leave the usual platforms of the art circuit behind. MePri: You have been making this kind of supra-factual or “soft”- cartographies since 2005 in various international megacities: Guangzhou, Cairo, Beirut and in your native town Amsterdam. […]
Not translated: Cabanel, der Name klingt nach Parfüm und wird auch so beworben. Immerhin hat der Maler dahinter den Modezaren Christian Lacroix angelockt, der nun wiederum Besucher ins Kölner Wallraf-Richartz- Museum locken soll. Lacroix hat man dort nicht nur die Möglichkeit eingeräumt, sein künstlerisches Idol in Kachtelteppich und saucige Fototapete einzukleiden sondern auch noch zum […]
Julian Assange …. ….. a John Wilkes of the new century? WilkesLeaks: …. John Wilkes, the “Father of Civil Liberty” was released from prison in April 1770. Still banned from the House of Commons, Wilkes joined the campaign for the freedom of the press. In February, 1771, the House of Commons attempted to prevent several […]
In 2009 the Russian website Drawing The Court arranged an open contest for artists, illustrators and cartoonists working at the trial of the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his close associate Platon Lebedev. The results are now presented , together with a short history of courtroom drawing. Courtroom drawing 23/07/09 Courtroom Drawing, 09/09/09
3) Verdun revisited In the circles of specialists in German studies, the political Goethe is regarded as “difficult”. His ambitions in this regard are often treated as fringe problem zones that can be neglected within the monumental, aesthetic whole comprised of creative writing and natural science, which one is accustomed to admiring him for. What […]
II) The Old Empire Strikes Back Just a few months after the disastrous end of the campaign against France, Goethe once again functioned as a monarchist campaign propagandist – this time in putting down the Mainzer Republik, the first democratic state on German soil, which had been established with the support of the French revolutionary […]
I) The Campaign Against the New Insanity Was Goethe a war artist? The first section of the three-part historical essay, which sheds light on the drawing activities of the poet in connection with his political endeavours, focuses on his participation in the campaign of the monarchist First Coalition against revolutionary France in 1792. Only thirty […]
Lintoniana IV “History will speak of me.” – On Linton’s colonial-critical dialogue William James Linton grasped himself foremost as a political artist. In the biographical appendix of the compilation of lyrics, English Verse. Lyrics of the 19th Century, which he edited in 1883 together with the renowned literary critic Richard Henry Stoddard, he left no […]
Daumier Again. The following survey by David Kunzle contrasts Daumier’s career with that of the then much more popular Amédée de Noé, who was known under his penname Cham. He was ten years younger and a disciple of Daumier’s role model, the tragically underrated Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet, who was banned by Baudelaire from the pantheon of […]
Not translated: Seit 1921 betätigte sich Karl Arnold, einer der Hauptzeichner und Miteigner des Münchner Satiremagazins Simplicissimus, als Chronist des “wilden” Lebens in der preußischen Metropole. Seine Berliner Bilder erschienen in unregelmäßiger Folge und brachten es auf insgesamt 48 Blatt. Mit der Publikation eines gleichnamigen Sammelbandes hatte die Reihe dann 1924 auch ihren Abschluß gefunden. […]
Much more than her precursor Joseph Pennell, young Viennese artist Lili Rethi was able to transform static architectural sites into energetic, vibrant organisms. The illustrations of the German version of Upton Sinclair´s Letters to Judd, an American Workingman (Briefe an einen Arbeiter, Leipzig- Wien 1932) already revealed her specific talent to praise the processes and […]
18/5/08 Annabelle Görgen: Antihaltung mit System: Die Arts Incohérents. Eine vergessene Kunst und die Folgen. MePri-Lecture #14 Das surrealistische Verfahren der poetischen Zündung, die Methode der Kombinatorik, und der häufig sprachspielerische und schwarze Humor erhalten durch die Erforschung einer wenig bekannten Pariser Künstlergruppe des späten 19. Jahrhunderts einen neuen historischen Hintergrund: Die Arts incohérents waren […]
-abridged version- L’imagination au pouvoir – Imagination to power (Charles Fourier) One has settled down comfortably with Honoré Daumier. “There is hardly another artist who has become such an epitome of an entire art genre,” (1) Thomas Gaehtgens wrote in his text on the French illustrator published in 1979, and what he meant was the […]
New Release The projected monumental five-volume set (four of them are available now) by Erik Fischer is the first extensive monographic treatment of one of the most interesting artists of the 16th Century. Melchior Lorck, or Lorch, originally Loris, born in 1526/27 in the former Danish Flensburg, was a contemporary of Pieter Breugel the Elder […]
Among the many voices that paid homage to the ninty-years old cartoonist Ronald Searle, the one of film director Mike Leigh protrudes. In an essay published by Daily Telegraph Leigh, who is noted for his experimental methods of achieving realism in film, explains, how a book of cartoons, given to him at the age of […]
The MePri-Collections holds the original of a coloured poster, signed by Emile Cohl. Pierre Courtet-Cohl, the grandson of Emile Cohl was so kind to examine this large cartoon (84 x 49 cm) and it turned out, that the drawing was not only authentic, but also – as far as known – the only surviving example […]
Charles Gilbert-Martin, along with André Gill, Alfred Le Petit and Thomas Nast, counted as the main protagonists of the second wave of the caricature movement. What lent them unparalleled popularity in the field of art was less the graphical brilliance and enormous richness of ideas in their works than the back-breaking campaigns and skilful ambages […]
Willibald Krain became known during the First World War for his pacifistic prints portfolio “Krieg” [War] which was published 1916 in Zurich in three different language versions. Along with his mentor, Käthe Kollwitz, Krain ranked among the very few socio-critical artists in 1920s Germany whose work was internationally acclaimed. His illustrations and paintings were published […]
Lintoniana III “Men like no prosy tales: we’ll try How doggrel rhyme fits history.” The MePri-Collection holds four different copies of Linton’s groundbreaking social poem in which he accuses the afflictions caused by the inhuman legislation for the poor. “This poem established Linton as a peoples poet and became part of the repertoire of radical […]
Not translated: Die Erfindung archigenetischer Gründungsmythen scheint eine der eigentümlichsten und nachhaltigsten Leistungen der Moderne gewesen zu sein. Schaut man sich die Entwicklungsstränge der Kunst des frühen 20. Jhds. aus der Perspektive des Sonnendecks gängiger Kunstgeschichtsschreibung an, dann erweist sich das Auftauchen anarchischer Gruppierungen wie der Dadaisten und Surrealisten als ein schockierender Einbruch aus heiterem […]
Exhibition Catalogue TAUCHFAHRTEN (DIVING TRIPS) Drawing as Reportage Edited by Stephan Berg, Kunstverein Hannover; Ulrike Groos, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. With texts by Michael Glasmeier, Karin Gludovatz, Clemens Krümmel, Joachim Rees, Alexander Roob (ger./engl.). Softcover, 232 p., with 420 mostly colored illustrations. Richter Verlag, ISBN 3-937572-15-5 Bookstore, ISBN 3-937572-17-1 THE CATALOGUE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE BUT CAN […]
In her allegorical drawings, Alice Leora Briggs reflects her experiences with the escalating violence along the Mexican borders. “My current focus is Ciudad Juárez. In this city one sees fiction in action, even an hour is time enough to blend truth with myth. I have traveled to sites of recent executions, photo-documented known death houses where […]
extracts from a book by Tobias Greiner INTRODUCTION: Extracts from five chapters out of my Absolutely Drawpassing reportage book are presented as pdf files. Most of the works focus on drawings. Some photo images, real objects and installations are added that I have developed during my Drawpassing tours. The Drawpassing chapters presented here show 1. my Drawpassing practice/method 2. different places in the […]
The MePri Collection holds a wondrous scrapbook on wood engraving, affectionately combined and carefully lettered. The object was offered by a seller of autographs and announced as follows: “An autographed letter by William James Linton signed, to William Abercrombie, discussing his books, saying there is no large paper copy of the Hints. [on Wood-Engraving]. Tipped […]
Lintoniana I “We are Utopians, theorists, dreamers, enthusiasts, fanatics, madmen, in a word, we are republicans.” W.J. Linton, 1850 In December 1850, almost two years after the revolutionary hopes of a democratic change had been buried Europe-wide under a mantle of resignation and depression, radical artisan William James Linton began to proclaim his forceful vision […]
It was just always this swaying between a depressed mood and exaggerated self-confidence. This was always caused by the many years of dropping out of society. Something was bent inside me at the time and it never straightened up again. A certain dread of making new acquaintances always impeded me in an extraordinary way and […]
“War artists” was shown in Autumn 2008 at Annely Juda Gallery in London – together with two other drawing projects, one on Hermetic diagrams (“Alchemy”), and another on official letterheads (“Correspondence: From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe”). In the accompanying catalogue, Richard Grayson writes: “War Artists’ shows us twelve people using means of representation that were once […]
Now available: Our first edition of artists’ prints published by Melton Prior Institute for Reportage Drawing, Düsseldorf, in collaboration with Kunstverein Bremerhaven e.V. Luis Camnitzer, New York Bogdan Hoffmann, Bremen Birgit Jensen, Düsseldorf Ben Katchor, New York Stephan Mörsch, Berlin Alexander Roob, Düsseldorf Dierk Schmidt, Berlin Paul Schwer, Düsseldorf Andreas Siekmann, Berlin Susan Turcot, Toronto […]
Not translated: Die Schilderungen kontinentaleuropäischer Stadtlandschaften und Alltagssituationen des niederländischen Künstlers und Archäologen Theo de Feyter haben wir bereits in einem zurückliegenden Beitrag vorgestellt. In seiner aktuellen Ausstellung in der Amsterdamer Galerie De Rietlanden Exposities, die noch bis zum 18. Januar 2009 zu sehen ist, zeigt de Feyter nun Arbeiten, die in den letzten Jahren […]
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 […]
“Bernard Buffet, 34, painter of the “misérables”, owner of a Rolls-Royce, whose figures with their elongated proportions are no longer being rewarded by French art dealers in line with the bestseller lists, has painted a 20 sq. m. cinema poster for the ballad of the wide boys, “Terrain Vague”, by that old master among directors, […]
The painter and graphic artist David Friedmann lived in Berlin from 1911 and was a student of Herrmann Struck (etching) and Lovis Corinth (painting). Until the Nazis came to power in 1933, Friedmann was a successful artist producing late impressionist landscapes, still lifes, and nudes. In 1938, he fled with his young family to Prague only […]
A Summary of the Interview Thomas Zacharias, born in 1930, taught at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich from 1966 on. After receiving the emeritus status, the artist, book author, illustrator, art historian, and photographer created a comprehensive oeuvre in sketchbooks. At times, Zacharias lived in London, where he created these drawings. Thomas […]
“There is life in every little pencil stroke.” Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh Nuenen, 4 or 5 May 1885 “When I think how he rose to such a height by working from the very beginning from nature, without imitating others, and how he is none the less in harmony with the […]
This drawing, highlight of a series of a total of eight by American war artist Herbert C. Hahn, is certainly a haunting graphic document of the armistice talks during the Korean War that started at Kaesong on July 10, 1951 and lasted until August 22, 1951. Initially, both sides – the North Korean and Chinese […]
«Until now I never knew Boyd H[oughton] was so interesting (…) Very strange. (…) After you have seen my Boyd Houghtons from the first year of the Graphics you will understand more clearly what I wrote about the importance of this master’s work.» Vincent van Gogh to Anton van Rappard, February and April 1883 (Letters […]
“Mitoyennetés aberrantes” should probably be translated as “Aberrant neighbourhood”. It was conceived in october 2007 by Olivier Spinewine (drawing, photographing and filming reportage), Lionel Devlieger (text) and Alexia de Visscher (graphism). Eventually the project took the form of an exhibition and the edition of a zigzagfolder (download the pdf here). The concept evolved around French […]
Until July 28, the Parisian Galerie Jocelyn Wolff presents drawing-based work by Franz Erhard Walther (*1939). The new work “Sternenstaub – A Drawn Novel” (2007/08) consists of several hundred (photocopies of) pencil-on-paper drawings tacked to the wall, each of them detailing memorable occurrences and encounters from the artist’s life – in a style vaguely reminiscent […]
This drawing by Thomas Nast, in the MePri-Collection, is a very precise preliminary study for one of his best-known political cartoons. The wood engraving made from this 18 x 22.5 cm sketch filled a large-format double page spread in “Harpers Weekly”, the most widely circulated American illustrated magazine of the time, on 10 September 1870. […]
11 January, 1871. Snow covers the bunker installations of Bastion 69, southwest of Paris. Several soldiers are on guard with shouldered rifles and fixed bayonets. An icy wind is blowing over the defence walls. One waits, time seems to stand still, as if it were frozen. One person among the guards is not a soldier, […]
In her recent works, Susan Turcot has adopted a variety of reportage techniques and has made a significant point of examining the time-based, processual and functional equation that “live” drawing and its medialized representations can set up for the viewer. She investigates large-scale ecological and economical processes such as deforestation and the exploitation of other […]
The following text was commissioned by the Spanish artists magazine Centro de Bajo Rendimiento“ for proyecto editorial No.1, 2008 www.centrodebajorendimiento.com Special thanks go to Toni Crabb. I. Unfinished The first drawing ever published in a state of declared unfinishedness appeared on November 28th, 1891, in the globally distributed magazine „The London Illustrated News“. In his […]
Not translated: Das Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt zeigt eine Retrospektive des lange verdrängten und vergessenen Malerstars der fünfziger und sechziger Jahre. In der Ausstellung “Tauchfahrten. Zeichnung als Reportage”, die 2004/2005 im Kunstverein Hannover und der Kunsthalle Düsseldorf stattfand, war Bernard Buffet mit zwei Industriereportagen der sechziger Jahre vertreten, mit einem Porträt der Burda-Werke […]
Ill. 1 War is atrocious, and the horror of war has proven to be the most tenacious constant in human history. Empirically seen, we are in a constant state of war. Among other things, this fact presents problems to those responsible, to those who must make war – despite the known horrific results – publicly […]
“There is something virile in it – something rugged – which attracts me strongly (…) In all these fellows I see an energy, a determination and a free, healthy, cheerful spirit that animate me. And in their work there is something lofty and dignified – even when they draw a dunghill.” Vincent van Gogh, October […]
Summary From October 1998 to the end of 1999, drawings of Austrian artist Fritz Panzer appeared in the daily newspaper “Berliner Zeitung” under the title “Stadtblicke” [City Views] in quite irregular intervals. He had made the drawings in many different locations all over the capital. The then editor-in-chief, Michael Maier, intended to strengthen the element […]
Only in recent years has one gained the insight that Vincent van Gogh was not only a collector of Japanese graphic prints, like many of his artist colleagues, but was also imbued by a passion for the pictorial art of illustrated journals of his times. This was mainly thanks to two exhibitions: One, in spring […]
In the work Estrada da Floresta [Forest Highway] by artist Hélio Melo (1926–2001, from the Brazilian state of Acre) a rubber tapper – in Portuguese, seringueiro –approaches a big rubber tree, which in the wild can measure in excess of thirty meters in height and almost three meters in diameter. The picture does not therefore […]
28 drawings made during a residency in Acre, Brazil as part of my invitation to the 27th Sao Paolo Bienal, ‘How to live together’. Drawing as reportage: I have tried to merge historical, environmental, anthropological research with my own experience of rituals, exchanges, and travel during my residency in Acre. This series does not capture […]
I began my preoccupation with Heinrich Ehmsen at the end of the 1970s when I was studying at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich. In a study group concerned with exploring the image production during the Munich soviet republic, I took over the research on the topic of reportage drawing. It quickly became clear […]
Matthias Reinhold attended a six-month course dealing with traditional Chinese painting at the China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou, in southeast China. He presents a report for the MePri on the teachings conveyed at the art academy in the field of tension between classical landscape painting and the present-day reality of life, and on the […]
No translation yet. Die Ausstellung „Jan van der Heyden, painter and inventor“ im Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (2. 2. – 30.4. 2007)Möglicherweise hat es eines derart exklamatorischen Obertitels wie „Braand /Fire!“ bedurft und eines nicht minder sensationistischen Vergleichs des Subjekts der Ausstellung mit Leonardo da Vinci, um über die obligatorischen Amsterdam-Pauschaltouristen hinaus noch weitere Besucher in die […]
1) I prepare transparencies. These can be made by drawing on a clear plastic sheet, using traditional photographic techniques and enlarging on orthochromatic film, or by drawing on the computer or scanning and printing on clear plastic sheets. When registration of images is needed, printing is better done on an ink jet printer. Laser printers […]
When I refer to colony, I mean it quite literally: as a territory taken over by another power, where identity is maimed and slowly forgotten, values are shifted and the will for independence becomes ritualized into an increasingly empty and hopeless vow. When I arrived in New York in 1964 I shared a studio with […]
At the end of the 1960s, the Uruguayan sculptor, graphic artist and art critic Luis Camnitzer (born 1937 in Lübeck), living in exile in America, founded the New York Graphic Workshop together with his colleagues Liliana Porter and José Guillermo Castillo. The aim of this venture was to remove the aura of elitism from artistic […]
In his 1888 collection of stories bearing the somewhat excessive title „Tent Life in Tigerland. Being Sporting Reminiscences of a Pioneer Planter in an Indian Frontier District“, we find former Australian Minister of Education James Inglis looking back to an adventurous stretch of his life as an indigo planter in the mangrove forests of Northern […]
Among the innumerable illustrated travelogues about India directed to a primarily British audience in the18th and 19th centuries, „Sketches of Native Life in India,“ a book that was published in London in 1848,has gained a special reputation for its exceptional visual impressiveness and its idiosyncratic qualities.Today, even single illustrated sheets from this work are almost […]
In 1800, the Swiss educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi found drawing to be “a general human matter,” “eine allgemeinmenschliche Sache.” This maxim is at once both a claim and a vision. Pestalozzi raised drawing to the rank of a fundamental anthropological fact supposedly preceding all ethnic, cultural, social, and professional differentiation. Seen before the backdrop […]
A conversation on archaeology and drawing MePri, Düsseldorf, 12/16/2006 Alexander Roob: In addition to your art studies, you also completed a period of studies in archaeology and then worked as a professional archaeologist. Perhaps you can start with a bit of biographical information. Theo de Feyter: I first studied art at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, […]
The Dutch word “onverkoren” is a fictive, ambiguous term. It can mean both “not selected” and “not chosen.” Motifs not selected are motifs I came upon by chance. I am a painter who works outdoors, “in front of the motif.” My search for motifs in nature or in the city is influenced by the usual […]
The critical opinion reviewers had of 19th-century German press drawings and illustration art was quite sobering in its overall tenor and can easily be reduced to: There’s Menzel, and that’s just about all. Indeed, it took until the late 1880s for the contours of draughtsmen with a profile of their own to be noticed… PDF: […]
The more clearly and distinctly, more realistically things find themselves depicted, the more com-plex the play of perceptions and questions becomes. It is precisely the simple, the banality of the everyday become image that on closer inspection begins to drift off into the drama of the Symbolic or to founder in pure doubling … > […]
Sorry, not translated yet. Der Abschied. Nach monatelangen Reisevorbereitungen verabschiedet sich der Künstler am Morgen des 3. Juni 1773 von seiner Familie im Hof seines Berliner Hauses in der Brüderstrasse. Der Aufenthalt in Pyritz. Am Morgen des zweiten Tags erreicht er Pyritz, wo das kränkelnde Pferd anfängt zu lahmen. Während es von einem Schmied beschlagen […]
When he found himself obliged to the “Verein Berliner Künstler” due to a generosity bestowed upon him, Menzel decided to gladden his colleagues with a representative gift that was meant to recommend to them his own artistic program as a path to take. He painted the posthumous, life-sized portrait of the Berlin artist and miniaturist […]
In the 1980s, frustrated by the increasing restrictions in the field of magazine design, Weaver shifted the focus of his activities more and more to teaching at the New York Visual School of Arts and expanded a loose sequence of diary-like motif books he began with in the 1970s to form an independent complex of […]
In his “Songs for Drella”, Lou Reed claimed that no Michelangelo could ever come from the hicktown of Pittsburgh. But this does not stand up to close examination. Robert Weaver is from Pittsburgh and in 1949, the same year the other Pittsburgher Andy Warhol, the subject of Reed’s cycle of songs, moved to the metropolis […]
