Food don’t waste it!, U.S. Government poster published during World War I, 1917/1918.

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During World War I, many citizens planted Victory Gardens, vegetable, fruit and herb gardens, at homes and parks. These were designed to reduce the pressure on the food supply while boosting morale. The National War Garden Commission, organized in 1917, launched this war garden movement as well as a poster campaign encouraging the planting of these gardens.

The Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection is fortunate to own a number of posters promoting Victory Gardens.

“War Gardens Over the Top” shows a young boy with a hoe chasing fleeing ripe vegetables. The drawing is by Maginel Wright Barney, a children’s book illustrator and younger sister of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

The image in “The Seeds of Victory” was used in a number of posters. The illustrator, James Montgomery Flagg, is best known for his political posters, particularly his World War I recruiting poster featuring Uncle Sam pointing at the viewer with the caption “I want YOU for the U.S. Army”

“Food: Don’t Waste It” features sentiments that are familiar to us today. How often do we hear that we should shop carefully, cook certain ways, use less meat, buy locally, and eat less?

By: c u r i o
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://library.brown.edu/dps/curio/plant-your-victory-gardens/

On this day in 1911 the DELAG airliner LZ-8 (Deutschland) was destroyed in an accident.

Hugo Eckener was in command of an airship for the first time and LZ-8 had barely left its hangar when it was pulled away from its ground crew by a gust of wind.  The ship smashed against the roof of the hangar, but the passengers and crew escaped without injury by climbing down a long fire ladder.  The ship itself was a total loss.

The day’s gusty wind conditions made the flight ill-advised from the start and the wreck of LZ-8 contributed to the extreme caution for which Hugo Eckener became famous.  Eckener learned an important lesson from the accident, and he was determined never again to sacrifice safety to accomodate pressure from passengers, the public, the government, or any other source.

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By: Airships: The Hindenburg and other Zeppelins
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://www.airships.net/blog/anniversary-lz-8-deutschland-accident

By: The Golden Age
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://thegoldenagesite.blogspot.com/2013/05/more-misc-illustrations-artwork-by.html

This is unique footage of the great Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919).

He is seen at home, working on a canvas.

I’m just astonished it exists – I never imagined I’d see film of him painting – you even get a sense of his method of applying the oil to the canvas.

Also present in this footage are Renoir’s son Jean Renoir, 14, who stands by to arrange the palette and place the brush in his father’s hand, and Sacha Guitry, the man who made this film in 1915 and who appears midway through the film sitting down and talking with the artist.

A full description of the circumstances of the shooting of this footage and of those present can be seen at:

http://www.openculture.com/2012/07/astonishing_film_of_arthritic_impressionist_painter_pierre-auguste_renoir_1915

Enjoy

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By: The Cabinet of the Solar Plexus
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://dolorosa-reveries.blogspot.com/2013/04/wladd-muta-graphic-worksthe-secret.html

By: The Cabinet of the Solar Plexus
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://dolorosa-reveries.blogspot.com/2013/05/cornelis-galleemblems-1640.html

By: The Golden Age
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://thegoldenagesite.blogspot.com/2013/05/blog-post_23.html

Posted on May 21, 2013 at 10:32PM.

Posted on May 22, 2013 at 07:00AM.

By: The Golden Age
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://thegoldenagesite.blogspot.com/2013/05/harry-clarke-1889-1931-years-at-spring.html

Posted on May 19, 2013 at 10:08AM.

Albrecht Dürer self-portrait, 1484, drawn when the artist was thirteen years old.

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Superstition aside, these sculptures made from shards of mirrors were created by artist Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen.  If you look at the photographs carefully, in addition to the sculptures a person in a similar mirror-suit moves throughout the gallery.  The gallery also projects a video for this exhibit featuring  a person in this mirror-suit moving through commercial spaces in South East Asia and Denmark.  It is interesting noticing the virtually  universal nature of mannequins.  Rasmussen brings out that they allow us to imagine the way clothes will look on us, but on a deeper level we project what we want to be on them.  Similarly, these sculptures literally reflect those gazing at them.   [via]

By: Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://beautifuldecay.com/2013/05/20/mirror-shard-sculptures-and-performance-by-lilibeth-cuenca-rasmussen/

It bears a ‘working title’ hinting that it contains Dutch migratory birds, carries an Ex Libris stamp identifying it as belonging to the Katsurakawa^ family (2nd fig. below) and is owned and hosted by the State Library of Berlin. I see everything from eagle, pheasants, parrot species and hawk, to rhinoceros hornbill, egret, pelicans and many other species that escape my fairly ignorant abilities. Is Holland on all of their migratory flight paths? Seems unlikely, so I opted for the fail-proof, vanilla post title of ‘Bird Album’.

The 110+ page anonymous sketch album from the 19th century is called オランダ持ち渡り鳥類図帖 (仮題) 3巻 (online translation: ‘Netherlands have migratory birds such as Figure Pledge (tentative) Volume 3′) is available online via the State Library of Berlin website. [SBB Digital Collection homepage]

These delicate drawings are often outlined in ink and ink-wash and filled in with watercolour to a variable extent. Some of the illustrations are un(der)finished and I wonder if this isn’t something of a practice or copy album with published book designs appropriated for Japanese natural scenes. It’s all speculation of course. In general the birds are displayed quite realistically and are readily identifiable. I wonder, too, whether in those sketches where non-nondescript backgrounds are seen, if those birds were unfamiliar to the aritist(s).

The images above have all been moderately background cleaned and the colour saturation slightly boosted.

Thanks to @pop_ & @tatsushi_eto & @GingaStation.

By: BibliOdyssey
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2013/05/bird-album.html

Folkert

By: but does it float
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Source: http://butdoesitfloat.com/And-it-occurred-to-me-that-these-must-be-holographic-viral-projections

NGC 7293 Helix Nebula/Aquarius

M20 M21/SAGITTARIUS

M20

NGC6357/SCORPIUS

Comet C/2009 R1 McNaught June 10 2010 UT 00h30m

NGC 6726

Reflection and Emission Nebulas Scorpius/Ophiuchus

Comet Hale-Bopp April 1997

Horsehead Nebula

Comet Hyakutake at Perihel April 1996

M82 Ursa Major

NGC 4565 Coma Berenices

IC 4592 / Scorpius

NGC3372 overview/CARINA

Atley

By: but does it float
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://butdoesitfloat.com/It-is-man-s-relation-to-the-cosmos-to-the-unknown-which-alone-arouses

(Video link) Marc Azéma from the University of Toulouse Le Mirail in France has made animations by isolating and alternating the poses.
Thanks, Rob

By: Gurney Journey
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2013/05/stone-age-cinema.html

I went to see the show with a group of artist friends last week, and we were intrigued with several variations on a theme of passengers riding an omnibus.

In one version, a young woman sits with her left hand clutching the string of a box as her fellow passengers doze or gaze out the windows. Outside it’s a blur of action. Two contrasting light sources flood into the interior from the left and right.

In another, larger version, a wealthier woman hooks her fingers through a red strap in a hatbox. This time a man’s arm and hand fills the lower left. The same two side lights prevail as in the previous version. But now he adds a third light source, a bar of light from the viewer’s position cutting boldly across the main figure.

A smaller study shows a female omnibus rider peering out toward the light with a hand on the window.

A ‘bus interior is an interesting subject for a painter, one that we can relate to now. It’s an environment that mixes social classes, forcing strangers to sit together in the same space, while each is miles apart in his or her own thoughts.

Evidently all these paintings were based on visual impressions that Zorn experienced on location. Of course he couldn’t have painted these fairly large canvases on the spot. My guess is that he sketched some small rapid notations in pencil or charcoal on location, committed details to memory, and then reconstructed the scene with models in the studio.

The challenge would have been to hold to the fleeting impression, and not be seduced by detail in the static posed model. The attention to soft edges and rapid paint handling in all three versions gives the effect of jostling movement and the fleeting effect of a moment glimpsed and recollected.

Book: ANDERS ZORN: A European Artist Seduces America
Anders Zorn Exhibition

By: Gurney Journey
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2013/05/anders-zorns-omnibus-paintings.html

One day while completing an oil painting of a field artist Iris Scott needed to make a few quick adjustments to some yellow flowers but every brush at her disposal was stained a deep dark blue. Not wanting to stop and wash the brushes she decided to make a few quick touchups with her fingers, a small change to her process that would immediately change the course of her career. Wearing a pair of surgical gloves Scott now paints exclusively with her fingers bringing an impressionistic sense of color and texture to all of her paintings. The artist has a number of original works available on her website as well as prints over on Etsy, and here’s a quick video of her discussing her work on YouTube. (via gaks)

By: Colossal
Via: Feedbin Starred Entries
Source: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/05/oil-finger-paintings-by-iris-scott/