endless wonders

today (or very soon) i'll add an
"endless wonders" column in the
sidebar. (speaks for itself, no?)

these are from a source that has
outdone my best efforts,
& i couldn't be happier.

i once said that this blog was the
only place on the internet where
one might find the complete
calendars of theo v. hoytema.
i now am wrong.

at the Wolfsonian, late publishers
of the astonishing journal DAPA,
have done something wonderful
to their website collections:
they've made them very accessible.

i've left out the months we've already passed in this first calendar,
but with a reminder that you can find the whole thing
at the wolf's site,
not to mention that there are a number of other calendars for 1928
(of which 2012 is a repeat): just enter -- calendar 1928 --
as your search terms.


yes, there's a lot more
(-- calendar hoytema -- gets you that entire set),
and other treasures that take you beyond the calendar world...
and there are other sites of endless wonders....
to be explored....

allegories • (the calendars)

(for evan et al!)

for the children? • (the calendars)

UNTIL TODAY, ALL of the calendars i've posted have been, quite unintentionally, for adults. today we begin a break from that,
though who will ever agree as to where that line really falls?

THE STORIES OF hans christian andersen have been discussed here before. notably, an entire storybook was featured, with illustrations by theo van hoytema. numerous others, also illustrators of andersen's tales, have been mentioned, including harry clarke, edmund dulac, arthur rackham, w heath robinson, maxwell armfield, mable lucie attwell, charles robinson, and many, many more.

THIS TIME WE have carl otto czeschka, member of the wiener werkstatte. though these images are drawn from andersen's tales,
i think we might question who the expected audience might be.

BUT WHO WAS this master storyteller that inspired all of the
brightest lights of the golden age of book illustration?
was he this, as danny kaye portrayed him?

uhhh...., no.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN was the ugly duckling, and he was also the little mermaid. reports ubiquitously describe his unhappy childhood, with his huge beak of a nose, he was usually alone. even as an adult, his state remained solitary.

WHAT IS THE first thing you always wonder about mermaids?
is it,"how do they do it?"? yeah, i thought so; me too.
well, neither did mr andersen. biographies describe instead
a lonely man burned with a continual series of unrequited passions,
for both women and men. virginity as syrup to sweeten
children's stories. little mermaid, indeed. imagine really seeing
yourself as that creature with her legs fused together.

SO THAT LEADS one to wonder at the grand, lasting popularity of the stories. need for love, of course. basic for everyone. so what else is new? well, there is one other thing that to me fills in some of the remaining gaps, to question.

IN ADDITION TO andersen's unconsummated bisexuality, there is common speculation to his condition of asperger's syndrome, more difficult to prove from a nearly 200-year remove than those things
love letters can prove. but it would make sense.

WHILE ASPERGER'S IS perhaps best known for 'being on the autism spectrum,' few know what even that means, let alone all of the very important specifics. writers with asperger's have shown clearly that it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with curtailment of language skills. in fact the 'aspie's' ability to concentrate on minutiae endlessly reminds me of a poet i once knew who told me of the hundreds
of times she'd rewritten her ten-line poem.

BUT THERE'S ANOTHER thing: you may not know it, but you have
a gene that teaches you the rules of being a member of a group,
large, or even just two people. for aspies, that gene is different.
they, we, just do not hear conversation in the same way non-aspies do.
social interactions are also experienced differently.
they may, however, notice whole dimensions of things that go
unnoticed in the everyday for most people.
think temple grandin/ dr doolittle.

IMAGINE BEING AN ugly duckling who grows up still not getting much of the human interaction going on around you, and at the same time have a mind addicted to wonder. what better recipe for fairy tales, to fill up the gaps with the fancy? the happy ending is always better than the unanswered question; how much of all creativity is the simple act of 'filling holes,' answering one's own questions? and everyone else's?

are you still ready to say that andersen wrote stories for children?

but who better to inspire calendars?! another one next.

a man for all seasons • 1915

click to hear the song of a wild parrot

click to hear the song of a toucan

click to hear the song of a rooster

click to hear the song of a stork

click to hear the song of a peacock

click to hear the song of baby chicks

click to hear the song of an oyster catcher

click to hear the song of a swan

click to hear the song of a pheasant

click to hear the song of a kestral

click to hear the song of a penguin

Belle Jardiniere • (the calendars)

EUGENE GRASSET
& DECORATIVE ART IN FRANCE

by OCTAVE UZANNE

November, 1894.

Among those most deserving to be signalled out in an essay of some length is Eugene Grasset, whose recent exhibition of work displayed so rare a talent as to assign him a place in the first rank of those who strive to become innovators, and to point out the road for others to follow. Aesthetes and those who look about for original work were last summer united in a common enthusiasm at the Exposition de Cent, organised by a young school of artists and literary men whose acknowledged mouthpiece is the journal La Plume.

When confronted with the extraordinary versatility of his style, the infinite contrast in his conceptions, applied as they are to everything that can contribute to the decoration of our houses, everyone ignorant of the existence of this modest and painstaking artist was struck with astonishment. It is easy to understand their amazement, because Grasset proved that he was endowed with talent in the triple character of scholarly illustrator, skilled architect, fantaisiste and brilliant decorator, one who was quite as clever at the composition of cartoons for tapestry as at realising the combinations possible in textile fabrics, lace and furniture.

Grasset revealed himself to us as an illustrator about ten or twelve years ago, when there appeared one of the most beautiful books of the century, It is here, among these pages, at once so elaborate and so lucid, that one can appreciate the apostle of new conceits, new styles of ornament, never before given to the world, but dug out of some decorative botany that is still unpublished.

Although at first sight one would think that Grasset has consciously bowed to the influence of the Japanese, the Hindoos, or Persians, and assimilated in a vague way some of their methods, one has only to exercise one's criticism with greater perspicacity and observation to realise the mistake based on first impressions. It is from the study of rural life, from the grouping together of oft-repeated sketches, from the soundness of his taste mellowed by work, and from the contemplation of nature, that he has distilled the best part of his originality and talent.

A slower moment was a golden opportunity to thoroughly master different styles. It was then that he realised how his talent should be exercised; in the evenings he attended an academy for a course of drawing ; he familiarised himself with Japanese art, dipping into the encyclopaedias of Hokusai and Utamaro, or the works of the master-illustrators of Nippon; in studies and conscientious observation, that nature is the great teacher, the true educator, but that the mission of the true artist is less to copy than to express and interpret her; to metamorphose her by making her pass, so to speak, through the alembic of an individual temperament.

His insight was, as it were, doubled by his desire to master everything and know everything. His predilection for the occult in respect to apparitions equals that of a Japanese artist, for he recognises the element of terror in the phantasmagoria of hallucination ; and imparts a frisson nouveau (new shudder) into compositions of this kind. And I believe that in illustrating a book from the unscientific point of view, Grasset would give us a something unusually creepy.

For several years past this great artist, with the deliberation of a thinker and philosopher, has lived a retired life in Paris in his studio in the Boulevard Arago, indifferent to all flattery. There, with his beautiful work about him, I have learned to know and honour him, and have held him in the greatest affection. His life is solitary, for solitude only admits of any real work, engendered gradually, and matured in an environment of that silence so favourable to pregnant minds. Impervious to the theories of painter-cliques, or of men of the day, careless of fashion, without vanity of any kind, he seems to hide his personality with as much care as he does his works, with which he never allows himself to be satisfied. In spite of his reputation as a craftsman not often pressed to hand over a design "copyright free," Grasset has thrown into all branches of industrial art the spirit of a commanding personality.

His cartoons for stained glass are, numerically speaking, quite extra- ordinary; his posters, his chromo-typography, his catalogue and book- covers, his tapestry panels, his designs for furniture of all sorts, his architectural work, his lithography, his innumerable decorative works, might furnish material for an iconography far more important than we would think. Among his principal achievements, his glass ware and stained windows do him the greatest credit, and those aerial transparent paint pervading his compositions, but to his care in selecting beautiful iridescent glass, shimmering, striated and rich in tone, all of which he knows how to arrange.

This portion of his work is assuredly the most beautiful and elevated, because, as M. Arsene Alexandre, a discerning critic, has judiciously remarked, "Grasset, without shirking the strict limitations of the craft, on the contrary revels in them, and manages in these stained windows, by the means of the lead lines, to produce perfectly legitimate surprises due to broad original experiments, and to his steeping himself with colour and light. Moreover, like every true decorator, he has taken care to appreciate when and how Nature's colours lend themselves to transposition in the harmony of a composition. What matter if a sky be green, trees red, coursers and animals of mystic forest blue, running water a yellow sulphur tint, if the general effect of the fresco is enveloped in a pleasing atmosphere of gradations, and produces a startling unearthly impression.

Nature is synthetic in her colouring ; she never guarantees more than three tones—the tone of background, the tone of light, the tone of shadow. Such and such a plant, flower, or object only betray their true colour under atmospheric conditions when the light strikes from above, as is usually the case. To endow them with artificial colour, to transpose the value of backgrounds, shadow, and light should be the supreme achievement of decoration. The masters of all countries and all times have never acted otherwise, and our most celebrated tapestries charm us by the fantastic and agreeable unreality we detect in them.

It is one of Grasset's strong points that he has understood these things, and he has applied his principles with great courage to the execution of his works; for him the search for the beautiful does not cease to be the longed-for goal; he takes lessons from the past, and from exotic decorators new impressions ; but from Nature alone he claims inspiration. In the domineering and banal eclecticism of these days, it is fortunate that our decorative art can still boast a few artists of Grasset's vigorous calibre —artists who enable us not to despair of the future. 1

the calendar is from around 1895

serie du barbier • (the calendars)

george barbier evidently favored the series form. where yesterday we saw seasons, today we have the continents. these and others we'll see in the future were from annual almanacs that he illustrated.

these came out annually, beginning in 1917, and featured, along with calendars (unadorned), of course, poetry, blank but bordered pages for writing your secret thoughts, vaguely erotic romance stories, and more. profusely illustrated, they were clearly the perfect item with which to begin the new year.

in the early 1910s, following on the heels of charles worth's 'invention' of haute couture, the fashion magazine was born. barbier, then about 30, had found his shangri la.

The concept of the fashion magazine as a tool for defining style was in its infancy. Through these publications, Barbier reached thousands of women. With free rein to draw his own designs, as well as illustrate the gowns of established couturiers, Barbier began to influence the look of the day. As women sought new freedom in the form of shorter and nonconstricting dresses, Barbier's designs kept step with them -- or stayed a step ahead. 1

the wave of freedom-seeking, self-defining, celebratory and love-hungry women that spread throughout europe after world war one found its collective vision fulfilled in barbier's designs.

so who was this visionary? all his bio decry the lack of much about that, for which this new york times serves as an illustration:

Contributing to his disappearance [from the public eye after his death] were his own reticence and a surprising sparseness of biographical information. Born into a prosperous bourgeois family in the provincial town of Nantes, he lived a clearly very different lifestyle in Paris, where he frequented unmistakably, if not exclusively, homosexual circles - he was, for example, an intimate of the dandy and poet Robert de Montesquiou, who introduced him to Marcel Proust....

.... His library, containing many rare editions, was auctioned off and his collection of Japanese and European erotica was donated to the Bibliothèque Nationale, where it was placed in the restricted "Enfer" section, reserved for works considered threatening to public decency....

From the outset an ardent admirer of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, he produced sumptuously colorful albums celebrating Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina, and designed costumes for the ballerina Anna Pavlova. But he parted company with the Ballets Russes aesthetically and musically with the Cubist-style production "Parade" in 1917, which he condemned in print as "strange, noisy, eccentric" and "the apotheosis of the sneer."

A fashionable sapphic subtext is often present in Barbier's exquisitely composed fashion plates of highly feminine couples and trios, sometimes with companions in immaculate white-tie evening dress, who are either ambiguously epicene or clearly women in drag. "Real" males seldom appear in the artist's oeuvre....

His color plates for publications like the luxurious monthly "La Gazette de Bon Ton," published from 1912 to 1925, were produced using "pochoirs" or stencils, a technique criticized by some purists but vigorously defended by Barbier as a way to present "the artist's work in all its freshness without that often slightly cold transfer produced by mechanical means."

The hand printing process involved, inspired by the methods of the classical Japanese masters, produced a still-undimmed, jewel-like quality in the resulting images that testifies to Barbier's judgement in championing the pochoir technique. 2

the inventive arts • (the calendars)

MYA CALENDAR

Monks of the Years
for Zodiacal Ears

Actuary, Fritillary, Mush
Mandrill, Mace, Jejune,
Jelly, Aghast, Septic Ember,
Oak Toner, Remember, Distemper

Device to
Mesmerize the Monks

30 days hath septic ember
mandrill jejeune and remember
all the rest have 31 dyes
of different color:

Actuary: puce
Mush: buff
Mace: rose
Jelly: lime
Aghast: jade
Oak Toner: rust
Distemper: slush

except Fritillary which howls
28 cold tones of dust.

Colette Inez

“Mya Calendar” from
Getting Under Way:
New and Selected Poems
by Colette Inez.
(Story Line Press, 1993)

a man for all seasons: 1908

1i've changed my mind since yesterday. this project is too important to do in a half-assed manner. so, whenever i post a partial page i will do my best to replace it with a whole page as i can. i've finally found a bio for this artist, google-translated from the dutch. i'll try to catch all of the translating and "sense" problems, but if you find any i miss, please let me know!

HOIJTEMA, Theodoor van (1863-1917)

Hoijtema, Theodoor van (known as Theo van Hoytema), painter; draftsman and lithographer. Married 24/12/1891 to Martina Hogervorst. They had no children.

Theo van Hoytema, youngest in a family with eight children, lost his parents at an early age. Together with his brothers and sisters, Theo moved to Little City District where his eldest sister gave him his first drawing lessons. After having taken four classes at the Municipal Gymnasium in Leiden, he began working in the banking house of his two elder brothers in Delft.


Van Hoytema, however, with his cheerful nature and restless, artistic leanings and love of nature, was not at all suitable for such a job and, once it was possible, he left. In 1889 he moved from Delft to Leiden, where he spent some time with the family on his mother‘s side. Meanwhile, he followed courses in winter drawing and painting at the Hague Academy of Fine Arts (1887-1892) and drew stuffed animals in the Zoological Museum after school.

Through his uncle, business partner of the publishing and printing company Leiden Brill, Van Hoytema got his first assignments: scientific illustrations in biological works. In 1890 Van Hoytema established himself as an independent artist in his own studio Intrantibus Pax. That is where his lithographed book How the birds came to a king (Amsterdam, 1892) came into being. This was the first Dutch attempt to tie text and image to a single idea.

With the color lithographs in his next project, the ugly duckling (Amsterdam, 1893), a story with autobiographical elements to the tale of Hans Christian Anderson, Van Hoytema acquired some fame. He was married in 1891 and lived first in Loosduinen, later in Voorburg. His happiest and most productive years had begun. He painted the large canvas Return of the Stork (1893, Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen) and received orders for murals to decorate a room in the Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen (1893), and received orders for murals to decorate a room in the Society in Gorinchem (1894), and for a cruise boat of the company Fop Smit (1896).

Hoytema's subjects were almost without exception plants and animals, particularly after relocating to Hilversum in 1897. Chalk drawings dating from this period are Swans in a pond, and Face in a green- house, and such lithographs as the Rabbit and Egrets in the portfolio Animal studies. The architectural composition and technical mastery of these pieces bears witnesses to the skills Hoytema had acquired.

A difficult period for Van Hoytema began in 1902. His marriage broke up and he was worried about his health. Some years of wandering followed. He lived in Voorburg and Amsterdam, stayed with a sister in London and was nursed in a hospital (1904 - 1905), and in a sanatorium for nervous diseases in 1906. In 1907 he found a home with his sisters in The Hague, who lovingly cared for until his death.

Out of these stressful years grew the calendars for which Hoytema gained his greatest fame. The long series of color lithographs appeared only with great willpower, and the series was completed posthumously. The calendar for 1918 appeared in black and white.

Since 1970, the publication of his calendars and picture books has resumed in facsimile editions.

Van Hoytema did not belong to a particular artistic group or movement. His work reveals a number of typical characteristics of the period 1890-1900: the influence of English illustrators such as Walter Crane -- especially in the first two picture books, and the influence of Japanese prints. Art Nouveau styling elements, decorative and whimsical undulations, and distinct contours were employed, without losing sight of naturalism. By 1896 Hoytema had a great freedom in his work, and created a notably beautiful exhibition catalogue for the Rotterdam Art Circle, and a wonderful Monthly Scripture for Vercieringskunst.

Since 1892, Van Hoytema was a member of the 1893 Hague Art Circle and of Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam. He had many friends, including who even in his difficult years remained loyal and supportive. They described him as a friendly and cheerful despite everything, unpretentious man, full of idealism and hard work. 1

learning that hoytema suffered some years of despair didn't surprise me. there is something in the absolute tenderness with which he recreates his birds and animals that speaks, to me, of the sort of sensitive soul who may verge on that inexact edge between beauty and sadness.

he clearly loves these creatures, and devotes great care to represent both their beauties and their personalities. this is particularly observable in his work from this year, 1908. this is a year of solitary birds, close-ups, giving the viewer the sense that they can feel what the bird itself feels.

in upcoming posts we'll see how different years take on different moods and characters. and, as i said, the close-ups will be replaced with whole pages as i can, but i think, for this month in particular, the portraits will stay too.