Curio Cabinet

Just another breezy afternoon noodling on the leaf! Photographer Aditya Permana of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, stole this photo of a forest dragon lizard in 2015 after closely observing the critter for over an hour. The reptiles' humanlike repose and fingering give the impression that he's shredding on a chloroplastic guitar. According to Permana, he had to win over the pint-sized rocker's trust before it randomly picked up the leaf to channel its inner Hendrix. Though the image has certainly struck a chord with musicians and animal lovers alike, herpetologists remain skeptical. "Lizards do not lay on their backs and sit up like the one shown in the photo," said Adam D. Leache, an associate professor at the University of Washington. Dragon lizards like this guy tend to hang out in trees, not the ground, so it is possible that Permana posed him. Or maybe Leache doesn't boogie. At any rate, the lizard appears at ease. Now, if only we could hear those tasty licks!
 

Image credit & copyright: Aditya Permana / Mercury Press / Caters
 

Title: The Old Guitarist
Artist: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Created: 1903-04
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 48.4 × 32.5 in (122.9 × 82.6 cm)
Current location: The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
 

It isn't easy struggling to make ends meet. Renowned Spanish artist Pablo Picasso found that out in 1902, when he was so desperate and cold that he had to burn much his work to stay warm. No other piece of his embodies this tale of artistic struggle quite like The Old Guitarist, from his somber Blue Period (1901–1904). The painting's withered guitarist slouches cross-legged amongst a corner of dreary blues and greens; everything is austere but the tawny guitar, which glows faintly like a dull breath of life. The elderly man's jagged, elongated limbs harken to the tortured style of 16th-century artist El Greco. And a ghostly impression of a woman's face, a remnant of an underlying painting visible above the man's ear, shows that Picasso couldn't even afford a new canvas. Taken in as a whole, the scene reflects 22-year-old Picasso's empathy for people struggling like himself. Unbeknownst to him, his hard work would soon lead to a life of luxury!
 

Below: an x-ray image of The Old Guitarist revealing the underlying painting of a woman.
 

Image credit & copyright: Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
 

Don't mistake those fire masks for fashion accessories. American photographer Lee Miller snapped these two British women as they huddled near a bomb shelter during the Blitz of World War II—when the German Luftwaffe conducted nightly air raids over England. Just how Miller arrived in England is a somber tale. Raped as a seven-year-old, then objectified as a fashion model, Miller later struggled as her innovations in avant-garde photography—such as her and Man Ray's rediscovery of the "pseudo-solarisation" technique—were overshadowed by those of male contemporaries. Unable to join the Army and battle an unjust world with arms, Miller instead became a harrowing war journalist. But confronting the abyss led her down a brutal road; following the frontlines deeper into Nazi Germany, Miller witnessed first hand the atrocities of the Holocaust. Despite seizing the chance to muddy up Hitler's abandoned Munich home (and bathe in the megalomaniac's tub), she returned to the States with severe PTSD. Though she succumbed to alcoholism and faded into obscurity, her son rediscovered over 80,000 of her photos decades later and curated them in the Lee Miller Archives. Give them a look so Miller can finally get the elusive recognition she deserves.
 

Below: more photos by and of Miller, including Irmgard Seefried, Opera singer singing an aria from 'Madame Butterfly' (1945); Lee Miller by David Sherman in Munich Hitler's apartment (1945); and FFI (Forces Francaise de l’Interior) worker, Paris, France (1944).
 

Image credit & copyright: Lee Miller Archives / Imperial War Museum London
 

The entire world gasped last week as the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris burned out of control. Miraculously, firefighters were able to save the ancient structure from complete ruin. But it's estimated to take many years—and over one billion Euros—to repair the massive damage. The spire, the roof, and much of the original woodwork were totally destroyed. Complicating the repair efforts is the fact that very little is known about the structure's original design and construction, which began around 1160. If the original builders used drawings or plans, they are long lost. And there is much that engineers don't understand about Gothic construction techniques. All of which could explain why the internet was abuzz about Ubisoft Entertainment's video game Assassin's Creed Unity shortly after Notre Dame began burning. Set in Paris during the French Revolution, the game depicts Notre Dame in exquisite detail. Artists who worked on Unity spent two years building a 3D model of the cathedral that is almost a 1:1 ratio—that is, every inch of Notre Dame is represented on the computer with an inch of pixels. The texture of every brick is accurate, as are the locations of every piece of artwork. Ubisoft has already donated €500,000 towards the rebuilding effort and has offered to make the model available to the French team working on the reconstruction. Although they may not need it, thanks to another 3D model of Notre Dame. A Vassar College art historian named Andrew Tallon created digital scans of 45 Gothic buildings. His model of Notre Dame, which he constructed by taking scans and panoramic photographs from 50 locations, is accurate to within five millimeters. He collected over one billion data points in total. He dedicated his life to figuring out how Notre Dame was constructed before dying of brain cancer last year at the age of 48. But his model lives on, and it just might save the architectural masterpiece he was obsessed with. As Victor Hugo wrote in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, "When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker of a door."
 

Image credit & copyright: The Verge
 

Title: Flying Foxes from PET-ART
Artist: Veronika Richterová (b. 1964)
Created: ca. 2007
Medium: plastic bottles
Current location: Prague, Czech Republic
 

Holy Earth Day and recycled art, Batman! These Flying Foxes by Czech artist Veronika Richterová completely turn the world of recycling on its head. Richterová has created a number of animal and plant sculptures using empty plastic bottles, which she calls PET-ART after the substance polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a thermoplastic polyester. The substance is heavily used in industrial manufacturing and domestic products like laundry soap containers and water bottles. "In the Czech Republic alone there is an annual consumption of around 60,000 tons of various types of PET bottles," Richterová writes. In an essay on her website, Richterová traces the history of PET plastics and their impact on the Czech Republic, where the pile-up of single-use plastic bottles has led to some creative endeavors, like the construction of miniature scarecrows to frighten away garden moles. Richterová comes to this cultural history with a vision of reshaping trash into elaborate creatures, including the wings-aflutter fruit bats above. Through her choice of industrialized medium and choice of natural subjects, Richterová forces viewers to see both the creatures we must protect and the substances which threaten their delicate ecosystems.

 

Below: more of Richterová's PET-ART.
 

Image credit & copyright: Veronika Richterová
 

It's Flashback Friday! Pedal into the weekend with this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Please, no—the bikes, they just keep coming! In 2017, startups all over China pounced on the lucrative bike sharing trend, where pedestrians pay a small amount of money to rent a bicycle for a set amount of time. All the consumer has to do is unlock a GPS-enabled bike with a purchase, ride, and abandon their aluminum mount anywhere they like, be it against a building or in a bush. But there was a major problem: the startups flooded the market with bikes at a pace that far—far—surpassed demand. There are now so many bikes in China that spokes, pedals, and handlebars are clogging the streets. Shown above, a man pedals past a humongous pile of them. By the end of last year, Shanghai alone had 1.5 million bikes (compare that to London's 11,000). Eventually, city legislators had to move in and cap production. Although the treaded tide seems to have passed, there's still a lot of work to be done—countless bikes to be heaped and sent off to graveyards. We're not yanking anyone's chain: look below to see the damage!
 

Below: more shots of China's insane bike surplus, including: a man untangling rope from a heap of bikes; a 10,000-bike pile; and tens of thousands of unridden bikes collecting rust in a field.
 

Image credit & copyright: Reuters / TPG / Getty / Yibo Wang / Shutterstock
 

It's Flashback Friday! Pedal into the weekend with this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Title: The Cyclist (Велосипедист)
Artist: Natalia Goncharova (1881–1962)
Created: 1913
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 41.3 x 30.7 in (78 x 105 cm)
Current location: State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russian
 
A decade before the U.S. established women's suffrage, Natalia Goncharova was being hailed the "suffragist of Russian painting." The nickname had nothing to do with voting and everything to do with the painter's wild success; in 1913 at the age of 32, she became the first avant-garde artist to have a retrospective in a Moscow gallery. That year, Goncharova also painted The Cyclist. Her subject's body has been multiplied and his backdrop spliced, emphasizing his motion. With its repetition, dislocated contours, and references to a bustling urban environment, the painting has all the hallmarks of Cubo-Futurism—just one of styles influenced and developed by Goncharova. The artist didn't have time for neat labels, and her advice to female artists then is still salient today: "Believe in yourself more, in your strengths and rights before mankind and God. There are no limits to the human will and mind."