Curio Cabinet

Title: The Dominion of Light
Artist: René Magritte (1898-1967)
Created: 1954
Medium: oil on canvas
Current location: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
 

Surrealist painter René Magritte may be best known for pairing unusual objects—like his infamous bowler hat and green apple duo. But later in his career, he became obsessed with another type of unlikely combination. The scene depicted in the bottom half of The Dominion of Light is a traditional exploration of light on a quiet residential street; the street lamp emits a small halo inviting the viewer in. The bright, daytime sky above, however, proves rather disarming—and gives the work the surrealist edge Magritte was known for. Debuting to acclaim when it was shown at the Venice Biennale in 1954, the strange painting was accidentally sold to four buyers instead of one. Magritte rolled with it; after the exhibition, he created three identical works for the additional customers. What started out as a practical fix turned into a passion. Magritte painted the daytime/nighttime scene 23 more times over the next few years. "I find the evocation of night and day is endowed with the power to surprise and enchant us," he said of the paintings in 1956. Consider us enchanted!
 

Below: more paintings in The Dominion of Light series.
 

Image credit & copyright: Charly Herscovici / Brussels, Artists Rights Society

Thanks to Jesse Owens, the 1936 Olympic games didn't turn out to be the triumph Adolf Hitler hoped they'd be. 82 years ago this month, the Nazis were at the height of their powers, and Germany's leader wanted the Olympics, held in Berlin, to demonstrate the country's growing power and prosperity. For the international audience, the Nazis downplayed the regime's growing repression of Jews and other minorities; still, they wanted the Olympic games to be a showcase for Aryan racial superiority. But Jesse Owens, an African American sharecropper's son, smashed those expectations by winning four track and field gold medals. Hitler refused to congratulate Owens, and German newspapers derided the victories by claiming that "negroes" were not actually people, but an "auxiliary force" required to fortify the mediocre American team. When people expressed outrage on his behalf, Owens, a dignified, soft-spoken man, would occasionally point to the reception he received back home: "When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus," he said. "... I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."  

Below: Owens salutes the American flag after being awarded one of his gold medals at the Berlin Olympics.

Image credit & copyright: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; WikiMedia Commons
 

Actress Mae West once said "too much of a good thing can be wonderful," but she may not have felt that way about having her portrait taken. West, who was born August 17, 1893, agreed to be photographed by Diane Arbus for a 1965 feature in Show magazine. When the photographer arrived at West's home, she was greeted by burly male attendants and taken to West's gold and white bedroom with the expectation that Arbus would reinforce West's personal mythology as a brazen sex symbol. But for Arbus, taking portraits wasn't about flattering or airbrushing the subject; her goal was to capture unique moments—warts and all. When the feature ran in Show, West was furious about the photos' harsh light—and not just because soft lighting wasn't used to erase her wrinkles; she thought the images made her look dated. West enjoyed a modest revival of her career in the '60s, and in retrospect Arbus's photo of the star in a powerful seated pose perfectly depicts the strength of a woman who wrote her own comedic plays and movies—and single-handedly saved Paramount Pictures from going bankrupt with her 1933 film, She Done Him Wrong.

 

Below: more images from the Arbus-West photoshoot.
 

Image credit & copyright: Christie's, Diane Arbus
 

Title: Blue Boat
Artist: Raimonds Staprans (b. 1926)
Created: 1994
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 68 x 60 in (172.7 x 152.4 cm)
 

A beautiful summer day should be enjoyed with company, right? Not if contemporary painter Raimond Staprans has a say in the matter—his familiar settings, however inviting, eventually inspire profound loneliness. In Blue Boat, which depicts the shining San Francisco Bay, he pared the visuals down so much, all we're left with is abstractions of light and color: blue bands unfold from the harbor, and taper off to lighter hues as they near the brilliant horizon. A closer inspection of the boats reveals more of these thick strips of color. A barren isolation permeates this vast waterscape, down to the most rudimentary details, producing the effect of farsightedness. According to Staprans, he constructs unresponsive settings like that of Blue Boat's "from the ground up in absolutely abstract terms." However certain these boats look from afar, they lack the concrete detail needed to anchor their form!
 

Below: more of Staprans' paintings, including: Sunshine Pears (2006); Still Life With Equally Spaced Items (2010); The Sunshine Table #3 (1988-1999).
 

Image credit & copyright: Susan Adamé
 

Title: Guardian of the Disphotic
Artist: Shih Chieh Huang (b. 1975)
Created: ca. 2018
Medium: trash bags, LED lights, highlighter pen fluid, household objects, electronics
Current location: Bechtel Gallery 3, Wattis Webcast Studio, Exploratorium, San Francisco, California
 

We know cephalopods are capable of escaping from aquariums, but now it looks like they've snuck in and taken over San Francisco's Exploratorium science museum. In a piece titled Guardian of the Disphotic, mixed-media artist Shih Chieh Huang blends ordinary objects like LED lights and trash bags to create the cyber-psychedelic look of T-24L, the central 24-tentacled (and liquid-filled) creature in the middle of the room. With the red-orange lights encircling the space, the Wattis Webcast Studio is transformed into a dark space with bioluminescent creatures, not unlike the disphotic region of deep sea where a tentacled-creature might reside. For Huang, the process of building inflatables—which is coincidentally the title of the Exploratorium exhibit showing the piece until September 3—was a "familiar and friendly" one. He initially began blowing air into, painting, and manipulating air beds and sheets of plastic in the mid '90s when he lived in San Diego. Since then he's had an insatiable appetite for repurposing and bringing to life materials that would be tossed away by normal consumers. Because one man's trash is another artist's uncanny undersea lair!

 

Below: more installations at Inflatable: Jason Hackenwerth's Cauldron Veil, Pneuhaus' Compound camera. Finally, a video of Huang detailing Guardian.

 

Image credit & copyright: Hyperallergic, Jason Hackenwerth
 

Somebody bring aloe vera? Looks like the Netherlands forgot to moisturize! The small country saw an unusually frigid winter this year, and now it's battling a brutal summer drought along its coast. Dutch photographer Albert Dros recently documented the alarming, yet eerily photogenic, scene earlier this month. Once smooth and damp, with sand that seeped between the toes, these strands now blister and crack under the worst drought since 1976—which took place roughly 40 years ago. But as frightening as the lack of rain may be, Dros finds himself captivated by its beauty, and invites us to join him in his admiration. The patterns of the mud cracks stand out to Dros, who uses rich color filters to make the Dutch coast appear like a distant alien world. In places where the high tide still reaches, outcrops of vegetation grasp for life, and the ocean ebbs and flows through the tiny fissures in the earth. The phenomenon is certainly worth a gander, but we shouldn't forget sunscreen—lest we end up burned like the coast!
 

Below: more photos of the Dutch drought.
 

Image credit & copyright: Albert Dros
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives in honor of World Lion Day.
 

Unlike Madeline, these girls are keeping their ranks. On a safari in Zambia, photographer Torie Hilley found herself surrounded on all sides by sight-obstructing savanna grass. Just as she abandoned her search for wildlife, these lionesses came jaunting down the road more traveled: the tire tracks leading from behind her vehicle! National Geographic is currently running the Travel Photographer of the Year Contest until June 30, and Hilley's March, above, is one of the editors' picks for the week. Hilley found herself very lucky with the photo; lions have adapted over millions of years to camouflage amongst the golden grasslands, so tough luck photographing a lion in the thickets. But that doesn't mean they enjoy grass in their whiskers any more than the rest of us. These females, the sole meal providers in a lion pride, were likely taking advantage of the tracks during a tough hunting excursion while the males stayed back to patrol the pride's land. We're just glad these furry ladies didn't nab Hilley as their dinner!

 
Image credit & copyright: Torie Hilley
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives in honor of World Lion Day.
 

Title: illustration from The Lion & the Mouse

Artist: Jerry Pinkney (b. 1939)
Created: 2009
Medium: watercolor
 

No words needed. Children's book illustrator Jerry Pinkney didn't always plan for his 2010 Caldecott Medal-winning book, The Lion & the Mouse, to be wordless. But after sketching out thumbnails for his retelling of the famous Aesop fable, Pinkney realized the images could stand on their own. Save for a few animal sounds, the book's lack of text allows Pinkney's expressive watercolor brushstrokes to sing. In the spread above, the angry lion eyes the tiny culprit that's disrupted his slumber before setting her free. As the fable goes, the lion's compassion ends up saving his life when he is caught in a rope net and (spoiler alert!) set free by the mouse. On his ongoing love of the story, Pinkney stated: "As a child I was inspired to see the majestic king of the jungle saved by the determination and hard work of a humble rodent; as an adult I've come to appreciate how both animals are equally large at heart: the courageous mouse and the lion who must rise above his beastly nature to set his small prey free." The Philadelphia-based artist, clearly an inspiration himself, has been honored by his hometown with a Jerry Pinkney Day since July 2016.

Below: the unusual front and back covers for The Lion & the Mouse, which feature neither title nor author's name.

Image credit & copyright: Jerry Pinkney
 

Title: The Swing (La Balancoire)
Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Created:1876
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 36 x 29 in (92 x 73 cm)
Current location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
 

Nice swing! In this painting, Renoir seems to have interrupted a young couple mid-flirtation. The woman on the swing looks pleased but embarrassed by whatever her suitor is saying; she even blushes a little. Was Renoir depicting a budding summer romance? Perhaps, but the Impressionist painter was more interested in how to represent the light in the painting then he was in his subjects. He created The Swing during the summer of 1876, and was painting Dance at the Moulin de la Galette (Bal du Moulin de la Galette) below, at the same time (he reportedly worked on one canvas in the morning and the other in the afternoon). In both works, Renoir dwelled on the light, attempting to capture the shadows and flickering patches of color created by sunshine filtered through leafy trees. The result is an atmosphere both romantic and joyful, a celebration of a summery afternoon. "I like a painting which makes me want to stroll in it," Renoir once said. We'd be happy to stroll through this enchanting scene—but it's not clear this couple wants any more company!  

Below: Renoir's Bal du Moulin de la Galette.
 

Image credit & copyright: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Musée d'Orsay
 

Photographer Daniel Arnold's photo of a young couple intertwined on the grass captures the humid, bittersweet nature of summer love, our theme today. It's a carefree scene featuring bare feet and casual dress, with people sprawled in clusters on the grass. Arnold took the photo in Central Park's Sheep Meadow, which he calls, "a very romantic space. It's like a bottle-of-wine area." But there is something poignant, here, too. The girl to the left appears lonely and pensive, her solitude underscored by the mutual absorption of the couple—a contrast that hints at the fleeting nature of summer romance. Arnold's passion for his adopted city and its inhabitants (he moved to New York from Milwaukee) is anything but fleeting. He is known for his candid portraits of New Yorkers, which have been featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and on his popular Instagram feed. With typical New York sass, Arnold's subjects often confront him to ask why he is taking their pictures. "I try to be very calm and honest that I have this fetish about New York and that you in this moment, with these city surroundings, just look like New York to me," he says. As romances go, Arnold's isn't always requited!  

Below: more images by Daniel Arnold.
 

Image credit & copyright: top and center: Daniel Arnold for The New York Times; bottom: Daniel Arnold.org