Curio Cabinet

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."
 

As one of the 19th century's greatest poets, Walt Whitman once wrote, "I am large, I contain multitudes." It was no secret that Whitman was also a tall and gregarious figure in life, which makes these images of his last years in Camden, New Jersey, all the more poignant. Whitman spent years in and out of newspaper rooms in New York and New Orleans, with a role as a hospital caretaker during the Civil War. He first published his seminal work Leaves of Grass in 1855 and revised at least nine editions. Like many aspects of his life, Whitman's poetry in Leaves of Grass ignored rules about rhyme and meter, subjecting readers to a vibrant and affectionate view of the world (the erotic texts cost Whitman a job in the Boston, Massachusetts, District Attorney's office). After suffering a paralytic stroke in 1873, Whitman once again took to revising Leaves of Grass, noting it would be his final edition. He felt that the work encapsulated all things great and small: "L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old."

 

Below: another view of Whitman in his house at Camden, New Jersey.
 

Image credit & copyright: Library of Congress
 

Title: I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold
Artist: Charles Demuth (1883 - 1935)
Created: 1928
Medium: oil, graphite, ink, and gold leaf on paperboard (Upson board)
Dimensions: 35.5 x 30 in. (90.2 x 76.2 cm)
Current location: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
 

For artist Charles Demuth, friends are there through good times, through bad times, and through artistic times. Demuth's I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold is an homage to the great imagist (heavy focus on sensory experiences) poet William Carlos Williams. The numbers and central color scheme are derived from Williams' poem The Great Figure: "Among the rain / and lights / I saw the figure 5 / in gold / on a red / firetruck / moving / tense / unheeded," he wrote. Demuth employs a precisionist style and geometric objects like the gold 5, the red truck, and the city lights to echo the loud and disorienting experiences in Williams' poem. To further cement the ekphrastic friendship, Demuth added his initials in red in the bottom left corner of the painting; WCW for William Carlos Williams is in the bottom middle, with a big "BILL" at the top. As far as gestures of friendship go, this one probably ranks up there with a high five and secret handshake greeting!

 

Image credit & copyright: Metropolitan Museum of Art