Curio Cabinet

Title: Peanut Joe's, Baltimore
Artist: Aaron Sopher (1905–1972)
Created: 1934
Medium: ink, watercolor
Dimensions: 4.75 x 7.25 in (12.1 x 18.4 cm)
Current location: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.
 

Hey, what's a watercolor sketch gotta do to get some service around here? Life during the Great Depression was no small subject, as Aaron Sopher depicted in his drawing, Peanut Joe's. The Boston-based artist was known for taking his art to the streets to capture everyday life, especially those less fortunate than him. In Peanut Joe's, for instance, expensive furs aren't the only things lining their visages: the harsh lines on the red-capped woman's face scream of an indignant view of the service at Peanut Joe's. Sopher may have said the same expression should be on the viewer's face in this instance: one for making jokes at the upper crust's expense, he felt socially responsible for aiding the labor class and civil rights movements. Utilizing the brevity of sketch work, Sopher acted as a sort of artist-journalist (and occasional satirist), depicting with just a few lines the incredible history of a modern age.
 

Image credit & copyright: Smithsonian American Art Museum
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Enough horsing around—it's time for the annual haircut. Rapa das Bestas, or "Shearing of the Beasts," is a 400-year-old horse festival that takes place each summer in the region of Galicia, Spain. Hundreds of semi-feral horses are the focus of the event. They're corralled from local mountains to a curro, or enclosure, where they get their manes deloused and trimmed in front of eager crowds. And as this photograph by Javier Arcenillas proves, these untamed animals can get quite feisty! Because of this, aloitadores, or fighters, must first calm or wrestle the horses into submission before they can be groomed. After this unusual "spa treatment," the animals are released back into the mountains to roam free until the next summer's festival. The rite serves two purposes: to care for the local horse population and to prove an aloitadore's manhood. We can't decide which is more nerve-racking: strong-arming a mare, or betting one's entire life savings on the darkhorse!

 
Below: aloitadores tag-team a horse while spectators look on.

 
Image credit & copyright: Javier Arcenillas via Smithsonian.
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Title: The Diverting History of John Gilpin
Artist: Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886)
Created: 1878
Medium: chromoxylography
 

This horse drawing ain't horsin' around. Randolph Caldecott believed that overly-intricate illustrations—like the fussy imagery of his contemporaries—complicated picture books. So he galloped in a new direction in his drawings for The Diverting History of John Gilpin, William Cowper's comical ballad about a man stuck on a runaway horse. By juxtaposing the image's detailed foreground with its minimal background, Caldecott helped guide readers' eyes to important plot elements and streamline the storytelling process. But he wasn't alone; Caldecott got help from famed color-printer Edmund Evans to achieve the image's warm hues. Evans etched a relief of Caldecott's drawing onto a block, applied ink to the relief, and stamped the impression onto paper. Miniscule notches in Evan's relief allowed the colors to then bleed and create delicate hues, like those filling the character's ruddy cheeks. The duo's work redefined picture book protocol, and decades later in 1937, a likeness of this drawing was used to create the Randolph Caldecott Medal. Annually awarded by a division of the American Library Association, the prestigious medal recognizes the year's most outstanding American children's picture book. Now, if only the award also recognized Evans in its name!
 

Below: a close-up of the Randolph Caldecott Medal.
 

Image credit & copyright: Hudson Area Library
 

Human artistry goes back far. Really far. At least 43,900 years, according to archaeologists who recently discovered the oldest-known figurative cave art, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. They think the tableau depicts small animal-headed hunters assailing larger wild hogs and dwarf buffaloes. The figures, painted in red ocher pigment—a blend of clay and ferric oxide—wield spears and/or ropes. It's a crude effort by modern standards, but researchers are applauding its complex use of storytelling relative to its period, the Middle Paleolithic (roughly 315,000-43,000 B.C.E). Sadly, we'll never know who this prehistoric Michelangelo was. Dating of uranium and thorium levels points to an early wave of humans who arrived in Indonesia 50,000 years ago, far before modern Sulawesians. By age, this mural edges out other human rock art found across Asia and Europe by at least 4,000 years. But it's not the oldest-known cave art in the world. Well, only if you look outside of humanity. Abstract designs by Neandertals in Spanish caves date back at least 65,000 years—20 millennia before Homo sapiens seemingly developed their art bent. Granted, these primeval doodles are less sophisticated than the more figurative Sulawesian characters. Who knows, maybe Neanderthals were just going through their abstract movement at the time?
 

Brr, this gives new meaning to weathering winter! This snow-covered Tungus (or Indigenous Siberian) man is part of a LensCulture feature on the series Out of the Way by Russian photographer Elena Ansova. Her project highlights life in a remote settlement in Northern Russia where the Tungus people live. In the photo, an older Tungus man seems unconcerned at the snow collecting on his face and beard. The image is an example of the fortitude displayed by the 100-or-so people who also call his village their home. There, electricity is only available during mornings and evenings, food must be grown in sealed greenhouses, and hunting elk is a matter of survival. What inspired Anosova to travel to such a place where temperatures can fall as low as -67 degrees Fahrenheit? Family ties. Her own ancestors helped found the settlement around 300 years ago, and practically everyone living there now is a distant relative. Out of the Way is an extraordinary series which shows getting back to one's roots can be worth braving the cold.

 

Below: More from Elena Anosova's Out of the Way series.
 

Image credit & copyright: Elena Anosova