suite №4

For the iconic motor carriage’s sixtieth anniversary, the design studios of Mathieu Lehanneur made some modifications to the classic Renault 4L (“Quatrelle,” manufactured from 1961 to 1994)—now fully electrified and with photovoltaic cells to help charge engine batteries as well as glamping accessories—the first hatchback as sort of an open, motel on wheels. More at designboom at the link above.

saint ursula and companions

Though little reliable contemporary details of her hagiography and that of her eleven-thousand handmaidens and the virginal princess went unnamed for centuries, they are venerated on this day (see previously) and are the namesake of both the Ursuline order (the name Latin for little she-bear) and the Virgin Islands, marking the occasion of their mass-martyrdom in 383 at Köln on the banks of the Rhine. The Daughter of legendary King Dionotus of Dumnonia (Devon, Cornwall) was betrothed to pagan governor of the province of Armorica, whom after a miraculous storm transported her and her retinue across the sea in just the space of a day resolved that they should all undertake a pan-European pilgrimage, heading first to Ravenna and Rome and persuading the pope to join them. Their encampment was besieged by the Huns at the frontier city with a basilica dedicated to them on the spot of the massacre. Officially stricken from the calendar of saints in 1969 as fantastical, scholarship suggest that the large number of companions may be due to a misreading of the Latin numerals or a single virgin martyr with the name Unidecimilla, the error transmitted through the ages.

post and lintel

Via the always engaging Things Magazine, we quite enjoyed this profile and portfolio of architectural photographer Hélène Binet—now based in London. One of the most famous in her niche field which can nonetheless evoke the most stirring of abstracted landscapes to inhabit in angles, shadows and negative space, Binet is celebrated for her collaborative work especially with contemporary celebrity architects Daniel Libeskind, John Hejduk (Kreuzberg Tower and Wings, Turm mit Flügelbau pictured) Peter Zumthor and Zaha Hadid as well as appreciating past movements through her lens, like this study of the monastery of La Tourette designed by Le Corbusier. More to explore at the links above.

l’train à grande vitesse

The first public, commercial run of France’s intercity high-speed rail service, TGV, transversing the some three-hundred and seventy kilometres between Paris and Lyon in just under three hours began on this day in 1981 with some seven hundred seventy passengers. To combat the conception that the train was meant to be a premium for business travellers, initially the tickets were offered at the same price as parallel conventional lines, which would have taken the better part of a day to make the crossing, and hailed with the promotional slogan that “Progress means nothing unless it is shared by all.”

5x5

fallout boy: the legacy of Albania’s seven-hundred-thousand bunkers  

al forno: Barilla (previously) sponsors an annual contest to solicit for innovative designs for its 3D pasta printer  

mathmos: how lava lamps are manufactured—see also 

stowaways: butterfly researches in the Åland islands accidentally introduce a parasitic wasp that relies on the caterpillars as well as a hyperparasitoid that the wasps host 

 île flottante: a boat camouflaged as a rock tours the coastline of Marseille—via Everlasting Blört

aubert d’avranches

Venerated on this day, the sainted bishop of the diocese of Coutances is credited with the construction of Mont Saint-Michel, in its earliest form a humble oratory, a spot reserved for assembly and prayer, after being visited by the archangel in a vision who instructed Aubert to establish a shrine on the rocky tidal island in the basin that divided Normandy and Brittany. Reportedly, Aubert was hesitant to act, doubting the veracity of the message or whether it might be a demonic missive, and had to be poked in the head to start the task, after being reminded for the third time. The dedication ceremony took place in 709.  The place were the angel had touched him left a hole in his skull. It is believed that the cranium kept as relic in the basilica of Saint Gervais is more ancient (Aubert was said to be buried at Mont Saint-Michel) and forensically shows evidence of a trepanation procedure.

viermächteabkommen über berlin

On this day in 1971, the four wartime Allied powers concluded the negotiation through their ambassadors for the Quadripartite Agreement (see also) which reaffirmed the rights and responsibilities of the occupying forces and compelled the Soviets to respect the western sectors and generally improved ties between both parts of the divided city. Drafted and drawn up in French, Russian and English, there was no authentic, authoritative German version and translations be each state had subtle but marked differences. The agreement came into force the following summer and is considered among the first in a series of thawing of chilled relations and a move towards reconciliation.

genesius of arles

Conflated with a contemporary saint of the same name in Rome who was a stand-up comedian and spontaneously converted to Christianity in the middle of a routine satirizing these Jesus-y upstarts (let that be a warning) and with a pooled patronage, Saint Genès as he is known in French was a personal secretary of the magistrate of Gaul and is venerated on this day on the occasion of his martyrdom in 303 under the persecutions of Maximian and Diocletian (see previously) for objecting to a legal writ that would sanction further maltreatment of the religious sect. Together with his Roman counterpart, Genesius is patron and protector of notaries, secretaries, stenographers, clowns and comedians.

♄ viii

Discovered by Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1671 and later dubbed after the titan Iapetus after the naming convention established by William Herschel—with the antiquated adjectival form of Japetian that points to the conflation of the deity with Japheth, brother of Moses—and explored more thoroughly during the 2007 mission named after its discoverer, the satellite of Saturn first loomed large in human imagination when on this day in 1981 the Voyager 2 probe relayed the featured image back to Earth. The prominent equatorial ridge, named the Voyager Mountains after the photograph are among the highest in the known Solar System, and ring the object almost perfectly, giving rise to the theory that the feature is a reabsorbed ring and the probable but yet unseen occurrence of sub-satellites.

fantasmagorie

Caricaturist and member of the mostly forgotten art movement the Incoherents (les arts incohérents in opposition to les arts décoratifs—contributions later described as surreal) Émile Cohl (*1857 - †1938) created was is commonly accepted as the world’s first animated film, debuting at the Théâtre du Gymnase in Paris on this day in 1908. Consisting of seven hundred hand-drawn images on glass-plates (cels) and running about two minutes, it is evocative of the magic lantern shows from which it takes its title and is executed in a stream of consciousness style without narrative.

journée du 10 août

Symbolically, a year to the day after storming of the Tuileries Palace during which the Nation Guard of the Paris commune and confederates from Marseille and Brittany overpowered a detachment of Swiss Guards and took Louis XVI and the royal family into custody, the pivotal event that eventually led to the declaration of a republic, the adjacent Musée du Louvre was officially opened in 1793. Fortified in the late twelfth century to rebuff attacks from on the western side of the city by English Normandy, the name of the palace may be derived from an ancient wolf hunting lodge (lupus, lupara) originally on that site. In 1846, the US Congress charters the Smithsonian Institution (previously), after its benefactor and namesake English mineralogist James Smithson of the Royal Society, dying without an heir, bequeaths an endowment of half a million dollars. By dint of another coincidence, another grand institution of Europe, the Natural History Museum of Vienna (as das k. u. k.—kaiserlich und königlich—Hof-Naturalienkabinette) held its official opening ceremony on this day as well in 1865, sourced from the personally acquisitions of the Double Monarchy, by Emperor Franz Joseph I.

9x9

form follows function: a Bauhaus poster generator—see previosly—via Kottke 

reddy made magic: a gallery of images plus the Walter Lantz theme song for mascot and industry shill, Reddy Kilowatt   

dining car: vintage railway menus (see also) illustrate the evolution of American cuisine—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links  

δ δ δ, can I help ya, help ya, help ya: a guide to joining the right sorority this fall  

jeux de la xxxiiie olympiade: the upcoming Paris games will be sustainable and moderately priced—see also  

attention k-mart shoppers: Americans emerge from the pandemic less patient, less empathetic than before and the service industry culture that fuels the cruel fantasy  

cycles pour animaux: a 1907 patent for a bicycle for horses to amplify their speed and le cheval-vapeur 

divergent association task: help science gauge creative reflexes by thinking up ten words as different as possible (in English only for now)  

betaplex: colourful retro cinema space in Ho Chi Mihn City recalls Saigon’s Art Deco architecture

glossographia

Writing for Æon Magazine, Arika Okrent presents a compelling argument that the overwhelming inconsistencies of the English language in its written form has less to do with the mixing of peoples on the British Isles but rather the incidents and accidents of early-adoption of the printing press and with the attendant increase in literacy, conventions like adhering to uniform and phonetic spelling (previously) could be set and propagated by any author, especially with English falling out of common-parlance (see also) only to re-emerge after a hiatus of nearly three-centuries, only separated by a few generations the introduction of publishing.

i feel the earth move

On this day in 1976 at the Avignon Festival—title taken from the post-apocalyptic novel about the aftermath of global thermonuclear war—the Philip Glass Ensemble premiered the four act opera Einstein on the Beach—see previously here and here—a trilogy of portraits of personal vision and transformational thinking that spurred revelation through ideas rather than brute force and might. This two-hour excerpt from 1979 faithful recreates the staging from the five-hour debut.

quasi-guerre

On this day in 1798, the United States Congress re-established the new country’s naval and marine forces and authorised the use of deadly force against France, by proxy for the most part in colonies in the Caribbean, which America had agreed to help protect from the British and the Dutch in perpetuity in gratitude for French assistance in securing independence. Against the backdrop of France’s own revolution, there was theoretical public support for the republican cause and political reform for their ally domestically but practically, America preferred to maintain a neutral stance that would allow the northern industrial states to continue trade with Britain which would otherwise be subject to embargo (see also) and the southern agricultural states did not care for the message that France was sending with ending the institution of chattel slavery. Negotiations fell apart—in what’s known as the XYZ Affair—and the US stopped payments on loans to France that had been used to finance their revolt and French privateers began to seize merchant vessels in American waters in retaliation. With minimal casualties but considerable American resources expropriated and lasting loss of export revenue, there was a cessation to the violence with the Convention of 1800 (the Treaty of Mortefontaine) status quo ante bellum.

le pont de trinquetaille

Seeing that on this day in 1987, a Van Gogh (previously here and here) of a bridge scene in Arles fetched a then record twenty million dollars at auction made me reflect on a recent podcast episode about the individual responsible for the artist’s posthumous and compelling fame promoted out of necessity and circumstance, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger (*1862 - †1925), widow of theretofore Van Gogh’s greatest champion, his brother Theo, and sister-in-law who had acquired a great deal of the then worthless works and against the advice of friends and family brought them back to their native Holland from Paris after losing her husband. In order to provide for herself and her child, Van Gogh-Bonger collected and edited an epistolary exchange and between the brothers and family biography, helping to establish her brother-in-law’s fame and reputation, as well as arranging exhibitions, helping to define not only Vincent as a celebrity but the attendant marketplace of the art world as well.

parc des ateliers

Opening to the public, Frank Gehry’s twisting tower for the Luma Arles campus is informed by the city’s Roman architecture and the craggy promontory that inspired Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night—painted near there. Clad with eleven-thousand stainless steel panels, the structure houses an exhibition space as well as seminar rooms and workshops for various projects.  Much more at the link up top.

djet et décoratifs

Though we tend to mostly imagine the chassis of classic automobiles as neatly unadorned, artist Sonia Delaunay, co-founder of the movement known as Orphism, a branch of Cubism emerging as distinct from 1912 onwards, bestowed a quite remarkable and unexpected amount of detailing to the bodies of older autos, especially in the 1920s when a

custom job was very much in order. First living woman artist to enjoy a retrospective exhibition in the Louvre and officer of the Legion of Honour, Delaunay’s introduction of geometric abstraction as a regular and customary feature helped establish brilliancy and the Gestalt across her chosen canvas. More to explore at the links above.

journal de bord

Our fellow peripatetic internet caretaker Messy Nessy Chic turns us on to a mysterious notebook of outsider art (Art Brût, see previously here and here) that is the only artefact of the creator and contains all that is known (see also) about Jean Fick (*1876) with a decontexualised autobiography and unclear vocation whether he is the Ambassador of or to God. There’s no indication of what the brilliant colours and patterns might symbolise. Though with no more provenance attached to where or how it was found, the notebook rose to prominence after being featured in a special exhibition by the American Folk Art Museum in 2018. 

« FICK JEAN NEE 23.11.1876 — HOPITAL — SOLDAT. 13.10.1898 — 13.9.1900 — RM 57 — WESE GUERRE 9.14 — 4.8.1.4.1917.7. SANTE BLESSE – INVALIDE FICK J MARIAGE DELESSE MARI. MODES 29.4.1902 HOPITAL NEE 8.9.1874. FICK ALISE 24.2.1903. MARIE. A. 1.2.1904. JEAN. K. 22.05. MAGU. 11.6.10 ». Sur la couverture : « Jean Fick ambassadeur mondieu N.23 ». 

“FICK JEAN BORN 23.11.1876 – HOSPITAL – SOLDIER. 13.10.1898 – 13.9.1900 – RM 57 – WESE WAR 9.14 – 4.8.1.4.1917.7. HEALTH INJURED – INVALID FICK J MARRIAGE ABANDONED HUSBAND  . MODES 29.4.1902 HOSPITAL BORN 8.9.1874. FICK ALISE 24.2.1903. MARRIED. A. 1.2.1904. JEAN. K. 22.05. MAGU. 11.6.10”. On the cover: “Jean Fick my God/world [mondieu] ambassador  N. 23.”

8x8

such good: a dating app based on shared meme-affinity  

boulevard du crime: a lost Parisien theatre district that specialised in putting on felonious melodramas 

lion city rising: photographer Keith Loutit captures eight years of change in Sinagpore  

lunachicks: a flamboyant punk rock group who are a product of unvarnished New York  

broodclipjes: more fun with twist-ties and related species (see previously)—from Pasa Bon!  

horological constraints: the typography of watches—see also  

 profiles in pride: World of Wonder showcases some of the gay rights movement’s pioneers (see also), starting with Frank Kamey of the DC Mattachine Society  

masterpieces of streaming: a collection of the subtle genius of dumb viral videos—via Waxy