gesamtkunstwerk

Having observed the centenary of the successor Bauhaus movement earlier in the year, it was a real treat to visit the Wiesbaden museum (previously) for a grand and circumspect tour of the age in art and design that came right before with an inspiring exhibition of Jugenstil and Art Deco that for the first time brought together the institution‘s complete endowment of period antiques from the collection of local patron Friedrich Wolfgang Neiss, supplemented with a few objects on loan from Paris and Vienna.

It was not only dazzling with fine and elegant craftsmanship on display—lamps and chandeliers from Louis Comfort Tiffany, Émile Gallé, and the Müller Fréres, porcelain, paintings and furnishings (the individual suites were sort of set up like IKEA showrooms) but also was curated in such a way to address the artists’ philosophy and outlook.  Thematically it was also interesting to note the subject matter being different and unexpected with lots of mushrooms, bats and even jellyfish and mermen appearing throughout the collection aside from mythological and religious allegories.  These images are just a small sampling of the items that caught my eye.

robble-robble

In a side note that’s bigger than the post’s main topic Super Punch casually asks us if we‘d ever heard of the early depiction of McDonaldland character Hamburglar as the Lone Jogger.
One can’t just drop that sort of a bombshell without elaborating. After reforming his original incarnation as a lecherous old man with rodent features, for creative reasons lost to history the Hambuglar (previously) was given a partner in crime, the piratical Captain Crook, and donned with his signature cape, only to be directed to mime being a flasher—only to disclose his his identity as the Lone Jogger.  The advertising campaign was significantly curtailed after a 1973 lawsuit levied by Sid and Marty Krofft against McDonald’s for copyright infringement on their character universe. 

valid

Whereas the Latin for pale (palleō, I blanch) gives us pallor and pallid and callid in the sense of callousness (tough-skinned) has its roots in callus with the same meaning, callid derived from the Latin term calidus (caleō, I glow) is a special and rare adjective signifying a creature (usually a cow or dog but could also be used for a person with a singular white shock of hair) with a spot, specifically a star-shaped one, in the centre of their forehead.

contiguous

From Boing Boing, we’re rather saddled with the font face Ugly Gerry, letter-forms selected from gerrymandered voting precincts that conspicuously and shamelessly illustrates the kerning and ink-traps of disenfranchisement that keeps incumbents in power and marginalises challengers through cracking and packing.

videojuego

We enjoyed perusing this gallery of vintage and antique sporting and summer travel posters going under the hammer. We were especially taken with the vibrant and angular design of artist Josep Renau Montoro exhibited in this 1941 commission for the Revolutionary Games held at the behest of Manuel Áliva Camacho. The artist was most famous for his murals and political propaganda during the Spanish civil war before being exiled first to México and then to East Berlin. There are other painters of note to be found in the auction preview including Sergio Trujillo Magnenat, Boris Artzybaseff and others.

bibliophile

While we may have missed US National Tattoo Day, commemorated on 17 July annually (sharing the spotlight of the date with another form of expression), we can nonetheless appreciate these fine literary tattoos and the stories behind them, as found at the circulation desk of Miss Cellania, shared by the employees of  New York‘s Public Library System. We especially liked the ankle branding of one branch‘s services assistant of the emblem of the secret society VFD from Daniel Handler‘s Series of Unfortunate Events.

monochrome

Optical illusions, like this one from artist and software engineer Øyvind Kolås (note no gratuitous metal umlauts here) that illustrates the brain’s facility for colour assimilation (also called the von Bezold spreading effect for the Münchener meteorologist who first described it), have always engaged and captivated (see also) us because of their sheer pernacity in showing us how easily we’re fooled in a form that’s not so simply rebuffed or dismissed, like saying we’d never fall for this hoax or be a victim of that scam.  There’s no disenchantment in the explanation in a video at the link up top either, and maybe if you look hard enough you will see it’s a black-and-white photograph of a classroom overlaid by those chromatic grids.