On May 20, 2005, to convey its size, Italian artist Gianni Motti walked the length of the nascent Large Hadron Collider, followed by a cameraman.
At an average speed of 5 kph, it took him 5 hours 50 minutes to walk all 27 kilometers of the underground ring. Today a proton covers the same distance 11,000 times in 1 second.
Motti dubbed his effort “Higgs: In Search of Anti-Motti.” I don’t think he found it.
Before making his name with mobile sculpture, Alexander Calder was captivated by the circus. On a visit to Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in New York City at age 27, Calder traveled about the big top with a sketchpad, drawing tightrope walkers, horseback riders, and acrobats. Using a free pass, he returned to the circus every day for two weeks, and then set out to make a toy circus of his own.
He assembled it from wire, cloth, leather, corks, pipe cleaners, string, and wood. He worked on it for six years, until he had 55 performers, and then put on circus parties for friends, playing music and introducing a ringmaster who would direct each of the acts. When it became too fragile to handle, he gave the circus to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, where it remains today.
“Sandy is evidently always happy, or perhaps up to some joke, for his face is always wrapped up in that same mischievous, juvenile grin,” his school yearbook description had read. “This is certainly the index to the man’s character in this case, for he is one of the best natured fellows there is.”
In 1818 caricaturist George Cruikshank saw several people hanging from a gibbet near Newgate Prison in London and learned to his horror that they had been executed for passing forged one-pound notes — at the time, doing so even unknowingly was punishable by death or transportation.
The fact that a poor woman could be put to death for such a minor offence had a great effect upon me — and I at that moment determined, if possible, to put a stop to this shocking destruction of life for merely obtaining a few shillings by fraud; and well knowing the habits of the low class of society in London, I felt quite sure that in very many cases the rascals who forged the notes induced these poor ignorant women to go into the gin-shops to ‘get something to drink,’ and thus pass the notes, and hand them the change.
He went home and dashed off this sketch, which was then printed on the post paper used by the bank, so that it would resemble counterfeit currency. “The general effect was of a counterfeit, but closer examination revealed that every element of the official design had been replaced by a savage parody,” writes Robert L. Patten in George Cruikshank’s Life, Times, and Art. The seal shows Britannia eating her children, the stamp depicts 12 tiny heads in prison, and the pound sign is a coiled hangman’s rope.
The protest created a sensation, and remedial legislation was passed. Cruikshank’s satire, noted the Examiner, “ought to make the hearts of the Bank Directors ache at the sight.”
C. Wiltberger created this allegorical map of temperance in 1838 (click to enlarge). The goal is to get from the Ocean of Animal Appetite in the west to the Ocean of Eternity in the east. It would be natural enough to investigate Indulgence and Generosity Islands, but this will lead you to Evil Company Island, and once you’re through the Devil’s Trap you’ll have to negotiate the Sea of Intemperance, with its islands of Murder, Arson, Larceny, and Quarrel. Beyond the Great Gulf of Wretchedness lies the Sea of Anguish, which puts you out at Suicide Island (and its capital, Spontaneous Combustion).
The better plan is to head north immediately and enter the Cold Water River at Hope Island. Bear south at Knowledge toward Cultureville and Mount Science and take the Tee Total Rail Road to the Sea of Temperance, and then head north through the Old Age Outlet past Comfortville and Restburg and safely into Eternity. (Beware the Gulf of Broken Pledges — even at this late stage, it will lead you directly to Desperation Point.)
My favorite part: Poverty Island has a port called Nosupper.
Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay erected this sculpture in Stuttgart in 1975.
The engraving appears meaningless until it’s viewed across a body of water — and the German word schiff (ship) floats reflected on the surface.
Berkeley software engineer Stephen Malinowski creates animated graphical scores of musical works.
“The vertical positions of the bars on the screen represent the relative pitches, while the color can represent instruments or voices, thematic material or tonality,” explains Crétien van Campen in The Hidden Sense. “When they are synchronized, the sound and image are easily linked in our perception. Musical structures like Bach’s canons or his many-voiced compositions thus become understood and accessible by means of a visual aid.”
There’s much more on Malinowski’s YouTube channel; here are some of his favorites.
In 2015, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, master sculptor Karen Mortillaro created 12 new sculptures, one for each chapter in Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece. Each takes the form of a table topped with an S-cylindrical mirror, with a bronze sculpture on either side. The sculpture that stands before the mirror is anamorphic, so that the curved mirror’s reflection “undistorts” it, giving it meaning:
“The S-cylindrical mirror is ideal for this project because it allows for the figures on one side of the mirror to be sculpted realistically, while those on the opposite side of the mirror are distorted and unrecognizable,” Mortillaro writes. “The mirror is symbolic of the parallel worlds that Alice might have experienced in her dream state; the world of reality is on one side of the mirror; and the world of illusion is on the mirror’s opposite side.”
Mortillaro’s article appears in the September 2015 issue of Recreational Mathematics Magazine.
Vernet relates, that he was once employed to paint a landscape, with a cave, and St. Jerome in it; he accordingly painted the landscape, with St. Jerome at the entrance of the cave. When he delivered the picture, the purchaser, who understood nothing of perspective, said, ‘the landscape and the cave are well made, but St. Jerome is not in the cave.’ ‘I understand you, Sir,’ replied Vernet, ‘I will alter it.’ He therefore took the painting and made the shade darker, so that the saint seemed to sit farther in. The gentleman took the painting; but it again appeared to him that the saint was not in the cave. Vernet then wiped out the figure, and gave it to the gentleman, who seemed perfectly satisfied. Whenever he saw strangers to whom he shewed the picture, he said, ‘Here you see a picture by Vernet, with St. Jerome in the cave.’ ‘But we cannot see the saint,’ replied the visitors. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ answered the possessor, ‘he is there; for I have seen him standing at the entrance, and afterwards farther back; and am therefore quite sure that he is in it.’
— Thomas Byerley and Joseph Clinton Robertson, The Percy Anecdotes, 1821
The residents of Brattleboro, Vt., awoke to a surprise on New Year’s Day 1856: An angel of snow stood at the corner of Linden and North Main streets, holding a pen and notebook as if ready to record the events of the new year.
The artist turned out to be 21-year-old Larkin Goldsmith Mead Jr., the son of a local lawyer. He had worked through the night to fashion the eight-foot figure by lantern light, shaping it by hand from snow brought to him by two friends. He sculpted some parts separately in order to mold them more easily, attaching them later with wet snow, and he poured water over the finished creation to give it a smooth finish. The Vermont Phoenix marveled:
The inhabitants of the village discovered ‘The Snow Angel,’ in the prismatic glow of the morning sun’s reflection. The early risers and pedestrians about town were amazed, when they drew near, to see what appeared at a distance like a school-boy’s work turned to a statue of such exquisite contour and grace of form. … The passing school-boy was awed for once, as he viewed the result of adept handling of the elements with which he was so roughly familiar, and the thought of snowballing so beautiful an object could never have dwelt in his mind. It is related that the village simpleton was frightened and ran away, and one eccentric citizen, who rarely deigned to bow to his fellow men, or women either, lifted his hat in respect after he had gazed a moment upon Mead’s work.
The angel was featured in newspapers in Boston and New York, and it brought Mead commissions for more lasting works, including a statue of Ethan Allen and a wooden figure symbolizing agriculture for the Montpelier statehouse. His later projects include Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield, Illinois.
In 1886 he reproduced the angel in marble — it stands in the public library in Brattleboro. Across the street, commemorating the site of the original angel, stands a drinking fountain designed by his brother, architect William Mead — who immortalized the family name in his own way.
Classical statues tend to lose their noses, and in the 19th century museums would commonly replace them with “restoration” noses, to preserve the appearance of the original sculpture.
In the 20th century some museums changed philosophies and “de-restored” their collections, thinking it better to present each piece in its authentic state.
This created a superfluity of noses, and some museums collect these into displays of their own. Charmingly, there’s even a word for this: A collection of noses is a Nasothek.
Above is the collection in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum in Copenhagen.
(Thanks, Carsten.)
