Leonardo's Flying Machine Revisited

The ornithopter, or human-powered flying machine built
by Todd Reichert

One of the first blog posts I wrote was back in October 2005, under Camera Lucida. I filed it under science, although it was about the artist (now we consider him more of an artist than a scientist) Leonardo Da Vinci. It was titled Leonardo's Flying Machine, and describes a contemporary scientist's attempt to rebuild one of Leonardo's flying machines. What this 21st century designer attempted was more glider than a plane.

Todd Reichert, a PhD student for the University of Toronto, has recently managed to build another Leonardo machine. This time, it is a human powered flying machine, and actually flies rather than glides. Reichert sits in the cockpit of the small plane (with expansive wings) and pedals the machine up and into the sky.

You can watch the short video (Reichert managed to stay airborne for 19 seconds) here - just scroll down to the "video".

For some reason, each time I see these scientific reports about flying machines, I think of the movie Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines (Or How I Flew From London To Paris In 25 Hours 11 Minutes), with the playful lyrics (of which I know only the first three lines):

Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines.
They Go Up, Tiddly, Up, Up.
They Go Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.
They Enchant All The Ladies And Steal All The Scenes
With their Up, Tiddly, Up, Up
And They're Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.

Up! Down! Flying Around.
Looping The Loop And Defying The Ground.
They're All, Frightfully Keen
Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines.

They Can Fly Upside Down With Their Feet In The Air.
They Don't Think Of Danger. They Really Don't Care.
Newton Would Think He Had Made A Mistake.
To See Those Young Men And The Chances They Take.

Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines.
They Go Up, Tiddly, Up, Up.
They Go Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.
They Enchant All The Ladies And Steal All The Scenes
With their Up, Tiddly, Up, Up
And Their Down, Tiddly, Down, Down.

Up! Down! Flying Around.
Looping The Loop And Defying The Ground.
They're All, Frightfully Keen

Small Gem at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Paintings and Prints by Frans Masereel
 
The Saleswoman, by Frans Masereel, 1923
Watercolour, brush and black ink on paper

The Art Gallery of Ontario has another small gem of a show. It is barely visible, taking up only one room. This small exhibition is titled, "Frans Masereel: The Pulse of Paris." Masereel was a Belgian print maker from the turn of the 20th century, and lived into his eighties still producing his prints. He lived most of his adult life in France - in Paris, then later in the south of France. 

The AGO exhibition shows two techniques that Masereel perfected. One is woodcuts and etchings where Masereel carves intricate and delicate lines, which he then prints in stark black ink onto white paper. Some of these images are part of his collection of  "wordless" graphic novels.

He also did giant pieces of black permanent ink with watercolor washes. This technique is less involved than the woodcuts, yet it still demands a sure hand which is not afraid to guide (and drag) the permanent ink to make the indelible images.

The effects are uncanny. One set of images (the woodcut prints) are controlled and elaborate, while the ink and watercolor washes appear more spontaneous and free. Still, the signature of the artist is apparent in all the works.

An Inferior (Photographic) Reproduction

Of Madame X
Left: Nicole Kidman as Madame X
Right: The original Madame X - Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau,
an American socialite married to a French banker

The October 2010 issue of Vogue is promoting a new book: The World in Vogue: People, Parties, Places, and put a sampler of two portraits of famous women. One is American painter John Singer Sargent's Madam X, which he painted in 1884. Another is a reprint of actress Nicole Kidman posing as a Sargent woman, and Madam X in particular, taken by Vogue photographer Steven Meisel for the June 1999 issue of Vogue.

Sargent's Madame X exudes confidence by the full twist of her body, as though ignoring the painter, and the way she holds her head high. Her presence is appealing with her tightly clinched waist, and a dress with a well-defined bodice and of fine satin material.

Kidman, on the other hand, cannot seem to decide whether to turn away or toward the photographer, and she has those "eyes glaring at headlights" look that she conveys in many of her photos and films. (I always wonder why she is such a popular actress, with such a meek presence). The cut of her dress is not nearly as sophisticated as Madam X's, and it is not clear what the material the dress is made from, although it looks like a heavy and unattractive velvet. And it could just be the web and magazine reprint, but the light behind her is unforgiving and harsh, bringing up too much of a contrast in her skin, and giving it an unattractive reddish glow. Even the table she is leaning on is overbearing, unlike the elegant circular form which is behind Madam X, and whose curves mimic her delicate waistline.

The article in Vogue describes a new exhibition on view at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. The museum's website has a few images from the exhibition, including a sketch of Madame X by Sargent.

Portuguese Filmmakers

Scene from "Mysteries of Lisbon"

What is it with Portuguese films and filmmakers these last couple of years? First there is the centenarian Manoel de Oliveira, who has brought a new film, The Strange Case of Angelica, to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) this year. Only a year ago, he had a 2009 film Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl also at TIFF. I wrote a blog post on it which I titled: Charm and Mischief at One Hundred: Manoel de Oliveira's sparkling, winking gem.

There is now another Portuguese film, Mysteries of Lisbon by Raul Ruiz who originally hails from Chile (nonetheless a "Latino"), showing at this year's TIFF. Ruiz is in his seventies. Perhaps age provides wisdom coupled with charm to bring a unique understanding of the world. The film appears to be a sweeping epic. Here is part of the TIFF synopsis of Mysteries of Lisbon:

Based on a famous nineteenth-century Portuguese novel, Raul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon follows a jealous countess, a wealthy businessman and a young orphaned boy across Portugal, France, Italy and Brazil where they connect with a variety of mysterious individuals.

A fuller description of the film and the director is at the TIFF site, where Piers Handling writes that "the film’s magnificence is buoyed by refined art direction and fluid camerawork."

What a TIFF

Michael Snow's Wavelength

The Toronto International Film Festival (or TIFF, as it is affectionately - or mischievously - called) is in full swing.

It is a long festival, since it really does try to accommodate all tastes - from the star gazing fans to those who watch and decipher the latest avant-garde films on the menu.

I admit, I am a bit of the latter, although part of my excuse is that the blockbuster movies will soon be in the theaters anyway.

I went to a screening on Monday which was part of the Wavelengths series (which is in honor of the old guard avant-garde filmmaker Michael Snow's 1967  Wavelength). Below is a synopsis of Wavelength from Bright Lights Film Journal:

Wavelength [is a] 45-minute intermittent forward zoom taken at slightly altered camera positions in a loft. Briefly men and women enter and exit the frame, triggering the pretense of a narrative. But in reality, the viewer becomes increasingly absorbed in the purpose of the zoom and where it's heading. Wavelength ends on a photograph of the sea that has been placed flat on a wall between two windows. On the soundtrack we hear, among other things, a sine wave.

I studied "experimental films," as such films are called amongst the few die-hards, and I even produced two that were exhibited nationally and internationally. But, shortly after that, I stopped making such films and resumed textile design, which I had worked on independently during my film study years.

I left experimental film because I found it too subliminal. Imagine sitting in a dark theater, where images are flashing at you (or gliding slowly along the screen) with their own strange coherence, which you have to try and decipher in your logical, real world. I felt that this was impossible, since the real intent of many of these filmmakers is to put the viewer into a kind of unthinking, primal trance, and to make him free associate the images to produce some other, unreal (art?) world. We were being manipulated, and after I learned the craft, I understood, in a very rudimentary way, how these manipulations can occur. For example flashing an image in a barely perceptible single frame, completely (apparently) unrelated to the rest of the footage, can induce the viewer to conclude "something else."

Monday's program brought another perspective to my understanding of such films.The program's title was Coming Attractions, and it was the sixth, and last, in the series of these Wavelength films. Here is the synopsis of the title film Coming Attractions:

Peter Tscherkassky's Coming Attractions is a sly, sartorial comedy that masterfully mines the relationship between early cinema and the avant-garde by way of fifties-era advertising. With references to Méliès, Lumières, Cocteau, Léger, Chomette and Persil laundry detergent, the film explores cinema’s subliminal possibilities using an impressive arsenal of techniques, like solarization, optical printing and multiple exposures.

Cinema's subliminal possibilities using an impressive arsenal of techniques? I was right after all!

The film was in a sense an homage to those greats in experimental film (or avant-garde  film as it was known at the birth of this type of film making) - Méliès, Lumières, Léger, who really did experiment with the camera, the film and their subject matter. They were trying to understand and invent a new art form. Their mission seemed as much scientific as artistic. And they were trying to make film as prestigious and respected as painting (or any of the other fine arts). If there is any analogy to literature, they tried to recreate film as poetry, rather than the novel - which they derogatorily considered the domain of "narrative" films, which is what our film world is filled with now.

But, we are past one hundred years when this experiment started. Rather than put their kinds of film on par with painting (perhaps their scientific endeavors have borne fruit since film making has left the celluloid and progressed to digital), this small program revealed to me that the final, and logical squaring of the circle occurred with Austrian filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky's Coming Attractions. The subliminal avant-garde provided an aggressive "arsenal of techniques" for advertising. How far removed from art can this be!

So, it was disappointing, and in many way redemptive (I left the discipline, after all) to find that this new millennium (countering the past millennium and the birth of film), might be ushering in the death of film - or the experimental trials (in search of art) that those avant-gardists were attempting. And Coming Attractions is the best that the contemporary avant-garde filmmaker can make - imitate those techniques to send subliminal messages to make us buy things we don't really want or need, rather than contemplate and be nourished by art. But, I have another, harsher, theory, which I will expound on in the future. These early 20th century avant-garde filmmakers had already planted the seeds for the demise of art and that experimental film was doomed from the beginning. Since a great part of its mission is to regress us (the viewers) to a primeval state, when we cannot attentively contemplate art and beauty, but are led to passively react to the images.

But, having said all this, there is a charm and beauty to some of these films. Perhaps the strategy is to watch them in small doses, once a year at a film festival. Still, flickers of light and color in magical shapes in a darkened theater may pull us into a netherworld, but we had better find a way to enter our own, real one once out of that modern camera obsucra.

Luck of the Unicorns

Keeping up the good fight
St. George with Unicorn-like horse, Ca. 1740-55
(Ethiopian Orthodox Church illuminated manuscript)

In the post "Revolt on the Nile" (which describes Egypt's and Sudan's claim to the Nile at the expense of other African countries including Ethiopia) at Our Changing Landscape, I chose to place the above Ethiopian church illuminated manuscript of St. George as the main image. Perhaps this was an invocation to the country's patron saint to protect her from such strange events, including the rise of a new enemy - Chinese land robbers. The "horse" that St. George is riding while slaying the dragon in the above illuminated manuscript is actually a unicorn, as my title in the original blog post on August 2007 indicates: "Kindling the Spiritual Flame: Western influences in Ethiopian Biblical Art" .

In a completely unrelated post a few days later, "The Luck of the Unicorns in Medieval Tapestries", at Camera Lucida, where my topics are related to art and culture, I talk about the influence of unicorns in art, religion and even (medicinal) science, after having read a small article on the Cloisters in New York City which house the famous Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. In the same post, I also describe my own fascination with unicorns, and link to an article I wrote for the Botanical Artists of Canada, where I briefly describe the floral elements of another famous unicorn tapestry, "The Lady and the Unicorn".

Is it serendipity at work, or is all this simply a way of these magical beasts telling us not to give up hope, and valiantly to keep fighting the battle, like St. George himself? I think we are at the cusp of tremendously difficult times. I've mentioned in a post the strange summer we've had, and my reaction to it both physiologically and psychologically (yes, polar bears in the summer is surely an unnatural event, albeit tinted with humor).

Another thought. We are focused on Islam these days, as we should be, but I keep returning to the East in my analysis of some of these events, and specifically China [1, 2 3]. I try to argue that that region is showing dangerous signs of economical and territorial muscle flexing.

On a cultural note, I follow fashion (to some extent), and the fashion world seems infatuated with subpar designers of Chinese origin (this link shows Jason Wu who designed Michelle Obama's strange inaugural gown). Here is a blog post I did on first ladies' gowns, with these comments on Michelle Obama's gown:

[Michelle Obama's] inaugural gown...is shapeless, with an unattractive asymmetry at the shoulder, and stiff three-dimensional flower-like shapes which don't fit on the light-weight material. It looks like a cheap wedding dress.

I've written about Vera Wang here (follow the links) to make a point about the aggressive push by Chinese American and Chinese Canadian designers in order to have their work viewed and sold. One point I make is that their non-Western, non-Christian background gives them a different (and I think detrimental) psychological and spiritual guide for modern day women (and especially brides, when it comes to wedding dress designer Vera Wang).

I will be writing a more descriptive piece on unicorns in Christian history. And perhaps another on how the unicorn became St. George's horse in Ethiopian religious iconography (my thesis is that Ethiopian monks and pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem brought back religious stories and cultural ideas to Ethiopia, including artwork).

There is much to be vigilant about. China, Islam, all under the eye of the unicorn.

References from Our Changing Landscape:
1. Land Grab: From the Poor to the Poor
2. China Rising? [Cont.]
3. China Rising?

"Botanical Art and the Decorative Arts"

Botanical Art and the Decorative Arts
Botanical Artists of Canada Newsletter, Summer 2007. Pp3-4
Kidist P. Asrat

The earliest recorded botanically accurate illustrations date around 372-286 BCE in Enquiry into Plants by Aristotle’s student Theopharastus. Although no documents exist from this period, images survive on frescoes, mosaics and architecture. One of the most popular was the acanthus plant, which the 19th century textile and decorative arts designer, William Morris, was to repeatedly use in his works.

Acanthus Column of the Dancing Girls (base), Greek, 330-320BC

The Greek influence of realistic botanical representation on Ancient Rome was highlighted in Pliny the Elder’s encyclopedic Natural history, where he tackles every imaginable aspect of nature from cosmology to precious stones, including several books on the medicinal values of plants (ten of the 37). What survive of Roman homes show us some uncanny, realistic fruits, flowers and trees on mosaic and fresco decorations.

Mural Painting with Pomegranate tree, Laurel and Cypress. Roman, ca. 38BC

The Late Antiquity physician, Pedanius Dioscorides (first century AD), continued with the these empirical botanical investigations in his De Materia Medica. Although no original manuscript survives, many copied, illustrated versions circulated around Europe and were used well into the 15 century as the authority on plants as pharmaceuticals.

The early medieval period drew upon these Greek and Roman texts and illustrations to substantiate the medicinal usefulness of plants, but the botanical arts concentrated on the spiritual and symbolic aspects of plants and flowers. Later medieval periods were greatly influenced by St. Francis of Assisi’s love of the natural. St Francis was able to release plants from their purely symbolic and religious values, and was an important precursor to the natural study of plants which was revived in the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

One of the most enchanting mergers of scientific observation and religious symbolism are the tapestries of the Hunt of the Unicorn. These tapestries are covered with the late Medieval tradition of fields of millefleurs. When analyzed carefully, many of these flowers are clearly identifiable, in their correct environment. The Madonna Lily, depicted in The Unicorn in Captivity tapestry, is both a religious symbol of the purity of Mary and also a medicinal plant that treated burns, ulcers and ear infections, amongst other things.

Right, The Unicorn in Captivity from The Hunt of the Unicorn ca. 1495-1505
Left, Detail from The Unicorn in Captivity showing Madonna Lily from the large
rectangle in the bottom right.

It was around this time that the scientific study of nature, apart from religious symbolism, was undertaken by the German “Father of Botany” Otto Brunfels. He recorded his work in the Herbarium Vivae Eicones (illustrated by Hans Weiditz). Brunfel’s work was revolutionary because he primarily used his own observations to publish his works, although he still used the ancient Roman and Greek texts for comparisons.

The Medici family’s love of gardens and great patronage of the arts perfectly combined the arts and sciences in Renaissance Florence. Their gardens provided both a botanical repository as well as inspiration for their fine and decorative art pieces. Symbolism and religious identifications were no longer prevalent, and plants was admired for their intrinsic, natural qualities.

Sunflower, Pietre Tenere Mosaic, Florence, 1664

Imagery on textiles were achieved mostly through arduously long processes of weaving or embroidery until the late 1700 and early 1800s. With the industrial revolution, new methods of printing on textiles for larger productions were invented. One of the most important was the engraved roller printer, where even the most delicate lines could be repeatedly printed on yards of fabric. This precision in printing, coloors and dyes, combined with the reinvigorated scientific illustrations of plants and flowers, resulted with some of the most realistically rendered botanical prints on textiles.

Copper-plate print monochrome textile, 1825

Plants brought by adventurers and travelers from around the globe coincided with the golden age of botanical art in England in the 19th century. Domestic as well as exotic plant illustrations increased greatly in number and quality. One of the most prolific of the interior designers to take advantage of these images was the ubiquitous designer William Morris. He was able to market his simple daisy on a wallpaper as easily as his upholsteries of the exotic Mediterranean acanthus.

William Morris’ Acanthus print for textiles and wallpaper, 1875

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, designer Candace Wheeler was influenced by Morris’s Arts and Crafts movement when she founded her own Society of Decorative Arts of New York. She incorporated many local plants and flowers in her uniquely American designs, creating a domestic arts and crafts culture and identity.

Candace Wheeler’s embroidered Madonna Lily Pillow Cover, 1876-77

The Canadian artist Joyce Wieland used the unique techniques of American quilters and embroiders when she created her 1971 Water Quilts. Delicate embroideries of artic wildflower on thin gauze cover printed texts of environmental concern. Their message was simple: if we are to relish the beauty of the flora, and especially such delicate ones as northern wildflowers, we have to take care of them. And after all, without them, there would be no botanical art.

Left, Embroidered, hand woven blanket, US, 1853
Right, Water Quilt, by Joyce Wieland, Canada, 1971

The Luck of the Unicorns

In medieval tapestries

The Toronto Star had a "Special Report" on fall travel in last Monday's (September 6, 2010) edition. One especially enchanting place to visit is The Cloisters in New York. One sometimes forgets the fascination for old Europe that Americans (and Canadians) had. In this day and age, Europe seems to have lost its luster. The Cloisters are especially interesting since the structures were re-assembled from originals from France, gifted by the great John D. Rockefeller Jr.

I have never been to The Cloisters, but have always known that they house the beautiful tapestries The Hunt of the Unicorn. But, I was lucky to see another set of unicorn tapestries, The Lady and the Unicorn (La Dame à la Licorne), housed in the Musée de Cluny, in Paris.

While studying botanical art, I wrote an article in which I do an expansive (idiosyncratic?) review of botanical art through the centuries. I mention The Lady and the Unicorn briefly, explaining how the work merged the decorative and medicinal elements of plants.

The article, Botanical Art and the Decorative Arts was published in the Botanical Artists of Canada Newsletter in the Summer 2007 issue (pp3-4).

 

Think of the Polar Bears

In this summer heat

It's been a long, hot, humid and even wet summer. The weather experts say that this has been a summer of record heat waves, beating out those of  the last ten years.

But, think what the polar bears must be going through! There's been some funny commercials here on Toronto television stations for the Toronto Zoo summer ad campaign. And who do they use as their stars? The polar bears, of course. This is the kind of humor that has put Canadians on the top of television comedies, notably the cast on Saturday Night Live.

The above ad is one of a few that has kept the humor going in an otherwise pretty difficult summer.

"The Bride Wore Black"

To her groom's funeral?
Poster for the film "La Mariée était en noir"
by Francois Truffaut

I recently wrote about Vera Wang's black wedding dress which I described as a dress fit for a vampire's bride. French filmmaker Francois Truffaut's 1968 film The Bride Wore Black  (La Mariée était en noir) reminds me of this black wedding dress. The film was from a novel by William Irish (pseudonym for Cornell Woolrich). Here is a short synopsis of the novel from amazon.com:

No one knew who she was, where she came from, or why she had entered their lives. All they really knew about her was that she possessed a terrifying beauty-and that each time she appeared, a man died horribly. 

And of the Truffaut film from Wikipedia:

[The Bride Wore Black] is a revenge film in which five men make a young bride a widow on her wedding day. She takes her revenge, methodically killing each of the five men using various methods.

I don't know if Vera Wang has watched this film (or if she even knows about it), but the psyche is a strange thing. After all, there are only a limited number of references and connections we can make in this world.

Wang's flashing bride in black is a negative statement on weddings, and life, in general. In our culture, white is for purity, whereas black is often for death, the mysterious (and evil?) underworld, darkness and obfuscation. And if the bride wears black, it is as though the she went to her own funeral. Or is a widow executing a vengeful act, as the Truffaut film discloses. And what real-life bride wants to be dressed in black, even with the modern woman's dearth of cultural knowledge and sensitivity?

Surprisingly, the white wedding dress, which is the norm for modern Western weddings, is relatively new. The British Queen Victoria set the tradition with her own wedding dress in 1840. Prior to that, brides wore dresses fitting their status and wealth.