Plenty of Nothing

Sendak's Hobbit

Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) did some work on a proposal for a 30th anniversary illustrated edition of The Hobbit, but Tolkien was unimpressed and it didn't happen.

Pine Tree by Nukina Kaioku

The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, in British Columbia, has a large searchable online collection of art images, including a fine collection of Japanese art. I've only just learned about the place by coming across a mention of it in Joan Stanley-Baker's volume Japanese Art in the black-spined Thames & Hudson World of Art series. She was once Curator there.

Pines have been represented in Japanese art since the beginning. They are strongly identified with winter, and their gnarliness and individuality appeal to the skills of the ink painter/calligrapher. I've liked their company ever since I first lived amongst them on Pine Ridge in Kingston, Nova Scotia. D

About Nukina Kaioku.

Iceberg by Banting

Sir Frederick Banting didn't just discover insulin, you know. He could draw an iceberg.

Gimli, 1935

The Pavilion Museum in Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg has a good collection of Walter J. Phillips' series of colour woodcuts depicting scenes from Gimli, Manitoba, in the 1930s. For a Depression Era town it's quite a charming little place. I think I like the one above best because it appears that Olive Oyl has taken up residence in the house on the right. D

Chocolat Menier

Just in case you thought graffiti was a recent phenomenon, here's a poster of young Yvonne Bouisset, caught in the act of scrawling the name of her favourite confection on a wall in 1893, with a piece of chocolate. Her father Fermin Bouisset created one of the most enduring advertising images, at least in the French-speaking world, with this poster. And, as you can see, he understood the importance of the colour yellow. Chocolat Menier continued to use variations of Bouisset's poster for decades.

Snowshoeing by Moonlight

Snowshoeing by Moonlight by J.E.H. MacDonald, 1910.

St Anthony by Albrecht Dürer

Dürer's Netherlands Sketchbook includes pages that juxtapose cityscape and portrait to create a very strong sense of character, as if each sitter is saying, "This is me and here I am." St Anthony improves on that by putting the subject in front of the cityscape, in a posture that duplicates the shape of the hill town behind him, creating a micro/macro relationship. Despite its intricate solidity, the city is like a thought or emanation of the saint. There might be 1200 years between the foreground and background, but the time feels like a quiet afternoon.

Chris Berens

This striking cover art on Blondie's new record Panic of Girls is by Dutch artist Chris Berens. The hair and the strange facial proportions of the central figure cause you to jump to the false conclusion that this is a work of digital photographic manipulation, but in fact it's an oil painting. It makes me curious to see other paintings that are unmistakably 21st-century. D

Hurdy Gurdy

That folk song Child 95 has got me interested in the hurdy gurdy. (See, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant use a hurdy gurdy in their 1994 arrangement of "Gallow's Pole", the Led Zeppelin version of Child 95, on the album No Quarter.) (Here is Nigel Eaton playing a hurdy gurdy solo from the 1995 tour.)

Above is a highly detailed portrait of a hurdy gurdy player and her instrument, painted by Jules Richomme in 1879. I've lifted the image from this site which is devoted to a return to the artistic virtues of 19th-Century painting. Good luck converting all those conceptual artists, but I can see a few mangaka being won over by her hands and eyes. D

Have You Heard the News?

"Have You Heard the News?" by Frank McFadden. The McTear auction website is a good place to see what they've been painting in Glasgow.