Gravity of Light : Mike and Doug Starn

”Light is thought, light has gravity, light is what attracts us. The sun is what we want, who we want to be, who controls us. It is the future and the past. A Light too bright to look at, although light itself is invisible. The collection of light is black, and contradictorily, black is the absence of light. Black is both the void and the reservoir of what we need.” — M+D Starn

Descartes claimed that the blind see with their hands; it is a positivist view that to touch something, to determine its contours, is to know it: I “see” it, therefore it is. But this idea does not so much redress but renew the gulf between seeing and knowing: the classic mind-body problem. Centuries later, the French phenomenologist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty refocused Descartes’ analysis. “There is no vision without thought,” he wrote. “But it is not enough to think in order to see.” In other words, our bodies—our vision—are the permanent condition of our experience, and thought is born by what happens in and on the body. We are conductors; absorbers and emitters of the universe’s energy.

Since well before the Renaissance, light has been used for and understood as a metaphor for illumination, spiritual or intellectual; light is the opposite of dark. Pure light is the carrier of energy at once the message and the messenger. And the news is this: light can bring, in equal measure, life and destruction, energy and fear, illumination and obscurity.”


In their most ambitious project to date, Mike and Doug Starn present Gravity of Light. This exhibit is part art sculpture, part photography, and part scientific experiment that includes a carbon-arc lamp that mimics the sun. This arc lamp is very much the center of the show as it is brilliant and noisy. The 13-foot tall carbon arc lamp is so bright visitors must wear safety glasses in order to protect their retinas. 

The lamp is a facsimile of Sir Humphry Davy’s “voltaic arc” used in the first discovery of electric “artificial light in 1804. The peculiar thirteen-foot-tall mechanical structure at its center is titled Leonardo’s St. John or This is my Middle Finger (2005). In the painting by da Vinci, St. John the Baptist shrouded in darkness, is lit up and points his finger to the heavens, indicating the path to enlightenment.

da Vinci's St. John

The Starn version of St. John’s gesture has been digitally replaced by one of profanity. As Martin Barnes, senior curator of photographs at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, writes, this gesture “is like a rebuff, aimed at paltry human confidence in the face of eternity. Pure light is the carrier of this awesome power, at once the message and the messenger.”

So much about this installation is unique from the carbon-arc lamp illumination to the location of the exhibit. Although the Cincinnati Museum of Art sponsored this exhbit its location is not within the museum. Holy Cross Church at the Mount Adams Monastery is the place where you can view the Starn show.

Holy Cross Church is an old abandoned church. You can see the faded paintings and religious images on the wall. The whole building is in disrepair and the Starn imagery, large and beautifully photographed contrast with the crumbling bricks and faded religious iconography. Each of these photographs each deal with the theme of light’s effect. One of their large moth photographs shows the insect from a previous exhibit, Attracted to Light. The moth is attracted to the light which often leads to their own death, yet they can't resist it. It is what human and non-human crave, the light, that which helps us to visually see or to see the spiritual light.

Another piece is of the Buddhist monk Ganjin, it towers over us at the opposite end of the church. Ganjin was blind yet with an inner vision. He saw the black is still filled with light and saw the light inside of himself, found through a form of Eastern religious discovery. He too like the moth was attracted to the light not in the physical sense but in the spiritual one. 

Light can be a blessing but can also bring death through the blinding light of the carbon-arc lamp. Light can bring, in equal measure, life and destruction, energy and fear, illumination and obscurity.

The Starn exhibit is put on by the Cincinnati Museum of Art and closes on December 30, 2012. You can read about the show in the accompanying book Gravity of Light.

Articles:
FotoFocus
The Scariness and Brilliance of the Starns’ ‘Gravity of Light’

What is the Light? Doug & Mike Starn: Gravity of Light

Books in the Art Division's collection. Click to access the catalog.

Giotto: Trecento Master

Giotto
Giotto di Bondone

There is a story about Giotto that was told by another artist, Cimabue. Cimabue was walking through the countryside to visit the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. He saw a young boy drawing his sheep flock with a stone in the sand. Cimabue said, “This boy will be a Prodigy,” and then asked Giotto’s parents if Giotto could become his apprentice. That is the beginning of Giotto's career as the inventor of realism and detail in painting.

Giotto, born 1267 – January 8, 1337 is an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is said to be the founder of the Italian Renaissance. He brought his own sense of what he thought a painting should look by rejecting the Italo-Byzantine form of stylized painting and brought a sense of realism and naturalism to his work. The late-16th century biographer Giorgio Vasari describes Giotto as making a decisive break with the prevalent Byzantine style and as initiating "the great art of painting as we know it today, introducing the technique of drawing accurately from life, which had been neglected for more than two hundred years. Not only was he noted for his realistic human figures but he brought a new vision to perspective. His knowledge of painting influenced those High Renaissance painters that came after him like Michelangelo and Raphael. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, trans. George Bull, Penguin Classics, (1965)

Giotto is known for his clear, simple solutions to the basic problems of the representation of space and of the volume, structure, and solidity of 3-dimensional forms, and above all the human figure. He was also a genius at getting to the heart of whatever episode from sacred history he was representing,  finding the compositional means to express its innermost spiritual meaning and its psychological effects in terms of simple areas of paint. 


After leaving his home to go work as an apprentice for Cimabue he went on to become of the most famous painters of Tuscany. Cimabue was one of the first Italian painters to make a make from the Italo-Byzantine style but he still relied on some Byzantine models. While Giotto brought his sense of realism to a work, Cimabue clearly painted in a style that is clearly Medieval with stylized elongated figures. Giotto worked on Cimabue’s paintings while Cimabue was absent from the studio. Giotto had extraordinary skill and rendered his subjects with lifelike precision. While working on one of Cimabue’s paintings he painted a fly on one of the faces with such a realistic representation that Cimabue tried brushing it off.

You can see the differences in the two works below. The one on the left was done by Cimabue. It has the gold background typical for Byzantine works, elongated figures on a flat plane with little dimension to them. On the right is Giotto's work, Ognissanti Madaonna, where he has created a feeling of depth, the figures occupy a deeper space as compared to Cimabue's work. Even the Madonna's throne recedes in depth.

                                         

Maesta. 1280-1285, Uffizi Gallery, Florence

There is a lot of disagreement about Giotto’s life. Many speculated on his place of birth, his appearance and there are arguments about what he did and did not paint. One of these arguments surrounds the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi. Cimabue was commissioned to paint many of the large frescoes at this newly built basilica and it is said that Giotto accompanied him. The attribution of the fresco cycle of the Life of St. Francis in the Upper Church is a hotly debated topic among art historians.

Basilica of St Francis of Assisi

From Wikipedia:

“From Rome, Cimabue went to Assisi to paint several large frescoes at the newly-built Basilica of St Francis of Assisi, and it is possible, but not certain, that Giotto went with him. The attribution of the fresco cycle of the Life of St. Francis in the Upper Church has been one of the most hotly disputed in art history. The documents of the Franciscan Friars that relate to artistic commissions during this period were destroyed by Napoleon's troops, who stabled horses in the Upper Church of the Basilica, and scholars have been divided over whether or not Giotto was responsible for the Francis Cycle. In the absence of documentary evidence to the contrary, it has been convenient to ascribe every fresco in the Upper Church that was not obviously by Cimabue to Giotto, whose prestige has overshadowed that of almost every contemporary. Some of the earliest remaining biographical sources, such as Ghiberti and Riccobaldo Ferrarese, suggest that the fresco cycle of the life of St Francis in the Upper Church was his earliest autonomous work. However, since the idea was put forward by the German art historian, Friedrich Rintelen in 1912, many scholars have expressed doubt that Giotto was in fact the author of the Upper Church frescoes. Without documentation, arguments on the attribution have relied upon connoisseurship, a notoriously unreliable "science."However, technical examinations and comparisons of the workshop painting processes at Assisi and Padua in 2002 have provided strong evidence that Giotto did not paint the St. Francis Cycle. There are many differences between the Francis Cycle and the Arena Chapel frescoes that are difficult to account for by the stylistic development of an individual artist. It seems quite possible that several hands painted the Assisi frescoes, and that the artists were probably from Rome. If this is the case, then Giotto's frescoes at Padua owe much to the naturalism of these painters.”

Detail from a fresco at the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi that is said to be done be Giotto. Click on the image for more information about this work.

More information about this at Cimabue and Giotto Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists

Detail: Scrovegni Chapel

Around 1305 Giotto completed what is considered to be the masterpiece of Early Renaissance, Scrovegni Chapel also known as the Arena Chapel in Padua, This cycle’s theme is Salvation with emphasis on the life of the Virgin and the life of Christ. This cycle was commissioned by Enrico degli Scrovegni. The chapel is dedicated to the Annunciation. The theme is Salvation, and there is an emphasis on the Virgin Mary, as the chapel is dedicated to the Annunciation and to the Virgin of Charity. As is common in the decoration of the medieval period in Italy, the west wall is dominated by the Last Judgement. On either side of the chancel are complementary paintings of the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary, depicting the Annunciation. This scene is incorporated into the cycles of The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary and The Life of Christ. The source for The Life of the Virgin is the Golden Legend of Jacopo da Voragine while The Life of Christ draws upon the Meditations on the Life of Christ by the Pseudo-Bonaventura. Anne Derbes and Mark Sandona, The Usurer's Heart: Giotto, Enrico Scrovegni, and the Arena Chapel in Padua, University Park, 2008; Laura Jacobus,Giotto and the Arena Chapel: Art, Architecture and Experience, London, 2008; Andrew Ladis, Giotto's O: Narrative, Figuration, and Pictorial Ingenuity in the Arena Chapel, University Park, 2009

The cycle is divided into 37 scenes, arranged around the lateral walls in 3 tiers, starting in the upper register with the story of Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Virgin and continuing with the story of Mary. The life of Jesus occupies two registers. The Last Judgment fills the entire pictorial space of the counter-façade.

Detail: Last Judgment

Giotto paid a great deal of attention to detail and his figures draw on classical sculpture. Unlike Cimabue Giotto reject styling figures and rejected the elongation of the figure as byzantine models often did. His figures are solid, have three-dimensional qualities and gestures that are taken from observation. The clothing is not formalized but have dimension and weight. With these frescoes, Giotto gained a reputation for setting a new realistic standard in painting.

Florence Cathedral

Along with attaining fame as a painter, Giotto was also commissioned as an architect. In 1334 he was as given a major architectural commission as the architect of the new campanile (bell tower) of the Florence Cathedral. This bell tower is a free-standing structure that is part of other buildings that make up Florence Cathedral on the Piazza del Duomo in Florence, This masterpiece of Gothic Architecture was designed entirely by Giotto and is encrusted with polychrome marble and sculptural decoration.

Giotto’s life and work is argued among scholars with many is disagreeing on his birthdate, birthplace, his apprenticeship, the order in which he created his works, and whether or not he painted the famous frescoes at Assisi, (see above) and his burial place. Two things about his life that are agreed upon: his Scrovegni Chapel frescoes and his design for the campinale of the Florence Cathedral.

Giotto died in January 1337. According to Vasari,Giotto was buried in Santa Maria del Fiore, the Cathedral of Florence, on the left of the entrance and with the spot marked by a white marble plaque. According to other sources, he was buried in the Church of Santa Reparata. These apparently contradictory reports are explained by the fact that the remains of Santa Reparata lie directly beneath the Cathedral and the church continued in use while the construction of the cathedral was proceeding in the early 14th century.

During an excavation in the 1970s bones were discovered beneath the paving of Santa Reparata at a spot close to the location given by Vasari, but unmarked on either level. Forensic examination of the bones by anthropologist Francesco Mallegni and a team of experts in 2000 brought to light some facts that seemed to confirm that they were those of a painter, particularly the range of chemicals, including arsenic and lead, both commonly found in paint, that the bones had absorbed.

The bones were those of a very short man, of little over four feet tall, who may have suffered from a form of congenital dwarfism. This supports a tradition at the Church of Santa Croce that a dwarf who appears in one of the frescoes is a self-portrait of Giotto. On the other hand, a man wearing a white hat who appears in the Last Judgement at Padua is also said to be a portrait of Giotto. The appearance of this man conflicts with the image in Santa Croce.

Vasari, drawing on a description by Boccaccio, who was a friend of Giotto, says of him that "there was no uglier man in the city of Florence" and indicates that his children were also plain in appearance. There is a story that Dante visited Giotto while he was painting the Scrovegni Chapel and, seeing the artist's children underfoot asked how a man who painted such beautiful pictures could create such plain children, to which Giotto, who according to Vasari was always a wit, replied "I made them in the dark."

Forensic reconstruction of the skeleton at Santa Reperata showed a short man with a very large head, a large hooked nose and one eye more prominent than the other. The bones of the neck indicated that the man spent a lot of time with his head tilted backwards. The front teeth were worn in a way consistent with frequently holding a brush between the teeth. The man was about 70 at the time of death.

While the Italian researchers were convinced that the body belonged to Giotto and it was reburied with honor near the grave of Brunelleschi, others have been highly skeptical. (Wikipedia article).

Peruzzi Altarpiece, about 1309–15, Giotto di Bondone and His Workshop.
Tempera and gilded gesso on poplar panel, 41 5/8 x 98 1/2 in. (105.7 x 250.2 cm).
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, GL.60.17.7Click on image for more information

More information on Giotto here at the Athenaeum

At Duke University

Click on images below for more information about the exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum

Left: The Virgin and Child with Saints and Allegorical Figures, about 1315–20, Giotto di Bondone (Italian, about 1267–1337). Tempera and gold leaf on panel. Private Collection. Courtesy of Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York. Right: The Crucifixion, about 1315-20, Giotto di Bondone. Tempera and gold leaf on panel. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg, photo M. Bertola

Some books at the Central Library's Art Division about Giotto
Click on image to connect with the library catalog

The boy who drew sheep 

The Limners: Early American Portrait Painters

Unidentified artist, seventeenth century, Elizabeth Clarke Freake (Mrs. John Freake) and Baby Mary, about 1671 and 1674, oil on canvas, 42 1/2 x 36 3/4 in. (108 x 93.3 cm), Worcester Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Albert W. Rice, 1963.134. More about this painting can be found at the Worcester Art Museum

The Limners: Early American Portrait Painters  

Limner painting took place in early 17^th century America.  A limner painter had little or no formal training; sometimes they are called naïve painters or folk painters. The word limner or limning comes from the old English word for drawing or making images with lines. The old English word comes from the Latin word, illuminaire, to make bright or to light up.

During the middle ages before printing the word limning meant manuscript illumination. These early manuscript illuminators used bright colors without shadowing which caused their work to take on a flat appearance. The Limner’s painted in much the same way, as they were untrained, their work tended to be very flat, with very little shading which caused the figures to take on that flat look. The figures they painted did not appear to have life in them.

In Early America much of the painting that was being done was sign painting. Signs were hung out of storefronts and other businesses. As many Americans could not read signs were painted not with words but with images.  As American colonists began to prosper they looked for things that could brighten up their lives so purchased things that could bring happiness into their homes, and they began to hang portraits of themselves and their family. Guess who painted these portraits; yes it was those sign painters.

Many of these sign painters became the first painters of early America, now known as the Limners. These portraits took on the same qualities as their signs, portraits were simple, flat and tended to be posed in awkward positions that no human could attain. The portraits looked as though the artist had drawn lines and then filled them in with color. As these paintings took on an unsophisticated look, many times they are referred to as primitive works. The clothes painted in these portraits went from one extreme to the other, one would be simply dressed and another elaborately clothed with lace, ribbons, and fancy fabrics. The faces tended to be expressionless with a lifeless stare, the children did not look like children but like miniature adults. Each limner painters had their own style of painting but most often the eyes of the sitter were heavily accentuated and very often included things like books, birds, pets, household objects. The artist often used crushed burnt walnuts, ground chicken bones, boiled eggshells, blueberries and even local clays to create their works with. 

Limner artists were not revered like cabinetmakers or silversmiths, what they produced was not necessary but an item that was considered frivolous. As a result these artists travelled and moved from one location to another to earn a living, and as they weren’t considered important many of them are unknown and many of the works they did went unsigned.

If you are interested in reading about the Limners and early American art here is a selection of books from the Art Division.

Volume 1

American folk art and decorative arts from the early years of the Republic are telling indicators of family traditions, aesthetic values, and household customs of the young nation. Showing us how creative and consumer cultures from the old world were transformed in the new, Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence presents more than two hundred examples of American folk art and decorative arts created in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia in the 18th and 19th centuries. Drawn from the extraordinary Jane Katcher Collection, the book features familiar expressions of American folk art—portraits and carvings, quilts and needlework, weathervanes and whirligigs, family records and calligraphy, ceramics, furniture, baskets, and toys—as well as the unexpected—valentines, friendship albums, and keepsakes woven from the hair of loved ones.

Volume 2

The two books below do not have book jackets so the title page was scanned

 

Although from a different time period than Limner painting, this book has excellent reproductions of early American folk art

 

 

Below is a children's book on Limner painting

 

 

The Stanley Burns Archive, Mourning Photography, & The Mütter Museum

Mourning Photography

Post-mortem photography is photographs of the recently decreased and is sometimes referred to as memento mori.  During the Victorian period it was quite common and an accepted way of memorializing the dead from infants to the elderly.

Around 1839 the daguerreotype made photography cheaper and easier for the middle class who could not afford to have paintings done of their loves ones. This photography invention allowed people to have an image of their family member, many of who most likely never had a photo taken of themselves.

It was during the Victorian era that post mortem photography really became commonplace. Mortality rates were quite high particularly among infants and young children. Many children died suddenly and parents would have to get a photographer to the body quickly to photograph the body. Parents took photos of their deceased children as a keepsake to remember them by; often these children were posed as if they were sitting with their eyes open or in a restful sleep. Many times children were in a crib or a bed, surrounded by flowers, and these photos were never taken with the deceased in a coffin. Children were often dressed in white or ordinary clothing and many photographers added a rosy color to their cheeks. Many times in those photos the mother is holding her deceased child while
she is covered in a black shroud. This was done to put emphasis on the deceased.

These photos were supposed to portray the deceased as if they were still alive so many times they were also posed with everyday things such as toys and usually other family members posed with the dead. As the eyes are the first things to deteriorate after death, many photographers learned to paint false eyes on closed lids if they could not keep the eyes open. It all sounds very macabre but these photos were taken with love and admiration for the deceased. The Victorians did not view death as a macabre experience; instead they found beautification in death and sought to have their loved one memorialized in peaceful images.

The origins of memento mori photographs can be traced back nearly to the beginning of photography itself. During the nineteenth century, post-mortem portraits were used to acknowledge and mourn the death of a loved one, especially a baby or child. All social classes engaged in the practice, which became more widespread after the introduction of the daguerrotype in 1839. The subjects of the photos were generally arranged to appear as if peacefully asleep, all their earthly suffering ended. Displayed prominently in the household alongside other family photographs, the portraits helped heal grieving hearts by preserving some trace of the deceased.

The ritual of photographing the deceased is not a practice that continues in mainstream culture today as many consider it morbid and disrespectful to the corpse. Not so for those who are member of the group, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. This non-profit group in Colorado specializes in infant bereavement photography and their photographs of children are special and comforting to the parents by no means morbid.

The Burns Archive

Although there are those that find photographing the deceased terribly morbid there are many collectors of Victorian mourning photography throughout the world. One of the largest collections belongs to Stanley B. Burns, M.D. He is an ophthalmologist who claims to have been a visual person his whole life which led him into the field of seeing and vision. In the 1970s he began collecting post mortem and medical photography to document medical and social conditions. He owns about half a million photographs from the that daguerreotype originated in 1839 through 1939.

As stated above Burns began collecting as he wanted a record of the social conditions at those times. He also has another reason that has to do with documenting how practicing medicine has changed from those times to today. Burns does not have a great fondness for the healthcare system today where doctors are called healthcare providers and patients are called clients or customers. He wanted his collection of medical photography to document want he refers to as, “medical individualism, when special care was paid to the individual as a medical patient. His collections have been published in the books he has written.

Burns has written books enabling readers to view his vast collection. One of these books, entitled, Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America, takes the reader into the world of mourning photography. Many of these photographs are the only images the families will have of the deceased. The images from his collection show a common practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Post mortem photography according to Burns, “make up the largest group of nineteenth century American genre photographs” and they are very much unseen. In this book you will find sepia and black and white photos. Burns collaborated with photographer Joel-Peter Witkin on this book. There are two other accompanying books,   Sleeping beauty II : Grief, Bereavement and the Family in Memorial Photography, American & European Traditions, and Sleeping Beauty III: Memorial Photography: The Children which focuses specifically on peaceful images of children. The book also has a section on contemporary memorial photography and images from Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.

If you are interested in Burns’ medical photography archive, you can view them in A Morning’s Work, Medical Photographs from the Burns Archive & Collection, 1843-1939.

Clicking on the book covers below will bring you to our catalog.

Not from the Stanley B. Burns archive but covers medical photography

The Mütter Museum

The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia is a museum that specializes in the history of medicine and has a large collection of medical photography. Their goal at the museum is to help the public understand the mysteries and beauty of the human body and to understand the history and treatment of diseases.

Mid-nineteenth century saw a beginning of medical photography where physicians were able to share information with their students about their patients. As photography became simpler with the introduction of the Kodak camera in 1888, physicians were able to communicate to their patients as well about their medical conditions.

The museum is part of the The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Along with their collection of medical photography the museum’s collection contains, anatomical and pathological specimens, wax models, and antique medical equipment. Along with the Burns Archive The Mütter Museum has a large medical photographic collection dating from the 1850s to the 1940s.

The two images at either end are items the library owns. Clicking on the image will direct you to our catalog.

Everything is display in a dark 19^th century cabinet museum setting. The Mütter is not for everyone. Many find the photographs and collection disturbing while others find a beauty and aesthetic value in the collection. If you go to the Mütter be prepared to see photos and specimens of human oddities and deformities. Remember while you are at the museum or viewing one of their books, the photographs were never meant to put these patients on display as a side show would. Instead these photographs were taken as a way for physicians to understand how to help their patients. The camera makes us see these afflicted people as human beings ravaged by disease and is empathetic to the afflicted. Today these historic photographs provide the viewer a look at how medicine was practiced.

August 2012.NN