Charles Livingston Bull

Charles Livingston Bull

the Pincushion of the Woods

circa 1922

     With many of Bull’s illustrations there seems to be an inherent sense of devotion that he ingrained into each of his animals. He used his gift of drawing as a gateway between his world and theirs, transferring his imagination and their mannerisms onto paper as a single expression. He did not merely replicate what he saw, but perceived it as something to first understand and observe, and to then translate through a brush. The bear here, for example, is more than just a detailed depiction of a grizzly; it is a bear who has a story of its own, as does the ‘pincushion’ sneering down at it from the tree. An unusual pair of plunderers, they might be bickering over their latest failure in stealing a few sets of much-needed trousers from the local laundry house; or they may be having a classic lovers’ quarrel, one blaming the other for the inexcusable mess of pine needles left at the foot of their tree; or maybe they are not fighting at all, but instead saluting each other after a satisfying few months of hibernation, and proposing to schedule a game of tennis for the following Wednesday. The possibilities for what may be taking place in this scene are endless, as long as one has an imagination at least equal to that of the artist’s to be able to envisage them. But it is not without Bull’s help that one can do this - take away his style and characteristic imprint as an illustrator and we would have but a silent bear, a stiff porcupine and an empty husk of bark.

the Wiener Werkstätte: Emanuel Josef Margold

Emanuel Josef Margold

Ex Libris for Josef Pecsi

circa 1911

     By clearly placing Josef Pecsi’s name at the top of this piece, Margold cleverly implies that it is like the ‘sun’ to which the strange unfurling plant underneath is slowly growing. One’s eye is thus naturally drawn upwards with the plant itself, this being a visual tool which gives movement to a supposedly stationary, two-dimensional illustration. The artist also squeezes the plant into a long and lengthened rectangle - again, a technique used to fool the eye into believing that whatever is inside the space is limited and cramped, and is forced to spread out either upwards or downwards (again drawing the eye towards the intended point). This forms a pleasant ‘conversation’ between the illustration’s elements, fluidly connecting them in a kind of circular, loop-the-loop script which instantly communicates to us, the audience, the misleading idea that the illustration is simple and uncomplicated. But in fact, the design was carefully planned and executed, with its overall message of simplicity being exactly what Margold intended the viewer to believe in.

the Timepiece: Breguet et fils

Breguet et fils (established 1775)

Watch (no. 4111)

circa 1827

     What one must first know about this objet d’art is that it is an incredibly thin piece, a feature specially enabled by the fitted balance wheel within. Turned on its side exactly 90 degrees, the watch's wide elegant face (as seen on the left) becomes a mere sliver of gold - slim not only in perspective, but also in weight. 

     The precision of the watch - crafted and executed without a single computer or fancy digital design programme in sight - is one that seems to laugh at today’s contemporary ideals of ‘advanced technology’, and at the common misconception that ‘bigger’, more complicated methods always yield better-than-before results. With respect to the arts, this is rarely true, and this pocket watch proves it: a machine could not have made its metal surface any smoother or its shape more circular. It could not have rendered its numerals more accurate in size or in symmetry, and it certainly could not have made its hidden dials and rotary systems perform more seamlessly. In all of these qualities lies a talent found uniquely in the human eye and in its willingness, and innate capability, to then forge it into something tangible. The only effect a machine could have on an object as this would be that of stripping away the originality created from the watch’s bare hand-to-object contact. It would erase its characteristic ‘blemishes’ (minute though they may be) made throughout its formation, those which form the bread trail from its conception to final birth. The watch would become an empty entity; a mindless mechanical face with no personality imbued in its shiny skin. But fortunately, the era into which this Breguet watch was born was one where artisans strove off of what their raw talents, aided only by secondary tools and the like, could earn them. Depending on one’s understanding of the idea of evolution, it is questionable as to whether humankind is indeed progressing and maturing as much and as far as it could be, and whether it is only a matter of time before it realises that some of its innovations are but cheap, regurgitated copies of the past - redundant and sterile, unlike their ancestors. 

Leonard Turzhanskii

Leonard Turzhanskii

Spring Coming

circa 1922 (?)

     Perhaps in this scene there is an equal play between sight and sound. The emphasis on the coming of Spring is not placed on typical (though still beautiful) images of blooming green shoots and flowers or of new offspring of nature but, on the contrary, on what is going to be temporarily lost and hidden with its arrival. Pairing snow with sunlight, the two main figures in this scene, the artist creates a direct flow of communication between what he wanted his viewers to see and what he then wanted them to sense and feel. With simple visuals Turzhanskii makes the coming of Spring personal to each of us: he draws sound out of sight, impressing individual ideas of melting, mushy snow in our minds as if it were really taking place, drop by drip, in the painted courtyard before us. Even the roosters may now come to life, clucking and pecking around their snowy territory in search of hibernating seeds, and it is at this point that we may actually feel rather than just see the coming of Spring on this two-dimensional canvas. Underneath the paint is the subtle message of the progression of time; it spreads itself over landscapes in the form of seasons, redefining what we see differently each time and painting for us new ways in which to interpret what we think we may see, versus what is really there.