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Monday, April 18, 2016
Sunday, April 17, 2016
The Incredible Occult Illustrations of Alphonse Mucha [feedly]
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The Incredible Occult Illustrations of Alphonse Mucha
// Ultraculture
The Incredible Occult Illustrations of Alphonse Mucha | Jason Louv | Ultraculture - Wake Up and Mutate
Art Nouveau illustrator Alphonse Mucha's beautiful occult-inspired art from the turn of the century
Ultraculture friends Century Guild are Kickstarting a coffee table book of the occult Art Nouveau illustration of Alphonse Mucha. It looks like an absolutely incredible project—and one that will definitely appeal to occult art collectors! Mucha drew on motifs from Kabbalah and turn-of-the-century occulture for his works—several of which are featured below!
Here's what Century Guild has to say about Mucha:
By December 20, 1899, Alphonse Mucha had experienced four years as the most recognizable proponent of Art Nouveau graphics and the most celebrated illustrator in Paris. The massive output of the artist in his first four years in the advertising and decorative world earned much for Mucha's publisher but very little for the artist himself.
As the end of the century grew near, Alphonse Mucha insisted upon the release of a deeply personal work, and printed 510 copies of what he for the remainder of his life considered his works-on-paper masterpiece, Le Pater.
Decidedly non-denominational, Mucha's exploration features a female deity protecting humankind and a number of sophisticated occult themes across a series of images of mystical illustrations.
Unlike the advertising art that had dominated Mucha's output since his "discovery" by Sarah Bernhardt in late 1894, Mucha described this series of images to a New York reporter as "the thing I have put my soul into." (The Sun newspaper, 5 January, 1900)
Mucha's previous artworks were lithographed on numerous mediums ranging from paper to silk, in multiple formats; Mucha's publisher Champenois saw that Mucha was the most printed artist in Paris in the late 1890s. Mucha's concern, understandably, was likely that the imagery of his spiritual work would be capitalized upon. By 1899, he had earned the right to demand that the Le Pater images would be produced in an edition of only 510 copies, and subsequently saw the plates destroyed- ensuring the work would never be reprinted for mass-market purposes.
The images from Le Pater are mentioned in numerous Mucha books as his masterpieces and are universally acknowledged alongside his massive Slav Epic paintings as his finest work. However, as a result of Mucha's forced limitation of the publication of this masterwork, the rarity of the lithographs means that most books are limited to mentioning the images in the text and leaving the reader to wonder what these "lost masterpieces" might look like.
The original promotional materials for the Le Pater series name these artworks as of "rare interest and considerable importance". Over 115 years later, the description continues to ring true.
If you'd like to see all these artworks in one book, captured in high resolution from the originals, please support our project and pre-order the book!
Check out the Kickstarter here—there's only a day left to get a copy of the book!
Check out the Kickstarter here!
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5 Steps To Use Mind Maps to Unlock Your Creativity [feedly]
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5 Steps To Use Mind Maps to Unlock Your Creativity
// Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement
You're reading 5 Steps To Use Mind Maps to Unlock Your Creativity, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
What is mind mapping?
Mind maps are diagrams used to help visually organize information. Generally, you would start with a central idea or theme, in the center of the map. Sub-sections will branch out from the center much like the branches of a tree, but will be arranged all around, instead of just going up and down. Mind mapping uses lot of color, doodles, and varying sizes of text, in order to arrange the information. Colors can help to group parts of a larger idea together, and using different sizes can help differentiate subsets of information, or more important parts of the map.Why should I use mind mapping?
Many people find it difficult to begin using mind maps, simply because they are unused to the concept, but it's definitely worth it to learn. A 2002 study found students that used mind mapping to help them study found a 10% increase in the ability to recall information. It also speculated that if students were more familiar with the process and more motivated to use it, they might gain as much as a 15% increase. The fact that the information is organized visually and you need to invest thought into how to arrange it, makes it easier to recall. You are not just copying words down, you're thinking about what they mean and where they fit in the map. It's also important to realize it's not the map itself that helps you learn, it's the mapping. Simply studying a map that someone else has created will be no better for you than copying notes off of a board. You have to take the time to understand how the ideas should be arranged, in order to gain the benefit.Where do I start?
The simple answer is you start in the middle of a blank page. You begin with a keyword, idea, or subject you are trying to understand or organize, and you branch out from there. Much like an actual tree, your branches closest to the center will be heavier with supporting broader topics, and as the ideas are broken down further, should turn to smaller lines. Using a different color for each main idea will help you figure out how to place new keywords or images into your map. If you like the idea but aren't convinced of your drawing abilities, you can look into software that is designed to help with the process. It will allow you to link documents, websites, images, or other digital content to your map, making it easy to gather your information or ideas in one accessible place.Basic steps to creating a mind map
- Decide on a central idea and write it down
- Add branches
- Add keywords to the branches
- Color-code your branches and sub-groups
- Add images to your map to help you solidify the ideas
You've read 5 Steps To Use Mind Maps to Unlock Your Creativity, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you've enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
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thebristolboard: Original art by Robert Crumb for Hulp Comics,... [feedly]
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thebristolboard: Original art by Robert Crumb for Hulp Comics,...
// Hyperwave
Original art by Robert Crumb for Hulp Comics, a series which was never published, circa 1992.
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Radiocarbon Dates Suggest New Timeline for Chauvet Cave [feedly]
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Radiocarbon Dates Suggest New Timeline for Chauvet Cave
// Archaeological Headlines - Archaeology Magazine
PARIS, FRANCE—A series of more than 250 radiocarbon dates of rock art samples, animal bones, and charcoal from Chauvet Cave suggests that people used it seasonally for cultural purposes during two distinct periods separated by several thousand years. According to the Los Angeles Times, the first period lasted from 37,000 to 33,500 years ago. The second period of occupation began between 31,000 and 28,000 years ago, and lasted for 2,000 to 3,000 years. Occupation of the cave may have ended due to rockfalls that blocked its entrance. Anita Quiles of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology and Jean-Michel Geneste of the Ministry of Culture and Communication in Paris say that most of the drawings were created during the first period of occupation, while the torch marks were left by the second group of people. Bears left scratch marks on the walls between 48,500 and 33,300 years ago, but probably only used the cave during the winter months to hibernate. "Only the black paintings have been dated," Quiles and Geneste wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The dating technique for the red paintings has yet to be developed." For more on cave art, go to "The First Artists."
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Monday, April 4, 2016
6 Times Dreams and Mysticism Changed the Course of Science [feedly]
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6 Times Dreams and Mysticism Changed the Course of Science
// Ultraculture
6 Times Dreams and Mysticism Changed the Course of Science | Annie Webb | Ultraculture - Wake Up and Mutate
Science doesn't just advance by research and cold rationality. Some of the most incredible breakthroughs in scientific history are the result of dreams, intuition and what might generally be considered the "mystic part of the brain." Here's six scientists who had dreams and mystic experiences that literally changed history.
Scientists and researchers spend over two decades in school learning to identify problems, design projects, construct experiments, collect data, conduct literature reviews, calculate, analyze, write grant proposals, generate statistics and report findings. There is emphasis on the technical, empirical and rational forms of knowledge.
However, scientific innovation, invention and discovery often arise from imagination, intuition, dreams and flashes of insight (for instance, in the cases of Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr, Archimedes, Dmitri Mendeleev, etc). This type of cognitive processing is not well accepted in the scientific discipline, but the truth is that the mind requires sleep, intuition and unconscious modes of cognitive processing for problem solving and generation of innovative ideas.
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." – Albert Einstein
Scientists can be grouped into two broad categories based on their working habits: "accumulators" and "guessers." The accumulators gradually gather and accumulate data, building upon and modifying existing knowledge. The guessers have flashes of insight, leaps, hunches, intuitions and dreams, which can then be tested to see if they are sound. Ideas and hunches often come when the mind is relaxed and not deliberately concentrating on technical problems.
When a scientist is working to solve a problem, data and observations are gathered with the conscious mind while awake. While sleeping, the unconscious mind synthesizes, organizes and associates recent observations and stored information.
Dreams and sleep are crucial for thinking; they allow the mind to reconfigure data into meaningful patterns. This can help conceptualize a problem in a more holistic and integrated way, it can help harmonize data in order to form a unified picture, and it can provide the basis for the solution for a problem. This can generate novel ideas, which can then be tested through experiments and the scientific method.
Here's 6 dreams and visions that led to scientific breakthroughs:
1. Mendeleev's Dream of the Periodic Table
In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev developed and published the periodic table, where chemical elements are organized based on their atomic and chemical properties. He had been unsuccessfully trying to find a logical pattern to organize the chemical elements. He fell asleep at his desk one night and claimed to have envisioned the complete arrangement of elements in a dream:
"I saw in a dream a table were all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction seem necessary."
While sleeping, Mendeleev's unconscious mind synthesized and organized the data that his conscious mind had been absorbing while working. A more holistic and complete understanding of the issue is generated, which is crucial to solving problems.
2. Niels Bohr's Dream of Atoms
Niels Bohr is the father of quantum mechanics, and won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1922. He developed the Bohr model of the atom, where electrons revolve around the nucleus and can jump to one energy level or orbit to another, concepts that are still valid today.
Bohr often spoke of the inspirational dream that led to his discovery of the structure of the atom. He had attempted to design various frameworks for the configuration of the atom but none would fit. One night, he saw electrons spinning around the atom's nucleus like planets revolving around the sun.
Upon awakening, he felt the vision was accurate, and immediately went to his lab in search of scientific evidence to support his dream.
3. The Symbol of the Ouroboros and the Discovery of the Structure of Benzene
The 19th century German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé is famous for having discovered the structure of benzene, and hence the structure of all aromatic compounds. In this day, there was no technical way for him to visually see the structures so they had to be deduced from chemical properties.
Kekulé says that he had a reverie or daydream where he saw a snake seizing its own tail and this was the inspiration for discovery of the ring structure of benzene. The snake eating its own tail is a religious and mythological symbol of many ancient cultures, known as the Ouroboros.
Kekulé is also famous for formulating the theory of chemical structure. This, he also saw in a daydream or reverie, where molecules and atoms were "swirling in a giddy dance," which inspired his theory of chemical structure.
4. Einstein Dreams of Relativity
When Albert Einstein was an adolescent, he had a vivid dream that would influence the course of his life. Einstein describes his dream (dreamed around 1890-95):
"I was sledding with my friends at night. I started to slide down the hill but my sled started going faster and faster. I was going so fast that I realized I was approaching the speed of light. I looked up at that point and I saw the stars. They were being refracted into colors I had never seen before. I was filled with a sense of awe. I understood in some way that I was looking at the most important meaning in my life."
The dream was an inspiration for what was to become the Theory of Relativity. Einstein says that his entire scientific career was a meditation on this dream.
May it have been more of a premonitory vision, than just a dream?
5. René Descartes' Visions of Divine and Evil Spirits
A vision is something seen in a dream, trance or supernatural experience that discloses information through a revelation. Visions are linked to religious and spiritual traditions, and provide higher knowledge or understanding of human reality.
One notable example is René Descartes, who had a series of three visions on the night of November 11, 1619, where he says that a divine spirit revealed to him a new philosophy, which combined mathematics and philosophy into a new discipline, analytical geometry. Through these visions he also discovered that all truths are linked to one another.
Descartes also had imaginary conversations with an "Evil Demon" or "Evil Genius" in Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), a personification who is "as clever and deceitful as he is powerful, who has directed his entire effort to misleading me." Evil Demon is used as a method of systematic doubt, where we must doubt even our senses, which could be deceived.
The goal is to use doubt as a way of obtaining knowledge about the things one cannot doubt. This is where "I think therefore I am" comes from: Descartes tried to doubt his own existence, but the fact that he was doubting his existence proved that he existed, since he could not doubt if he did not exist.
6. Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan's Vision of the Goddess Namakkal
Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan (1887–1920; he died at 32 years old), was an Indian mathematician who, with almost no formal training, made extraordinary contributions to mathematics and almost all his claims have been proven correct. He initially developed his own mathematical research in isolation, and developed over 3900 math theorems.
Ramanujan credits his work to the Hindu goddess Namakkal and her consort, who would repeatedly visit him in dreams and present him with scrolls of complex mathematical formulas. He would then test and prove them after waking.
On the 125th anniversary of his birth, India declared the birthday of Ramanujan, December 22, to be "National Mathematics Day."
Reconciling Science and Mysticism
Empirical and rational knowledge, as well as the intuitive knowledge that bubbles up from just under our awareness levels, are necessary for scientific innovation. The unconscious mind can help solve complex problems when sleeping or when the mind is relaxed. Dreams, daydreams and even visions have sparked important scientific discoveries and innovations.
Scientists—do yourselves a favour and leave the lab, go for a leisurely walk and go to sleep early tonight.
"It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover." – Henri Poincaré
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Shinji Tsuchimochi’s 100 Views of Tokyo [feedly]
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Shinji Tsuchimochi's 100 Views of Tokyo
// lines and colors
The name of Japanese illustrator Shinji Tsuchimochi's series of drawings, "100 Views of Tokyo", is of course a reference to the well known series of 19th century woodblock prints by Utagawa Hiroshige, "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo" (AKA Tokyo).
Tsuchimochi's colorful, sometimes straightforward but often fanciful drawings of his home city owe as much to anime, manga and European and American comics as they do to Ukiyo-e prints, and therein lies much of their charm.
[Via Rocket News 24]
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Artist Of The Day - Bud Cook [feedly]
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Artist Of The Day - Bud Cook
// PROTEUS MAG
See more - www.budcookstudio.com
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Dream Projects [feedly]
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Dream Projects
// Muddy Colors
-By Arnie Fenner
Lauren's post last week about the "Dream Covers" group show she curated for Krab Jab Gallery in Seattle got me thinking a little bit about artists with "dream projects."
James Gurney, of course, created the incredibly popular Dinotopia series, Brom has written and illustrated several novels (The Plucker, The Child Thief, Krampus the Yule Lord, etc.) with more on the way, Tom Kidd has been plugging away on his Gnemo book, if I recall correctly, since the 1980s, and visitors to MC know that Greg Manchess is hard at work on his Above the Timberline opus. But those are examples of artists working on their own creations, writing, designing, and illustrating, and what I was really thinking about was more along the lines of Lauren's show: artists illustrating their favorite books. Written by someone else, that is.
Roy G. Krenkel, besides nurturing younger artists like Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, and Jeff Jones, was a life-long fan of the fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard. In 1973 Donald Grant agreed to publish one of his dream projects: illustrating a hardcover collection of Howard's short stories titled Sowers of the Thunder. Krenkel provided full page and spot drawings along with decorative devices and hand-lettered titles, all of which helped make the book extremely popular. It rapidly sold out its first edition, was reprinted, and eventually was reprinted again in paperback by another publisher (though with a different cover by Jones). Roy illustrated a second REH book for Grant, The Road to Azrael, and was just beginning to work on a deluxe Conan volume, The Scarlet Citadel (another of his dream projects), when he died from cancer in 1983.
Bernie Wrightson had been a huge fan of the Frankenstein story since watching the Karloff movies on TV as a kid; going through his body of work reveals a significant number of drawings, both serious and funny, of the monster, most showing the influence of the movies. The DC comic that he co-created with Len Wein, Swamp Thing, was inspired by Frankenstein so it was almost inevitable that he would eventually illustrate Mary Shelley's classic. Bernie has said, "I've always had a thing for Frankenstein, and it was a labor of love. It was not an assignment, it was not a job. I would do the drawings in between paying gigs, when I had enough to be caught up with bills and groceries and what-not. I would take three days here, a week there, to work on the Frankenstein volume. It took about seven years." Marvel published the book in 1983, Chuck Miller reprinted it in 1994, and Dark Horse released a 25th anniversary edition in 2008.
Another "labor of love" project was Michael Wm. Kaluta's illustrated edition of Metropolis by Thea Von Harbou (wife of the film adaptation's director Fritz Lang). Published by The Donning Company in 1988, Michael designed the book with a deliberate Art Nouveau-influence to reflect the time when the novel was written.
Though he's painted covers for The Hobbit and a Lord of the Rings omnibus for the SF Book Club, Donato has independently produced many works based directly on Tolkien's trilogy, a number of which were collected in his book Middle-Earth: Visions of a Modern Myth. But I think it is a safe bet that Dan would like to roll up his sleeves, take all of his existing paintings and drawings, create new ones, and design his own illustrated editions of the classics along with The Simarillion, Unfinished Tales, and, most likely, The Children of Húran for good measure. He says, "When I'm reading modern fantasy, it's always in comparison to what Tolkien did; the depth of creation, the depth of his characters and complexities, and the histories."
These are naturally just a very few examples of projects that reached fruition, either singularly or in some way collectively (thinking of Donato). I've talked through the years with Paul Bonner, Frank Cho, Mark Chiarello, Bruce Timm, and Kent Williams about books they'd either like to tackle or are actively planning to illustrate when their schedules permit. So this is a question for the artists out there reading this post:
What is the book—or story or poem—that you'd absolutely love to illustrate, start to finish, top to bottom? The Stars My Destination? The Left Hand of Darkness? The Shining? Something Wicked This Way Comes? A Wrinkle in Time? What?
We're all ears.
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