Pictures & Blather

Romane Bearden, Village of Yo, c. 1964

From the Yale University Art Gallery:

Already an accomplished abstract artist, Romare Bearden was propelled by the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s in the United States to a return to figuration. In 1963 he began using collage as a way to reintroduce the political possibilities of figurative images into his abstract vocabulary. In Village of Yo, a work that reveals Bearden’s social and political concerns of the 1960s, he alludes to the dual role of European and African heritages that form the basis of the African-American experience. At the center of the composition, a cubist-inspired head peers from a post-and-lintel frame, drawing on the dual perspective of profile and frontal viewpoint common to Egyptian images. Bearden then repeats this motif throughout the collage in numerous surrounding heads constructed out of photographs of African masks, ritual sculptures, and contemporary faces. The relays among these heads exemplify Bearden’s literal and symbolic reframing of the vocabulary that European modernism appropriated from Africa, within the cultural context of his own African heritage.

(via cavetocanvas)

28 Jan 2012 / 52 notes

classicaldotorg:

Devin Hester by Dmitry Samarov

Originally published with Eric Marsh’s “Devin Hester, Folk Hero,” 12/20/11.

28 Jan 2012 / 8 notes

artistandstudio:

Henri Matisse

“An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success.”

~ Henri Matisse

28 Jan 2012 / 154 notes

kingstitt:

Loyola Station looking south on Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 1925. (huge collection of posters here)

28 Jan 2012 / 7 notes

biomedicalephemera:

Tooth Extraction and Extraction Instruments

Looks like a fun trip to the dentist! Though, as anyone with a seriously abscessed tooth can tell you, it would have definitely been worth the temporary (relatively small) pain spike in order to alleviate the continuing pain from the infection.

Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme comprenant la medecine operatoire, par le docteur Marc Jean Bourgery. Illustration by Nicolas Henri Jacob, 1831.

27 Jan 2012 / 54 notes

biomedicalephemera:

Tooth Extraction and Extraction Tools

I don’t know a heck of a lot about dentistry, but I do know a few of the names of the extraction tools used (both back in the 1830s and today), and they’re excellent:

Greyhound

Cow horns

Bayonet

Root

Elevators [I know, I know, but still can’t help but see a lift in someone’s mouth, rather than a tool meant to elevate a tooth]

Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme comprenant la medecine operatoire, par le docteur Marc Jean Bourgery. Illustration by Nicolas Henri Jacob, 1831.