Category Archives: Art

The “plastinated” models of the Sansevero Chapel

Posted on by The Old Wolf

While living in Naples, Italy for 14 months or so back in 1970, I took the opportunity to visit the Sansevero chapel.  There on display are two intriguing anatomical models, which were represented at the time as being the earliest known examples of plastination, popularized by the Body Worlds exhibits.

From Wikipedia:

These “anatomical models” (macchine anatomiche) were thought to be examples of the process of “human metallization” (metallizzazione umana) as implemented by anatomist Giuseppe Salerno ca. 1760 from a commission by Raimondo di Sangro. The exhibit consists of a mature male and a pregnant woman. Their skeletons are encased in the hardened arteries and veins which are colored red and blue respectively. Previously, historians have surmised that the corpses could have been created by injecting the hardening substances directly into the veins of living subjects.[4] However, recent analysis shows no evidence of techniques involving injection. Analysis of the “blood vessels” indicate they are constructed of beeswax, iron wire, and silk.

Whatever the case, these models were amazingly detailed, and even the manufacture of them at the time would have been a master undertaking.

Naples - Sansevero Chapel - Raimondo de Sangro Female skeleton

The female model – Photo ©1970-2013 Old Wolf Enterprises

Naples - Sansevero Chapel - Raimondo de Sangro Male skeleton 2

The male model – Photo ©1970-2013 Old Wolf Enterprises

Naples - Sansevero Chapel - Raimondo de Sangro Male skeleton

Male model – Closeup – Photo ©1970-2013 Old Wolf Enterprises

macchina

Color photo of the female model from the official website of the Sansevero Chapel Museum.

If you’re ever in Naples, this museum is worth a visit – if only to see the Veiled Christ of Giuseppe Sanmartino, but if you do go, be sure to check out the anatomical machines – they’re brilliantly executed and would have taken forever to make.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

 

The Daydream, 1931.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

El Ensueño [The Daydream], 1931 – Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Mexico’s first significant fine art photographer.

This gelatin silver print was estimated to fetch between £40,000 – £60,000 at auction by Christies’s in 2007. The hammer price was £126,500, or $261,223. Not bad for a black-and-white photo smaller than your average letter-sized sheet of paper.

Found at Frog Blog

Charles Bukowski: So you want to be a writer

Posted on by The Old Wolf

So you want to be a writer

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

-Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

Tiroler Volkskunstmuseum (Tyrolean Folk Art Museum)

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Three images from this museum which I was privileged to visit whilst living in Austria, two rather strange and one lovely and evocative.

Vogel Selbsterkenntnis (The Bird of Self-Knowledge)

The text below this strange creature reads:

Zieeh sich ein yeydts selbst bey Der Nasn —
Waß Dich nit Prendt Thue auch nicht Plasn.

Or, in standard German,

Ziehe jedermann sich selbst an der Nase
Was Dich nicht brennt, tue auch nicht blasen

Translated into English:

Let everyone take themselves by their own nose
Don’t blow on what does not burn you.

This is an admonition to mind your own business, know yourself, and don’t involve yourself in things that do not concern you.

The Holy Trinity

An attempt by a Tyrolean artist to comprehend the doctrine of the Trinity as set forth in the Athanasian Creed. Tyrol is probably the most Catholic of all the regions of Austria, itself a predominantly Catholic nation.

An old Tyrolian parlor.

I love the wood. Warm, old, polished, wood. My dream house would have rooms like this.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Kevin Kunstadt: The Dolomites

Posted on by The Old Wolf

“I took these photographs in August 2010 in the Dolomites — a section of the Alps located in northeastern Italy. The Dolomites are named for a type of carbonate rock that has a distinct pale rosy-orange hue. I have tried to capture the specific grandeur of this range, as well as present a document of the myriad ways in which people interact with and experience it for themselves.”

Visit Kevin Kunstadt’s home page.