1. Europe’s 19th Century Hippies
Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851–1913) is regarded as the “forefather of alternative movements” and one of the most important champions of life-reform, the peace movement and naturism, which caused him to clash in the prudish society of the Empire.
Diefenbach (pictured standing) was not just an artist, but a cultural rebel through and through: as a “sun worshipper”, vegetarian and supporter of free love, as a social reformer and pacifist, he rebelled against many of the customs of his time. He stoically accepted the fact that he was ridiculed as a “kohlrabi apostle”, “grass eater” and unworldly crank. His followers, at least, addressed him as “master”.
Diefenbach went travelling, crossing the Alps and to Egypt, where he dreamed of building a temple in the shape of a sphinx.
At a young age, Diefenbach studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, but later became an independent representative of symbolism.
Diefenbach retired to the artist island of Capri in 1899 and continued painting there. The photo shows him around 1912; he died on December 15, 1913.
He decorated the outside of his accommodation, the Villa Giulia in Anacapri, with silhouettes of figures to draw attention to his exhibition. Many of Diefenbach’s works can still be seen in a museum in the monastery Certosa di San Giacomo on Capri, and some of his ideas, above all vegetarianism, are probably closer to us today than to his fellow human beings back then. The largest collection of the work of Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach in the United States is held by The Jack Daulton Collection in Los Altos Hills, California.
More about his story found here.
2. Art for Baudelaire’s ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’, 1920s
Jan Frans De Boever (1872 – 1949) was a Belgian Symbolist painter, known for his paintings of voluptuous nude women in morbid contexts. Skeletons, death and eroticism flood his oeuvre. He made illustrations in gouache for Charles Baudelaire’s famous Les Fleurs du mal for the Ghent collector and art patron Léon Speltinckx with 157 gouaches. While he was a successful artist during most of his lifetime, his megalomaniac character made him a solitary and isolated individual.
Found on Wikipedia/ Wikimedia.
3. With this ring…
This gold and enamel ring was made in Italy in the 17th-century. Diamonds are set in the skull’s eye sockets and nose, and in the crossbones, which would have sparkled and flashed in the light. Memento mori rings – from the Latin ‘remember that you must die’ – were intended to remind the wearer of the brevity of life.
Found on The Ashmolean Museum.
4. The First Fossil Finders in North America Were Enslaved and Indigenous People
Decades before paleontology’s formal establishment, Black and Native Americans discovered—and correctly identified—millennia-old fossils… Scholars don’t know these individuals’ names or any other details of their lives… Stories like these, of the enslaved people who helped kick-start paleontology and the Native American guides who led naturalists to fossils around the continent, have long been suppressed. In recent years, however, young paleontologists have pushed their field to reckon with its whitewashed history by recognizing early finds made by Black and Indigenous people.
Full article found on The Smithsonian. Also see: “Where are the Black Archeologists?“
5. An appreciation for the Mid-Century Medieval Aesthetic
A collection by Evan Collins found on Are.na.
6. How to discover your own taste
I feel like this is relevant again. Listen here.
7. A look at the tourist as a species with exotic and particular quirks
8. America’s northernmost National Park, with fewer visitors in a year than Yellowstone gets in a single day (yet it’s three times the size)
Gates of the Arctic in Alaska, more info found here.
9. Marseille’s Transporter Bridge (and Restaurant) inaugurated in 1905 and destroyed in 1944
Demolished by the Nazi army in an attempt to block the port during the liberation of the city. At the top of the bridge there was a luxury restaurant while at the water’s edge a mobile platform suspended by cables connected the two banks with a 20-minute journey.
A transporter bridge, also known as a ferry bridge or aerial transfer bridge, is a type of movable bridge that carries a segment of roadway across a river. The gondola is slung from a tall span by wires or a metal frame. The design has been used to cross navigable rivers or other bodies of water, where there is a requirement for ship traffic to be able to pass. This has been a rare type of bridge, with fewer than two dozen built. There are just twelve that continue to be used today, including one converted into a lift bridge and one designed as, but not yet operating as, a transporter bridge.
All French transporter bridges were the work of the same engineer, Ferdinand Arnodin, over a period of seven years, starting with the Bizerte bridge (1898), reassembled in Brest in 1909, Rouen (1899), Rochefort-Martrou (1900), Nantes (1903) and finally Marseille (1905).
Found in Made in Marseille.
10. Fish drying in the Philippines
National Geographic | February 1942
Found here
11. An artist’s sweaters for dead birds
“I found my voice as an artist when I stepped on a dead sparrow on a street in Paris in 1971. I didn’t know why, but I was sure this sparrow was important because it was something very fragile that was near me and my life. Like the people I love, these small birds were always around me, yet they remained strange and mysterious. So I picked up the sparrow, took it home and knit a wool wrap for it. Why? I can’t say. You want to do something and don’t know why – all you know is that you have no choice, that it’s a necessity.”
– Annette Messager
Found on Anonymous Works.
12. This designer wants you to wear your Apartment
Find Lirika Matoshi and her whimsical designs here.
13. Yvonne LaFleur shares a story from Paris
Reminds me of this visit to one of the flower couture houses which sadly closed down after the pandemic.
