Tinkerbell Picture by Myrea Pettit

Tinkerbell Picture by Myrea Pettit

Tinkerbell
Sightings: Tinkerbell was the jealous pixie/fairy who glowed brightest for Peter Pan. Her voice sang like a tinkling bell and a sprinkle of her pixie dust could make you fly. Tinkerbell is traditionally staged as a flying point of light beamed from offstage. She was called Tinker Bell because she mended the pots and kettles, a tinker is a tin worker, and with her magic wand led Peter Pan through the ins and outs of Never Never Land reminding us of a time in everyone's childhood when danger and adventure lured us into the possibilities of the imagination to believe in Fairies, to this day she is one of our greatest influences to search out and find.
http://www.fairiesworld.com/famous-fairies/tinkerbell.shtml

Great illustrators like Brian Froud and Myrea Pettit as well as Disney have sought to create their own characterisation of the personality of Tinkerbell, who in some countries like Sweden is also affectionately called 'Tingaling'

Best time: Any time, through the popularity of the success of Sir J.M Barrie’s story of Peter Pan bequeathed to The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London. In the story if not enough people believe in fairies, Tinker Bell will die from drinking poison. The resulting plea by Peter calling out to children everywhere to sustain her, is a moment of childhood realisation that Tinkerbell should be immortal and is just too hard to believe especially as Peter has an everlasting childhood in which real death and sadness cannot exist. Long live Tinkerbell is the cry and has meant that many versions of this little fairy has inspired artists all over the world to create their own ‘Tink’ and for many children this is their introduction to the wonders of Fairyland. Any sparkle or unexpected flash of light can be associated to the speeding Tinkerbell, but it is only when tinkling bells are heard that this could be a genuine sighting. Is to die an awfully big adventure? Most children remember starting to cry knowing that they were unable to save Tink in spite of Peter’s pleading for them to believe in Fairies. Yet one cannot wonder that this is not fantasy, the power lies in the fact that human beings all tend to search for that which we can no longer have, and share these emotions reminding us of when anything can be believed and make-believe is real.

Habitat: Worldwide if you believe, and Never Never Land
Likes: Tinkerbell is a free spirit, she is what she is, says what she says and doesn’t give a care what others may think, and seems happy to tell people they are a silly ass. She does however endear herself to everyone in spite of her jealous ways and spiteful character. She would lay down her life for Peter and finds it difficult to compete with his attention to other adoring female company.

Tinkerbell

Tinkerbell Reunited with Peter Pan Copyright© 2005 The London Evening Standard

The Great Ormond Street Hospital “Tinker Bell” by Diarmuid Byron-O’Connor.
This Tinker Bell stealing the “kiss” from the well known Peter Pan statue was unveiled by the Countess of Wessex on the 29th September 2005. Although a later addition, it was part of the original conception back in 1999 when Peter was commissioned, but dropped at the time as being too ambitious. It is a credit to Peter’s popularity that the issue was redressed.
The hospital was gifted the rights to Peter Pan by the author J.M Barrie and the charity was secured the rights in perpetuity by a special amendment to an act of Parliament in 1988.
In celebration of this, the sculpture honours Barrie’s original and beautiful description of the characters as they appear in the 1904 play.
Peter is a mischievous but enchanting boy, blowing fairy dust over the passers by. Whilst Tink, his ever loyal companion is showing her darker, jealous side and trying to steal his thimble. The thimble, you remember, Wendy gave to Peter when he innocently held out his hand to receive a kiss from her. That Tinker Bell knew exactly what Wendy meant explains a lot about her feelings towards Peter.
http://www.fairiesworld.com/tinkerbell1.shtml

The Absinthe Green Fairy

 

Myrea Pettit as Absinthe ­The Green Fairy-La Fée Verté

Clouded in mystery the Absinthe Green Fairy or La Fée Verté was certainly the friend of artists and authors. She exposed herself in Paris in the heady days of the impressionists who fell under her spell casting her image and fairy magic in the drink Absinthe building their reputations and fame worldwide as she wormed her way into their psyche.

"The first stage is like ordinary drinking, the second when you begin to see monstrous and cruel things, but if you can persevere you will enter in upon the third stage where you see things that you want to see, wonderful curious things." "Absinthe has a wonderful colour, green. A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world. What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?" --OscarWilde

"Let me be mad, mad with the madness of Absinthe, the wildest, most luxurious madness in the world." ‹Marie Corelli

 

The Fairies

Folktales say it is dangerous to enter a ring of dancing fairies as one can be caught forever in the fairy world. An old Welsh tale recounts the following: "The shepherd saw the fairies, in appearance like tiny soldiers, dancing in a ring. He set out for the scene of revelry, and soon drew near the ring where, in a gay company of males and females, they were footing it to the music of the harp. Never had he seen such handsome people, nor any so enchantingly cheerful. They beckoned him with laughing faces to join them as they leaned backward almost falling, whirling round and round with joined hands. Those who were dancing never swerved from the perfect circle; but some were clambering over the old cromlech, and others chasing each other with surprising swiftness and the greatest glee. Still others rode about on small white horses of the most beautiful form. All this was in silence, for the shepherd could not hear the harps, though he saw them. But now he drew nearer to the circle, and finally ventured to put his foot in the magic ring. The instant he did this, his ears were charmed with strains of the most melodious music he had ever heard...".

Midsummer Eve
by E.R Hughes
Victorian fairy painting mainly has its background in literature: William Shakespeare (eg Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest), John Milton, Hans Christian Andersen, the brothers Grimm as well as traditional folklore have provided the basis for motifs, decoration and scenes. It can not really be called a "movement" of art, but was a distinct streak during the Victorian period. Victorian fairy paintings were, however, special in the way that they did combine phantastic motifs with a naturalistic and realistic style of painting, which, according to Christopher Wood in his book "Victorian Fairy Painting", p. 11, gave them a "strange and, at times, disturbing intensity". After 1850 there was more independency of the literary inspiration to be found in fairy paintings, but it is important to take into account fairy literature in order to understand the context of Victorian fairy painting.

"Fairy" research for exhibition proposal

The painter Richard Dadd (1819-1886) has a suitably strange and dark romantic life history for the fairy painting genre.
Apart from his numerous other works he only painted about 10 fairy paintings, but especially the last two, which he painted after he "went mad", rank as the masterpieces of the genre.
After a Grand Tour through Europe, the Middle East and Egypt he began to have delusions. He returned to England in 1843 and, during a recuperation visit in the country, brutally murdered his father  who he believed was the devil. He spent the remainder of his life in mental institutions, but was able and encouraged to go on painting and created several watercolours and sketches of various themes.
The two fairy oil paintings "The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke" and "Contradiction: Oberon and Titania", though, which both took several years to paint, are remarkable for their clarity, minuteness and hallucinatory atmosphere - a strange glimpse into the fairy world.

Contraditction: Oberon and Titania
1854-58; Oil on canvas
This painting was painted during his years in Bethlem Hospital while he was suffering from schizophrenia. It was painted after he had been staying there for ten years. However, this painting does tie into his earlier work because once again it has for its subject Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. This painting depicts the scene of Oberon and Titania arguing over an Indian boy in Act II, Scene I. This painting is different from his earlier works because every piece of space in the painting is covered with miniscule fairies dancing and plants. The details are extreme he spent years obsessively working on this painting. At the bottom of the painting beneath Oberon and Titania, there appears a blue butterfly and to the left of it, a tiny fairy flying, above it are even more miniature fairies which are difficult to see in this picture. He painted this painting for his doctor, Dr. William Charles Hood, who was enlightened for the time and encouraged his painting. This painting was never viewed by the public until 1930. After this painting and his other master piece, The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke were viewed he was to be declared the greatest Victorian Fairy painter.

William Turner and Sir Edwin Landseer produced fairy paintings, suited to the fairy craze of the Victorian period. Fairy painting was also used by some painters to explore immoral motifs under the cloak of Fine At: nudity, heresy, drugs and violence. Christopher Woods describes the fairy nudes of John Simmons as "bunny girls of the Victorian era" in his book "Fairies in Victorian Art".

John Simmons (1823-1876), "Titania"

Later fairy painting lived on in book illustrations during the so-called Golden Age of Book Illustration. This centered around children and children's stories like Peter Pan, Dew-drops of Fairyland, The reign of King Herla, Andrew Lang's Fairy Book series and The Water Babies.  Famous illustrators who worked with the fairy theme are Arthur Rackham, Edmond Dulac, Warwick Goble, Kay Nielsen, Margaret Tarrant, H.G. Ford and many others.

The fairy craze of the post-Victorian time even resulted in the "Cottingley Fairies affair", that involved as famous an author as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1917 and 1918 two young girl cousins took photographs of themselves with fairies and goblins they had apparently met by a stream beyond the garden. Those photos and others they took later were subsequently publicised and examined by photographic experts as well as spiritualists. Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a spiritualist himself, got very interested in the story. He was convinced that the sightings and photographs were genuine and in 1920 he wrote an article about it. Much later the photographs were pronounced to be fakes and the two girls, now in their seventies and eighties, gave conflicting statements about the fairy sightings and photographs.

The photographs and two of the cameras used are on display in the National Media Museum in Bradford.

Victorian fairy painting mainly has its background in literature: William Shakespeare (eg Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest), John Milton, Hans Christian Andersen, the brothers Grimm as well as traditional folklore have provided the basis for motifs, decoration and scenes. It can not really be called a "movement" of art, but was a distinct streak during the Victorian period. Victorian fairy paintings were, however, special in the way that they did combine phantastic motifs with a naturalistic and realistic style of painting, which, according to Christopher Wood in his book "Victorian Fairy Painting", p. 11, gave them a "strange and, at times, disturbing intensity". After 1850 there was more independency of the literary inspiration to be found in fairy paintings, but it is important to take into account fairy literature in order to understand the context of Victorian fairy painting.

Richard Dadd, The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke

Richard Dadd, The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke (1855-64)

 

Oil on canvas, size 21.25 x 15.5 inches, Tate Gallery, London

Dadd was judged insane after he murdered his father in 1843, and he was committed to Bethlem Hospital. When Dr. William Hood came to the hospital as its administrator in 1852, he saw that Dadd could profitably fill his time with painting and gave him the supplies he needed. The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke occupied the artist for nine years (1855-64), but the strange work has yet to be fully interpreted and explained. What the painting means is obscure, but the content of the picture is made somewhat comprehensible by a poem Dadd wrote to describe the various figures and activities depicted; we know from his poem, Elimination of a Picture & its subject--called The Feller's Master Stroke, that everything in the painting is intentional and that it is not simply a pastiche of mad delusions.
At the center of the painting is a figure Dadd calls "The Patriarch." He has a full white beard and wears an improbably huge hat with a papal-like, three-tiered crown. Fairies and elves dance on the brim of the hat, which twists off into tendrils and flowers to join the vegetation surrounding the Patriarch. The Feller, directly beneath the Patriarch, stands with his ax poised, awaiting the command to split a hazelnut in two; the

fay woodman holds aloft the axe
Whose double edge virtue now they tax
To do it singly & make single double
Featly & neatly--equal without trouble.

The two halves of the hazelnut will be used to build a chariot for Queen Mab. The allusion here is probably to the Queen Mab of Romeo and Juliet (I, iv) who, Mercutio says, rides in a chariot created from "an empty hazelnut":
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:
Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs,
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
Her traces, of the smallest spider's web;
Her collars, of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;
Her wagoner, a small gray-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love. . . .
Dadd loved Shakespeare, and many of his paintings allude, even if somewhat tenuously, to various plays. One other detail in the painting draws two characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Directly above the Patriarch stand Titania and Oberon (see the detail), looking down on the busy scene of the painting. These two aspects of the painting are the only ones that have their source in Shakespeare, but if you wish to pursue the painting in more detail, David Greysmith, working from the text of Dadd's poem Elimination of a Picture & its subject--called The Feller's Master Stroke , closely describes all the figures and actions in the painting (121-25).
As we look through the clutter of nuts and berries, the tangle of grass and stems in the foreground of this puzzling work, we glimpse a scene that is oddly fitting for a nineteenth-century visualization of A Midsummer Night's Dream. This play was not, Richard Altick notes, ever performed in the eighteenth-century or the early part of the nineteenth as Shakespeare wrote it; instead, it had been adapted many times as a backdrop for opera and spectacle.
No matter when performed, or by whom, or with what text, A Midsummer Night's Dream was a favorite vehicle for spectacular staging, especially the last act, which was treated much like a pantomime transformation scene. Both this play and The Tempest were the chief Shakespearean beneficiaries, if that is the right word, of the rage for fairies on the stage and in art which was one of the more picturesque phenomena of popular culture in the 1840s. . . . Most Midsummer Night's Dream pictures therefore were realizations in paint of the play's poetic imagery, its fairy and comic characters, and its never-never-land setting in a moonlit glade . . . . they were compounds of all that went to make up the early Victorian notion of the fanciful--lush arboreal landscape, moonlight, fireflies, the flora and fauna of the woods from a rich variety of flowers to capacious toadstools, assorted hovering or reveling fairies and elves. (Altick 264)
As bizarre as Dadd's The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke may seem to us, it reflects, along with fairy paintings by artists like Robert Huskisson, Daniel Maclise and Joseph Noel Paton, the nineteenth-century taste for a romantic, fairy and elf-ridden A Midsummer Night's Dream. Nor does the tradition die in the twentieth century. The heritage of fairy paintings of A Midsummer Night's Dream and the spectacular stage productions that look much like the paintings is revived by Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle in their 1935 black-and-white film of the play. The "ethereal forest" of the film, "with shimmering white balletic fairies racing through the trees and up moonbeams" to Felix Mendelsohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream, Jack Jorgens says,

carries on the spectacular stage tradition. Deer, owls, frogs, birds, and a unicorn inhabit a world of intensely back-lit ferns and rushes, lush grass and pools, flowers, and huge oaks. Shakespeare's lush imagery and lyricism have been stripped from the text . . . and embodied in chords of birch trees, cascading musical streams, and swirling fog and fairies shot in soft focus through gauzes or through smeared sparkling sheets of glass." (41)

The Reinhardt film looks as if the director went directly to painters like Dadd and Paton for the designs of his scenery, and the misshapen gnomes of The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke take their place in a twentieth-century motion picture.
We are urged, on the other hand, by Raymond Lister not to let the romantic and charming elements of Dadd's painting overwhelm us and prevent a clear reading of other possible implications of the canvas. "The picture," is, after all, he says, "a series of visions derived from the mind of its demented creator." In Dadd's painting of Titania and Oberon, as in Sir Noel Paton's The Reconciliation of Oberon and Titania, there remain dark and sinister aspects; Lister draws our attention especially to several figures in the painting that are purely distorted and menacing:

The Feller is the centre of attention of the many characters in the composition, most of whom are, in one way or another, distinctly disturbing and malicious: the hard-faced, huge-calved ballerinas, the insect-like figure just above the Feller, and especially the little old man with a white beard, looking on with crazed concentration and appalled terror (plate 64).

http://shakespeare.emory.edu/illustrated_showimage.cfm?imageid=49

The Blackburne House

The Blackburne House is one of my favourite places in Liverpool. I love there everything! The very first my English cource was there, it was summer English class for two weeks and I enjoied there very much. The building of Blackburn House had very long and interesting history.
I will do big research about it.
I glad that Jen was agree to do imaginary art exhibition for learning proposal there!
But I am looking forward to do real art exhibition there! Why not? It is exactly what I mean - International Women Day on 8 March and there always a lot of celebration and activities for women!
International Women’s Day at Blackburne House, Sun 6 Mar 2011

"Lady Lilith" by D.G. Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti  produced two paintings entitled “Lady Lilith.” One piece is an oil painting, the other done in water colours. The painting depicts a pale woman in a floral setting, combing her blonde hair and staring at a mirror. There is almost an ethereal quality to her, and the floral surroundings are vaguely reminiscent of the Garden of Eden. In addition she is dressed in white, eluding a connotation of purity, which is a far cry from the depictions of Lilith that we’ve encountered so far. Compare to John Collier’s Lilith painting where she is nude with the snake wrapped around her.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti based his painting Lady Lilith on a sonnet from his poem 'The House of Life' entitled "Body's Beauty."
"Lady Lilith sits luxuriously in a sensual environment. Her auburn hair cascades down her voluptuous frame. Her draping dress barely covers her overtly feminine form, revealing her pale shoulders, clavicle, and breasts.
As Lilith combs her hair she contemplates her own reflection in a hand mirror. Another mirror in the upper left corner reflects a tree, adding to the ambiguity and mystery of Lilith's surroundings."
Like her flowing hair and garments, Lilith is draped over a chair with white roses and poppy's framing her seductive face, but the reflection of the tree makes it unclear to the viewer whether the scene is in or out of doors.
The overt sensuality of the painting is clearly grounded in physical beauty and desire, just as the sonnet speaks of the "Body's Beauty.
In Talmudic legend Lilith was Adam's first wife. In this painting she is Rossetti's 'femme fatale', seducing young men with her feminine wiles and then encouraging them to defile themselves."

Lady Lilith)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

Oil on canvas

38 x 33 1/2 inches.

Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, Delaware

Lilith by John Collier (1892)

I wonder today - does anyone know if Collier based his Lilith on a real life person ? Is the name of the model known?

A photocopy of John Collier's Sitters Book (made in 1962 from the original in the possession of the artist's son) can be consulted in the National Portrait Gallery Heinz Archive and Library. This is the artist's own handwritten record of all his portraits, including name of subject, date, fee charged, and details of any major exhibitions of the picture in question.

Lilith - is a mythological female Mesopotamian storm demon associated with wind and was thought to be a bearer of disease, illness, and death. The figure of Lilith first appeared in a class of wind and storm demons or spirits as Lilitu, in Sumer, circa 3000 BC. Many scholars place the origin of the phonetic name "Lilith" at somewhere around 700 BC.[1] Lilith appears as a night demon in Jewish lore and as a screech owl in the King James version of the Bible. She is also apocryphally the first wife of Adam.

Lilith was said to be the wife that Adam had before Eve; she is a figure of terror, feared as a demon or vampire, and a night monster. She is also known as Lamia; Keats describes her as a serpent which assumed the shape of a beautiful woman 'palpitating snake ... of dazzling hue, vermillion spotted, golden, green and blue', and it is this image which seems to have captured Collier's imagination. The subject also attracted John William Waterhouse and the Symbolists. (wiki)

I love this painting!
 

 

The novel Lilith by George MacDonald.
The story of Lilith focuses on the story of the main character Mr. Vane travels through a mirror into another land. This land is mystical and medieval, ruled over by a princess who turns out to be Lilith. In this world also exist a spieces of children who never grow old and simply turn into giants, called the Little Ones. The key to allowing the Little Ones to grow old is literally in the hand of Lilith. In her hand, which is clenched tight, is water needed for the Little Ones to grow. In order to get her to release the water, which is impossible for her to do because the hand has grown fused shut, her hand is severed and she subsquently passes on.

Most of the book is focuses on the significane maintained by the character Mr. Raven, who turns out to be the Biblical Adam, and the house he maintains where the dead lie in endless sleep until the apocalypse. 

Although the novel is named after her, Lilith does not appear until half way through the text. Her name is first said on page 204 as Adam explains to Mr Vane why she is a villian in the text. According to him, "her first thought was power; she counted it slavery to be with me and bear children for Him" and that after had spilled her own blood, she was made queen of Hell by a force known as the Shadow (204). He also calls her the, "vilest of God's creatures." (205) The creation story of Lilith as explained in Ben Sira is used and played straight, although the escape to the dead sea is replaced with her becoming queen of Hell.

There is very little mythological connection from here on out. On page 282 Lilith is described as talking in a primitive language the narrator doesn't understand, implying her old age and on page 297 she can be heard talking about God and expressing sadness that she failed Him. However, both are very much minimally related to the mythology. 

Gunter von Hagens

 Gunter von Hagens, 

developer of a body preservation
method called "plastination", which essentially replaces the body's
fluids and fats with a reactive polymer.  The level of preservation is
remarkably lifelike, and astonishingly fascinating:

Gunter von Hagens' Bodyworlds:  The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies
http://www.koerperwelten.de/en/pages/home.asp

His horse and rider piece is featured on that page, and you can see it
in greater detail here:

Highlander
http://www.koerperwelten.de/Downloads/Wallpaper_Highlander_800x600.jpg

I don't want to post pictires of his art because I dislike it. I think it is horrible.

The artist who also used human and animal bodies for sculptures was Honoré
Fragonard.  He was indeed featured on a Ripley's Believe It or Not;
has a gallery in Europe; and is known for a sculpture of a horse and
rider.

"Episode #109 (Wednesday, March 8, 2000 continued)" [under "Corpse Artist"]
Ripley's Believe It or Not!
http://www.sonypictures.com/tv/shows/ripleys/database/ep_109b.html

"Dead Bodies - Fact or Fiction?" [under "Honore Fragonard"]
Kidzworld
http://www.kidzworld.com/site/p1855.htm

Musée Fragonard
http://www.vet-alfort.fr/fr/musee/musee.htm [unfortunately only the
French pages are working]

Katsushika Hokusai The Great Wave

Hokusai (1760-1849)

Katsushika Hokusai, Japan's best known artist, is ironically Japan's least Japanese artist. Japan's best known woodblock print, The Great Wave, is very un-Japanese. Welcome to the artist often known as Hokusai.
Hokusai (1760-1849) lived during the Tokugawa period (1600 to 1867). In a Japan of traditional Confucian values and feudal regimentation, Hokusai was a thoroughly Bohemian artist: cocky, quarrelsome, restless, aggressive, and sensational. He fought with his teachers and was often thrown out of art schools. As a stubborn artistic genius, he was single-mindedly obsessed with art. Hokusai left over 30,000 works, including silk paintings, woodblock prints, picture books, manga, travel illustrations, erotic illustrations, paintings, and sketches. Some of his paintings were public spectacles which measured over 200 sq. meters (2,000 sq. feet.) He didn't care much for being sensible or social respect; he signed one of his last works as "The Art-Crazy Old Man". In his 89 years, Hokusai changed his name some thirty times (Hokusai wasn't his real name) and lived in at least ninety homes. We laugh and recognize him as an artist, but wait, that's because we see him as a Western artist, long before the West arrived in Japan.
"From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was fifty I had published a universe of designs. but all I have done before the the age of seventy is not worth bothering with. At seventy five I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am eighty you will see real progress. At ninety I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At a hundred I shall be a marvelous artist. At a hundred and ten everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokosai, but today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing." -- Hokusai
Hokusai started out as a art student of woodblocks and paintings. During the 600-year Shogun period, Japan had sealed itself off from the rest of the world. Contact with Western culture was forbidden. Nevertheless, Hokusai discovered and studied the European copper-plate engravings that were being smuggled into the country. Here he learned about shading, coloring, realism, and landscape perspective. He introduced all of these elements into woodblock and ukiyo-e art and thus revolutionized and invigorated Japanese art.
source

"Entartete Kunst" - Degenerate Art

In 1937 in Munich the Nazis held an art exhibition of what they called Entartete Kunst, or Degenerate Art. The purpose of the exhibition was to let the Germans know that some forms and pieces of art were not accepted by the "highest race", and this art is "degenerate", also called as Jewish or Bolshevistic. During the "Entartete Kunst" campaign over 20 thousand works by more than 200 artists of that time were confiscated.


The grounds for choosing the "unworthy" pieces of art were quite simple and cruel: anything that was out of tune with Hitler's way of thinking, was considered to be "degenerate". Hitler believed the art must serve the purpose of exaltation of the Aryan way of life. In this case, with this great aim, art is perfect and eternal. To Hitler's mind.
The authors of the banned works, mostly expressionists, were proclaimed mad. It would be curious to learn that most of those artists are known as the most prominent among their contemporaries, and are still admired. They are: Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Edvard Munch, many others, and the most degenerate artist of the world, Pablo Picasso.

This exhibition gave start to a series of art events in Germany of that time, and occurred to be a very powerful way of leading the overall opinion. The Nazis were good psychologists: instead of simply destroying the art works they thought inappropriate, they chose to do it publicly, in order not to create martyrs, so dearly loved by the people. In the way they did it, it worked, and the art of 1930s was labeled by the contemporaries as "incomprehensible and elitist".
source: TATE

Pauline Tarnowsky

“Anomalies of the Face and the Ear in Prostitutes”, from Pauline Tarnowsky, Étude anthropométrique sur les prostituées et les voleuses (Paris: E. Lecrosnier et Bébé, 1889). Ithaca: Private collection.

Pauline Tarnowsky

After today lesson about Art, Imagine and Representation module, I decided to learn each day at least one artist from module. To be honest I am shocked because I am afraid Slide Test on 29 March and I think I will never remember so many dates and names....

I feel miserable.

Pauline Tarnowsky,

A 19th-century researcher, Dr. Pauline Tarnowsky, documented the facial anomalies of prostitutes with photographs, and studied what she called atavistic regression as a kind of fall down the evolutionary ladder.  This link between beauty and proportion is also seen, in reverse, in nowadays obsession with supermodels. Prostitution supposedly correlates with a kind of asymmetry or pragmatism, a disproportion of the jawbones.

Pauline Tarnowsky was one of the first medical women in Russia and was well-known for her work in psychiatry and craniology. She had provided the photographs of Russian female criminals and prostitutes and a scale of the appearance of prostitutes in an analyses of the “physiognomy of  the Russian prostitute”

The First Exhibition of Criminal Anthropology

 

Visitors to the Palazzo delle Belle Arti in Rome in the autumn of 1885 became the witnesses of a most unusual spectacle. On display in one hall was a huge array of objects including well over three hundred skulls and anatomical casts, probably several thousand portrait photographs and drawings of epileptics and delinquents, insane and born criminals, and maps, graphs and publications summing up the results of research in the new scientific discipline of criminal anthropology.

The Italian criminal anthropologists saw themselves most closely connected to Quatrefage and Broca’s classical anthropology:

 

If anthropology in general is, following the definition of Quatrefage, the natural history of Man, like zoology is the natural history of animals, then criminal anthropology is nothing else but the study of a human variety, a particular type: it is the natural history of the criminal Man, just as psychiatric anthropology is the natural history of the insane Man.

 

source: book Raw material: producing pathology in Victorian culture By Erin O'ConnorDurham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.