Monstrous Pig of Landser
Correspondent:: König Prüß, GfbAEV
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:55:04 GMT
--------
washingtonpost.com
Albrecht Durer, Draftsman of Doom
By Paul Richard
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, October 18, 2004; Page C01
RICHMOND -- The Monstrous Pig of Landser was born near Basel on the
first of March in 1496, the year that Albrecht Durer began to cut the
pear-wood blocks with which he printed his "Apocalypse." Now at the
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, this fantastic and factual 15-woodcut
narrative marks one of the wow! moments in the 30,000-year history of
pictures. It made people gasp. So did the pig.
The eight-footed, four-eared, two-tongued Monstrous Pig of Landser
didn't live long, but as Durer engraved it he imagined that piglet of
evil omen as a grown-up. He knew what it meant: The Antichrist is near.
Many beasts with many heads appear in the "Apocalypse" to deliver the
same message. "Oh ye Christian men," the German super-artist pleaded in
his diary, "pray to God for help, for His judgment draweth nigh."
The prints of the "Apocalypse," which were recognized at once as
strikingly believable shiver-causing wonders, made young Durer famous.
When the movies started moving, or black-and-white went color, the
viewers, amazed, felt just that sort of jab. Nobody had ever seen prints
like these before.
Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) made them using very sharp and very small
steel chisels to cut his slender lines, or to be precise, to cut the
wood away around them, leaving the lines standing, ready to be inked.
Durer's black lines aren't just outlines, nor do they just fill in. His
swelling, swooping markings summon air and shade and sunlight -- even as
they detail the most minute particulars. Five hundred years ago, when
images were coarse and scarce, seeing ones such as these must have been
like watching St. John's Revelation on high-definition TV.
Here's hermaphroditic Satan being thrust into the pit. He's solid as a
statue and scaly as a snake. His horns are like a ram's, his claws are
like a lizard's, his face is like a dog's.
There's the Whore of Babylon, a looker out of Hollywood, beautiful and
brazen in a rich off-the-shoulder gown. Lots of Durer's draperies are
crinkly and crisp, like those cut into gray stone on Gothic churches,
but in 1496 he'd just come back from Italy, and his Whore is costumed in
the latest Venetian fashion.
The Celestial Jerusalem, turreted and spired, has just come down from
Heaven. There are the Four Horsemen, riders in the sky. Such pictures
sold and sold. You could bring them home. They scared you at a time when
the populace of Europe had reason to be scared: The Sultan of the Turks,
who was certainly no Christian, was marching into Europe, and the
plague, the King of Terrors, was abroad in the land, and the year 1500
(a big, round, scary number) was inexorably approaching, to say nothing
of the warning delivered by the pig. The pope in Rome, decisively
responding to the widespread consternation, ordered witches burned.
Durer's dragons swish their muscled tails. As his angels fly and float,
the viewer gets to see each feather on their wings. His gentle
landscapes roll deep into the distance. What he could imagine he could
make us see.
He's a superstitious scientist. The Christian faith that rises from the
Richmond exhibition is as simple and devout as that of any
piglet-dreading, witch-pursuing peasant. His imagination was incredibly
vivid. And yet he always kept an iron grip on fact.
He wrote: "Nothing is less pleasing to a man of good sense than mistakes
in painting."
At the same time he sought marvels, animal marvels, particularly. One of
his woodcuts is a plate-by-armored-plate description of a rhinoceros, an
animal he'd never seen. He also drew a walrus. The monstrous delighted
him. The logical did, too.
"Albrecht Durer: A Renaissance Journey in Print" presents 83 sheets
borrowed from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which has been using
them as teaching tools since the 17th century. Durer's prints are that
instructive: They demonstrate the newest visual technologies masterfully
controlled.
One of those technologies sets solid forms in structured space in
accordance with the laws of mathematical perspective. Another new
technology, that of archaeology, has also stamped these pictures. Adam,
in "Adam and Eve," a 1504 engraving, had no living model. He is based on
an antique marble statue, the Apollo Belvedere, just unearthed in Rome.
One thinks of metallurgy, too, for these pictures weren't just drawn,
they were also engineered. Behind them, one imagines teams of
gouge-fashioners and steel-sharpeners and plate-polishers and pressmen.
For his delicate engravings (in which the ink sits in scratched grooves
instead of on raised ridges) Durer needed burins sharp as needles, and
the smoothest copper plates, and presses that, with wooden screws,
applied high and even pressure. Consider, too, the orchardists who
tended Durer's pear trees and the smiths who forged their saws, their
pruning hooks and axes. This is early industrial art.
Metallurgical technology came to Durer as a birthright. In Nuremberg,
the Meistersingers' town, his father was a goldsmith, his godfather a
publisher. Of the skills he mastered early on, many had been developed
to reproduce the printed word. Durer used them making pictures as no one
had before.
Printing, at first, was a curiosity and a luxury. Johann Gutenberg's
Bible (circa 1452), though printed with moveable metal type, was almost
as opulent as the costly and handwritten books it superseded. Its pages
weren't paper, they were vellum, with illuminations. Durer's paper
pictures -- which were printed in the hundreds -- were aimed at a
broader market. Even tradesmen could afford them. When he produced them,
he wasn't a hireling of some patron. He cut the blocks, he bought the
paper, he was on his own. The "Apocalypse" made him rich. On his second
trip to Venice, in 1505-07, he was acclaimed as a celebrity. He bought a
mansion, formed an art collection, wore expensive clothes and dressed
his long blond hair with perfumed oil. The beard he grew, which made him
look a bit like Jesus, was regarded by his friends as an outrageous
affectation.
The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts wants you to look closely at these
pictures. It hands out little magnifying glasses, which show you that
the images in Durer's "Melencolia I" (1514) and "Knight, Death and the
Devil" (1513) are entirely the product of seas of stippled dots and sets
of scratched-in lines -- and yet produce grays as numerous and subtle as
those in an Ansel Adams photograph.
But these aren't photographs. That's Death himself, riding on his nag,
with snakes around his throat and crawling on his crown. Who today
thinks that way? That's the odd thing about Durer -- who scares us
still, and strikes us with his special effects, and often seems to be as
modern as the movies, but had a medieval mind.
Albrecht Durer: A Renaissance Journey in Print will remain on view at
the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, on the Boulevard at Grove Avenue,
through Jan. 9. The display, curated by Donald Schrader, was organized
by PONTE in cooperation with Washington's International Arts and
Artists. The galleries are open Wednesday-Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Adult
admission is $6.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Correspondent:: HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 21:43:20 -0500
--------
On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:55:04 GMT, König Prüß, GfbAEV
wrote:
>
>
>
>washingtonpost.com
>Albrecht Durer, Draftsman of Doom
>
>By Paul Richard
>Special to The Washington Post
>Monday, October 18, 2004; Page C01
>
>
>RICHMOND -- The Monstrous Pig of Landser was born near Basel on the
>first of March in 1496, the year that Albrecht Durer began to cut the
>pear-wood blocks with which he printed his "Apocalypse." Now at the
>Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, this fantastic and factual 15-woodcut
>narrative marks one of the wow! moments in the 30,000-year history of
>pictures. It made people gasp. So did the pig.
>
>The eight-footed, four-eared, two-tongued Monstrous Pig of Landser
>didn't live long, but as Durer engraved it he imagined that piglet of
>evil omen as a grown-up. He knew what it meant: The Antichrist is near.
>Many beasts with many heads appear in the "Apocalypse" to deliver the
>same message. "Oh ye Christian men," the German super-artist pleaded in
>his diary, "pray to God for help, for His judgment draweth nigh."
>
>The prints of the "Apocalypse," which were recognized at once as
>strikingly believable shiver-causing wonders, made young Durer famous.
>When the movies started moving, or black-and-white went color, the
>viewers, amazed, felt just that sort of jab. Nobody had ever seen prints
>like these before.
>
>Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) made them using very sharp and very small
>steel chisels to cut his slender lines, or to be precise, to cut the
>wood away around them, leaving the lines standing, ready to be inked.
>
>Durer's black lines aren't just outlines, nor do they just fill in. His
>swelling, swooping markings summon air and shade and sunlight -- even as
>they detail the most minute particulars. Five hundred years ago, when
>images were coarse and scarce, seeing ones such as these must have been
>like watching St. John's Revelation on high-definition TV.
>
>Here's hermaphroditic Satan being thrust into the pit. He's solid as a
>statue and scaly as a snake. His horns are like a ram's, his claws are
>like a lizard's, his face is like a dog's.
>
>There's the Whore of Babylon, a looker out of Hollywood, beautiful and
>brazen in a rich off-the-shoulder gown. Lots of Durer's draperies are
>crinkly and crisp, like those cut into gray stone on Gothic churches,
>but in 1496 he'd just come back from Italy, and his Whore is costumed in
>the latest Venetian fashion.
>
>The Celestial Jerusalem, turreted and spired, has just come down from
>Heaven. There are the Four Horsemen, riders in the sky. Such pictures
>sold and sold. You could bring them home. They scared you at a time when
>the populace of Europe had reason to be scared: The Sultan of the Turks,
>who was certainly no Christian, was marching into Europe, and the
>plague, the King of Terrors, was abroad in the land, and the year 1500
>(a big, round, scary number) was inexorably approaching, to say nothing
>of the warning delivered by the pig. The pope in Rome, decisively
>responding to the widespread consternation, ordered witches burned.
>
>Durer's dragons swish their muscled tails. As his angels fly and float,
>the viewer gets to see each feather on their wings. His gentle
>landscapes roll deep into the distance. What he could imagine he could
>make us see.
>
>He's a superstitious scientist. The Christian faith that rises from the
>Richmond exhibition is as simple and devout as that of any
>piglet-dreading, witch-pursuing peasant. His imagination was incredibly
>vivid. And yet he always kept an iron grip on fact.
>
>He wrote: "Nothing is less pleasing to a man of good sense than mistakes
>in painting."
>
>At the same time he sought marvels, animal marvels, particularly. One of
>his woodcuts is a plate-by-armored-plate description of a rhinoceros, an
>animal he'd never seen. He also drew a walrus. The monstrous delighted
>him. The logical did, too.
>
>"Albrecht Durer: A Renaissance Journey in Print" presents 83 sheets
>borrowed from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which has been using
>them as teaching tools since the 17th century. Durer's prints are that
>instructive: They demonstrate the newest visual technologies masterfully
>controlled.
>
>One of those technologies sets solid forms in structured space in
>accordance with the laws of mathematical perspective. Another new
>technology, that of archaeology, has also stamped these pictures. Adam,
>in "Adam and Eve," a 1504 engraving, had no living model. He is based on
>an antique marble statue, the Apollo Belvedere, just unearthed in Rome.
>
>One thinks of metallurgy, too, for these pictures weren't just drawn,
>they were also engineered. Behind them, one imagines teams of
>gouge-fashioners and steel-sharpeners and plate-polishers and pressmen.
>For his delicate engravings (in which the ink sits in scratched grooves
>instead of on raised ridges) Durer needed burins sharp as needles, and
>the smoothest copper plates, and presses that, with wooden screws,
>applied high and even pressure. Consider, too, the orchardists who
>tended Durer's pear trees and the smiths who forged their saws, their
>pruning hooks and axes. This is early industrial art.
>
>Metallurgical technology came to Durer as a birthright. In Nuremberg,
>the Meistersingers' town, his father was a goldsmith, his godfather a
>publisher. Of the skills he mastered early on, many had been developed
>to reproduce the printed word. Durer used them making pictures as no one
>had before.
>
>Printing, at first, was a curiosity and a luxury. Johann Gutenberg's
>Bible (circa 1452), though printed with moveable metal type, was almost
>as opulent as the costly and handwritten books it superseded. Its pages
>weren't paper, they were vellum, with illuminations. Durer's paper
>pictures -- which were printed in the hundreds -- were aimed at a
>broader market. Even tradesmen could afford them. When he produced them,
>he wasn't a hireling of some patron. He cut the blocks, he bought the
>paper, he was on his own. The "Apocalypse" made him rich. On his second
>trip to Venice, in 1505-07, he was acclaimed as a celebrity. He bought a
>mansion, formed an art collection, wore expensive clothes and dressed
>his long blond hair with perfumed oil. The beard he grew, which made him
>look a bit like Jesus, was regarded by his friends as an outrageous
>affectation.
>
>The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts wants you to look closely at these
>pictures. It hands out little magnifying glasses, which show you that
>the images in Durer's "Melencolia I" (1514) and "Knight, Death and the
>Devil" (1513) are entirely the product of seas of stippled dots and sets
>of scratched-in lines -- and yet produce grays as numerous and subtle as
>those in an Ansel Adams photograph.
>
>But these aren't photographs. That's Death himself, riding on his nag,
>with snakes around his throat and crawling on his crown. Who today
>thinks that way? That's the odd thing about Durer -- who scares us
>still, and strikes us with his special effects, and often seems to be as
>modern as the movies, but had a medieval mind.
>
>Albrecht Durer: A Renaissance Journey in Print will remain on view at
>the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, on the Boulevard at Grove Avenue,
>through Jan. 9. The display, curated by Donald Schrader, was organized
>by PONTE in cooperation with Washington's International Arts and
>Artists. The galleries are open Wednesday-Sunday 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Adult
>admission is $6.
>
>
>
>© 2004 The Washington Post Company
>
no linky to a picture?
how frustrating.
Correspondent:: HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 21:48:24 -0500
--------
On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:55:04 GMT, König Prüß, GfbAEV
wrote:
>
>
>
BEHOLD THE SOW OF LANDSER AND REPENT THY SINS!!!!!!
THE END OF THE WORLD IS OINK!!!!!!
http://rubens.anu.edu.au/htdocs/surveys/charlotte/0007/000704.JPG
Correspondent:: König Prüß, GfbAEV
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 03:06:23 GMT
--------
"HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:55:04 GMT, König Prüß, GfbAEV
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> BEHOLD THE SOW OF LANDSER AND REPENT THY SINS!!!!!!
>
> THE END OF THE WORLD IS OINK!!!!!!
>
> http://rubens.anu.edu.au/htdocs/surveys/charlotte/0007/000704.JPG
Yeah! Later, she became
"The Monstrous Thuriger Sausage of Landschutz, Bavaria!"
Correspondent:: "ghost"
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 03:08:26 GMT
--------
"HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" wrote in
message news:j009n05lhrm2j5qii99k0dv7uu5no2a6qa@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:55:04 GMT, König Prüß, GfbAEV
> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> BEHOLD THE SOW OF LANDSER AND REPENT THY SINS!!!!!!
>
> THE END OF THE WORLD IS OINK!!!!!!
>
> http://rubens.anu.edu.au/htdocs/surveys/charlotte/0007/000704.JPG
Fank you very much.
"Hey there piggy pig pig pig..."
Correspondent:: HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 22:20:32 -0500
--------
On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 03:08:26 GMT, "ghost" wrote:
>
>"HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" wrote in
>message news:j009n05lhrm2j5qii99k0dv7uu5no2a6qa@4ax.com...
>> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:55:04 GMT, König Prüß, GfbAEV
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> BEHOLD THE SOW OF LANDSER AND REPENT THY SINS!!!!!!
>>
>> THE END OF THE WORLD IS OINK!!!!!!
>>
>> http://rubens.anu.edu.au/htdocs/surveys/charlotte/0007/000704.JPG
>
>Fank you very much.
>
>"Hey there piggy pig pig pig..."
>
Oh Fear Ye for the Seventh Squeal of the Apocalypse hast been
broken!!!!
OH MY PROPHETIC SOW!!!!!!!
It is a memorable image for a signate.
~Salacia
Correspondent:: König Prüß, GfbAEV
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 03:31:41 GMT
--------
"HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 03:08:26 GMT, "ghost" wrote:
>
> >
> >"HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" wrote in
> >message news:j009n05lhrm2j5qii99k0dv7uu5no2a6qa@4ax.com...
> >> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:55:04 GMT, König Prüß, GfbAEV
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> BEHOLD THE SOW OF LANDSER AND REPENT THY SINS!!!!!!
> >>
> >> THE END OF THE WORLD IS OINK!!!!!!
> >>
> >> http://rubens.anu.edu.au/htdocs/surveys/charlotte/0007/000704.JPG
> >
> >Fank you very much.
> >
> >"Hey there piggy pig pig pig..."
> >
>
> Oh Fear Ye for the Seventh Squeal of the Apocalypse hast been
> broken!!!!
>
> OH MY PROPHETIC SOW!!!!!!!
>
> It is a memorable image for a signate.
>
> ~Salacia
Results of early attempts to breed a kosher pig.
Correspondent:: Zapanaz
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 22:07:10 -0700
--------
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 21:48:24 -0500, HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer
wrote:
>On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:55:04 GMT, König Prüß, GfbAEV
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>BEHOLD THE SOW OF LANDSER AND REPENT THY SINS!!!!!!
>
>THE END OF THE WORLD IS OINK!!!!!!
>
>http://rubens.anu.edu.au/htdocs/surveys/charlotte/0007/000704.JPG
But Johnny Depp had to fuck it anyway.
Sometimes things don't work out in real life as nicely as they do in
the movies.
--
Zapanaz
International Satanic Conspiracy
Customer Support Specialist
http://joecosby.com/
Drop Down on all Fours and Stick Your Ass High
in the Air: You are Sexy as Hell! Young, Firm
Breasts, a High, Tight Rump...Why Do You Have
to Do the Drug 'Thang'? Damn, Bitch, You are
So Pretty!
--anti-drug advice to the US Air Force
Correspondent:: HellPope Huey
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 15:23:02 GMT
--------
In article ,
HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer wrote:
> THE END OF THE WORLD IS OINK!!!!!!
Phew, thank goodness; I thought that noise was just in my HEAD. Pretty
disconcerting when you have a mouthful of sausage link.
--
HellPope Huey
Pity the truly Lost, for they are the ones
who keep showing up at political rallies
and demanding scratch-&-sniff centerfolds
in Cat Fancy magazine.
To get the attention of a large animal,
be it an elephant or a bureaucracy,
it helps to know what part of it feels pain.
Be very sure, though, that you want its full attention.
- Kelvin Throop
"I'm not going to be your monkey."
- Jon Stewart
Correspondent:: "ghost"
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 03:06:38 GMT
--------
; "GfbAEV" wrote in message
news:417465E4.E4D359F8@ranunculus.org...
>
>
>
> washingtonpost.com
> Albrecht Durer, Draftsman of Doom
>
> By Paul Richard
> Special to The Washington Post
> Monday, October 18, 2004; Page C01
>
>
> RICHMOND -- The Monstrous Pig of Landser was born near Basel on the
> first of March in 1496, the year that Albrecht Durer began to cut the
> pear-wood blocks with which he printed his "Apocalypse." Now at the
> Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, this fantastic and factual 15-woodcut
> narrative marks one of the wow! moments in the 30,000-year history of
> pictures. It made people gasp. So did the pig.
>
> The eight-footed, four-eared, two-tongued Monstrous Pig of Landser
> didn't live long, but as Durer engraved it he imagined that piglet of
> evil omen as a grown-up. He knew what it meant: The Antichrist is near.
> Many beasts with many heads appear in the "Apocalypse" to deliver the
> same message. "Oh ye Christian men," the German super-artist pleaded in
> his diary, "pray to God for help, for His judgment draweth nigh."
>
> The prints of the "Apocalypse," which were recognized at once as
> strikingly believable shiver-causing wonders, made young Durer famous.
> When the movies started moving, or black-and-white went color, the
> viewers, amazed, felt just that sort of jab. Nobody had ever seen prints
> like these before.
>
> Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) made them using very sharp and very small
> steel chisels to cut his slender lines, or to be precise, to cut the
> wood away around them, leaving the lines standing, ready to be inked.
>
> Durer's black lines aren't just outlines, nor do they just fill in. His
> swelling, swooping markings summon air and shade and sunlight -- even as
> they detail the most minute particulars. Five hundred years ago, when
> images were coarse and scarce, seeing ones such as these must have been
> like watching St. John's Revelation on high-definition TV.
>
> Here's hermaphroditic Satan being thrust into the pit. He's solid as a
> statue and scaly as a snake. His horns are like a ram's, his claws are
> like a lizard's, his face is like a dog's.
>
> There's the Whore of Babylon, a looker out of Hollywood, beautiful and
> brazen in a rich off-the-shoulder gown. Lots of Durer's draperies are
> crinkly and crisp, like those cut into gray stone on Gothic churches,
> but in 1496 he'd just come back from Italy, and his Whore is costumed in
> the latest Venetian fashion.
>
> The Celestial Jerusalem, turreted and spired, has just come down from
> Heaven. There are the Four Horsemen, riders in the sky. Such pictures
> sold and sold. You could bring them home. They scared you at a time when
> the populace of Europe had reason to be scared: The Sultan of the Turks,
> who was certainly no Christian, was marching into Europe, and the
> plague, the King of Terrors, was abroad in the land, and the year 1500
> (a big, round, scary number) was inexorably approaching, to say nothing
> of the warning delivered by the pig. The pope in Rome, decisively
> responding to the widespread consternation, ordered witches burned.
>
> Durer's dragons swish their muscled tails. As his angels fly and float,
> the viewer gets to see each feather on their wings. His gentle
> landscapes roll deep into the distance. What he could imagine he could
> make us see.
>
> He's a superstitious scientist. The Christian faith that rises from the
> Richmond exhibition is as simple and devout as that of any
> piglet-dreading, witch-pursuing peasant. His imagination was incredibly
> vivid. And yet he always kept an iron grip on fact.
>
> He wrote: "Nothing is less pleasing to a man of good sense than mistakes
> in painting."
>
> At the same time he sought marvels, animal marvels, particularly. One of
> his woodcuts is a plate-by-armored-plate description of a rhinoceros, an
> animal he'd never seen. He also drew a walrus. The monstrous delighted
> him. The logical did, too.
>
> "Albrecht Durer: A Renaissance Journey in Print" presents 83 sheets
> borrowed from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which has been using
> them as teaching tools since the 17th century. Durer's prints are that
> instructive: They demonstrate the newest visual technologies masterfully
> controlled.
>
> One of those technologies sets solid forms in structured space in
> accordance with the laws of mathematical perspective. Another new
> technology, that of archaeology, has also stamped these pictures. Adam,
> in "Adam and Eve," a 1504 engraving, had no living model. He is based on
> an antique marble statue, the Apollo Belvedere, just unearthed in Rome.
>
> One thinks of metallurgy, too, for these pictures weren't just drawn,
> they were also engineered. Behind them, one imagines teams of
> gouge-fashioners and steel-sharpeners and plate-polishers and pressmen.
> For his delicate engravings (in which the ink sits in scratched grooves
> instead of on raised ridges) Durer needed burins sharp as needles, and
> the smoothest copper plates, and presses that, with wooden screws,
> applied high and even pressure. Consider, too, the orchardists who
> tended Durer's pear trees and the smiths who forged their saws, their
> pruning hooks and axes. This is early industrial art.
>
> Metallurgical technology came to Durer as a birthright. In Nuremberg,
> the Meistersingers' town, his father was a goldsmith, his godfather a
> publisher. Of the skills he mastered early on, many had been developed
> to reproduce the printed word. Durer used them making pictures as no one
> had before.
>
> Printing, at first, was a curiosity and a luxury. Johann Gutenberg's
> Bible (circa 1452), though printed with moveable metal type, was almost
> as opulent as the costly and handwritten books it superseded. Its pages
> weren't paper, they were vellum, with illuminations. Durer's paper
> pictures -- which were printed in the hundreds -- were aimed at a
> broader market. Even tradesmen could afford them. When he produced them,
> he wasn't a hireling of some patron. He cut the blocks, he bought the
> paper, he was on his own. The "Apocalypse" made him rich. On his second
> trip to Venice, in 1505-07, he was acclaimed as a celebrity. He bought a
> mansion, formed an art collection, wore expensive clothes and dressed
> his long blond hair with perfumed oil. The beard he grew, which made him
> look a bit like Jesus, was regarded by his friends as an outrageous
> affectation.
>
> The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts wants you to look closely at these
> pictures. It hands out little magnifying glasses, which show you that
> the images in Durer's "Melencolia I" (1514) and "Knight, Death and the
> Devil" (1513) are entirely the product of seas of stippled dots and sets
> of scratched-in lines -- and yet produce grays as numerous and subtle as
> those in an Ansel Adams photograph.
>
> But these aren't photographs. That's Death himself, riding on his nag,
> with snakes around his throat and crawling on his crown. Who today
> thinks that way? That's the odd thing about Durer -- who scares us
> still, and strikes us with his special effects, and often seems to be as
> modern as the movies, but had a medieval mind.
>
Writing about woodcuts is like sculpting about calligraphy.
C'mon, man, no graphic links?
Correspondent:: König Prüß, GfbAEV
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 03:12:48 GMT
--------
ghost wrote:
> ; "GfbAEV" wrote in message
> news:417465E4.E4D359F8@ranunculus.org...
> >
> >
> >
> > washingtonpost.com
> > Albrecht Durer, Draftsman of Doom
> >
> > By Paul Richard
> > Special to The Washington Post
> > Monday, October 18, 2004; Page C01
> >
> >
> > RICHMOND -- The Monstrous Pig of Landser was born near Basel on the
> > first of March in 1496, the year that Albrecht Durer began to cut the
> > pear-wood blocks with which he printed his "Apocalypse." Now at the
> > Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, this fantastic and factual 15-woodcut
> > narrative marks one of the wow! moments in the 30,000-year history of
> > pictures. It made people gasp. So did the pig.
> >
> > The eight-footed, four-eared, two-tongued Monstrous Pig of Landser
> > didn't live long, but as Durer engraved it he imagined that piglet of
> > evil omen as a grown-up. He knew what it meant: The Antichrist is near.
> > Many beasts with many heads appear in the "Apocalypse" to deliver the
> > same message. "Oh ye Christian men," the German super-artist pleaded in
> > his diary, "pray to God for help, for His judgment draweth nigh."
> >
> > The prints of the "Apocalypse," which were recognized at once as
> > strikingly believable shiver-causing wonders, made young Durer famous.
> > When the movies started moving, or black-and-white went color, the
> > viewers, amazed, felt just that sort of jab. Nobody had ever seen prints
> > like these before.
> >
> > Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) made them using very sharp and very small
> > steel chisels to cut his slender lines, or to be precise, to cut the
> > wood away around them, leaving the lines standing, ready to be inked.
> >
> > Durer's black lines aren't just outlines, nor do they just fill in. His
> > swelling, swooping markings summon air and shade and sunlight -- even as
> > they detail the most minute particulars. Five hundred years ago, when
> > images were coarse and scarce, seeing ones such as these must have been
> > like watching St. John's Revelation on high-definition TV.
> >
> > Here's hermaphroditic Satan being thrust into the pit. He's solid as a
> > statue and scaly as a snake. His horns are like a ram's, his claws are
> > like a lizard's, his face is like a dog's.
> >
> > There's the Whore of Babylon, a looker out of Hollywood, beautiful and
> > brazen in a rich off-the-shoulder gown. Lots of Durer's draperies are
> > crinkly and crisp, like those cut into gray stone on Gothic churches,
> > but in 1496 he'd just come back from Italy, and his Whore is costumed in
> > the latest Venetian fashion.
> >
> > The Celestial Jerusalem, turreted and spired, has just come down from
> > Heaven. There are the Four Horsemen, riders in the sky. Such pictures
> > sold and sold. You could bring them home. They scared you at a time when
> > the populace of Europe had reason to be scared: The Sultan of the Turks,
> > who was certainly no Christian, was marching into Europe, and the
> > plague, the King of Terrors, was abroad in the land, and the year 1500
> > (a big, round, scary number) was inexorably approaching, to say nothing
> > of the warning delivered by the pig. The pope in Rome, decisively
> > responding to the widespread consternation, ordered witches burned.
> >
> > Durer's dragons swish their muscled tails. As his angels fly and float,
> > the viewer gets to see each feather on their wings. His gentle
> > landscapes roll deep into the distance. What he could imagine he could
> > make us see.
> >
> > He's a superstitious scientist. The Christian faith that rises from the
> > Richmond exhibition is as simple and devout as that of any
> > piglet-dreading, witch-pursuing peasant. His imagination was incredibly
> > vivid. And yet he always kept an iron grip on fact.
> >
> > He wrote: "Nothing is less pleasing to a man of good sense than mistakes
> > in painting."
> >
> > At the same time he sought marvels, animal marvels, particularly. One of
> > his woodcuts is a plate-by-armored-plate description of a rhinoceros, an
> > animal he'd never seen. He also drew a walrus. The monstrous delighted
> > him. The logical did, too.
> >
> > "Albrecht Durer: A Renaissance Journey in Print" presents 83 sheets
> > borrowed from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, which has been using
> > them as teaching tools since the 17th century. Durer's prints are that
> > instructive: They demonstrate the newest visual technologies masterfully
> > controlled.
> >
> > One of those technologies sets solid forms in structured space in
> > accordance with the laws of mathematical perspective. Another new
> > technology, that of archaeology, has also stamped these pictures. Adam,
> > in "Adam and Eve," a 1504 engraving, had no living model. He is based on
> > an antique marble statue, the Apollo Belvedere, just unearthed in Rome.
> >
> > One thinks of metallurgy, too, for these pictures weren't just drawn,
> > they were also engineered. Behind them, one imagines teams of
> > gouge-fashioners and steel-sharpeners and plate-polishers and pressmen.
> > For his delicate engravings (in which the ink sits in scratched grooves
> > instead of on raised ridges) Durer needed burins sharp as needles, and
> > the smoothest copper plates, and presses that, with wooden screws,
> > applied high and even pressure. Consider, too, the orchardists who
> > tended Durer's pear trees and the smiths who forged their saws, their
> > pruning hooks and axes. This is early industrial art.
> >
> > Metallurgical technology came to Durer as a birthright. In Nuremberg,
> > the Meistersingers' town, his father was a goldsmith, his godfather a
> > publisher. Of the skills he mastered early on, many had been developed
> > to reproduce the printed word. Durer used them making pictures as no one
> > had before.
> >
> > Printing, at first, was a curiosity and a luxury. Johann Gutenberg's
> > Bible (circa 1452), though printed with moveable metal type, was almost
> > as opulent as the costly and handwritten books it superseded. Its pages
> > weren't paper, they were vellum, with illuminations. Durer's paper
> > pictures -- which were printed in the hundreds -- were aimed at a
> > broader market. Even tradesmen could afford them. When he produced them,
> > he wasn't a hireling of some patron. He cut the blocks, he bought the
> > paper, he was on his own. The "Apocalypse" made him rich. On his second
> > trip to Venice, in 1505-07, he was acclaimed as a celebrity. He bought a
> > mansion, formed an art collection, wore expensive clothes and dressed
> > his long blond hair with perfumed oil. The beard he grew, which made him
> > look a bit like Jesus, was regarded by his friends as an outrageous
> > affectation.
> >
> > The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts wants you to look closely at these
> > pictures. It hands out little magnifying glasses, which show you that
> > the images in Durer's "Melencolia I" (1514) and "Knight, Death and the
> > Devil" (1513) are entirely the product of seas of stippled dots and sets
> > of scratched-in lines -- and yet produce grays as numerous and subtle as
> > those in an Ansel Adams photograph.
> >
> > But these aren't photographs. That's Death himself, riding on his nag,
> > with snakes around his throat and crawling on his crown. Who today
> > thinks that way? That's the odd thing about Durer -- who scares us
> > still, and strikes us with his special effects, and often seems to be as
> > modern as the movies, but had a medieval mind.
> >
>
> Writing about woodcuts is like sculpting about calligraphy.
>
> C'mon, man, no graphic links?
Show of 83 Durer prints
http://www.vmfa.state.va.us/durer.html
Correspondent:: "Mike Dogwalker"
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 23:50:33 -0400
--------
; "GfbAEV" wrote in message
news:417465E4.E4D359F8@ranunculus.org...
> washingtonpost.com
> Albrecht Durer, Draftsman of Doom
> By Paul Richard
> Special to The Washington Post
> Monday, October 18, 2004; Page C01
>
>
> RICHMOND -- The Monstrous Pig of Landser was born near Basel on the
> first of March in 1496, the year that Albrecht Durer began to cut the
> pear-wood blocks with which he printed his "Apocalypse." Now at the
> Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, this fantastic and factual 15-woodcut
> narrative marks one of the wow! moments in the 30,000-year history of
> pictures. It made people gasp. So did the pig.
>
> The eight-footed, four-eared, two-tongued Monstrous Pig of Landser
> didn't live long, but as Durer engraved it he imagined that piglet of
> evil omen as a grown-up. He knew what it meant: The Antichrist is near.
....and Bob Evans has been makin b-fast sausages from her carcass ever
since : )
Correspondent:: nikolai kingsley
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 20:21:24 +1000
--------
> Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) made them using very sharp and very small
> steel chisels to cut his slender lines, or to be precise, to cut the
> wood away around them, leaving the lines standing, ready to be inked.
duder! this guy like must have been reincarnated as Jean Giraud.
.torrent on those "Apocalypse" prints? .CBR?
animated .GIF?
Correspondent:: König Prüß, GfbAEV
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 14:11:58 GMT
--------
nikolai kingsley wrote:
> > Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) made them using very sharp and very small
> > steel chisels to cut his slender lines, or to be precise, to cut the
> > wood away around them, leaving the lines standing, ready to be inked.
>
> duder! this guy like must have been reincarnated as Jean Giraud.
> .torrent on those "Apocalypse" prints? .CBR?
>
> animated .GIF?
An anigif of the 4 Horsemen woild be cool,
but an anigif of the Monstrous Pig would be scarier!
A .swf of the Devil yodeling in The Pit would be cool, too!