Cabinet of Curiosities

The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia houses a vast collection of Victorian-era medical oddities; crude antique prosthetics, human pathological specimens preserved in formaldehyde, hundreds of skeletal curiosities, and a vast array of photographs. I just ordered a copy of the book of photographs taken within the museum, ‘The Mutter Museum: Of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia’ from Amazon.com - http://www.amazon.com/Mutter-Museum-College-Physicians-Philadelphia/dp/0922233241/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-9949795-0824721?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185694513&sr=8-1

Some time around 2000 the curator of the Mutter at the time invited photographers to the museum to pictorially chronicle a section of the museum’s collection through artistic photographs. These images, as well as photographs taken within the museum from the turn of the century through the 1940s, are what compose this book’s some 200 pages.

Plakaty! Plakaty! Plakaty!

http://www.polishposter.com/ is undoubtedly one of the best sites for Polish poster art online. Not only can one view extensive galleries of posters designed for the stage, cinema, and advertising, but micro-biographies for each artist are supplied as well. AND, to top it all off, they also have a large stock of original posters up for purchase.

The poster shown above is by Franciszek Starowieyski, an artist who turned his skills to poster design sometime in the 60s; his amazing work reaching up to the 90s. His incredibly powerful poster for Witkacy's Beyond Reality from 1981 is featured briefly in the opening sequence of the Brothers Quay's most well-known film, The Street of Crocodiles.

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There's always been so many things about poster design that have fascinated me. A poster artist once famously claimed, albeit rather biasedly, that posters are the most important art form, because of the mass’s constant exposure to them. I think there’s something true about this statement because, as can be seen at Polishposter.com, this stuff really is fine art, and it’s designed with a singular purpose. So much good art is never experienced, whereas posters have always been near the frontline, so to speak.

I have to knock a few things off my wall and make room for a new poster soon . . .

Something fresh.

For the past few days I've been reading the diaries of Franz Kafka. I'd heard so much about his diaries in the past, and I'd always intended on getting around to reading them. When I found a link to English translations this last weekend I decided to finally dig in.

After having only read The Metamorphosis and In The Penal Colony I must say I wasn't quite prepared for this. The diaries are written in a very elusive way: these half-fragments and broken thoughts. Yet, there is something strangely fulfilled and well-executed throughout his seemingly incomplete threads, as if the fragmentary nature of them holds the writing together in a tentatively self-sustaining manner.

I’ll post a link later when I’m not feeling so lazy, and actually have the will to search for it. Until then, here’s a cool music video of Hugh Cornwell’s Another Kind of Love directed by Jan Svankmajer.

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