Over at The New Republic, Jed Perl says that the Met’s “Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages” is one of the most original shows he’s seen in 7 years:
The entire show fits into three galleries, but what galleries they are![The curator Melanie] Holcomb has gathered books and manuscripts from museums, libraries, andreligious institutions in Europe and the United States. And it is inthese bound volumes that the signal graphic achievements of the MiddleAges are to be found.
Everybody, of course, knows the illuminatedmanuscripts of those centuries, with their dazzlingly colored pages,finished to a jewel-like shimmer. Holcomb’s great idea has been to setthose works aside for the time being, and focus instead on what havetraditionally perhaps been regarded as humbler fare.
These are thepictures done with black or brown or sometimes colored ink, many ofwhich have, at least at first glance, a more casual, more informalcharacter. Such works, she argues, put us in touch with the medievalartist’s most immediate impressions and responses. I think she isabsolutely right.
[More here]
David Shrigley’s mixtape. Rick Poynor profiled the illustrator for Print in our May/June 2006 issue.
The Courtauld Institute in London is considering drastic cuts to its three archives of images. More than three million images are kept in the Somerset House andare currently open to the public every weekday, for 10 pounds a year. The collections include the Witt library, which holds approximately two million photographs and reproductions; the Conway Library (one million); and the Photographic Survey, which covers 600 collections.
15 billboards that don’t belong next to each other. (How many of these are intentional, though?)
[Buzzfeed]
The Times discovers “new vintage,” an aesthetic that’s “chockablock with Edwardian-style portraits, heraldic devices and mounted antlers.” The lovely Hovey sisters get their picture.
Former Print managing editor Todd Pruzan created a narrative for a golf ball bank on Significant Objects this week. It sold for $14.50. Right now, you can bid on a porcelain statuette of the Baron Von Blaueheimer holding a peace dove.
And J. Penry has updated his site with an awesome collection of pet portraits.