Friday, April 9, 2010

deformity


The "grotesque" in art had a fairly specific birth date which was around 1500. This category of art and decoration is based on the Roman wall paintings that were uncovered in 1488 in the buried ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, the "Golden House" on the Esquiline Hill in Rome. The term grotesque comes from the Italian word grotto, or cave. Initially the word grottesco referred solely to a type of ornamentation where animal, vegetable and mineral mingled in a bizarre fashion deliberately confusing the animate with the inanimate: human heads grew from trees, animal faces were placed on human bodies etc.

Examples of this kind of art:


Mother Nature is surrounded by grottesche
in this fresco detail from Villa d'Este


Nero's Golden House

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SIDESHOW

Carte de Visite

Each photograph was the size of a visiting card, and such photograph cards became enormously popular and were traded among friends and visitors. The immense popularity of these card photographs led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominent persons. "Cardomania" spread throughout Europe and then quickly to America. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors.



HUBERT'S MUSEUM slide show








Stanley Kubrick: The Shining & Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick and the Aesthetics of the Grotesque

Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland"

John Tenniel: original illustration
for Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

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