"Das Neue Strahlen," Jugend, 1896

Das neue Strahlen from Jugend 1896, Band 1 (Nr. 1-26), page 81, via Wurzeltod's recent post.

Click on image to see larger version.

Proteus Gowanus, Morbid Anatomy Library, And Observatory in the New Yorker

Big congratulations to all of our compatriots in the larger Proteus Gowanus complex--Proteus Gowanus, Reanimation Library, Fixer's Collective, Morbid Anatomy Library and Observatory--for the wonderful shout-out (see above) in this week's New Yorker! And special thanks to Sasha Chavchavadze and Tammy Pittman, whose vision brought it all into being, and to Patricia Marx, for being interested in our peculiar and fascinating warren of idiosyncratic spaces.

The above in an excerpt from Patricia Marx's "On and Off the Avenue" in the March 8th issue of the New Yorker; click here to find out more.

My New Favorite Magazine : Lapham's Quarterly

To the pain in the womb. O womb, womb, womb, womb. Boxy womb, red womb, white womb, fleshy womb, bloody womb, large womb, bloated womb--demonic womb.
--From a prayer for curing hysteria, C. 950 , Europe. Lapham’s Quarterly Medicine Issue, p. 175

At a recent open studio event, I met an editor for a magazine I had never heard of: Lapham's Quarterly. Interestingly, the current issue's theme was medicine, and the editor promised to send me a copy to check out. What I received has fast become my new favorite magazine.

A kind of Cabinet Magazine for the history set, this digest-sized, beautifully illustrated tome is a delightful, intriguing and thought-provoking read. Each issue utilizes a sort of patchwork, magpie approach to the theme; contents include historical pieces (see epigraph above), artworks, quotations, and contemporary writings that approach the topic obliquely and with a restrained, urbane wit, resulting in an impressionistic, playful, suggestive portrait of the topic. Former issues of the magazine--described by founder Lewis H. Lapham (formerly of Harper’s Magazine) as a magazine for “people who wished they had paid more attention in school” (1)--have tackled themes such as Eros, Crimes and Punishment, and Book of Nature; the next issue will be Religion.

The Medicine Issue will be on the newsstand until December 15th. I highly recommend you pick up a copy before it disappears. Truly not to be missed!

You can find out more about the Lapham's Quarterly Medicine Issue--and read some of the pieces, including Lewis Lapham's brilliant introduction--by clicking here. You can find out more about the magazine in general by clicking here. Visit the magazine's blog by clicking here. Read more about the magazine in this recent New York Times story, from which the quotation above is drawn.

Image: From the revelatory Wellcome Images. Credit: Position of the right hip. Figure showing child being turned in the womb. Engraving; From: Nouvelles demonstrations d'accouchemens, By: Jacques Pierre Maygrier; Published: BechetParis 1822; Credit: Wellcome Library, London

Morbid Anatomy Library in Time Out New York!

The current issue of Time Out New York features a nice little article about the Morbid Anatomy Library by friend-of-the-library Liz Day. You can check it out in its entirety (along with many great photos of the library by Eric Harvey Brown, as seen above) by clicking here.

Coincidentally, the library is open this Saturday and Sunday (October 17 and 18th) from 1-6 PM as part of the Gowanus-wide open studios weekend (aka A.G.A.S.T.). So if you are free and in the neighborhood, please do stop by for snacks, drinks, a perusal of the stacks, and a quick hello! Hope to see you there.

To find out more about the open studios weekend, and get directions to the library, click here.

"Der Orchideengarten," 1919-1921

The always wonderful blog "A Journey Around my Skull" has just posted a fascinating story about a short-lived German fantasy pulp magazine called Der Orchideengarten. Around for only 3 years (from 1919 to 1921) and spanning 51 issues, the magazine (to quote from the post, which quotes Franz Rottensteiner's TheFantasy Book: An Illustrated History From Dracula To Tolkien):

...featured an impressive gallery of fantastic art, ranging from reproductions of medieval woodcuts, and the work of established masters of macabre drawing like Gustave Dore or Tony Johannot, to contemporary German artists like Rolf von Hoerschelmann, Otto Linnekogel, Karl Ritter, Heinrich Kley, or Alfred Kubin.... the magazine also printed a wide selection of fantastic stories by famous foreign authors such as Dickens, Pushkin, Charles Nodier, Maupassant, Poe, Voltaire, Gautier, Washington Irving, Hawthorne, Valerii Briusov, H. G. Wells, Karel and Josef Capek, Victor Hugo, and others equally prominent....

The wonderful cover illustrations for the magazine--three of which you can see above; click images to see much larger versions--are noteworthy for a disquieting blend of Jugendstil elegance and a macabre decadence. You can see more of these fantastic magazine covers--and read the full post--by clicking here.

Bones Issue of Cabinet Magazine, 2008

So what went on in the anatomy halls? What did medical students do? They played. With the dead... --"Bone Play," Mike Sappol and Eva Ahren

I have just received my copy of the Bones Issue of Cabinet Magazine. Highlights thus far include Mike Sappol and Eva Ahren's "Bone Play" (from which the above images and quotation are drawn) and Scott F. Gilbert and Ziony Zevit's "Congenital Human Baculum Deficiency," which will make you rethink the biblical story of Adam's rib in the most fascinating of ways. Other articles touch on the mummies of Palermo, paleontology, and trepannation. Well worth checking out.

Note on images: Second image down, caption reads "Photograph from the dissection hall at the Academy of Surgery, Copenhagen, C. 1910; Bottom image, caption reads: A lithograph by Edward Hull depicting Death interrupting an author before his writing is complete, 1827.