Rediscovered Scene from an Artist's Fever Dream

Xavier Jean Manon was a French watercolorist living and working in Toulouse in the early to mid-nineteenth century. An intensely private man, Manon nevertheless achieved popular fame during his lifetime for bizarre, dream-like illustrations, many of which appeared in magazines such as La Silhouette and La Plume. While Manon's art shared some of the visual conceits of his contemporary J. J. Grandville, it lacked the famed caricaturist's aim toward political and social satire and instead presented a more personal, ecstatic vision of the fantastic and uncanny (thus predating the schools of Psychoanalysis and Surrealism*) 
¶  For unknown reasons, on 23 August, 1832 Manon set fire to the majority of artworks, both finished and unfinished, still in his possession. He soon after sold the remainder of his property and left Toulouse with no word to his few friends and family. Four weeks later, on 25 September, a badly beaten and delusional Manon was found crawling along a country road on the way to Carcassonne (his birthplace). Taken back to Toulouse, he died two days later while in hospital. Xavier Manon was buried outside of Carcassonne in his family's plot.

* Many artists associated with the Surrealist movement, including Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy, were later champions of Manon's work.

[Above] Xavier Manon, Unfinished study for The Masked Contessa. 1826 (?).

14'' x 12'' Watercolour, graphite, and ink on paper. Currently under conservation. [Left and below] Details showing previous conservation (c. 1856) of the more fugitive crimson pigments used for the lips and knife blade.

In a word: POLYCHAETE

Cape Cod, Low Tide: At which time I happen upon one of the common yet ever fascinating tidal annelids—in this case, a rag worm, or clam worm (variously Alitta virens [alternatively Neiris virens, King rag worm] or Hediste diversicolor [alternatively Neiris diversicolor, Red rag worm]), additionally known by the common monikers pileworm, musselworm, and sandworm. Presented with such divers names from which to choose, I think one may therefore feel justified in referencing these primitive, ancestral creatures in any way that most appropriately suits his or her—taste, as it were, while thereby continuing the centuries-long frustration in satisfactorily classifying the members of the Family. The result is a sense that there have been as many reevaluations of the taxonomic plan as there are parapodia on a specimen.
¶ This bejewelled and not insubstantial fellow photographically captured by the author just before it began its steady and deliberate burrow into the sand.

THE PAINTED SPINES OF PRAŽSKÝ HRAD

Beginning in 1541 the Land Rolls of Bohemia were bound and kept in the (now Old) Royal Palace in Prague. Most fascinating are the beautifully painted spines of the 18th-century Land Rolls, each a miniature canvas adorning its respective volume. But why? Whimsy? No, surely not for purely decorative reasons. Is there meaning in the medium? The eye delights while the mind ponders.

THE STRAHOVSKÝ KLÁŠTER XYLOTECHA

A short communique from Prague: During my visit to the Theological and Philosophical Halls of the Strahov Monastery libraries, I stumbled upon a library collection I have long wanted to see (I would say "in the flesh," if not for the dendrologic nature of the specimens): the xylotecha of Karel of Hinterlagen from 1825. Each volume of this "book" collection consists of various parts of a single specimen of tree wood (including seeds, roots, flowers, et c), contained within a binding, or case, of the specimen's bark, complete with associated lichens and growths. Gilded spine labels in German and Latin complete each volume. Books made from paper in it's purest form.

THE IBIS JAR REVEALED

The new ibis mummy x-ray that now brackets our title lines and keeps guard of all Random musings herein comes from the Brooklyn Museum. The ibis itself comes from Abydos, Egypt. The fine print reads thusly:  
Ibis Mummy, 410-200 B.C.E. Animal remains, linen, 5 5/16 x 5 1/2 x 15 9/16 in. (13.5 x 14 x 39.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 14.651. Creative Commons-BY

PRAHA AUTOMATA, No. 2

I found this image a long time ago online somewhere (I've of course forgotten where; the downloaded image filename is an unhelpful "13754.jpg") of the supposed Praha Automata; thought I would post it here. The image is a photographic reproduction (detail) of an etching by the 18th century mathematician-artist Matthias Mütter. The reproduction appeared in a short monograph, published in the States in 1956 I believe, on Mütter's graphic works. The original etching was included in a now non-extant collection of Wunderkammer drawings and etchings published in 1708 [Frankfurt am Main].

PRAHA AUTOMATA, No. 1

In a matter of weeks, I will be accompanying my wife (Vartan Gregorian Assistant Professor of Archaeology and the Ancient World and Egyptology and Ancient Western Asian Studies) to the Golden City of Prague. While she will be attending the 7. Tagung zur Königsideologie congress, I hope to find myself willfully lost on a daily basis—drawing, painting, writing, investigating—gleefully searching out the historical remnants of Brahe, Kepler, Bürgi, the MaHaRaL himself, perhaps even those legendary cloth-covered remnants of once-living clay in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue. Chances are the last of those will come only as inspired sketches in my notebook. 

¶ And yet there is one small thing, one mystery I really do hope to shed some light on in Prague: that of a legendary automaton created for Emperor Rudolph II and then (supposedly) owned by Johannes Kepler himself; a clockwork monk referred to in more modern times simply as the Praha Automata. Reportedly quite similar in size and form to a more well-known clockwork monk created in 1562 for Spain's King Phillip II to miraculously save the ailing Crown-Prince Don Carlos, the Praha Automata however proved a more intricate creation, its internal and external movements more extensive and complex, to the point that Kepler seemed convinced of coded patterns and geometries within its walking movements. It has even been said that among these fantastic tracings was included a miniaturized walking route through the streets of Prague to some unnamed secret cache of learning—a treasure map of sorts contained in clockwork. One only needed a properly scaled map of the city and knowledge of the true starting point (secrets in and of themselves, of course) in order to be "taken" there. Whatever the ultimate truth of this story (no rigorous evidence outside of [admittedly] cryptic references by Kepler himself in respective letters to Michael Maestlin and David Fabricius* has ever been provided of the Praha Automata's  existence), it does seem unlikely such a cache was ever found.

¶ And so, as I begin my little foray into proper Czech pronunciation and standard "tourist phrases," I do wonder what I myself may find in the Golden City. 

*Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke (1937- ), Vol. 13, letter 58a and Vol. 16, letter 27a