18th-century curiosity cabinet of Joseph Bonnier de La Mosson (1702 -1744), Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris.
For the 2021 national symposium 'Preservation Meets Innovation', hosted by the CCAD: 'Fashioning Old into New: A 'Natural' History of Artist-Collectors'.
Examining the natural specimens artists collect(ed) in the past and present, this lecture argued that 'dead' specimens constitute 'the old' / a memory reinvented into 'the new' by artists on canvas. This is a rich topic, considering the first museums artists visited were full of natural specimens. As for contemporary art, there are no shortage of artists today, whose works consciously reference these early museums, or cabinets of curiosities, appropriately called Wunderkammern.
Dragonfly Detail of “Vase with Flowers”, Rachel Ruysch, 1689, San Diego Museum of Art
Among the historic artists examined was the celebrated 17th-century Dutch painter, Rachel Ruysch (1664 - 1750), who specialised in floral still lifes. Although most painters of this genre were men with more support of their craft, Ruysch created some of the most masterful examples we know today (and she did this while being a mother of ten children). Ruysch depicted flowers from different seasons and regions, striving to render the highest level of detail. She had unique access to preserved botanical specimens kept by her father, Frederick Ruysch (1638-1731), a professor of anatomy and botany, whose private cabinet of natural wonders, including flowers, plants, and insects, was admired across Europe. On close inspection of Ruysch’s paintings one finds creatures like the dragonfly, whose wings are so transparent, they seem to float from the canvas. She would sometimes use actual wings of butterflies or insects, perhaps remnants from her father’s collection, to imprint the canvas. In this lecture, several natural collections of artists were surveyed, followed by a discussion with contemporary Canadian artists about their collections of the same. Guests included the artists Christine Davis and T.M. Glass (the latter of which is highlighted in a previous post).
Detail, Morphochromes, Christine Davis, 2019
Davis' work includes an installation of a cabinet of curiosities housed in her studio, along with a large work/canvas covered with actual butterfly wings. Like Rachel Ruysch, Davis grew up in a science household, which entailed a life of travel and study of the natural world. The work illustrated here is a detail of her Morphochromes (2019). If you missed this talk, you can learn more about Davis here, who characterises this work as: 'Inspired by a Borges story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbius Tertius, re-interpreting a work from 2003 where a dissolve sequence of astronomy slides shows the universe at different wave lengths, projected onto a suspended screen of Morpho butterflies. Pinned into a grid and animated by the shifting light, documentation of the heavens and classification of wildlife are overlaid in a system of ordering and symmetry that is at once mystical and sadistic, absurd and universal.' The dark psychology at work in Davis' imagery, spun into the mystical and beautiful, is no doubt just as 'curious' as those fashioned centuries ago.