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Nuremburg city museum, part I

Over the Christmas and New Year's holiday I was in Germany. The first city I visited was Nuremburg. Below are some images from the Nuremburg City Museum. Like many European municipal museums I've visited in the past, Nuremburg has an oddly eclectic collection of objects and artwork stretching from roman times up through the middle ages, Renaissance and somewhat later. Actually the collection reaches further back than that, they have a number of neolithic finds of bone and stone implements, too. But as usual most of what I was interested in was the art and artifacts of the middle ages. Here are some pieces of religious art mostly from the middle ages. The place was filled with stuff, much of which was unremarkable, but following are a few pieces I thought especially beautiful. The subtlety of the faces and expression here in the first two stone sculptures are kind of amazing. Look at the ever so slight rippling of fabric on the first madonna's breast. And her half warm and smiling, half arrogant expression. Awesome.


I came accross several images of St. Christopher carrying the infant Christ on the trip. This one I thought especially dark. A re-enactment after the end of the world.





Here is some female saint standing on a (sleeping?) mortal. The Hindu goddess of chaos, Kali is usually shown like this, I believe, as a symbol of the necessity of submission to the chaos of the world, but I don't recall seeing it in western art. If anyone knows who this Saint might be I'd be curious to hear.


Lastly there was a striking painting of the last judgement. As in most of such scenes the devils casting souls into hell is the more interesting side. I have to apologize for the quality of the images, but I thought the various demons were worth a look. Medieval demon imagery is so strange and inventive. I liked these a lot, but they also reminded me of Maurice Sendak's wild things a bit. Note in particular the man being force fed gold coins, and the rabbit-eared devil with a backpack filled with sinners. More soon.

Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi

The current show at Lula, Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi's paintings and constructions, is on its way down. The work in the bar came out two days ago and the rest of the work comes down next Tuesday. Because you are, after all, reading the blog of someone who makes books, it seemed appropriate to post some of the stuff, much of it book based, that they had in the cases in the bar (for those of you who have never been, the bar at Lula is made from old humidors salvaged from the cigar store that used to occupy the space...so the bar is hollow and covered in glass–we show art there, as well as on the walls). The first two pieces are children's books that Nadine painted in to alter/interact with. As is often the case, the physicality of these is pretty well lost in just zeros and ones, but they're awesome. Here are two of my favorite spreads:


The next three are Nick's, from a blank book in which he did a series of small paintings.



Lastly is a handmade book of what I'll call improvisational screen printing. Nick made a number of small screens with various geometric shapes and used them to create different compositions, ultimately binding them together in the book. Again...physicality, uselessness of computer screens, subtlety, awesomeness, etc etc ad naseum. Following these last book pieces are two more drawing/painting collage type things. Did I mention their posters?