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Defining the Demonic

- October 30, 2017 in Art & Illustrations, Books, catholicism, cristianity, demonology, demons, dictionaries, dictionary, Enlightenment, illustration, occult, occultism, Religion, Religion, Myth & Legend, the devil

Although Jacques Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire infernal, a monumental compendium of all things diabolical, was first published in 1818 to much success, it is the fabulously illustrated final edition of 1863 which secured the book as a landmark in the study and representation of demons. Ed Simon explores the work and how at its heart […]

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Race and the White Elephant War of 1884

- October 24, 2017 in Adam Forepaugh, circus history, Culture & History, elephants, Featured Articles, history of racist soap adverts, Light of Asia, P.T. Barnum, pears soap, race, racism, racist soap advert, Toung Taloung, white elephants, White Fraud, white supremacy

Feuding impresarios, a white-but-not-white-enough elephant, and racist ads for soap — Ross Bullen on how a bizarre episode in circus history became an unlikely forum for discussing 19th-century theories of race, and inadvertently laid bare the ideological constructions at their heart. The Lydian Monarch had been sighted from Fire Island and was expected in Jersey […]

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Master of Disaster, Ignatius Donnelly

- October 24, 2017 in apocalypse, Atlantis, Books, catastrophe, disaster, disaster porn, Featured Articles, Ignatius Donnelly, Literature, pseudo-science, Religion, Myth & Legend, Science & Medicine, science fiction

The destruction of Atlantis, cataclysmic comets, and a Manhattan tower made entirely from concrete and corpse — Carl Abbott on the life and work of a Minnesotan writer, and failed politician, with a mind primed for catastrophe. The magnificent civilization of Atlantis shattered and plunged beneath the sea in February 1882. Or, to be more […]

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Human Forms in Nature: Ernst Haeckel’s Trip to South Asia and Its Aftermath

- October 24, 2017 in aart form in nature, Art & Illustrations, biology, ceylon, Darwinism, ernst haeckel, eugenics, Featured Articles, Kunstformen der Natur, race, racism, Science, Science & Medicine, sri lanka

An early promoter and populariser of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, the German biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel was a hugely influential figure of the late 19th century. Bernd Brunner looks at how a trip to Sri Lanka sowed the seeds for not only Haeckel’s majestic illustrations from his Art Forms in Nature, for which he is […]

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The Art of Philosophy: Visualising Aristotle in Early 17th-Century Paris

- October 24, 2017 in allegory, aristotle, Art & Illustrations, Philosophy

With their elaborate interplay of image and text, the several large-scale prints designed by the French friar Martin Meurisse to communicate Aristotelian thought are wonderfully impressive creations. Susanna Berger explores the function of these complex works, and how such visual commentaries not only served to express philosophical ideas in a novel way but also engendered […]

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