"Strange Science"

images from Strange Science by various aritists
http://www.strangescience.net/index.htm

ps - if the pictures look strange, then click on them.
I don't know why it's doing that.

art vs. science

advertised as a mermaid
and let me add this taxidermied something or other:

mandrakes

human monstrosities - first feared then revered.

neat: "German zoologist Ernst Haeckel claimed that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," or that an animal's embryological development repeats the stages of its ancestral evolution. This picture comparing embryos was intended to support that view. "

apparently this was based on an elephant. Early Modern stuff is awesome.

Witkin

I think everybody knows this guy, but I was in the mood.
Cool examples of photographic cornucopias.
Modern preternatural.

Joel-Peter Witkin
http://www.edelmangallery.com/witkin.htm#14

curiosity headwear abundance

I like his parodies of art-allusions

still life

artist's purgatory

exemplar

spare oddities

a natural root that resembles an animal

Mask made of bamboo root from the Tamang people of Nepal

They are kind of like an obscure and evil I-Spy book, with lots of hidden actions and creatures. Also, this website it absolutely crazy (the whole point of the original curiosity cabinets anyway - disorientation --> association).

"Mythological Dioramas. Zymoglyphic art contains the concepts of: myths; the earth; the illustration of a cycle of birth, living, aging, death, and rebirth; and themes of creative fermentation in the primordial ooze."

http://www.zymoglyphic.org/dioramas.html

Hydrocephalic child whose head has opened like a flower (photo by Rosamond Purcell)

Uncurated miscellani (photo by Rosamond Purcell)

Kim Keever

Kim Keever:

"He floods these 100-gallon tanks with colored lights as he pours colored inks over the models submerged in water. The resulting photographic images are rich in color with areas of sharp contrast and areas of abstract forms. Each photograph is a unique moment in time mirroring nature by having a particular light, a distinct color."

http://www.fassbendergallery.com/Keever/index.html

shellfish cornucopia

"Marine snails of the genus Xenophora collect shells, rocks, and other debris from their environment. They attach these objects to their shells at intervals during the shell's growth. Sometimes it creates a neat radiating pattern; sometimes the effect is more that of a jumble of debris. The result for us in any case is that their collections become little samplings of a variety of faraway underwater realms."

http://www.zymoglyphic.org/exhibits/xenophora.html

traditional --> modern

photographic interpretation of traditional "asian" forms


(above) Gorilla, 1976

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Don Hong-Oai (1929-2004)

http://www.zymoglyphic.org/links/photography.html

Dr. Frederick Ruysch

F. Ruysch developed new embalming techniques that revolutionized anatomical studies and practices, and also blurred the distinctions between art, science, and morality. Many of the works still exist today.

child's arm holding an eye socket

examples of preserved items in his wunderkammern/kunstkammern

the skeleton on the right clutches a piece of lung tissue. The inscription reads something like: "why did I waste my life on worldly goods?" (vanitas)

an etching done after a real diorama made by Ruysch out of infant's skeletons, injected blood vessels, and gallstones. More vanitas motifs.

lovely child's arm - vanitas

sick midwife toad - note the scattered babies(click image to enlarge)

Dr. Frederick Ruysch (1638-1731)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Ruysch