Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Classic Whaling Prints Exhibition

Check out my meticulously constructed 1':.75" model of the upcoming Classic Whaling Prints Exhibition! It's not done yet, but it's getting there. Here's a walking tour of my souped up curatorial dollhouse.





















Here're the Hulsart prints you see when you first enter (yellow paper just represents information plaques).




















Then immediately on your left is the seventeenth century Dutch whaling prints.















There are a bunch of French prints behind you.















The French are the lads for painting action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings in Europe, and where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing commotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where the beholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutive great battles of France; where every sword seems a flash of the Northern Lights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a charge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that gallery, are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.

The natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of things seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings they have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England's experience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the Americans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only finished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the whale hunt.
(Moby Dick, Chapter 56)
















Back to more Dutch stuff. And the narwhal tusk. Grey cardboard indicates a display case, yellow a door.















British prints.















Then onto the American prints! Apparently, if things go according to my model, a large number of prints will remain in plastic bags on the floor in front of you.















More American prints on all sides. America rocks.















The Benjamin Russel 1871 Arctic Abandonment series, both water color originals and print versions.















Closing with Japanese and Eskimo whaling prints. Unfortunately, the Eskimos never really made very many prints of any sort, but the Japanese sure as heck did. That green piece on the table is a scroll.















The exhibition opens in late February if you'd like to see something more than scale three-quarter-inch place markers on foam core.

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