User:L. van de beek

Lieve van de Beek

Images from intro-week

Fantastic forgeries

Grotesque , Anonymous , 1850-1900, Bronze patina over lacquer

Getting to know him

When I was walking around in the museum I saw this little guy and felt or him. He is small but the way he looks he has a big personality but still he looks to me like a scared and alone creature. He is weird and not a known animal. He has legs of a bird a body that looks like a snail shell and head that can be a dog,dragon or frog like creature. I saw him in the intro week and didn't really looked at the information about him so a few days later I went to see him again at the Boijmans. Then i saw that on the information bord of his display there was only info about 3 items and in the display where 4 objects. So I went to the information desk and they didn't know what he was he also was not on there only archive. But a bit old sercuriy guard that had worked long at the Boijmans helped me and he was almost certain that he was the Grotesque by Anonymous from 1850-1900. This was still not real information for me because what can I find about anonymous?

This was a start of some fun and interesting research moment!

I first started trying to search with Boijmans in my head en the the : Grotesque or grotesk beest and I found this photo. Its a sort of 3d photo.

Brons Boijmans 3D, wim hoppenbrouwers, 2014

This was stil not more information about the object so I went on searching on google,pinterest,flicker and tumbler. I started to try make different kinds of words to use to search online. I tried just using Grotesque this didn't really work so I used other words next to it like bird, beast or something like that then i thought of hybrid. I will go more in to the word hybrid later on. But with the combo Grotesque hybrid i finally found something in google images. If you look at the animal on the right there is an animal that looks a lot like the little guy of the Boijmans. ( I am still thinking about giving him a name so I can talk easier about him)

Twee monsters bereden door apen, Arent van Bolten, ca. 1604 - ca. 1616

So seeing this was for me the feeling that my search really started now. I went to the site of the image it was a blogspot of someone that had a page about Groteskology. And there it said that the drawing was from a Dutch artist named Arent van Bolten. And it had lots of other drawings of wears animal like creatures and information about him. ( im going to make a small page about him) Then I went searching again but with his name trying to find more about him and images. On Pinterest i found an images of a statue just exact the same as the one at the Boijmans. it was again on someones blog and it said it was in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. So i went on there site and found him again. I search further and found another and another and another.

Rijksmuseum 1610-1630, Victoria& Albert Museum 1600-1650, Harvard Art museum 1610-1630, the Detroit Institute of Arts 1610-1630, Auction site Artnet 1596

I went to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to look if he was really the same creature. Before I went I looked up where I could find him in the museum on the site. The are starting to put there hole collection online. You can look at art work and zoom in en make your own digital collection which is much fun! Here is a link to there site direct to the Grotesque statue

Grotesque on Rijksmuseum.nl.

When I was looking around on the site of the Rijksmuseum and I went to there online shop just for fun to have a look what they sell. And guess what?!?!?!?! He is for sale as replica in the shop! I was so surprised! So when I was at the Rijks I couldn't help myself and bought him in the name of research!

on the online shop, on display in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, on display in de museum shop, my own Grotesque replica

description of him

To make a replica i must observe him and try to make a good description to work with as well. First I want to scan him analoge with my eyes. I am going to try to find out ,out of which parts of animals he is made of. And now I have my own replica from the shop I can have a close look at him.

On the online shop they have made a description of the animal. The description is :The body of a snail, the legs of an ostrich, a head that is birdlike yet human: the silversmith Arent van Bolten was fascinated by such bizarre monsters, as is evidenced by his numerous design drawings and prints. This statuette may have once served as an incense burner or an oil lamp.

Legs

If i look at his legs they look like bird like legs. In the folder of the museum shop they describe him to have legs of a ostrich. So I'm looked up some pictures of ostrich legs for comparison. The legs look a like but his feet of the grotesque has 3 toes and a ostrich only 2 in the front of the foot. So the legs ar much like the ostrich tall with muscles but the feet are not the same. The feet also have skin between the toes it looks more like a water bird like foot.

Body

The body is covered with a shell but what kind of a snail shell it also is the same on both sides so its very unusual. I'v looked up some shell examples. And the shape is more like fossils of shells. The one that looks most like the shell body is the fossil of an ammonite.

Head

When I look at the head it makes me think of the Chinese statues of lions and how there head looks like.But i can't be quiet sure because in the shop folder it says its bird like, maybe because of the way of his expression like a hungry little bird.

Trying to find similar objects and images

To get some ideas of in what kind of way i want to replicate my object I tried to find object and images that could fit in the same category. So the images i found our very diverse and can look just the same but can also have just some elements. I already had found the same all over the world like i told in the beginning in the section : Getting to know him.

Here are drawings and other images that made me think of him, with for starters of course the drawing of Arent van Bolten. And i found images from all kinds of periodes from old till new that have the same essence as him. The second image is a drawing of Christoph Jamnitze he lived in the same period as Arent van Bolten and was a goldsmith almost the same profession as van Bolten. You can see clear similar shapes in the drawings. the third image is a detail of something in a book from the 16th/17th century. The fourth image is a drawing from 1545–1560 and they are attributed to Andrés de Melgar. They are sketches for ornaments on buildings. The fifth image is a drawing by Peter Holtswijller from 1565 its a design for a trophy or something like that. The sixth image is from our century. Its a illustration of Rovina Cai she made a collection of illustrations of mythical creatures this images is of a Simurgh ( a dog/bird like creature). Image number seven is a sort of collage the creature has bird legs and head and a body of what looks like a bullet, the tail of the creature is some sort of leaf. And the last image in the row underneath is a artwork of Benedetta Bonichi she makes al kinds of images with X-rays. And this artwork looks like a human/bird hybrid. This artwork gives me inspiration for what i want to make I like the idea of making something mythical more realistic. This artwork gives the idea this creature is real and this is a real xray of it.

If i imagen how he acts i think he has the same funny character as Kevin in Up. Here is Kevin in a little gif where he is some sort of annoying smart ass. Also Kevin thinks he is the superior.

And I also found pictures of objects that have same elements. The first image is a Nautilusbeker from around 1600 so from the same time as the Grotesque statue but this one is way more luxurious. Gold a precious shell and great details. But it it has bird legs, shell body and a bird head that looks like the grotesque but with a glamoured look. The second image i found , I have chosen it because of that its a lamp. Because at the Rijksmuseum they think the statue may have been used as a oil lamp. The third image is a window display of Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton has been working on very creative displays the last few years, its always fun to see a new one. Here they display there bags on sort of table's with bird legs, it looks like the bags have legs and they can just walk away. For me the Grotesque Hybrid is already alive in my head so seeing the robotic bird like thing in the fourth image it makes me think of him walking around maybe in the second stage of the assignment. In the fifth image its like somebody already gave him more life , which makes me think again of Kevin in up all those bright colors. The sixth image is a taxidermy artwork with the name : the bird that couldn’t fly. IF you look at others they are actually almost al birds that can not fly what is a weird and sad thing. Birds should fly so if they can't are they still birds? If we play with evolution i think my creature will become like the seventh image. A sort of robotic version that replaced parts of himself with spare parts of other robots.

Hybrid

In research class we made a sort of mind-map about our object. We had a big paper and we had to write down things we thought where the most important thing about the object. And out of this mind-map i found out that the most interesting thing was that the creature statue was a hybrid animal. So the word hybrid was the most interesting and important but what is the meaning of hybrid?

Testing and experimenting

/ notes