Listen up, children.

Once upon a time there was no such thing as the Internet.

In those dark days we had to scrape and scrounge what information we could find wherever we could find it:  public libraries, phone books, bulletin boards, the backs of obscure magazines.  There was no easy way to locate materials, instruction, or supplies.  If we needed to research something out of the ordinary, first we had to figure out where and how we could even find the information before we could learn it.

In those dark days, clothing and costume design was not the semi-respected pastime that it is today.  Fashion was the reserve of professionals in New York and Paris and Milan.  Sewing was out-of-the-mainstream.  Cosplay was undeard-of.  Fabric stores were rare and poorly stocked.  The only costuming conventions one ever heard of were of scholarly societies and historians who took little notice of practicing artisans.  If you weren’t at least a semi-professional theatrical costumer, personal costuming (aside from ephemeral Halloween-related activity) was seen as a little odd.

A funny sort of hobby ...

In those dark days before the Internet there were diligent and devoted people who assembled compendiums of information, encyclopedias almost, of addresses and sources of supplies and mail-order and books and information on specialized subjects.  The granddaddy of them all was The Whole Earth Catalogue, which enraptured my childhood years, and until the Internet made them obsolete these “catalogues” were vital resources.

I first found reference to The Whole Costumers’ Catalogue while thumbing through the massive volumes of Books in Print (something else made obsolete by the Internet) in my local bookstore.  The premise sounded so promising, I ordered a copy sight unseen in the hope that it would prove helpful.

Boy, did it ever.  I had hit the costumers’ jackpot.  I would have been satisfied with a modest listing of resources and addresses, but Karen L. Dick’s book proved to be a fantastic, dense, carefully assembled, relatively large volume of the most wide-ranging of resources, everything a serious costumer would need, from patterns to fabrics to plastic-molding supplies to dental equipment.

I was in costumers’ heaven.  My well-thumbed copy, the 14th (and I believe last) edition, has carefully pencilled notes in the margins: a check for sources I contacted, a double-check for ones that responded (because of the time it took to print a book, some of the information would be obsolete, and some businesses would be gone), a snail shell for the ones that were very slow, a skull for ones I believed to be no more, an “H” for things I already had (there were only a few of those).

The book was clearly a result of massive efforts on the part of Ms. Dick, and I was and am grateful for the work she put into it.  While it is a sort of book that is probably no longer necessary in the way that Sears mail-order catalogues are no longer necessary, it was vital in its time.  The Whole Costumers’ Catalogue put possibilities into my hands that would have been very difficult to find on my own.

So know, children, and remember, that once upon a time information was not readily available at everybody’s fingertips, and that there were people who did a darned lot of work to make it available.  And while their works are no longer necessary, we who had to live through those times are grateful that they were there.

Now, be good, children. and maybe next time I’ll tell you how I made my first Dungeons and Dragons costume as a teenager out of a hippie tucked-cotton Mexican wedding shirt, a waterproof rain poncho, a fence post, and window putty.

It was sixty years ago today …

Since I am a history wonk who loves to put things into context, here not only is a review of the old magazine, but also a little historical perspective. I may ramble a bit. And the review will contain spoilers.

So let’s find out some of what would have been going on on that cool day in mid-March sixty years ago when the April 1952 issue would have hit the newsstands, and then let us see what the magazine has for us.

Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin

March 1952 is a subdued time. The Korean War has dragged on in bloody stalemate for nearly two years since the “fall” of China to the Communists, blunting the optimism of the end of World War II. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin has been hard at work for two years of anti-Communist hysteria, and has years ahead of him of witch-hunting and bullying.

President Harry Truman

President Harry Truman‘s popularity is dropping rapidly, but it’s only March and the presidential elections haven’t gotten into swing yet.

New monarch of Great Britain

In world news, King George VI of England, the wartime king, died last month and young Elizabeth II is now queen, although her official coronation will not be until next year. Mohandas Gandhi, a great voice for nonviolence and peace, was assassinated five years ago, and his ideas seem irrelevant now.

Recent new states include the Federal Republic of Germany (“West” Germany), the German Democratic Republic (“East” Germany), the People’s Republic of China (“China”), the Republic of China (“Taiwan”), the Republic of Ireland (“not Northern Ireland”), the Dominion of Pakistan, the Union of India, the Kingdom of Jordan, and Israel.

Bad news.

The Soviet Union lifted its blockade of Berlin on May 12, 1949, but the good news was brief. On August 29, 1949, the west’s comfortable postwar monopoly on nuclear weapons was shattered when the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb in Kazakhstan. Panicked US citizens sought to expose the spies and saboteurs they were convinced must exist — how else could the Soviets have made a bomb? The US is now two years into a massive anti-Communist witch hunt, spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.

On January 31, 1950, President Truman announced an emergency program to quickly develop a hydrogen bomb. They are still (presumably) hard at work, but no results have been announced yet. Just last month (February 1952), Winston Churchill announced that the UK had developed a nuclear bomb. The first electricity was generated by a nuclear power plant only three months ago, on December 20, 1951 in Idaho. It was enough to light four 200-watt light bulbs.

Subversive

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) (which has been a permanent standing committee since 1945) started holding hearings on Hollywood in 1947 and has produced a blacklist which will ultimately have over 300 actors, directors, screenwriters and more, who are de facto not allowed to work. Many careers have already been destroyed, and many fine talents have been driven away from Hollywood. Persons already on the blacklist include playwright Lillian Hellman, actor Paul Robeson, and author Richard Wright.

Advertising one's diligence.

Alger Hiss, a lawyer and journalist, was convicted of perjury in 1950 for denying that he was a spy for the Soviet Union. President Truman called the trial a “red herring,” and its virtue may perhaps be judged by the two careers it launched: Richard M. Nixon, who successfully led the investigation, and Joseph McCarthy, who successfully started an anti-Communist witch hunt in its wake.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death in April 1951 for spying for the Soviets. A very large number of people believe them to be innocent and are trying to get a stay of execution.

Hot stuff.

“Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” by Dr. Alfred Kinsey et al., popularly known as the first half of the Kinsey Reports, was published in 1948, shocking and fascinating the public and immediately becoming a best-seller. Public discussion of sexuality becomes daringly fashionable. Cole Porter cites the study in a lyric in “Kiss Me Kate.” The female report will be published in 1953.

Women’s rights have been in full retreat since the high point of the nineteen-twenties (they have been in general decline for four hundred years or so). After women had provided invaluable support during World War II, a concerted social effort was made to get women out of the workplace and back into homes. Three years ago in 1949 Simone de Beauvoir published her treatise The Second Sex, arguing that women are socially defined as “Other,” not normal, pushed aside and forced into passivity and not allowed to be fully human, as men are. It has not been translated yet into English, but it has garnered notoriety and both Ms. de Beauvoir and her book have been viciously attacked.

Civil rights for black citizens is a simmering issue. Segregation is still the law of the land. Interracial marriage is illegal in most states apart from the northeast (California and Oregon only just repealed their anti-miscegenation laws). President Truman desegregated the armed services in 1948, angering many segregationists. Attempts by the administration to advance civil rights were thwarted by the US Senate in 1949, but in 1950 the Supreme Court ruled favorably on some civil rights cases. In the fall of 1951, just a few months ago, a class action lawsuit was filed against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas by thirteen black parents of young children, led by Oliver L. Brown, requesting that the schools be integrated. This year the United States District Court for the District of Kansas will rule against the parents, and Brown v. Board of Education will continue on to the Supreme Court.

Jack Kerouac coined the term “Beat Generation” in 1948 to describe the anti-conformist, drug-centered youth movement in New York. It hasn’t yet exploded into pop culture’s notice.

"The King and I" opened a year ago, on March 29, 1951

“The King and I” is in the middle of a succesful Broadway run. Arthur Miller has recently written and won the Pulitzer prize for “Death of a Salesman.” Christopher Fry has written “The Lady’s Not for Burning.” “South Pacific” opened on Broadway in 1949 and is still going strong.

The next big thing in art

While New York art critics see nothing but European-style abstraction, American art is still dominated largely by the regionalism and social realism of the 1930s and 1940s. Andrew Wyeth, for example, painted “Christina’s World” in 1948. Major artists include Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, and Georgia O’Keefe. Abstract expressionism, that manly, robust, oh-so-American art, is just on the cusp of being identified and made fashionable in New York, but few outside of a small circle have heard of it yet.

Radio music is dominated by swing bands and crooners like Frank Sinatra, although Pete Seeger and others are popularizing folk music. Seeger and the Weavers’ cover of Leadbelly’s “Goodnight, Irene” was the top song for 13 weeks in 1950. Although the Weavers have stuck to unobjectionable songs because of anti-Communist hysteria (and are criticised by progressives for it), they will still be blacklisted next year and silenced from the airwaves. Other recent popular songs include “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” “If I Knew You Were Comin’ Id’ve Baked a Cake” and “Ragg Mopp.”

Science fiction outperforms superheroes in comic books.

It is near the end of what later is called the Golden Age of comic books. Almost 200 comic book titles are available monthly at newsstands, aimed at a diverse audience of men, women, and children. Superheroes have been declining since the end of World War II, but there are plenty of western, romance, crime, children’s, science fiction, horror, and war comics.

In newspaper comics, “Pogo” and “Peanuts” have recently been launched.

The Polaroid Land Camera was invented in 1948, allowing instant photography without a darkroom.

Last year, 1951, was big in technological developments. In 1951 the television networks extended their reach from coast to coast and are now broadcasting serials and news (although radio serials are still more popular). “The March of Time” series of newsreels in movie theaters ended its run in 1951, but several other newsreel series continue.

UNIVAC in 1951

In 1951 the Remington Rand Corporation introduced UNIVAC, the first commercial digital computer (ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, was built for the US military and completed in 1946. Interestingly, the team of ENIAC programmers, math majors from the University of Pennsylvania, was entirely female — something the army glossed over and kept silent about for decades).

Interest in computers and robotics is high.

CBS experimented with color TV for four months last year, although it is currently suspended and being retooled.

New York City installed the country’s first “walk-don’t walk” signs on February 5, 1952, to reduce pedestrian fatalities.

Here are some books which have been published within the last two or three years, including Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel, the New York Times Bestseller the day the April 1952 issue of “Astounding Science Fiction” hits the newsstands:

*****

The April 1952 issue of “Astounding Science Fiction” contains a lot of fun reading. There is some very early speculation on what computer control of city functions would be like, and a speculation on nuclear accidents. There is a depressingly anti-feminist screed, and a casually female-inclusive tale. There’s a weird cross-pollination of swashbuckling and hardboiled fiction. There’s a good long discussion of cloud-seeding, and some remarkable gems hidden in advertisements. Radioactivity is a recurring motif.

I found the stories overall enjoyable, although I certainly had issues with some of them, which I will detail below. There are spoilers, which I hope will not offend, not after sixty years.

*****

The Editor’s Page has an editorial, “Military Weapon” by editor John W. Campbell, Jr. He says, “Free exchange of information … has gone into total eclipse. … The true measure of the military potential of a nation today is its technical research capacity.” Note the early cold war, McCarthy-era allusions to military secrecy and paranoia, and the awareness that it is advanced tech, not number of guns, that gives a state military power.

*****

The first story is a novelette, “Dumb Waiter,” by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (known chiefly for his devastating 1960 masterpiece, A Canticle for Leibowitz). There are some nice illustrations by Rogers.

It is 1989, a few years after a sort of limited radioactive dusting made cities temporarily uninhabitable. Now the radioactivity has cooled off, but the unnamed capital city is run by a computer, Central, whose protocols keep people out. If you try to enter the city and jaywalk or commit a traffic violation or are simply stopped by a cop robot and don’t have a currently valid id (and nobody does, because they’re issued by Central), you’re put into jail and a robot subunit will bring you an empty tray because the city ran out of food long ago and you will starve to death. The city robots all rely on radio instructions from Central. Robot jet fighters from the enemy fly over the city daily, opening long-empty bomb bays. Apparently this problem is worldwide.

At the beginning of the story, our hero, Mitch Laskell, is riding a bicycle and carrying a shotgun towards the city. He is a youngish computer programmer, and if he can somehow communicate with Central he may be able to change its programming. There is some urgency because a group of desperate citizen vigilantes is going to try to blow up Central, a horror to the practical-minded Mitch, who hates to see good tech go to waste. In the suburbs of the city, where life is still possible, he meets Marta, a young widow driven temporarily mad by her husband’s messy suicide. Mitch stays the night at her house — what happens is ambiguous — and in the morning discovers she has stolen his bicycle and gun and headed with her baby into the city. But she isn’t insane any more, and she baked him some biscuits for breakfast.

He finds the biscuits tasty and decides her husband must not have killed himself because of her cooking. This is the first of several terribly jarring bits bordering on misogyny.

Mitch gets pulled over on an expired license violation and brought to jail, where he finds Marta, who was also brought in and the bicycle impounded. She is frantic because her baby was taken away to the city orphanage. Fortunately, past bombing has damaged the jail walls, and the two of them can escape (There are telephone lineman robots, but apparently not masonry repair robots).

All this time Mitch is lecturing and scolding Marta for knowing nothing about technology. The message of “Dumb Waiter” is that people who don’t know how their tech truly works are fools who lead the world to disaster.

This not unreasonable argument is presented with a heavy hand, and Mitch’s abuse of a fragile, frightened young widow and mother just makes him look like a creep.

Mitch and Marta make their way to the orphanage, where she charges alone upstairs and is violently ill at the sight of all the little skeletons. Her child is safe, and she gathers it up.

Mitch gains access to the mayor’s house, which has a direct, secure line to Central. Eventually he fixes Central’s programming, but not before turning Marta over his knee and giving her a spanking — Nice one, Hero! — because she balked at his crazy-sounding plan which he didn’t bother to explain while he was haranguing her about her technological ignorance and her unfitness to be a mother.

At the end Mitch has saved the day. But I wanted to sock him.

The city in “Dumb Waiter” is a fascinating period piece. It’s like a typical 1950s city, but completely computer-controlled and filled with robots. The traffic cop robots are made with moulded Irishman heads, and the robots in general duplicate the society of the 1950s — robot bankers and secretaries and telephone repair entities and so on. The story is an argument against a single, unreachable central computer controlling everything. There’s also an argument that people must understand technology, although I don’t think it has to be as deep an understanding as Miller’s character insists and I don’t agree that smacking around the ignorant helps anybody. The misogyny aimed at a severely traumatized newly-widowed young mother was appalling.

*****

“Suicide’s Grave,” by Joseph Petkoff, is a smug little piece about a scientist who got things wrong. Meh.

*****

The next feature, “The Farthest Horizon,” by Raymond F. Jones, is a real piece of work. Sarah, a desperately unhappy woman, is the daughter and wife of rocketship pioneers, and the mother of an aspiring one. Her entire life has been spent on military bases, huddling with the women while they wait, bored and terrified, for their menfolk to return from their missions (the very thought of women doing anything else here never comes up).

She wants nothing more than to become a farmer, as her father finally did in retirement. The story is how, during a family vacation, she is told — commanded, really — that she and her husband and son will be moving to the military base on Mars and her son will have strings pulled to become a junior rocket pilot.

Every member of her family has long conversations with her, telling her, serenely, rationally, reasonably, how selfish she is to be unhappy about this. Her mother actually tells her that men must be indulged in everything they want, that her only other choice would be to leave them and be a farmer by herself, that that is what women’s freedom truly means, and that she is mean and unreasonable to ask for any consideration or input.

In a bizarre psychological twist ending, Sarah realizes she has been inhibiting her sense of fun, and now she is happy, so happy, to move to a Martian military base and let her men have what they want. Yay.

Shades of Sylvia Plath! This story made me want to beat myself to death with a tire iron. After I described it my husband called it “a consciousness-lowering story.”

Raymond F. Jones is best known for writing This Island Earth, which apparently also snarks at organized labor. Call me fussy, but I don’t think I’ll be searching out any more of his fiction.

The illustrations are by Orban, who did a very nice job showing the psychology of the characters.

*****

The next story is “Radiation” by Kelley Edwards (about whom I could find very little information online). Edwards speculates about what an accident at a nuclear power plant would be like. Bear in mind that this story was published barely three months after the first real-world generation of nuclear power.

In the story, radioactive fuel slugs are ejected from their containment tubes and scattered all over a main floor. The engineers have to find a way to clean them up without being exposed to too much radiation. Edwards uses imaginary units (I think) for the radiation measurements. The cleanup crew have no safety suits, no cameras to remotely view anything (television is still new), not even radios to communicate with. Although someone talks knowledgeably about radiation bouncing up off of concrete floors, they use mirrors (!) to peer around corners at dangerously radioactive areas, which I think should bounce the radioactivity as badly as the concrete does. They have to cobble together a wheeled platform of lead bricks to enter the radioactive area. Everyone is worried about radioactive exposure — that part is true to life — but in the story it is clearly something you get over with rest. They solve the problem with fire hoses, washing the slugs into a pit under a service elevator, but they worry about radioactive water leaking out.

Edwards is clearly trying to present the difficulties inherent in a nuclear accident to an audience barely aware of the possibility. He does a good job, but it sure feels optimistic.

The characters are barely sketched in, having a sort of military unit army buddy casualness, but not much personality.

*****

The next article is nonfiction, “Clouds” by Roscoe Fleming, illustrated with photographs supplied by General Electric. It’s about cloud seeding to produce rain. The article mentions in several places that the Weather Bureau thinks it nonsense, but the main thrust is the excitement at General Electric’s research laboratories. It’s interesting reading, even if the Weather Bureau has turned out to be closer to the truth than GE was.

*****

“Cosmophyte” is a story by Julian Chain. Elements of it are so interesting I wonder why I can’t find out anything at all about the author.

The Irridalians are urban, harried, commercial, militaristic aliens, clearly standing in for 1950s Americans. The Terrans (humans of Earth) are relaxed, peace-loving, treehouse-dwelling gardeners on a future Earth free of pollution because of hydrogen reactors. Not much really happens. The main character, an Irridalian, makes contact with human friends he knew earlier and discovers that an Irridalian general has precipitated an international (interplanetary?) incident because he offended the main character’s female human friend, who is, as it turns out, a very important government official in Earth’s decentralized, vaguely anarchic government.

That’s right, in this story a woman is matter-of-factly part of the government. It’s a refreshing change from Jones’ story, above.

Our Irridalian hero has a nice time with his human hosts, then returns to his home planet where he finds the Irridalians beginning to take up treehouses. And that’s the story.

Who is Julian Chain? I’ve never heard the name before. This story stands out so much from most of the science fiction of the 1950s; it’s more like an ecological parable from the 1960s, with women in an equal role in government to boot. Not much happens, I’ll grant you, but the implications show an interesting imagination.

I would love to know more about the author.

*****

“The Reference Library” is book reviews by P. Schuyler Miller. The main essay is reviews of introductions to science fiction anthologies. There is also a review of Wine of the Dreamers, by John D. MacDonald, later known for his mystery novels. The book is about aliens who wreak havoc on Earth while thinking they are only playing a sort of virtual reality game.

*****

“Gunner Cade” by Cyril Judd (a pseudonym of Cyril Kornbluth and Judith Merril), is part two of a three-part serial, and since I haven’t got either parts 1 or 3, lacks a bit in development. It was a fun read, though.

The title character is a member of a celibate monastic order of zap-gun-wielders who serve the Emperor (of everything, apparently). The setting is a civilized but vaguely post-apocalyptic Earth, where Washington, Baltimore, France, etc. still have their names and the ruins of the Pentagon are a plot point and everybody still speaks modern English, although it is said to be 10,000 years in the future. There are two severely separated castes of people, the starborne (nobility), and the Commoners (everybody else). There are colonies on Mars.

Gunner Cade is a severely loyal and somewhat naïve brother in his order who has stumbled on a conspiracy to assassinate some high officials and is trying to warn them while on the run for being framed. It is clear that there is corruption even in the higher officials in his order, but Cade can’t bring himself to see that.

I don’t know if the story was deliberately written this way or if it was cultural blindness on the authors’ part, but “Gunner Cade” reads like an odd combination of the Three Musketeers and classic 1940s noir, with central-casting smugglers, con artists, prostitutes and high-class dames, drug abuse and conspiracy. The hero is pretty obtuse about the obviousness of what’s going on. The characters are as thin as cardboard, and there is nothing in this story that you can’t see coming from light-years away, but it’s entertainingly written.

The illustrations are by Gordon Pawelka (about whom I could find no information online, except that he illustrated a good amount of science fiction around this time), nicely stylized and expressionistic.

*****

“Mechanical Mice” is a little feature about a computerized “mouse” which solves a maze. The computer is actually the maze, and the mouse is magnetic.

*****

“Brass Tacks” is letters to the editor. There is a long explanation of geology from Wallace de Laguna, a geologist at Brookhaven, and a letter from L. Sprague de Camp, clearly part of an ongoing discussion about the definitions of and distinction between science fiction and fantasy (Some things never change).

*****

On page 163 there is an ad for Doubleday Books, and it’s an eye-opener. In this brief list of recent (to 1952) science fiction books are major groundbreaking classics of science fiction: Isaac Asimov’s Pebble in the Sky and The Stars Like Dust; Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man; Hal Clement’s Needle; John Collier’s Fancies and Goodnights; Robert A. Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters, Waldo & Magic, Inc., and his anthology Tomorrow the Stars; and John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids.

*****

On page 169 is a small ad on “How to Understand *CONSTRUCTION OF ROBOTS *SYMBOLIC LOGIC *MATHEMATICS and many other subjects” by “Edmund C. Berkeley and Associates, (makers of SIMON the Mechanical Brain, and SQUEE, the Robot Squirrel … ”

SQUEE the Robot Squirrel!

SQUEE the Robot Squirrel, the first true robot, still exists

SQUEE was, according to davidbuckley.net, the first true robot. It could find “food” and squirrel it away. It seems to have been largely forgotten, but just in light of its name I think it should be remembered.

There is some information about SQUEE here.

*****

I may come off as a little crotchety about this magazine, but I enjoyed reading it. I went into this with only a vague sense of science fiction of the time. I had read a few novels, but basically this was history to me. The stories were well-crafted, thoughtful, and wide-ranging in their approaches to science fiction. The characters in the stories were pretty flat for the most part, but I enjoyed reading about the ideas the authors were exploring. The magazine included unexpected detective noir and really unexpected hippie eco-parable, as well as the expected rocket-jockies. There was not-at-all surprising sexism and surprising inclusiveness and some thoughtful examinations of nuclear power.

Many thanks to my husband, Richard, for the birthday gift of an assortment of fabulous old pulp science fiction magazines.

The Aegis of Athena, painted leather, 2011

I’m working on some art to do with Athena, a painting and outfit which echo off each other. Here as part of the outfit is the Aegis of Athena, the shield with the head of the gorgon, Medusa. It’s made of heavy leather, cut, curled, and glued into place, and painted with acrylics. Some of the paint is interference gold, which can only be seen from certain angles. The holes along the edge are to fasten it to the rest of the outfit.

The Aegis of Athena, © Alessandra Kelley. Sculpted leather painted with acrylics. 2011.

Detail of the Aegis, © Alessandra Kelley

Scientific Illustration: A Guide for the Beginning Artist, by Zbigniew T. Jastrzebski

Zbigniew T. Jastrzebski was a scientific illustrator at the Field Museum of Natural History and a teacher at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and other area colleges. I took his classes for three years while at the SAIC. He was demanding and precise and required his students to work to their utmost capacities, just as he pushed himself all the time. He was an immigrant from Communist Poland, a child of World War II. He had no relations here save his mother, but he had many, many friends.

Zbigniew Jastrzebski at work, from a Field Museum publicity photo

Zbigniew was devoted to his craft. He would not tolerate laziness or carelessness. He also had a quirky sense of humor and an offputting demeanor. He was a small man, with ice-blue eyes, a shaved head, and a blond beard, fond of leather jackets and spiked helmets (although he had for formal occasions what we his students referred to as “the horrible brown suit”). He spoke in a deep voice with a thick Polish accent. My friends referred to him as “a mean old kung-fu master” because he required so much discipline and so often left me, an overconfident kid coasting on talent, deflated and determined to work harder.

A rendering of a fossil marsupial skull in pencil on Strathmore paper by Zbigniew Jastrzebski

Some students complained about him. He was a poor fit for the Art Institute’s laissez-faire style of artmaking and emphasis on self-expression more than technique or self-discipline. I think the students who did stick with him — and there were a good number — loved his teaching, his style, his devotion.

After graduation I met him a few times. Whenever I went to the Field Museum, where he worked during the day, I looked him up. I introduced him to my husband, to our first child. We would look out over the panorama of Chicago’s skyline and discuss art and illustration.

Zbigniew died suddenly in 2001, at the age of 60, sitting at his drafting table in his studio one night. I didn’t hear about it until I went to the Field Museum to find him because his phone wasn’t working and I couldn’t find his studio in the phone book.

I drew this cat skull in Zbigniew's class; it's not in his league, of course. Pencil on Strathmore paper

Zbigniew T. Jastrzebski had rare talent, although he would have scoffed at the notion and called it simply practice. He was the best teacher I ever had, and I owe him a great deal.

Scientific Illustration: A Guide for the Beginning Artist, by Zbigniew T. Jastrzebski. A book I recommend.

He wrote a book, Scientific Illustration: A Guide for the Beginning Artist, which is full of useful advice and information. It’s long out-of-print, but seems readily available secondhand online. I’d recommend it to any aspiring scientific illustrator.

I like to read it just to hear his voice again.

Star Trek "redshirt" sugar cookies

We actually baked these last Christmas, but since today is the 45th anniversary of the first broadcast of “Star Trek,” I give you the kids’ redshirt sugar cookies. The vanilla ones are humans and the gingerbread ones are Klingons. Note our children’s creative use of the cookies that broke during baking.

We made the gingerbread men into Klingon redshirts

Surprise! A Japanese artist painted this tempera portrait of a Chicago heiress in Paris. Tsugouharu Foujita, Japanese, "Portrait of Emily Crane Chadbourne," tempera and silver leaf (now tarnished) on canvas, 1922, Art Institute of Chicago

Egg tempera is a simple paint. Powdered pigments are mixed with egg yolk and a little water. That’s all. Laid down on a white, absorbent ground, usually plaster-based, they dry into a durable, brilliantly colored, tough film which can demonstrably last for millennia essentially unchanged.

The use of egg as a painting medium is ancient. Pliny mentions it. Some of the surviving Roman-era Egyptian mummy portraits are egg tempera. Artists learned early on to take advantage of egg’s toughness and permanence.

Gherardo di Jacopo, called Starnino, Italian, "The Dormition of the Virgin," 1401/1405 tempera on panel, Art Institute of Chicago

Egg was the primary medium for medieval panel painters. The Greek and Roman traditions had been carried forward primarily by Greek and Russian icon painters, and their work had a strong effect on Italian and other European art. The Italians continued to use egg tempera long after northern Europe had turned to oils, and of course the Greeks and Russians never really gave it up.

Sandro Botticelli, Italian, "Birth of Venus,"tempera, c. 1485, the Uffizi Gallery

Nevertheless, in the history of Western Art as it is usually written, egg tempera vanishes as a medium, utterly supplanted by oil paints by about the year 1500. Botticelli was the last major artist to stay with tempera. Michelangelo‘s panel paintings, of which admittedly there are only three, are all tempera.  But every artist who came after followed the examples of Raphael, who abandoned tempera for oils, and Leonardo, who never used tempera at all.

In the nineteenth century, concerned over the loss of a sense of craftsmanship, various artists, historians, and romantics looked back to earlier eras for inspiration. Among the many manifestations of this urge was a revival of the egg tempera technique in Germany and England. The methods and recipes were passed around, from teacher to student and artist to artist, and by the early twentieth century it was clear that a serious, if small, revival was in swing.

Early twentieth century tempera artists include Alphonse Mucha, who painted many tempera murals, and Otto Dix, who dabbled in tempera at an early age.

Otto Dix, German, self-portrait in egg tempera, 1912, Detroit Institute of the Arts

Ben Shahn, American, "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti," tempera, 1931-1932, the Whitney Museum of American Art

As modernism spread during the twentieth century, egg tempera appealed to artists with an interest in social observation, such as Thomas Hart Benton and Ben Shahn (who painted the moving “The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti“). In the nineteen-thirties the WPA sponsored many young artists to paint public murals, a good percentage of which were done in egg tempera. Daniel V. Thompson published his technical manuals of tempera techniques in the nineteen-thirties, making them much more widely available.

Reginald Marsh, American, "Tattoo and Haircut," tempera on masonite, 1932, Art Institute of Chicago

In the nineteen-thirties and -forties Reginald Marsh and Isabel Bishop made their wry and witty observations of the people of New York. A small group of friends, Paul Cadmus, George Tooker, and Jared French, were encouraging and inspiring each others’ works in tempera, looking back to classicism, mythology and spirituality. Through the ‘fifties, ‘sixties, and seventies Andrew Wyeth pursued his vision of humanity and rural New England. Robert Vickrey developed his austere paintings of children and bicycle shadows and brick walls.

Andrew Wyeth, American, "Christina's World," tempera on panel, 1948, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Today there are many who paint in egg tempera, from the iconographers (still!) to those like Cynthia Large and Koo Schadler, who deliberately look to the Renaissance, to abstract artists like Kathleen Waterloo who use the medium for its unique color effects. Egg tempera comes and goes in fashion, but its simplicity, its beauty, and its permanence continue to recommend it.

When I picked up the manual for France (“Instructions for American Servicemen in France during World War II,” University Of Chicago Press, 2008), I was shocked and delighted to recognize a Ludwig Bemelmans drawing of a gendarme on the cover.  The beloved author of “Madeline” and lots of witty books for adults had illustrated the French handbook!

Or so I thought.  There was no credit given, and when I contacted the University of Chicago Press they were unaware of any Bemelman’s connection.  No list of Bemelman’s books includes this one, which was originally published under the title “A Pocket Guide to France,” by the War and Navy Departments, Washington DC in 1944.

But I am convinced.  If these drawings are not by Ludwig Bemelmans, I will eat my hat.  The similarities between them and known Bemelmans illustrations are too great.  Bemelmans worked in New York City long before the war, and I would not be surprised if he was recruited for this effort, particularly given how famous and beloved his 1939 book “Madeline” was in this country.

Compare the illustrations from the army manual to to known Ludwig Bemelmans drawings, which I got from “La Bonne Table,” a collection of his essays on food.  In a general way, the use of ink line, the loose, wild style is the same.  There are also details of shading and hatching and ways of depicting people, buildings, and foliage which are compellingly similar.

This is a drawing from the army manual showing Paris.

This is a drawing from the army manual showing Paris.  Note the oddly right-leaning people walking away from us with their little hook-shaped feet.

This is a Bemelmans drawing of walking people

This is an image by Bemelmans showing a man and boy walking away from us.  They have the exact same tilt and the exact same sort of legs and feet as in the army manual illustration.  The man’s right arm is extended just as the woman’s carrying the bag as part of a couple in the army manual illustration.  Note also his hat is drawn exactly like the man’s in that same couple of the army manual illustration.  These are idiosyncratic details of drawing that are as unique to an artist as fingerprints.  It is highly unlikely that a different artist than Bemelmans could have produced them.

Bemelmans drew these rooftops

On the left is a Ludwig Bemelmans drawing of rooftops and chimney pots.  Compare it to the rooflines in the Paris illustration from the army manual, the use of lined-up chimneys and the little touch of the fenced-in balcony on the lower right.

A Bemelmans drawing of a town

At right is a Bemelmans drawing of a town.  Note the resemblance in style of the building on the left with the background building on the right in the army manual drawing of Paris.

The frontspiece of the army manual

This is the frontspiece of the army manual, a French street scene in front of a hotel.  Note the perspective, the hotel sign, the use of a figure on a bicycle on the left where the front wheel of the cycle is a circle with spokes and the back wheel is scrawled in and incomplete, and the little tree on the right which is a scrawl of loose double-lined branches and individual “C” shapes for leaves.

A Bemelmans drawing of a street of hotels

This is a Bemelmans drawing of various hotels on a street.  It’s a typical city drawing for him.  The perspective is similar to the army manual drawing, the treatment of the hotel signs is nearly identical, and there’s another person on a bicycle on the left and the bicycle is drawn similarly to the one in the army manual, with a spoked front wheel and an only partially-drawn back wheel.  There are tree branches in the upper right with the same sort of loose, double-lined branches and the same sort of individually-spaced, “C”-shaped leaves as the tree in the army drawing.

Army manual drawing of a mayor

At left is the army manual drawing of a typical French mayor. Below are two Bemelmans drawings of officious men.  Note the linework, but also the details of expression, the identical high collars and bow ties, the little moustache, the glasses on a chain.  Put them side by side and you could easily imagine them drawn by the same artist.

Two Bemelmans drawings of men

Ludwig Bemelmans had an art style that was unlike anyone else’s, and it is too much to suggest that some anonymous army illustrator somehow managed to duplicate his art style and line so completely.

I am not a certified expert, just a practicing artist.  From the evidence of my own eyes I believe this book, “Instructions for American Servicemen in France during World War II,” to be an undiscovered gem of a lost work of Ludwig Bemelmans illustration.

I chanced across an August, 1918 copy of “Red Cross Magazine” with photographs of the uniforms of women American Red Cross workers in France in World War I.  I thought these photos would be of interest to historians, costumers, and medical professionals, so I’ve scanned and cleaned up the pictures and present them here.  I’ve also transcribed the captions to make life easier, and included some context.

The clothing shown is simply and conservatively cut, with the high waist fashionable in 1918.  It follows generally fashionable lines.  Interestingly, the article claims the American Red Cross had just changed the uniform from white to grey  because of “the ever-present laundry problem in France,” presumably related to the blighted conditions in the country after four years of total war. Here for comparison are a couple of fashion plates, one from August and one from September 1918 from the “Russell’s Standard Fashions” catalogue (reprinted by Dover Publications).

August 1918 fashions

September 1918 fashions

Note that the lines of the Red Cross uniforms are generally the same as these, with a high waist and a somewhat full skirt just shorter than ankle-length.  Hair is worn rolled up and short-appearing.  The model on the left of the August fashion plate is wearing a dress with a collar similar to that of the Red Cross standard gray working uniform.  On the right of the August plate the model wears a cape similar to the Red Cross one.  The September plate shows a couple of coats, including one on the right very like the Red Cross gray summer outdoor uniform.

As a side note, it’s interesting to contrast the inhumanly thin model drawings with the photographs of real women in real clothes.  Even though the women in this article are slim, they are nowhere near as whip-thin and elegant as the drawings.  This is why I find it so useful to use photographs of clothing when studying its history, to not get misled by stylized fashion illustration.

The nurses wear pretty laced-up boots, black or white leather and in the case of the Town and Country Nurse, what looks like velvety suede.  Rubber rain boots are exactly the same shape as the fashionable boots.  Their hats manage a certain whimsy while trying to be plain and sober.

For a comparison with similarly-cut but more avant-garde clothing, see my sketches of Paul Poiret dresses.

The article has delicate references to the horrors of the First World War.  It is mentioned that cars get stalled, that mud is involved, and that surgery aprons are “unromantic.”  ”The laundry problem in France” is a surprising, practical explanation for the origin of the “gray ladies” of the Red Cross.

One gets the impression that this is almost a recruiting article, talking of women “covet[ing]” the uniform and being “beloved” and reminding that the Red Cross Nurses “receive the same war risk insurance as officers and enlisted men.”

Text of the article:

Service Uniforms of Red Cross Workers (no author given)

The nurse’s uniform that our wounded know best — the gray cotton crepe working uniform of the Red Cross Army and Navy nurse, which makes its wearer “the best-dressed woman in the world.”  Gray is an innovation used abroad, made necessary by the laundry problem in France.  The Red Cross brassard is worn only by nurses serving directly under the Red Cross.

White is the dress uniform of the Red Cross nurse in foreign service.  Nurses of the Army and Navy Nurse Corps wear the same uniform, with their insignia, the caduceus of the Army or the anchor of the Navy replacing the Red Cross pin.  They retain the red cross on the cap, however, if they have entered the military service from the Red Cross reserve.

In the operating room and in dressing work in the wards, the war nurse wears this white utility apron.  It is a most unromantic apron, adopted to simplify the ever-present laundry problem in France; but it is a badge of service coveted, nevertheless, by thousands of untrained women.

This is the famous red-lined cape of dark blue worn by the Red Cross nurse, the cape which the French people love.  It is worn with the brilliant lining thrown back over the right shoulder.  To the public it is the cape of posters and stories; to the nurse, an emergency wrap for outdoor wear.

At work in her district, the Red Cross public nurse wears the practical gray cotton crepe uniform with regulation hat and cape.  A new public health service in our own country is that for the guarding of the sanitary zones surrounding the camps.
Rubber boots and sou’westers are an essential part of the equipment of every nurse going into foreign service.  They are the outdoor uniform of the district nurse in France, who often makes her way through rain and mud, when her car is stalled.

The distinctive outdoor uniform of the United States navy nurse is the coat-cape, worn with the letters “U.S.” and anchor.  All army and navy nurses serve directly under the Government, and receive the same war risk insurance as officers and enlisted men.
An army nurse wears the caduceus, the winged staff and serpent of the Medical Corps, with the “U.S.” on her outdoor uniform.  If she has entered the Army Nurse Corps from the Red Cross reserve, she may retain her red cross on her service cap.

The Red Cross Town and Country Nurse, in her plain blue gingham dress with soft collar and cuffs, her Panama hat and her emergency kit, is a beloved figure in rural communities from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  Her insignia is the regular Red Cross pin.
This gray summer outdoor uniform of the American Red Cross is seen to-day in Palestine and Greece, in Italy and England, in the United States and France.  The nurses are working in hospitals, dispensaries and teaching centres everywhere.

The Burgess Shale is in Canada, and contains some fascinating examples of very early shallow sea creatures from more than 500 million years ago. Related fossils have been found in China.

I first found out about the Burgess Shale from Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould, an interesting re-analysis of misunderstood old fossils.

Top view of the cake. Creatures clockwise, starting at the top: Anomalocaris, crinoid, trilobite, hallucigenia, trilobite, pikaia, trilobite.

Anomalocaris was relatively huge (two or three feet long), probably a predator. In fact, it was so big, early paleontologists didn’t realize it was a single fossil and classified its parts as separate animals. Its name means “weird shrimp” because they thought its two grappling tentacles by its mouth were the tail ends of two shrimp. In fossils, the first part named names the whole critter, and sometimes we’re stuck with inappropriate names.

The cake. Hallucigenia is the spiny thing in the upper right. Anomalocaris is the big head on the left. Pikaia is coming towards us, and there are a crinoid and a trilobite on the front side of the cake.

Hallucigenia is a fun one. I went with recent scholarship which makes it look kind of like a caterpillar, with seven pairs of flexible legs on the bottom and seven pairs of spines on top. The name refers to how bizarre its fossils looked, like a hallucination.

Pikaia was a little worm with a notochord, and thus related to the ancestor of everything with a spine. This one is not to scale, as it would have had to have been a lot smaller, and is a little squashed, like the fossil I based it on (oops).

A close-up of one of the modeling chocolate trilobites

The trilobites are pretty generic; here’s a fossil one from the Burgess Shale.

Strictly speaking, crinoids date no earlier than the Ordovician, a good fifty million years later than the time period of the Burgess Shale.  But what’s a birthday cake without something flowerlike on it?

The cake is arranged with the anomalacaris approaching and the other critters fleeing the scene.

Modeling chocolate is a fun substance. You melt 10 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, add 3 ounces of corn syrup, let it cool at room temperature in a parchment-paper-lined pan, turning occasionally, then wrap tightly and refrigerate. To use it, let it warm to room temperature and knead it and you can roll and shape it. It has a texture like fondant, but tastes much better.  My husband Richard found the recipe online.

Richard did all the work of baking and frosting the cake (chocolate pound cake with whipped ganache frosting) and making the modeling chocolate. I molded the decorations.  A science-y time was had by all.

Now available for the Amazon Kindle, two novels by Richard Garfinkle: Exaltations, an allegorical fantasy about alternate histories and fictional realities, about the ways the channels of stories affect human thought, and about love, faith, devotion, and the tyranny of quests; and just-released Wayland’s Principia, a hard science fiction novel about human-alien interaction, interstellar travel, and what it means to be human.   I provided the cover art for both books.

Samples of the first chapters of each can be found online at Achronal Press, our small press.

You can find these novels on Amazon’s website. Exaltations is here and Wayland’s Principia is here.

Now here’s why you might care to read them:

My husband, Richard Garfinkle, is a writer.

Richard has had science and science fiction published with Tor, DAW, Benbella Books, and the University of Chicago Press. His books have won various awards and gotten great reviews in Publishers Weekly, Locus, Starlog, Analog, Booklist, Kirkus Review, the Library Journal, the Washington Post, and many others. He was a finalist for the Campbell award and missed getting onto the Nebula ballot by one nomination.

What I’m saying is he’s pretty worth reading in the opinion of more than just me, his wife (Well, I think he’s brilliant, but I’ve got the whole yeah, and you’re his wife problem).

You can read more about Richard on his website, www.richardgarfinkle.com.

Owing to some odd circumstances, we have chosen to self-publish Richard’s more recent work. It was a hard decision, but one we thought might be necessary given the somewhat esoteric nature of his stories, which are dripping with mythological allusions and (please excuse my cheerleading) deep insights into human ways of thought and spirituality.

Since I’m an artist and designer, we felt we could reasonably present Richard’s books in worthwhile form. We formed a small press, Achronal Press (motto: An Odd Small Publisher), to self-publish his books. At first we tried POD (Print-on-Demand) technology, but we found the pricing disappointing, about twice what we had been led to expect and far more than we could fairly ask of readers. So we are publishing Richard’s novels as ebooks through Amazon Kindle.

We have made Richard’s books the best we can, with professional artwork and careful editing. “Exaltations” and “Wayland’s Principia” continue in Richard’s tradition of mind-expanding, deeply intellectual and spiritual literature.

Exaltations and Wayland’s Principia are for readers who like deeply thought-out alien ways and esoteric mythological references and who are interested in having their assumptions exploded.

Critics have called Richard’s work “remarkable … exhilarating,” “[w]eird, disconcerting, fascinating, and original”, “astonishing,” “literate, cerebral,” “a sophisticated consideration of the nature of consciousness,” and “staggeringly metaphorical.”

If this appeals to you, please check out Wayland’s Principia and Exaltations on Amazon.