Astrolabes: Scientific and Cultural Overview

Recently at MIR Appraisal Services, Inc., our research team has been working on a fascinating and incredibly ornate astrolabe, a complex computation device used by scholars for thousands of years. Composed of a brilliant bronze and intricately decorated with astrological characters on the reverse, the entire piece is covered in Hebrew characters carefully hand-engraved into the surface. Complete with moving parts and an elaborate celestial sphere, the swinging hand used for measurement is held in place with a pointer decorated with a figural bird. The piece is a striking reminder of a time when scientific instruments were crafted by masters of their trade and were created as much for their functional purposes as for their ability to display the wealth and taste of their owners.

Throughout history, astrolabes have been used by astronomers and navigators to locate and anticipate the position of the celestial bodies such as the sun, moon, planets and stars. Beyond this they were used as a means of telling time and surveying vast territories of land. The scientific Swiss Army Knife of their time, the astrolabe is much more delicate than the mariner’s astrolabe which was invented to weather the harsh conditions of the sea. Originally invented by the Greeks one century before the Common Era, astrolabes were dramatically refined and improved by the Medieval Islamic world and often used as a way of finding Mecca for prayer or travel. In the 10th century Al Sufi, arguably the most famous astronomer of the Islamic world, noted that there were over 1,000 uses for the device, proving its vast utility as an instrument of knowledge and navigation (Winterburn).

A typical astrolabe is composed of four main pieces, the mater, rete, plates and alidade. The mater is the brass plate which is often ornately decorated and toped with a ring for hanging. The rete is the top plate which is a curvy net looking perforated plate that shows the fixed stars and the ark of the sun, a beautiful and complex layer placed over the plates beneath. The plates are tailored for different latitudes and can be interchanged to display the appropriate horizontal orientation. Finally, the alidade is a rule that moves and is used for making observations and calculations according to its orientation (Winterburn).

Besides the astrolabe there are other useful and alluring instruments including the armillary sphere, astrarium, astronomical clock, orrery and astronomical sextant. Of slightly various purposes and forms, these instruments are united in their old world craftsmanship and concern with the movement of heavenly bodies. These simple calculators were used by scholars to build the vast knowledge of the earth and stars that modern day scientists are building upon with the aide of more advanced technology including supercomputers, satellites and space shuttles. It must be remembered that these early devices and the minds behind them are the foundation of our knowledge of such distant objects.

A part of any well-rounded gentleman’s cabinet in the 16th through 18th centuries, instruments of this nature were highly prized and valued. The point is driven home by the painting “The Ambassadors” by Hans Holbein the Younger created in the middle of the 16th century. Now held at the National Gallery in London, the painting depicts two worldly men amidst a clutter of objects representing both the heavens and the earth as well as the vast range of knowledge maintained by powerful men and kingdoms. Among the objects depicted are celestial calculators and globes. A century or so later Vermeer would paint “The Astronomer,” a depiction of a scholar carefully considering a celestial globe; seized by the Nazis in 1940, the painting is now in the collection of the Louvre.

Astrolabes and other scientific instruments of the era are incredibly collectible because of the ever-increasing market of those interested in the sciences, the consistent collector market interested in historical objects and the constant group of those who are attracted to items of high quality and beauty. Their value understandably varies according to the age, origin, provenance, material and craftsmanship. Scholarship on such items and those who used them are on the rise in the academic arena of history, with some of the most interesting new books and articles chronicling the use of science in relation to the Islamic and European royal courts.

MIR Appraisal Services, Inc. is a fine art and antiques appraisal company that places a premium on research and client satisfaction. Employing a team of experts knowledgeable in various fine arts objects, MIR’s employees go the extra mile and dig deep into the interesting histories of the pieces brought to their attention by clients. Far from just giving an accurate monetary appraisal MIR offers clients true insight into the deeper value of their treasured items. 


Written and Researched by Justin Bergquist 


MIR Appraisal Services, Inc.
Principal Appraiser: Farhad Radfar, ISA AM
307 N. Michigan Avenue, Suite 308
Chicago, IL 60601
(312) 814-8510

Works Cited:
Winterburn, Emily. “Using an Astrolabe,” on MuslimHeritage.com

Celebrating Early Springtime with Andy: A Colorful March of Warhol

PART THREE:

AN ASPECT OF WARHOL’S EVOLUTION: AN UNDOING

I sense the backwards spiraling in the work of Warhol—a sort of undoing. He begins as a solo, meticulous draughtsman,

using the blotted line method as a way of evoking the sense that the works already belong to the world of published, printed images—granting the initially private works the illusion of an established public acceptance and presence (PBS, part 1).

In the end he abandons for the most part his detailed drawing in favor of photography/silkscreening, and filmmaking, becoming an open, “objective” mirror for the culture. “What was he impressed with, then? Fame—old, new, or faded. Beauty. Classical talent. Innovative talent. Anyone who did anything first. A certain kind of outrageous nerve. Good talkers. Money—especially big, old, American brand-name money…” recalls Pat Hackett (Hackett x).

In his own words, “I was never embarrassed about asking someone, ‘What should I paint?’—because pop comes from the outside…” (Wrenn 19). Indeed, some of his most famous works, including the soup cans, the silkscreened money imagery, and the Death and Disaster series, all began as suggestions and ideas of cohorts (PBS, part 1).

Warhol at first celebrates the celebrities,

and then later in the ‘70s and ‘80s, begins to elevate everyone to the stature of celebrity (though of course he held court in these later stages of his life with countless famous personalities.)

As artist Ronnie Cutrone puts it, “Pop Art was over, and there was a bunch of new movements… Pop celebrity portraits in the sixties—the Marilyns, Lizzes, Elvises, Marlons, etc.—it was a natural evolution to do portraits of private—or at least non-show business—people, therefore making them equal, in some sense, to the legends” (xiv). (I think it interesting, too, how the titles transform the individual star into pluralities in Cutrone’s description.) Even Warhol’s silkscreening process itself, beginning with the application of color, and ending with the application of the image, feels beautifully backwards, intuitive—perhaps even slightly abstract.

WARHOL’S SILKSCREEN PAINTING PROCESS

A negative of a Warhol-selected photographed image (originally from a newspaper, magazine, etc.) would be produced in a shop. Andy first placed paint on the canvas—the last step was to screen the image on top of the colors. Warhol on the silkscreening process: “With silkscreening, you pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across so that the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That was the way you got the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple—quick and chancy.

I was thrilled with it. My first experiments with screens were heads of Troy Donahue and Warren Beaty, and then when Marilyn Monroe happened to die that month, I got the idea to make screens of her beautiful face—the first Marilyns.” (Warhol 220).

As Wayne Koestenbaum relates, “Silkscreening required a historically new variety of visual intelligence—a designer’s, or a director’s, perhaps rather than a conventional painter’s” (Koestenbaum 61).

“From these first beginnings, Pop was not involved with either a simple copying of commercial sources or a simple rejection of the look of abstract art; instead, Warhol set up more or less obviously parodic situations of uncomfortable similarity between the two” (Varnedoe 338).

THE WARHOL CURRENTLY IN-OFFICE

To encounter not only an original Andy Warhol, but also a masterwork with a fascinating provenance, makes for a near-personal encounter with several iconic figures and cultural institutions of the 1960s. Perhaps Warhol returns to us our cultural property, and to encounter this original Warhol, on loan temporarily as we execute the appraisal and research process, gives us the sense that some of the fabric of this pop culture belongs to each of us—in this temporary arrangement, for this brief witnessing, the iconic Marilyn Monroe is visiting another “individual non-individual” for a moment.

Please visit our blog site again! Next week, I will consider Warhol’s use of artful and intriguing repetition.

Written and Researched by Jessica Savitz

MIR Appraisal Services, Inc.
Principal Appraiser: Farhad Radfar, ISA AM
307 N. Michigan Avenue, Suite 308
Chicago, IL 60601

(312) 814-8510

Works Cited

Burns, Ric. Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film. PBS, 2006.

Hackett, Pat. The Andy Warhol Diaries. Warner Books: New York, 1989.

Koestenbaum, Wayne. Andy Warhol. Viking: New York, 2001.

Krapp, Peter. Deja vu: Aberrations of Cultural Memory. Universty of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2004.

Warhol, Andy and Hackett, Pat. POPism: The Warhol Sixties. Harcourt Brace & Company: New York, 1980.

Varnedoe, Kirk, and Gopnik, Adam. High and Low:Modern Art, Popular Culture. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.: New York, 1991.

Louis Legrand, French Belle Epoque and Notable Etchings and Aquatints

An unfairly forgotten artist of France’s Belle Époque, Louis Legrand braved the wild cabarets of Montmartre and managed to capture the essence of the era’s exuberance in his prints and caricatures. An artist very much appreciated during his creative heyday, some have come to blame his disappearance from our cultural memory to his long life (Papadakis). While Legrand managed to represent many of the fin-de-siècle fashions of his youth, his creative output dropped significantly after the end of the First World War and the concerns of the world had transformed considerably. Far from the frivolities of turn of the century European culture, the continent had weathered four long years of bloody stalemate and had come out on the other end questioning everything. Less concerned with glitz and glamour, the interwar years were marked with an uncertainty and rebellion best represented by the Dada artists and their Surrealist offspring.

Legrand was born in Dijon in 1863 and lived in France until his death in 1951. A contemporary of artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Anquetin and Steinlen, Legrand studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Dijon and moved to Paris in 1884. There he worked as a caricaturist and satirist for La Journee, Le Journal amusant and Courrier francais, and eventually landed in prison briefly due to an obscene satire on Emile Zola, the famous French 19^th century author. After these flirtations with controversy Legrand met Felicien Rops who taught him how to make etchings. Legrand used these new skills to produce images for various French journals with a particular penchant for the depiction of dancing girls, Parisian café life and the social scenes of the day. However, he was not confined to these subjects, and over time the artist managed to illustrate the works of some of the 19^th century’s most innovative authors including the works of Poe, Maupassant, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Rimbaud and Verlaine.

Louis Legrand has recently been rehabilitated in the public eye with a recent exhibition of his work at the Musee Felicien Rops in France in addition to an accompanying catalog raisonne. The exhibition included many of his most well known engravings, some of which are subtly highlighted with bold colors skillfully but sparingly applied to the subjects’ hair, clothes or background. Most well known for his depiction of the Parisian social scene at the turn of the 19^th century, MIR Appraisal Services is fortunate to have one of these engravings in its collection that is available for viewing during appraisal appointments. The limited edition print captures a loving couple in a palm-lined café, closely carousing in the sumptuous setting. Executed in a foggy and almost dream-like way, the artist has managed to capture the fleeting nature of such encounters as well as the doubtlessly smoky atmosphere of an upscale Parisian café. Entitled Faune Parisienne, the print is an etching and aquatint created in 1901.

MIR Appraisal Services, Inc. is a fine art and antiques appraisal company that places a premium on research and client satisfaction. Employing a team of experts knowledgeable in various fine arts objects, MIR’s employees go the extra mile and dig deep into the interesting histories of the pieces brought to their attention by clients. Far from just giving an accurate monetary appraisal MIR offers clients true insight into the deeper value of their treasured items.

Written and Researched by Justin Bergquist

MIR Appraisal Services, Inc.

Principal Appraiser: Farhad Radfar, ISA AM

307 N. Michigan Avenue, Suite 308

Chicago, IL 60601

(312) 814-8510

Works Cited:

“Legrand, Louis.” Grove Art Online

“Louis Legrand: Catalog Raisonne,” on Papadakis Publishing Online

Image Sources:

http://www.victorarwas.com/images-publications/1.jpg

http://www.tokinowasuremono.com/tenrankag/izen/tk0604/imglarge/024LOUIS_LEGRAND.jpg

http://www.forumrarebooks.com/application/upload/forum/bimages/B1NCI3F4ISP8_2.jpg

http://www.chicagoartappraisers.com/IMAGES/Prints/legrand1_main_lg.jpg

http://www.chicagoartappraisers.com/IMAGES/Prints/Legrand1_b_lg.jpg