Today, when we (soft, fattened, fiddling Nero’s in miniature that we are) think “satire” we reflexively brace ourselves for the haw-haws. We think of Colbert and the Onion, or if we’re a bit older maybe Weird Al and Doonesbury, or MAD magazine and Dr. Strangelove. If we’re real oldenhiemers, with half a mind left, we might conjure fond memories of The Great Dictator and H.L. Mencken and a childhood of Twain stories and Thomas Nast reprints. In any case, for us, “satire” may as well be a straight-up 1-to-1 synonym for “funny.”

These Russian satires? Not so much.

Granted, I can’t read Cyrillic, and the million little contextual and cultural cues on display are obviously totally beyond me; I’m literally just looking at pictures. But one gets the sense looking over these underground turn-of the-century publications that the “satire” was here accompanied by an entirely different sort of wink. The closest equivalent I can think of, which might resonate for those living in a free and democratic society, would be the evocation of “satire” as a defense in an ugly slander lawsuit… if slander were punishable by death. Not much “comedy” involved. In these Russian magazines “satire” would seem, more than anything, a thin but precious barrier against open reprisal.

It’s said that these satires helped drive public opinion, to bring the criticisms which simmered just below the surface out into the open, and to force the first small concessions from the autocratic Tsar Nicolas II. Whether they in fact shamed the powers-that-be… it’s doubtful. I can say with certainty, however, that the graphic work in these publications, produced as they were under constant threat, does put most “underground” magazine work produced since to shame. The images, bleak and violent, mournful and angry though they are, remain powerful and terrifically beautiful.

Below, as illustration, I’ve reproduced a group of representative images culled from the book Blood & Laughter. Caricatures from the 1905 Revolution, by David King and Cathy Porter, put out in 1983.

Quote: “Bloody Sunday killed superstition, the old faith in a just Tsar, and unleashed a tumultuous rage among the masses… A huge wave of strikes swept the country, paralysing more than 100 towns and drawing in a million men and women. Throughout the summer peasants rioted while terrorists struck at figures of authority.

Alongside the struggle in street and factory was the struggle for the free press. Ministers and clerics suffered assassination more by the pen than the bullet as the revolution strove for the expression of powerful emotions long suppressed. A flood of satirical journals poured from the presses, honouring the dead and vilifying the mighty. Drawings of frenzied immediacy and extraordinary technical virtuosity were combined with prose and verse written in a popular underground language, veiled in allegory, metaphor and references to the past.”

“Russia had a rich history of satirical journalism. In the 1770s, in the reign of Katherine the Great, an elite of intellectuals close to the court developed a new ‘aesopian’ language — deeply subversive to the enlightened autocracy — to express their opposition to the old regime. The satire of the court flourished until the shadow of revolution in Europe drove the Empress to suppress it. Again in the 1860s highly popular satirical journals sprang up, drawing consciously on their courtly predecessors to curse the Crimean War and Tsar Alexander ll’s empty promises of reform. While populist revolutionaries went ‘to the people’ to make common cause with the peasants, radical journalists set out to collect folk-stories, popular sayings, soldiers’ songs and workers’ ballads. The old allegorical vocabulary was joined to the language of popular satire. By the 1870s these journals had been closed down, but this language was now part of everyday speech. Satirical writing returned to the underground, where it flourished, rooted in popular protest, until 1905. It was then that satire achieved its full power.”

“Satire turned holy names into household names, it insulted authority and withered reputations. Yet although the journals enjoyed an almost fanatical popularity, most writers clung to the anonymity of the underground where, apart from a few who became well-known after the Bolshevik revolution, they tended to remain. The artists proclaimed their names more openly, and a number of them — like Isaac Brodsky,  Alexander   Lyubimov,  Nikolai Shestopalov, Pyotr Dobrynin and Boris Kustodiev — went on to become prominent soviet painters. They and many other artists had all been students in the master-class of the great realist painter llya Repin. In February 1905 Repin and his students had marched together in a demonstration against the Bloody Sunday massacre, and from then on they had all turned to paintings of street demonstrations, meetings and peasant uprisings.”

“For a few brief months the journals spoke with a great and unprecedented rage that neither arrest nor exile could silence. At first their approach was oblique, their allusions veiled, and they often fell victim to the censor’s pencil. But people had suffered censorship for too long.Satirists constantly expanded their territory and their targets of attack, demolishing one obstacle after another as they went, thriving on censorship. The workers’ movement grew in boldness, culminating in the birth of the St Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, the people’s government. For fifty days the Tsar and his ministers were confronted by another power, another law. Journalists and printers seized the right to publish without submitting to the censor. The satirical journals then reached their apotheosis, until the revolution died as it had risen, bathed in blood.” -Cathy Porter, from her introduction to Blood & Laughter ,1983.

Well…

Apparently slaughter and hunger and class-struggle and brutal autocratic oppression aren’t very amusing when you get right down to it. On the other hand, perhaps for their intended audience these were amusing. Perhaps the simple but revolutionary act of speaking out against an oppressor was powerful enough to make even of a pile of human skulls feel exuberantly therapeutic. As a westerner, living a century later, totally removed from the language and culture and context I can’t rightly say. I mean, Russian humor has always had a slightly darker more grim cast than that of the West hasn’t it? Perhaps these “satires” offer a tiny clue as to why that might be. 

If you’d like to see more of these Russian Satires the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library has a very nice group of page scans, including interiors. Simply search for “Russia 1905.” Likewise, for more detailed information the Blood & Laughter. Caricatures from the 1905 Revolution is highly recommended.

Hope you enjoyed.

In 1863, after having read a paper by Paolo Mantegazza (the man who first isolated cocaine from coca leaves) on the effects of the coca leaf, and seeing the economic potential, Angelo Mariani, a corsican chemist, set to work creating a “tonic” of his own. The resultant coca wine, a Bordeaux treated with coca leaves, was the first recreational cocaine product brought to market. It’s formula evidently yielded a drink which was 10% alcohol and 8.5% cocaine extract by volume. 

Typical table wine, today, has an alcohol content of approximately 8-14%, so Vin Mariani falls squarely in the average. Not a fortified rotgut or anything. As for the 8.5% cocaine extract… I don’t really know how to compare that number. It’s more than the 7% Holmes liked to shoot? It doesn’t matter much, however, because evidently it wasn’t specifically the alcohol or the cocaine percentages which made Vin Mariani so potent, but rather the chemical combination of the two.

Quote: “If cocaine is consumed on its own, it yields two principal metabolites, ecgonine methyl ester and benzoyleconine. Neither compound has any discernible psychoactive effect. Cocaine co-administered with alcohol, however, yields a potent psychoactive metabolite, cocaethylene. Cocaethylene is very rewarding agent in its own right. Cocaethylene is formed in the liver by the replacement of the methyl ester of cocaine by the ethyl ester. It blocks the dopamine transporter and induces euphoria. Hence coca wine drinkers are effectively consuming three reinforcing drugs rather than one.” -Cocaine.org

Needless to say this tonic was a hit. So much so that Angelo began using its popularity among “notable personages” as a main selling point. His advertisements still extolled the curative virtues of the product, “renewing, invigorating, nourishing, strengthening, refreshing,” etc…

But damn near every product of the time made similar claims didn’t they? What made Vin Mariani really stand out (aside from the addictive narcotic high, obviously) was Angelo’s celebrity media blitz, a positively banal tactic in todays advertising landscape but, in the 1860’s, almost certainly the first marketing campaign of its kind.

Quote: “Mariani introduced his coca wine in the mid-1860s. By the mid-1880s he was the largest importer of coca leaves in Europe, and his Vin Mariani the most avidly endorsed tonic on both sides of the Atlantic. Testimonials from eminent personages were so numerous that Mariani, as great a public relations man as he was a chemist, published them in handsome leather-bound volumes—replete with portraits and biographical sketches of the endorsers.

Those present included the Prince of Wales, the czar and czarina of Russia, the kings of Norway and Sweden, the commanding general of the British Army, and Pope Leo XIII, who, after many years of sipping Vin Mariani, cited Mariani as a “benefactor of humanity” and presented him with a gold medal.

Some 8,000 doctors swore to the virtues of Vin Mariani. And Dr. J. Leonard Corning of New York, the first surgeon to use cocaine for spinal anesthesia, testified that ‘Of all the tonic preparations ever introduced to the notice of the profession, this is undoubtedly the most potent for good in the treatment of exhaustive and irritative conditions of the central nervous system.’

Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, Emile Zola, Henrik Ibsen, and other renowned authors were equally lavish in their praise of Vin Mariani. Bartholdi, sculptor of the Statue of Liberty, wrote that this ‘precious wine will give me the strength to carry out certain other projects already formed.’

Thomas Edison, a man who slept only four hours a day, was a steady user. The secretary of President McKinley noted that a case of Vin Mariani had received an enthusiastic reception by the president. The physicians of Ulysses S. Grant wrote that Mariani products had given the sick general and former president the strength to work several hours a day on his memoirs. And Queen Victoria was so pleased to receive a set of Mariani testimonial volumes that she wrote the master that she considered them among the finest specimens in her collection.” -High Times Encyclopedia of Recreational Drugs, 1978.

The success of Mariani’s wine inspired many imitators, the most famous being, of course, John Smyth Pemberton who’s “Pemberton’s French Wine Coca” would survive various American prohibition laws, the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act,  and growing public anxiety over the addictive qualities of cocaine to become Coca-Cola. Vin Mariani was not as fortunate.

Today, barring some homemade preparation by intrepid psychonauts, the closest you’re likely to get to that original “renewing, invigorating, nourishing, strengthening, refreshing” Mariani high would be through the Peruvian grown, Vin Mariani branded, “coca wine” being produced by the UK company, Mariani Amalgamated, Ltd., and one would have to assume that’s not very close at all. As for the over-the-top celebrity marketing campaigns and the doctor-prescribed highs… hey, no problemo man, we’re cool.

Hope you enjoyed.

As it happens just yesterday I came across the perfect resource to illustrate that point, the 1971 book The Poster Art of Tomi Ungerer, compiled and edited by Jack Rennert. Below I’ve reproduced, for your viewing pleasure and Mr. Ungerer’s glorification, a small sampling of the terrific poster work contained therein. Have a look…

Quote: “Expect the unexpected” is a fitting description of all of Tomi’s posters. The element of surprise, the element of the absurd, is a clear constant in his posters. When Tomi is finished with a poster design, he will step back a bit, and if he’s really satisfied with what he’s done, he’ll say, “It’s absurd!”

This very absurdity, achieved by elements of surprise and exaggeration, makes for a good poster: one of the key elements of a good poster is that it be arresting, that it be immediately compelling. This propensity for gleefully combining the improbable with the absurd is carried through in all of Tomi’s works.” -Jack Rennert.

Quote: “Hans Pflug, writing about Tomi’s work when he first came to the United States, noted: ‘His drawings and advertisements all give the impression of having occurred to him in a flash, and of having been captured on paper with equal immediacy.’ To watch Tomi at work is to know that this was an accurate observation and is still so. What is amazing to me, is that Tomi at once gets a complete image of what he wants to do, and putting it down on paper becomes almost the automatic reflex of his clearly ‘seen’ image. He rarely goes back over his lines. They are immediately, cleanly, and finally, put down on paper. He may not be satisfied when he’s finished and will throw the whole thing out, but he’ll seldom redo or rework his lines or colors.” -Jack Rennert.

Quote: “The main influences in my work were, as a child, Mathias Grunewald, Durer, Schongauer, as well as Hansi and Schnugg, both Alsatian illustrators. Later came Goya, Bosch, the Japanese graphists (Hokusai, etc.), the old issues of Simplicissimus, and Wilhelm Busch.

My high school records were crowned with the final remark: ‘Perverse and subversive.’

My interest and hobbies vary and alternate: flying kites and balloons, old toys, books, bondage, erotica, minerology, botany, medicine, jazz-the list is vain and endless. My most meaningful author is Louis Ferdinand Celine, my favorite painter is Ingres, and Bach’s is just about the only music that gives me total satisfaction.” -Tomi Ungerer, from the introduction to The Poster Art of Toimi Ungerer

It was no easy task choosing what to include here but I hope you enjoyed these.

You can visit Tomi Ungerer’s homepage if you’d like to see some more of his work.

Also I’ve posted a small set of pieces Mr. Ungerer created for a 1966 IBM exhibition called Some Computer ABC’s over at the Nonist Annex.

Lastly, in that I was unable to find anything comparable on the web—the horse’s mouth and all that—I wanted to offer the full text of the biographical sketch Mr. Ungerer wrote for the introduction to the book. You can read it here.

Below, for your viewing pleasure, I’ve reproduced 16 images from the book State of the Art, by Stan Augarten, published in 1983, by way of illustrating that even 25 years ago, a mere halfway-point in this technology’s development, complexity had evolved the integrated circuit out of human hands, and, for most of us, created something really and truly indistinguishable from magic.

For the most part, as was surely the book’s intention, I find these to be quite beautiful objects from a purely aesthetic point of view. Whether I understand them or not I can still appreciate their appearance. Interestingly, however, relative complexity has a role in even this most basic way of regarding the IC I think.

Perhaps it is simply the mind’s facility for pattern recognition but I find the earlier chips evoke one set of largely pleasant aesthetic comparisons, while the more complex chips evoke an entirely different, less obviously pleasant set. In the earlier chips I see science-fictional interiors and illustration, information graphics, diagrams, and the outer fringes of minimalism. In the later one’s however, I see parking lots, and power plants, and freeway systems, and refineries along the Garden State Parkway. 

I’d make the argument that from a visual standpoint, there is a sweet-spot in evidence here, where the forms which make-up the IC’s are complex enough to grab the eye, hold attention, and ignite curiosity, but still simple enough to please our senses of order and balance; or to put it another way, simple enough to feel familiar but complex enough to remain interesting.

Then again, perhaps It’s just my own aesthetic prejudices at work.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed.

For more on the subject see:

History of the Integrated Circuit at nobelprize.org.

The Compuetr History Museum

Chipshots at Molecular Expressions.

And finally, check out Smithsonian Chips which, I only realized after I scanned all these images, has a full version of State of the Art, by Stan Augarten on offer.

A tsuba is the small metal guard at the end of a sword’s grip, which sits between the hand and the blade itself… and that’s it. A humble object basically. Shaped by 14 centuries of Japanese sword culture and metalworking, however, you’d never know it.

Quote: “The tsuba served as the most important functional fitting and, due to its size and location, also had the greatest symbolic importance. It protected the hand, helped to balance the sword, and was the most visible decorative object when the sword was worn. Inasmuch as the samurai usually wore two swords at all times, and would not be seen without them, the kinds of tsuba worn often depended upon the day’s activity. One might, for example, prefer an iron guard for battle and a highly decorated soft metal guard for court use. although these distinctions were not invariable. The samurai usually owned several tsuba and matching fittings for each blade, and changed them to suit mood or occasion. -From the Introduction of the exhibition catalogue, Tsuba, put out in 1980 by The Cooper-Hewitt Museum.

The tsuba  evolved with advances in technology and to accommodate the needs of changing forms of warfare. The earliest examples were disks made of bronze or copper. In the 12th century plain iron disks, patinated to a “pleasing black color,” or allowed to rust slightly prior to stabilization to achieve a redish tint, were the norm. Inlayed, gold leafed, chiseled, complexly perforated, carved soft metal, and other decorative forms evolved later.

The perforations, punched or forged, visible in many tsuba began as a purely functional consideration. Iron tsuba could be made lighter with a few well placed perforations. Over time these perforations became more and more decorative in nature, to the point that functionality actually suffered. Some of the most ornate and complex examples were almost certainly used for formal or ceremonial occasions only.

Quote: “The use of alloys such as shakudo, shibuichi, as well as copper, brass, bronze, gold and silver together allowed color and contrast to become an overiding factor in decorative techniques toward the end of the fifteenth century.” —knives.com

Quote: “When peace came, however, tsuba making was carried out by rapidly proliferating schools of technically expert artisans whose production was seldom intended for use in warfare. The decorative styles of eighteenth-century tsuba matched their peaceful use; ornamentation of the tsuba became an end in itself and the art deteriorated. Although a few individuals and schools maintained the high standards of previous eras and produced magnificent works even in the twentieth century, a general conversion of art to artisanship continued until the wearing of swords was banned by Imperial decree in 1871, and the blades and fittings largely passed into the province of the scholar and collector.” -From the Introduction of the exhibition catalogue, Tsuba.

The images in the post (which were adapted and placed in my own desired groupings) were taken from the following sources-
Japanese-tsuba.com
George’s Tsuba Pictures
Ricecracker.com
Choshuya.co.jp
Aoi-art.com
Nihonto.com
Nihonto Kanji Pages
Japanese-swords.com
Shibuiswords.com
Tsuba.jyuluck-do.com

All of those sites feature a wealth of tsuba for your viewing, and in most cases, purchasing pleasure, and these are only the tiniest sampling of what’s available out there. Beautiful stuff.

Hope you enjoyed.