{"id":56413,"date":"2017-12-05T23:36:46","date_gmt":"2017-12-06T04:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/391936\/paleoart-in-progress\/"},"modified":"2024-08-26T16:17:04","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T20:17:04","slug":"the-rise-of-paleoart-and-the-artists-role-in-our-visions-of-dinosaurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/2017\/the-rise-of-paleoart-and-the-artists-role-in-our-visions-of-dinosaurs\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of Paleoart, and the Artist’s Role in Our Visions of Dinosaurs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Charles
Charles R. Knight, \u201cLaelaps\u201d (1897), the predators may represent paleontologists Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, whose intense competition defined early American paleontology (courtesy American Museum of Natural History)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Earlier this summer, I visited a quiet park in south London<\/a>, where families pushed strollers around a small lake, and solitary people read books on benches in the sun. Nestled in the foliage by the water is a curious relic from the Crystal Palace\u00a0Exhibition<\/a> which gives the\u00a0Crystal Palace Park<\/a> its name: a herd of concrete dinosaurs,<\/a> lazing with gaping jaws, and standing scaly and proud by the trees. The prehistoric creatures were made by artist\u00a0Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins<\/a> in the 1850s, and are recognized as the world\u2019s first dinosaur sculptures. Yet they don\u2019t look quite how we envision dinosaurs today;\u00a0the Iguanodons appear like rotund iguanas, the Dicynodonts like overgrown turtles, although\u00a0contemporary knowledge suggests they never had shells.<\/p>\n

\"Cover
Cover of Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past<\/em> (courtesy Taschen)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While their accuracy may vary (and is\u00a0closer<\/a> than many give him credit for), Hawkins was working with the most cutting edge 19th-century knowledge on dinosaurs to create sculptures both scientific and compellingly artistic.\u00a0Paleoart<\/a> has rarely been considered as part of the visual movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. Nevertheless, as writer\u00a0Zo\u00eb Lescaze<\/a> explores in\u00a0Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past, 1830-1980,<\/a><\/em>\u00a0out this month from\u00a0Taschen,\u00a0<\/a>it has been vibrantly present, whether in the dynamic Art Nouveau mosaics by Heinrich Harder at the Berlin Aquarium (reconstructed in the 1980s by Hans Jochen Ihle following their destruction in WWII), or the foreboding postwar depictions of mammoths and early humanity by Czech artist Zden\u011bk Burian.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to write this book precisely because paleoart is not a widely recognized genre, even though images of dinosaurs and their world are everywhere,\u201d Lescaze told Hyperallergic. \u201cIt\u2019s a fairly new branch of natural history illustration \u2014 the first painting of prehistoric reptiles only appeared in 1830 \u2014 and I\u2019m interested in how artists and scientists collectively formed our current ideas of prehistory through these images.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Paleoart:
Heinrich Harder, reconstructed by Hans Jochen Ihle, \u201cPteranodon\u201d (1982), the original was destroyed when explosives blasted the Berlin Aquarium in November 1943, destroying Harder\u2019s mosaics on the fa\u00e7ade. In 1982, the Aquarium reconstructed the mosaics, using photographs, tile fragments, and Harder\u2019s original plans (courtesy TASCHEN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Paleoart<\/em> is a monstrous book in size, visuals, and design; take off its dust jacket, adorned with\u00a0Alexei Petrovich Bystrow\u2019s 1933 painting of an\u00a0Inostrancevia with crimson Pareiasaurus flesh dripping from its teeth, and a scaly cover embedded with a dinosaur footprint is revealed. Tracking down this art was not easy and Lescaze had to delve into a diverse array of institutional and private archives, with some of the pieces published for the first time in the book. For instance, she describes in Paleoart<\/em> how\u00a0much of Burian\u2019s \u201cfinest works languish out of sight, locked in museum storage\u201d in the Czech Republic. Similarly, Hawkins\u2019s London dinosaurs were abandoned for decades after the Crystal Palace burned\u00a0in 1936<\/a>, only later saved from the overgrowth and restored.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause fresh fossil discoveries tend to render older works of paleoart scientifically obsolete, many outdated images are neglected, lost, or destroyed,\u201d Lescaze explained. \u201cSome pieces in this book are still on public display, but finding the others involved visiting natural history museums, libraries, archives, universities, and private collections around the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Philip
Philip Henry Delamotte, \u201cModel-Room at the Crystal Palace\u201d (1853), showing concrete dinosaurs being built in a workshop on the grounds of the Crystal Palace, London (courtesy TASCHEN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Paleoart<\/em> is arranged chronologically, and flipping through its pages, some which fold out into panoramas of idyllic tableaux of the \u201cAge of Reptiles\u201d or bloody battles of dinosaur chaos, you can see how our idea of what a dinosaur looks like evolved. In one delightfully anachronistic mash-up from 1889, dinosaurs and mammoths mingle together, with one wooly mammoth grabbing a unicorn with its trunk. An incredibly detailed 1984 terracotta installation by\u00a0Alexander Mikhailovich Belashov at the Moscow Paleontological Museum shows more familiarly lithe and reptilian dinosaurs, but the whole scene of Earth evolution is crowned by the Virgin Mary and Jesus.<\/p>\n

\"Ely
Ely Kish, \u201cTyrannosaurus and Edmontosaurus\u201d (1976) (courtesy Eleanor Kish, \u00a9 Canadian Museum of Nature)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Adolphe-Fran\u00e7ois Pannemaker in the 19th century also added a biblical tone to his illustrations, with volcanoes bursting and lightning striking in one rather apocalyptic piece, while other artists in those early paleoart days favored the battling\u00a0ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, their ocean confrontations referencing Victorian naval conflicts. Later in the 1970s to 1990s,\u00a0Ely Kish painted the mass extinction of dinosaurs and extreme weather environments, her dramatic scenes echoing the contemporary anxiety about climate change and environmental catastrophe.\u00a0And sometimes the double meanings of paleoart could only be glimpsed by those in the field. An 1897 painting by Charles R. Knight shows two\u00a0Laelaps (Dryptosauruses) in a fight with claws and teeth bared. Some have interpreted it as a jab at paleontologists and specifically the vicious rivalry between Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, two renowned figures who were not above\u00a0dynamiting<\/a> each other\u2019s dig sites.<\/p>\n

Dinosaur bones have long been a blank slate for projecting the artistic sensibilities, popular media, and anxieties of the day onto their forms. With each reconstruction of the past, a bit of the present is reflected. As Lescaze said, \u201cPaleoart is interesting to me because I think it often reveals as much about modern humans as it does about dinosaurs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Alexei
Alexei Petrovich Bystrow, \u201cInostrancevia, devouring a Pareiasaurus\u201d (1933); both species regularly appeared in Soviet-era paleoart (courtesy Borrissiak Paleontological Institute RAS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Pages
Pages from Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past<\/em> (photo of the book for Hyperallergic)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Adolphe
Adolphe Fran\u00e7ois Pannemaker, \u201cThe Primitive World\u201d (1857), the image was the frontispiece for W. F. A. Zimmerman\u2019s Le monde avant la cr\u00e9ation de l\u2019homme<\/em> (1857) (courtesy TASCHEN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Pages
Pages from Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past<\/em> (photo of the book for Hyperallergic)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Edouard
Edouard Riou; engraved by Laurent Hotelin and Alexandre Hurel, \u201cThe Ichthyosaur and the Plesiosaur (Lias Period)\u201d (1863); from the beginning, artists and scientists portrayed ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs as enemies. The reptiles, battling above the waves, became the most prevalent motif in 19th-century paleoart (courtesy TASCHEN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Pages
Pages from Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past<\/em> (photo of the book for Hyperallergic)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Zdenek
Zdenek Burian, \u201cMammoth (Elephas primigenius)\u201d (1941) (courtesy TASCHEN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Pages
Pages from Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past<\/em> (photo of the book for Hyperallergic)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Konstantin
Konstantin Konstantinovich Flyorov, \u201cTarbosaurus and Armored Dinosaur\u201d (1955), oil on canvas (courtesy Borrissiak Paleontological Institute RAS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past, 1830-1980\u00a0<\/a>was released September 11 by\u00a0Taschen.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source: The Rise of Paleoart, and the Artist’s Role in Our Visions of Dinosaurs<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles R. Knight, \u201cLaelaps\u201d (1897), the predators may represent paleontologists Othniel C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope, whose intense competition defined early American paleontology (courtesy American Museum of Natural History) Earlier this summer, I visited a quiet park in south London, where families pushed strollers around a small lake, and solitary people read books on […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56414,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[880],"tags":[208,245,639,728],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76562,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56413\/revisions\/76562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}