18 April 2008 - 10 August 2008

Admission free

This major exhibition captures the excitement of the steam train in art from the earliest days, through the boom years of Victorian railways to the end of the line in the 1960s.

Art in the Age of Steam is the most wide-ranging exhibition yet held to look at how artists responded to the extraordinary impact that steam trains had on landscape and society. It is one of the major highlights of Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture year.

Around 100 paintings, photographs, prints and drawings from some of the world’s greatest art collections come together in a dazzling display including:

“Aboard these great machines, passengers travelled at faster speeds than ever before and notions of time and space were forever changed. Nothing has been done on this scale before – visitors are transported on an exhilarating journey in the company of some of the world’s great artists.” Julian Treuherz, Co-Curator and former Keeper of Galleries at the Walker

Exhibition organised by the Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, USA. The exhibition will be staged at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art from 13 September 2008 to 18 January 2009.

Daily Telegraph review, 22 April, 2008

The coming of the railways transformed the way people lived - and provided glorious inspiration for artists, photographers and filmmakers. By Richard Dorment

The modern world came into being with a shriek and a rattle and a puff of dirty smoke on the day in 1830 when the first passenger train pulled out of Liverpool on its way to Manchester. The steam engine... changed man's perception of the world and his place in it.

(complete article - many more pics!)

The satirical cartoonist Honore Daumier made this illustration of really dopey-looking Parisians waiting for a Comet in 1857-88:

You certainly can get a neck ache if stare upwards like that. :)

And, what astronomer or star-hobbyist doesn't understand this next moment?

Here's another:

[text reads: Adelaide Adelaide the comet is coming… it's the end of the world… ah Omigod!… that's annoying… They promised it wouldn't come until June 13^th!]

And a little more on the macabre side of superstition:

[text = yes those comets predict great misfortunes. It doesn't surprise me at all that poor Madame Galuchet suddenly died last night.]

Ok – hah! Indeed the cosmos has for generations inspired all sorts of superstitions. This was certainly true in the mid-19th Century. If you're wondering, in 1857, the big event may have been Comet 5D/Brorsen, whose orbit at the time was miscalculated 3 months off. The comet has since disappeared. I found online somewhere (read: I have not verified or checked this information and had this bit of text sitting in a scrap file) that in early 1857 the popular press predicted that a comet would slam into the earth on June 13^th and destroy everything, which led to a series of panics among the gullible. Benjamin Disraeli may have written in an early June letter how "The world is very much frightened about the Comet .... A philosopher, who laughs at the theological view of the question, & therefore shocks the ladies, has however frightened them equally by his scientific announcement that the world has already been destroyed 27 times, that, reasoning by analogy, it must be destroyed again & probably often; that he rather imagines it will not be destroyed on the 13th. Inst, but there is no reason why it shd. not be destroyed before that, as the destructive agencies are all rife -- in the centre of the earth a raging fire, while the misty tail of the comet wd, if it touched us, pour forth an overwhelming deluge -- so in 4 & 20 hours we may be shrivelled or drowned. In the meantime, if the catastrophe do not occur, we hope to be at Torquay by the end of next month."

Book recommendation: Fire in the Sky: Comets and Meteors, the Decisive Centuries, in Art and Science, by Olsen and Pasachoff (Cambridge Univ Press 1999)

This next cartoon, well, has nothing to do with astronomy. But I've posted it just to illustrate Daumier's absolute satirical genius, his portrayal of a prancing effeminate soldier compared to a big fat one, a sort of 19^th Century Abbot & Costello:

[text = are you coming to announce victory? Hurry up and give me the details.]

How can you tiptoe so gaily and still have an angry facial expression? You should try it some day. And if you do, by all means take a photo, send me a copy, and I'll post your reenactment on this blog.

You can find prints and drawings by Daumier online quite easily. I saw some of the prints above at the Art Institute of Chicago a long time ago – must've been 1988 or so – I believe some of the above photofiles may be from their collection.

Die Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris zeigt zum Jubiläum 220 Lithographien von Daumier in einer Ausstellung im alten Gebäude an der Rue de Richelieu (4.3. bis 8.6.2008). Neben der chronologischen Darbietung der Bilder wird hier auch gezeigt, wie eine Lithographie entsteht.

Honoré Daumier

geboren am 26. Februar 1808 in Marseille

gestorben am 10. Februar 1879 in Valmondois

Bedeutender realistischer Maler, Bildhauer, Grafiker und politisch-sozialkritischer Karikaturist.

Nachstehend die Karikatur zur Londoner Konferenz von 1832, die nachfolgende Konferenz in London von 1838, die zum Vertragsabschluss 1839 zwischen Belgien und den Niederlanden führte.

Die Karikatur ist etwas verwirrend in freier künstlerischer Gestaltung. Die Streithähne sind angekettet. Rechts Belgien und links Holland. Am Konferenztisch sind Russland, Frankreich, Großbritannien, Preußen u.a., während Polen am Boden liegt.

Das angehängte Bild ist lt. Wikipedia zum Zeitpunkt dieser Veröffentlichung "public domain".

This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.
This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.

Honoré Daumier

E para o argumento de que assim é o capitalismo, lembremo-nos de que o capitalismo selvagem já foi posto de lado por países muito mais capitalistas que o Brasil há um bom tempo. Neles, busca-se conciliar o lucro com o respeito ao consumidor, pois parecem já ter entendido que o lucro sem um mínimo compromisso ético acaba trazendo maior prejuízo a longo prazo.

E para o argumento de que a TAM não tem culpa pela chuva e pelo caos do trânsito no Rio de Janeiro, lembremo-nos de que, se eles se responsabilizassem pelo que era de sua responsabilidade: fornecer o serviço ou então assumir que não poderia fazê-lo, explicar-se e propor alternativas, muitas pessoas na mesma situação que eu teriam voltado do aeroporto para casa, logo pela manhã, poupando a todos um bocado de aborrecimento.

Em tempo: como soube por uma das funcionárias do juizado de pequenas causas do aeroporto Santos Dumont, hoje pela manhã, em um vôo da GOL, os passageiros receberam seus cartões de embarque, foram chamados à sala, ao portão e, dali, ao invés de entrarem no avião, foram colocados em ônibus e levados ao Galeão, sem nenhum aviso prévio!!! O que é isso, um seqüestro?

Para maior espanto, nenhuma das pessoas se recusou a entrar no ônibus e ter sua vida assim decidida por outros que não elas mesmas. Ninguém se deu ao trabalho de ir ao juizado reclamar a esse respeito. O que acontece por aqui que as pessoas parece que não reclamam seus direitos por preguiça com o trabalho que isso dá? É claro que ir atrás de juizado, ação e afins solicita um tanto de tempo e de empenho de quem está se sentindo lesado. Mas como as pessoas imaginam que algo poderia ser diferente sem nenhum esforço da parte delas?

Aí é até possível entender porque companhias aéreas como a TAM e a GOL - descomunalmente mais desonesta do que a TAM, pois que com a GOL já vivi as situações mais escabrosas - se dão ao descaramento de nos aplicarem a lógica do mínimo de serviço pelo máximo de lucro. Nós também queremos tudo, desde que seja pelo mínimo esforço.

Ao que se lembram e aos que não, o quadro de Honoré Daumier, do vagão de terceira classe. Pois que nos tornamos todos passageiros de segunda classe, num vagão de terceira classe, cidadãos de quarta categoria. E vamos, mansamente, como gado para o abatedouro.

Sobre o juizado de pequenas causas nos aeroportos: usem!!!