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Clowns tell us a lot about ourselves and our lives. The best of them reveal some sadness or strangeness or both while doing their best to amuse us. The overall message is: you might as well laugh because, well, life isn’t always a piece of cake, sometimes it’s a pie in the face.
Clown figurines of tin or ceramic seem to carry an extra layer of sadness and oddness after a few years. Maybe there is a contradiction between what we see now and the smiles the little joker was meant to induce. Crawling clown toy, 1900, from here
But for all the contradictions, we can’t stop smiling at this little gang of kidders.
According to Tracey’s Toys:
“The Rolly Dollys first appeared in 1902 and were produced through the 1920s in over 70 different styles. Some were based on advertising or cartoon characters like Buster Brown and Foxy Grandpa, while others represented children, clowns, police officers, and more.”
Foxy Grandpa??
Is this him?
All in all, the clown whether he is a comic actor, a circus performer, a tin toy, or cookie jar (above) has a long history and a continuing important function in human society. Is there sadness underneath it all? Is there misery and madness?
Well…maybe. But we all have a choice to see the soda spray bottle half empty or half full. Is the whoopee cushion a cry for help? Or just a perennial boyish prank. We come down on the side of mirth. Release the clowns!!!
Play on fellas. Do you know “My Funny Valentine?”
The world is (still) full of wild things, plenty of them pretty weird in appearance and habits. Yet we humans have never been satisfied with nature’s menagerie. Since way back when, we have imagined things even more wild and more weird. Like this unnerving critter photographed by Nhung Dang (spotted here).
No surprise the Japanese have been heavily into conjuring up unusual creatures from the imagination. There was a whole show of them in London.
The USA can claim many producers of eye-poppng imaginary animalia, sometimes under the banner of Folk Art, sometimes Outsider Art, sometime…Art. This wild dog was here.
And in the USA, there is no shortage of well produced, well attended shows featuring objects and drawings of creatures who have never actually roamed the earth, but which are very much alive in the minds of some artist.
And then there is England, which might hold the all time record for the number of its citizens who have turned their imagination and their natural skills to the rendition of new life forms. The above drawing is a collaboration of two sisters born in the 1840’s with time on their hands and wonderful, playful minds. Here’s the story.
Kate Bradbury, a current artist from England, emerged late, blossomed quickly, makes things no one else could never dream of. This is her Angel. More
Let’s give the last word and image to the Asians. Eunmi Chun is Korean, and she makes animal figures out of dried intestinal skin and human hair (sometimes gold-leafed), beautiful forms sewn together, see here.
Wild. Thing. You make my heart sing.
Nature is the crucible, churning out an infinite variety of living things. And still, some of us turn our heads and minds to the invention of things that, so far, never were.
Wild.
Summer has arrived in our part of the world–long days, heat on your back, first morning coffee on the front step, dinner out on the back deck–so let’s talk about rain, lest we forget. Where we live, no one complains when the sky suddenly turns bright and fills with sunlight, but being surprised by a splash of rain, caught unexpectedly, under-equipped, predictably brings a cry of “no fair!”. This photo by Martin Parr from Bad Weather.
When it rains on your parade, some of us handle it better than others.
The music may have stopped, but the beer is just as tasty and mud between the toes can be quite lovely.. sometimes.
The flowers are still lovely too, and these two know that although the rain may keep some customers away, in the big picture, it’s fundamental to life, isn’t it luv? Eau de vie as they say.
If flower sellers and festival goers tolerate rain, some photographers seem to absolutely adore it–a gift from the sky every bit as precious as light.
This Rui Palha photo above is an ode to geometry and rainfall.
Beautiful image by Z D Wagner depends for much of its eloquence on the presence of rain (and wind)
New Yorkers, of course, find ways to not just persevere in the rain, but to make something memorable of it, such as this wet-footed pas de deux.
And if you are James Dean, a rainy day gives you another part to play, another iconic image you’ll leave behind.
On the other hand…
Unexpected rain isn’t just a photo op, is it?
Some of us caught in it will face nasty and possibly dangerous conditions.
Flood is more than an inconvenience. It can bring daily life to a stand still. Immobilized. The very water that gives life to us all can take it away. Without much warning.
We are the water planet in a thousand different ways. Try as we might, we cannot (yet) control when or how much water will fall from the sky. What we can control is how we react to rain. If the warnings go out to take cover, then by all means run for shelter and batten down the hatches. But otherwise, look up, be grateful, we are born water babies.
Joie de vivre/eau de vie caught by Elliot Erwitt, Paris. Salut!
Pieter Bruegel, Flemish, born almost 500 years ago, was a miracle of a painter who gave us images we can still understand and delight in without a thick book or an expert.
Most of his pictures have their origin in the Christian Bible, but if you never saw a Bible in your life you would see and feel the humanity of what is staring you in the eye.
And you would see the children, somewhere in the frame.
You need to look, sometimes, for the children. But they are almost always there, busy, preoccupied, stocky/stubby, lovely.
This is a detail of the Census of Bethlehem
Wherever you find them, these, Bruegel’s children are identifiable as today’s children, even if so much around them is bizarre.
Above, The Hunters in the Snow also known as The Return of the Hunters, is a 1565 oil-on-wood painting.
It is a quiet cold wonder in the palace of great art–thanks in part to those small boys and girls.
Our heroes are by definition magnificently far above us in what they do and how they do it. If you take a moment to look at the heroes of baseball, it seems not so impossible that you too might someday do what they do.
The costumes (simple, soft, comfy) and the main actions of baseball (swing, run, throw, catch, run, slide) tell you how sweetly uncomplicated it all is.
For a kid looking on, enthralled, obsessed, it almost looks possible. I can wear a uniform like that. I can swing like that. I can feel it.
At least that’s how it seemed in 1959, and we can hope that it is not far from the truth today.
Of the many who played the simple game at the highest level, these two Eddie Mathews and Hank Aaron, twin gods of the Milwaukee Braves in 1959, represented to the kid just about everything that was worth being if you were human–including approachability. Yes, you could imagine them coming to your house and throwing the ball around. Yes you did imagine it, over and over.
And those Milwaukee heroes didn’t seem to mind that you also worshipped others, like these two Baltimore Orioles, Brooks Robimson and Luis Aparicio (1967). Real heroes understand that. They know it is not betrayal, it does not diminish them.
Mickey Mantle (the Marilyn Monroe of baseball ?(without the tragedy), seemed to understand that as well as anyone. There seemed to be no envy in his rivalry with other players, no bitterness in his blazing competitiveness.
The best in baseball, at least in those days, always had time for the kid who worshipped them.
Brooks Robinson, sitting down, taking time. The kid is the batboy for the team. The BATBOY! Baseball even has a JOB for a kid, a JOB among the gods, a job in heaven itself.
What a game.
This batboy became a Chief Justice in the Court of Queens Bench in Canada, but we bet he never felt more glad to be alive than right there, the boy in charge of the bats.
Found here
If you are lucky, there is a game going on soon near you, and if you are super lucky, it unfolds in a place like this bit of heaven.
Nat Baily Stadium, Vancouver, BC
the republic of less 