Coming soon to a town near you (if you’re in Europe), the Voynich 2014-2015 international art exhibition project. Put together by Ron Weijers and 10dence art collective from Schiedam in the Netherlands, the exhibition features works of art by twenty-five different artists, all connected by a single shared point of inspiration – the mysterious (and, dare I say it, oft-appropriated) Voynich Manuscript.
Will these plucky artists “revive debate and dialogue on the Voynich manuscript in their own specific manner”? Personally, I sincerely doubt it: to most artistic eyes, the (to-all-intents-and-purposes-utterly-asemic) Voynich Manuscript has proved as much a blank sheet of paper as, well, a blank sheet of paper. So you may just as well put together an exhibition inspired by non-green vegetables, superceded home appliances, or misplaced envy. Whatever floats your artistic boat.
All the same, I hope their foray into Voynichness stimulates them all, and perhaps even inspires some of them into exploring the razor-thin line between meaningfulness and meaninglessness which the Voynich treads in such a unique way. To me, art needs a little bit of that danger: whereas the greatest creative peril of taking on the Voynich normally lies in trying to mimic its oddly artistic liminality but falling well short. Good luck with that one, Euro art people!
Oh, and the exhibition starts in Schiedam this November (2014), and is planned to move on to other galleries during 2015.
The artists so far announced are:-
* Thorsten Dittrich – Germany
* Katerina Dramatinou – Greece
* Willem van Drunen – Netherlands
* Alex Kiefmeijer – Netherlands
* Louis Looijschelder – Netherlands
* Gerard Extra – Netherlands
* Helmut Findeiß – Germany
* Vered Gersztenkorn – Israel
* Liesbeth van Ginneken – Belgium
* Chung-Hsi Han -Netherlands
* Serhiy Savchenko – Ukraine
* Nikolaj Dielemans – Netherlands
* Karim El Seroui – Austria
* Reinhard Stammer – Germany
* Ron Weijers – Netherlands
* Mats Andersson – Sweden
* Efrat Zehavi – Netherlands
* Beppo Zuccheri – Italy
* Arturo Pacheco Lugo – Mexico
* Rudi Benétik – Austria
* Zuzana Kaliňaková – Slovakia
* Herman Gvardjančič – Slovenia
* Željko Mucko – Croatia
* Klementina Golija – Slovenia
* Ulrich Plieschnig – Austria
You know, I don’t mind artists interpreting the Voynich manuscript however they want. It may seem like a lot of guff, but what they’re doing is reading their own thoughts and experiences of viewing or studying it. Though we might object that they miss what it “really” means, researchers miss that too.
The Voynich manuscript wasn’t a mystery to the person who made it, the images and text made perfect sense. They just had to pick it up and read it. My experience of studying the text without understanding it is as far removed from that as artistic interpretations might be. Sure there’s a “real” meaning to the Voynich manuscript out there, but most of the time researchers aren’t experiencing it either.
(PS Did you get the link I posted on the Voynich Theories page?)
Thing: sorry, I didn’t see a link or a comment. 🙁
Be sure to add spaces in to avoid getting spam-filtered out, I’ll reassemble links when I moderate in the comment.
How odd.
That’s my birth place. I lived there for about 28 years.
They scheduled this right in between two planned visits….
Rene: then the chances are the exhibition will be scheduled to move on to Darmstadt when you’re on holiday next year. 🙂
So, are they all contributing their ‘take’ on the manuscript’s contents, or are they planning on argumentation to come to a consensus?
So, Rene, is that xi-to-ma-tl (aka ix-to-ma-tl) which was part of Rudolph’s collection of oddities, treasures, and manuscripts, a tomato or tomatillo? Sahagun’s illustration on B-408, f-1v was depicting the tomatillo (note the papery husk). I haven’t yet been able to find illustrations of the larger red specimen. Also, I haven’t yet found the alpha-combination for ‘to’ or ‘do’. There is a cipher for words such as ‘in si dios’ or ‘pro pi tius’.
Or are the artists simply going to portray their own ‘unique’ offerings, with or without accompanying dialogues?
I hope we will all be able to get at least a ‘birds-eye’ glimpse.
a tout a l’heure!
beady eyed, and still wonder-ing!
😉
Another item from a large book (Milestones of History-Expanding Horizons) page 124: ‘The Virgin of the Navigators, to whom sailors prayed for protection from the dangers of the sea. Page 125 is a full-page (8 x 11 inches) reproduction of that painting.
Several months ago I referred you to B-408, f-86r3, and its discussion of the pictorial elements which were portraying a kingfisher, mushrooms, and people in distress hiding behind the stems. The story being told was of Alcyone and Ceyx, who were turned into kingfishers — and to whom sailors prayed during stormy conditions at sea. The story was also cautioning people to pick and eat mushrooms carefully, because some could combine with alcoholic beverages and destroy one’s liver.
So, Nick and Rene, cosmology, navigational hazards, and whether medieval sailors were praying to the Virgin or Alcyone — do you think we may be close to closure on folio 86? Perhaps one or some of our current crop of artists may come up with some new angles and/or concepts for the “Voynich” ?
bd
hi everybody, we did another voynich-related art project (photos, video and music) some of u might be interested in;
please check it out:
http://www.danielepinti.com/lymphaobscura/
thanx!