Empty Cows with Empty Eyes: Blank and Empty Things Department #12

JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 295

I’ve made several posts about Blank and Missing People and Empty Things which seem to me—having had long exposure to images over the last 30 years—to be quite unusual in the history of popular-published prints. This may actually be a simple corollary to a wider category of Blank Things, or Missing Things.  Like Dark Matter.  Or white, open, blank spaces on early, honest, maps. (And this may be part of another larger story on The  Spaces in Between, (a concept in German known as Zwischenraum), but that’s another story, identifying where the missing stuff might actually “be”.  Like the idea of "negative space", or unused space, in, say, a Zen painting, or the sue of quiet in a musical composition--generally, it is a period of space or transition in thought, the distance between ideas....)

Since it really is so unusual to bump into these images I'll just make a quick post on this one--it is simply (in a not-so-simple way) an illustration of a cow-blind from the wonderful and problematic masterpiece of Abraham Rees' Encyclopedia, this print being completed in 1812.  I should point out that the hunters--who would level their muskets through the empty eye socket--are not hunting cows; I'm not aware of what they would be hunting, but I know that it wasn't Bessie. So the image is really just a relatively mundane hunting tool, though pretty elaborate, set among other hunting tools--there is nothing mundane whatsoever about its presentation, though. 

(Detail above, and from the full sheet, below)

Comments

[catherine]

I'm visiting, but I don't know what to say. I am in awe, mouth open. closed. open again. then closed. Then sigh. I love Sept. 17, May 8 and May 9, by the way.

Sweet Sweet Tina

[John Ptak]

Dear Sweet (Sweet) Tina,
Well, you're really living up to your name with that post, really. Thank you for such lovely thoughts. You really like the self-cruxifiction one? I didn't see that one coming, though I *can* see the digit-alization and counting on the hands one. John

[Miss G. Marshall]

Still in over my head here Mr. Smell Good, but I figure it's better than taking yet another continuing ed class. Thanks.

[Jeff]

We need a zwischenraum in our culture. I like the idea of keeping a margin around every day. Ideally, there would be a margin around every meal, plus tea time. Also, a margin at the beginning and end of the work day. And margins around each period of sleep. As well as ample margins around every meeting. I'm leaning toward making the margins larger than the body of text itself ... we need room for more annotation as we get older.

[John Ptak]

Well said, Jeff. The more the Zwischenraum, the better, though for our present society it would probably only work out if it was prepackaged and sold on TEEVEE. I've also always liked the idea of margins and marginalia (and Patti has written on this in her book and blog, I mean about marginalia, not about ME and marginalia). Poe and Valery are two favorites of mine on the subject.

"We need more room for annotation as we get older."
I LIKE that.

[Jeff]

That's not EXACTLY what I said, but I like the way you put it better. I like better the way you put it. I better like the way you put it. Gott im Himmel!

[John Ptak]

Better the way I put it better? I dunno, I never read any of the comments anyway and am surprised at how close I come, just like the movies and books that I comment on...never seen/read 'em. Just kidding. Mostly. I never actually "see" the movies.

[John Ptak]

Better the way I put it better? I dunno, I never read any of the comments anyway and am surprised at how close I come, just like the movies and books that I comment on...never seen/read 'em. Just kidding. Mostly. I never actually "see" the movies.