L’Âge atomique – The Atomic Age

L’Âge atomique – Les artistes à l’épreuve de l’histoire | The Atomic Age Artists put to the test of history

The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris is inviting visitors to take a new look at the history of modernity in the 20th century via the imaginary world of the
atom. The exhibition is an opportunity to explore the artistic representations sparked by the scientific discovery of the atom and its applications, in particular the nuclear bomb, whose devastating consequences changed the fate of humanity. Bringing together some 250 works – paintings, drawings, photographs, videos and installations – as well as documentation that has often been previously unpublished, the exhibition shows, for the first time in a French museum, the widely differing different stances adopted by artists in the face of scientific advances and the controversies they have given rise to.
Dealing with a subject now more topical than ever, the exhibition is in keeping with the museum’s desire to reflect contemporary cultural and social concerns in its programming.
 
DANIEL BLAU has contributed 27 photos from our collection to enrich the exhibition

 
 
 
Exhibition Dates:

11 October 2024 – 9 February 2025
 
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am–6pm
Late closing: Thursday 9:30pm

 
Info:
Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris
11 Avenue du Président Wilson
75116 Paris
Tel. 01 53 67 40 00
www.mam.paris.fr
 

Tickets:
Admission
Full rate: 15€
Concessions: 13€
 

Find more information about guided tours here
 
Download press release published by the museum here  

L'Âge atomique - Les artistes à l'épreuve de l'histoire | The Atomic Age Artists put to the test of history
Paris Photo 2024

Paris Photo 2024

 

The Brilliance of the Actual View

 
DANIEL BLAU is pleased to present “The Brilliance of the Actual View” at this year’s edition of Paris Photo in November. This exhibition consists of a unique selection of photographs fusing the artistic and the scientific on a truly cosmic scale.
As the fair returns to its historic home in the Grand Palais, DANIEL BLAU is taking the opportunity to show one-of-a-kind original prints of key moments from landmark NASA missions, embodying mankind’s endless drive towards the extraordinary and urge to make the inconceivable real. The most crucial milestones, captured by the likes of the Mariner probes and Viking expeditions, serve as incomparable examples of the balanced harmony between technical precision and heavenly artistic aesthetics.
 
We look forward to seeing you in Paris.
 

John Glenn (1921-2016) on Friendship 7, Mercury, Atlas 6 Mission, “Fireflies, Mercury Atlas 6 Mission”, February 20, 1962
John H. Glenn Jr., “Fireflies Outside Friendship 7; First Human-Taken Photograph from Space”, February 20, 1962, chromogenic color print on fibre paper, printed in 1962, 28,2 x 34,3 cm © NASA, John H. Glenn Jr., courtesy Daniel Blau, Munich
 
 

PARIS PHOTO
Grand Palais
75007 Paris

 
Booth: B24
 
Fair Dates:

 
Public Opening:
November 7 – 9, 2024
Opening Hours:
1 pm – 8 pm
 
November 10, 2024
Opening Hours:
1 pm – 7 pm

 

 


Art Basel 2024

Art Basel 2024

 
 
DANIEL BLAU is pleased to present an exhibition of eleven outstanding artists exploring the fissures at the hinge of humanity this year at ART BASEL 2024.
Dan Asher, Georg Baselitz, George Condo, Jean Fautrier, Llyn Foulkes,  Antonius Höckelmann, Eugène Leroy, Robert Rauschenberg, Julian Schnabel, Don Van Vliet and Andy Warhol.

Interior and exterior, landscape and mindset, chaos and form: art thrives on tracing the dichotomies of our human existence in the world, and the mid-20th century found its great artists toying with and teasing out the creative potential of our fundamental conflicts with vibrant energy.

 

 
Fair Dates:

 
Vernissage:
Wednesday, June 12, 2024
5 pm – 8 pm
 
Public Days:
June 13 – 16, 2024
11 am – 7 pm

 

Booth E16
 
Messeplatz 10
4005 Basel
 
Download press release here  
 


Spring & Walk 2024 “Jensen – Penck. Geometrie und Theorie in Farbe und Form”
Alfred Jensen – A.R.Penck. Geometrie und Theorie in Farbe und Form

Die diesjährige Frühjahrsausstellung von DANIEL BLAU präsentiert zwei Werkkomplexe der renommierten Künstler Alfred Jensen (1903 – 1981) und A.R. Penck (1939 – 2017). Beide sind bekannt für ihr abstraktes Kunstschaffen, das komplexe Konzepte und gesellschaftliche sowie philosophische Ideen vereint.
 
Klare Linienführung und starke grafische Präsenz prägen ihre Werke ebenso, wie ihre kraftvolle Bildsprache. Sie erzeugen sowohl emotionale, wie intellektuelle Resonanz.
 
Alfred Jensen, bekannt für seine abstrakten, geometrischen Werke beschäftigte sich intensiv mit mathematischen Theorien, Zahlensystemen oder Kalender-Konzepten, u.a. dem Maya-Kalender. Seine Bilder sind durchdachte Darstellungen von kosmischen Ordnungen und philosophischen Ideen, und zeigen auch seine Auseinandersetzung mit der Farbenlehre Johann Wolfgangs von Goethe auf. Intellektuelle Erforschung und Komplexität treffen auf farbintensive geometrische Formen. Eine Auswahl von pastosen Gemälden und Malereien auf Papier soll einen Überblick über das Schaffen eines der bedeutendsten Vertreter des US-amerikanischen Abstrakten Expressionismus zeigen.
 
A.R. Pencks acht-teilige Tusche-Zeichnungen „Serie E“ demonstrieren seine Vielseitigkeit in der künstlerischen Ausdrucksform. Die Serie entstand im Jahr 1969 und zeichnet sich durch ihre abstrakten und grafischen Elemente sowie der Farbwahl aus. Penck verwendet in dieser Serie oft einfache Formen, wie Kreise, Quadrate und Dreiecke. Der Buchstabe „E“ stand für Penck für Existenz und Einheit. In ihrer abstrakten Art bilden die Zeichnungen diese Symbolik ebenso ab. Bei genauerer Betrachtung sind alle Zeichnungen durch eine Zäsur in der Mitte des Blattes geteilt. So drückte Penck die Spannung zwischen Kunst und Gesellschaft aus. Auch die Beschäftigung mit politischen Realitäten seiner Zeit, wie der Teilung Deutschlands ist immer wieder Gegenstand seiner Werke.
 
Die Ausstellung präsentiert Werke der beiden Künstler und ihre einzigartigen Stile und stellt sie in einen faszinierenden Dialog, zwischen Farbe und Form, Geometrie und Theorie.
 

 
DANIEL BLAU’s spring exhibition this year presents two sets of works by the renowned artists Alfred Jensen (1903 – 1981) and A.R. Penck (1939 – 2017). Both are known for their abstract pieces which combine complex concepts and social-philosophical ideas.
 
Clear line strokes and strong graphic presence shape their work as much as their powerful visual language. They resonate emotionally as well as intellectually.
 
Alfred Jensen, known for his abstract, geometrical works, was focused intensively on mathematical theories, counting systems or calendar concepts – for example, the Mayan calendar. His pictures are considered representations of strange orders and philosophical ideas, and also exhibit his examination of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s teachings on color theory. Intellectual exploration and complexity meet vividly colorful geometrical forms. A selection of paintings in oil and on paper provide an overview of the works of one of the most significant agents of American Abstract Expressionism.
 
A.R. Penck’s ‚Serie E‘ – a series of eight ink drawings – demonstrate his versatility in artistic expression. The series was made in 1969 and is characterized by its abstract and graphical elements as well as its color palette. In this series, Penck often used simple forms such as circles, squares and triangles. The letter ‚E‘ stands, for the artist, for ‚Existenz und Einheit‘ or existence and unity. Equally, the pictures deconstruct this symbolism through their abstraction. Upon closer inspection, all of the drawings are divided through the middle of the page by a central caesura, used by Penck to express the tension between art and society. His occupation with the political realities of his time, such as the division of Germany, is also a recurring subject in his works.
 
The exhibition presents works by both artists and their respective stiles, placing them in a fascinating dialogue: between color and form, geometry and theory.

 
 
 
Exhibition Dates:

 

Spring & Walk

 
April 13, 2024
presented by Initiative Münchner Galerien zeitgenössischer Kunst
 
11am – 6pm | mon – fri
Maximilianstraße 26, 80539 München

 
 

SPECIAL GUIDED TOUR 5:

Saturday, April 13, 2024
 
Meeting point:
from 3pm at Daniel Blau, Maximilianstr. 26
 
Tickets:
from the guide
 
Duration:
approx. 2 hours
 
Costs:
15,- € per person
 
Registration required:
info@muenchner-galerien.de
Tel. +49 (0) 89 288 08 509
 
Find more information about guided tours here
 

 

 
 

Alfred Jensen (1903-1981), "Sun is the Hidden Number", 1965
Alfred Jensen (1903-1981),
“Sun is the Hidden Number”, 1965,
gouache on paper cotton board,
127,0 x 101,6 cm, © Alfred Jensen, courtesy Daniel Blau, Munich
Alfred Jensen – A.R.Penck. Geometrie und Theorie in Farbe und Form

Alfred Jensen – A.R.Penck. Geometrie und Theorie in Farbe und Form

Our next exhibition, Farbe und Geometrie (Color and Geometry), will begin on 26 March and feature eleven works: four by Alfred Jensen (1903-81) and eight by A.R. Penck (1939-2017). Both artists are known for their abstract pieces which combine complex concepts with social-philosophical ideas.
 
Jensen’s work was focused on mathematical theories, numeral systems, Goethe’s teachings on color or the Mayan calendar. His drawings and paintings are considered representations of cosmic orders and philosophical ideas.
 
In the eight ink drawings from the „Serie E“, Penck uses simple forms such as circles, squares and triangles. Upon closer inspection, all of the drawings are divided by a central caesura. The tension between art and society and Penck’s occupation with the political realities of his time, like the division of Germany, are palpable.
 
The exhibition places select works by both artists into a dialogue, between color and form, geometry and their theories and demonstrates their clear line strokes and strong graphic presence..
 

 
 
Exhibition Dates:
 
March 26 – May 7, 2024
 
11am – 6pm | mon – fri
Maximilianstraße 26, 80539 München

 
 

The works in the exhibition are for sale. Please contact us for availability and prices.

 

 
 

Alfred Jensen (1903-1981), "Hekatompedon Serie, 1965", 1965
Alfred Jensen (1903-1981),
“Sun is the Hidden Number”, 1965,
gouache on paper cotton board,
127,0 x 101,6 cm, © Alfred Jensen, courtesy Daniel Blau, Munich
Antonius Höckelmann

Antonius Höckelmann

DANIEL BLAU, at the Maximilianstraße gallery, is pleased to present a new exhibition of works on paper by the extraordinary German artist Antonius Höckelmann (1937-2000). The exhibition opens today, Thursday 15th February.
 
Höckelmann studied sculpture, from 1951 until 1957, with Karl Hartung in Berlin, concentrating especially on wood as a material. It was only a gradual process of self-discovery that led him to drawing. His breakthrough came in 1977, with his participation in documenta 6; he returned to Kassel for documenta 7 in 1982, cementing his position in the contemporary art scene with numerous exhibitions throughout the decade, often alongside fellow artists like Georg Baselitz and A.R. Penck. Many of his works resist easy classification, bringing the disciplines of sculpture and painting together in one single piece; he will often combine materials both traditional and strikingly modern, like wood and bronze or Styrofoam and aluminum, in the same sculpture, before covering it in color as well.
 
The exhibition in the Maximilianstraße gallery spans a vibrant arc of creative years from 1964 until the early 1980s, featuring exclusively works on paper. Höckelmann here employs pastel, charcoal, graphite, and watercolor to conjure forth a host of sculptural and abstract shapes, of pastoral figures and creatures of fable and fantasy. There are echoes of Mannerism and the Baroque, too, lingering motifs from the artist’s time in Italy, and his intense study of those artistic eras. His compositions, charged with an electric sense of tension and suspense, burst with movement and dynamic surfaces, spirals and vegetative forms unfolding the cosmos of his drawings to the audience before them.
 
The exhibition will run until March 26th, featuring an overview of Höckelmann’s work on paper. The twelve pieces on display are excellent representatives of his art’s power and vitality, each conveying in its own way the power coursing through all his work, in its handling of color and form, of the figurative and the abstract.

 
 
Exhibition Dates:
 
February 15 – March 26, 2024
 
11am – 6pm | mon – fri
Maximilianstraße 26, 80539 München

 
 

The works in the exhibition are for sale. Please contact us for availability and prices.

 

 
 


Hooks Deluxe

~ Hooks Deluxe ~

 

Fish Hooks of the Pacific Islands deluxe box set

15 copies only!
 
The handmade slipcase contains:

  • Vol I and II of Fish Hooks of the Pacific Islands (each embossed linen hard cover with dust jacket)
  • a handmade, by master bookbinder Gisela Benfer of Munich, embossed clam shell case
  • a wearable solid silver New Zealand Hei Matau made after the original by renowned jeweler Otto Jakob
  • an adjustable hat with fish hook logo made on Maui in Hawai’i
  • a vintage 1936 map of the Pacific (80 x 99 cm)
  • a poster (58 x 42 cm) illustrating 28 fish hooks in their true size
  •  
    The edition is limited to 15 signed copies, numbered I-XV/XV
    Price: 1900 € (excl. shipping & VAT)

    Please order your copy, on a first come first serve basis here

     
    ORDER NOW

     

    The Winter Show 2024

    Andy Warhol – Daido Moriyama

    January 19 – 28, 2024

    DANIEL BLAU is pleased to present ten new works by Daido Moriyama, along with seven of Andy Warhol’s drawings from the 1950s, at the 2024 edition of The Winter Show, taking place in New York City from January 19th to 28th.
     
    Andy Warhol moved to New York City in 1949, immediately after earning his bachelor’s degree. He quickly made a name for himself in the sphere of commercial art, making illustrations for advertising campaigns and fashion magazines. The city shaped Warhol’s career, and during his first decade there he allowed himself to follow a dual approach to his art, a dichotomy that can be clearly seen in these drawings. On the one hand, he established his own personal freehand style, instinctive and thoughtful; on the other, he
    began creating images that were easily reproducible and in unmistakable conversation with the world of advertising into which he had stepped. It was also during this phase of his career that Warhol developed his ‘blotted line’ technique, which allowed him to present a variety of different versions of his advertising ideas to clients.
     
    Moriyama’s new works are the products of a richly complex process of creation, too. His typical approach to work involves walking through the streets around him, impulsively photographing his surroundings to capture the essence of any place he finds himself in. During his monthlong trip to New York in 1971, Moriyama employed a 35mm “half-frame”
    camera, meaning that each negative frame would in fact hold two, halfsized individual exposures. Each ‚complete image‘ shows the subject in two facets captured moments apart. The artist captured over 2,000 images this way.
     
    In 2023, Moriyama used a screen-printing technique to transfer a selection of these dual images onto large, individual canvases. The resulting works showcase Moriyama’s long-standing interest in the concept of “are, bure, bokeh”– roughly translatable as “rough, coarse, out-of-focus” – which, here,illuminates, evoked in shimmering bronzes and blacks, the atmosphere of a New York at night.
     
    Moriyama’s 2023 creations still carry all the spontaneity of his work in 1971. His return to the series after more than fifty years also shows his rethinking of the artistic process and his experimenting with possibilities of repetition. He was surely also inspired by Andy Warhol’s concept of “seriality”. In fact, it was Warhol himself who lured Moriyama to New York in the first place and Moriyama photographed him at the time.
     
    Our Winter Show exhibition for 2024 is able to show how these two artists respond to the city in ways that both diverge and intersect, that distinguish themselves and occasionally overlap. Warhol and Moriyama were both drawn to New York’s zeal for commerce and advertising – Warhol to Madison Avenue, where he found success as a commercial
    artist, and Moriyama to the bright lights and neon signs of the city itself (recurring motifs found not only in this series but across his entire oeuvre). The use of street photography, Moriyama’s defining genre, was also a part of Warhol’s artistic process, as was the use of a range of loosely categorizable subjects including cats, cars, and flowers. We can see how these motifs came to engage Moriyama as well as he explored the city, whether wandering the Flower District or the corridors of his hotel. Both artists also clearly felt drawn to pay particular attention to the city’s fire hydrants: Moriyama photographs one in the instants before it is lost in clouds of New York City street steam, while Warhol flanks his hydrants with two women’s cartoonish legs, seemingly leaning against the red iron. Those female feet bear shoes of special noteworthiness: they are drawn in the same style that earned Warhol his job as the ‘sole’ illustrator for the I. Miller shoe company between 1955 and 1957.
     
    DOWNLOAD press release Winter Show 2024  
     
    Opening Night Party:
    January 18, 2024, 5 – 9 pm
    Young Collectors Night:
    January 25, 2024, 6 – 9 pm
    Connoisseurs Night:
    January 26, 2024, 5:30 – 8 pm
    Opening Hours:

    Friday, Jan. 19, 12 pm – 8 pm
    Saturday, Jan. 20, 12 pm – 7 pm
    Sunday, Jan. 21, 12 pm – 6 pm
    Monday, Jan. 22, 12 pm – 8 pm
    Tuesday, Jan. 23, 12 pm – 5 pm
    Wednesday, Jan. 24, 12 pm – 8 pm
    Thursday, Jan. 25, 12 pm – 5 pm
    Friday, Jan. 26, 12 pm – 8 pm
    Saturday, Jan. 27, 12 pm – 7 pm
    Sunday, Jan. 28, 12 pm – 6 pm

     

    Visit Website: The Winter Show
     
    The 70th edition of The Winter Show will be held in the historic Park Avenue Armory where a breadth of works spanning 5,000 years will be presented by over 68 internationally renowned dealers. Myriad works from paintings and works on paper, fine furniture, and design, to jewelry, and contemporary ceramics and glass will be on view. Famed for its rigorous vetting practices carried out by a committee of 120 experts, the Fair’s exhibitors offer works of the highest standards of authenticity and quality in the industry.
     
    illustration: © 2024 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
     
    and © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation, Courtesy of Akio Nagasawa Gallery, Tokyo


    No Place for a Vacation

    No Place for a Vacation

    DANIEL BLAU is pleased to share that this year’s winter exhibition in the gallery on Maximilanstraße will be “No Place for a Vacation”, a selection of twenty-one NASA- and underwater photographs from the mid-to-late 20th century.

     
     
    Exhibition Dates:
     
    December 7, 2023 – January 23, 2024 | extended until February 9, 2024
     
    11am – 6pm | mon – fri
    Maximilianstraße 26, 80539 München

     
     

    The works in the exhibition are for sale. Please contact us for availability and prices.

     

     
     


    Fish Hooks of the Pacific Islands Vol II

    The sea, for those who live along the coast, is an important and even indispensable source of food
     

    Fish Hooks of the Pacific Islands Vol II

     

    Bonito fishermen [Bernatzik, 1934: fig. 30](1)

     
    For example: The Solomon Islands:
     
    The sea, for those who live along the coast, is an important and even indispensable source of food. In the Pacific Ocean, this is especially true. Fishing became, more than purely a necessity of life, a ubiquitous social activity across all the archipelagos and lone islands of the vast Pacific realm, with distinctive symbols, rituals, tools, and sites defining cultures from the West Coast of America to Southeast Asia.
     

    Solomon Islands, composite bonito hooks, shell, natural fibres, turtle shell, nylon, plastic, glass beads
     

    The fish hook, a simple prehistoric tool embedded in our shared human consciousness and essential for the survival of many island civilizations, spans and unites these various cultures, beliefs, and practices, allowing us a glimpse into the soul of the Pacific. In 2012, Daniel Blau and Klaus Maaz published their first book on the subject, “Fish Hooks of the Pacific Islands,” through Hirmer. Their work served as an introduction and meticulous evaluation of fish hooks from across the entire region. Their comprehensive and passionate approach exemplified to readers the degree to which these items are more than just tools, more than just functional, but are in fact art in themselves, where the magic of each hook’s form combines with the rituals of forefather craftsmen and fishermen past. The hooks represent the visible, material part of a tradition stretching back to the dawn of human culture, serving as a sort of chronocultural marker whose forms continue to evolve in space and time.
     
    In this case, the description of each object is essential. The maritime lives of Oceania’s inhabitants compelled them to create artefacts unique to each shore, even for the smallest and most remote islands. The trade networks made possible by the ocean enabled in turn a rich cultural exchange, and the spread of knowledge and material goods. Despite that exchange, though, the unique nature of each island or island group’s own production – the material and design of each island’s hook, the subtleties of its form or interaction of its component parts – survived.
     

    Solomon Islands, composite bonito hook, shell, turtle shell, natural fibres, glass beads

     

    More difficult to gauge at first glance is the precise, human nature of their use. The uninitiated have no clear path to imagining the interaction between hook and the hand of its crafter, the particular form of a given hook and the perfect technique for casting it. How exactly was each hook used? Which hook was best suited for which fish? The continuation of Blau and Maaz’s illuminating work, “Fish Hooks of the Pacific Islands Vol II,”, helps make the unimaginable real. This second volume draws us back once again to the fascinating world of the Pacific, deepening our knowledge of its diverse and complex fishing cultures, practices, and rituals.
     

    Solomon Islands (Uki/Ulawa)
     

    Solomon Islands, composite bonito hook, shell, turtle shell, natural fibres, glass beads

     

    For the people of the Pacific, fishing became more than just necessary – it became sacred. Perhaps the best example is to be found in the so-called bonito cult of the Solomon Islands. “Fish Hooks of the Pacific Islands: Vol. II” paints a vivid picture for us:
     
    Whereas the indigenous island cultures of Polynesia and Micronesia succumbed to the intrusive influence of Western civilization in the second half of the nineteenth century, the traditional culture of the Solomon Islands survived well into the twentieth century, including the all-important and omnipresent bonito cult.
     
    Particularly prominent in the islands of the southeast Solomons, ‘bonito cult’ is the term commonly used to refer to the entire, overarching environment of sacrality surrounding the bonito and everything related to it. This encompasses a vast range of practices, objects, and beliefs – sea spirits, fishing boats, traditions and rituals – but perhaps the most important and certainly the most visible single manifestation of the cult was to be found in the initiation ceremony of the Solomons, the sometimes months-long ritual process through which boys entered manhood – maraufu.
     

    “Stage for Malaohu Boys at Feast”, Ulawa, drawn by R. Marau [Ivens, 1927:p.130-148] (2)
     
    December through March is the windy season in the Solomons, the most important time of year for bonito fishermen. The season brings unfathomable schools of smaller fish past the islands’ coasts, and, following close behind them, large schools of sharks and other predatory fish at hunt, including, of course, the bonito. It is also in this season, therefore, that the initiation ceremony took place. Every boy had to undergo the initiation ritual, at about 13 or 14 years of age, in order to become a man, a process which, for the islanders, was intimately and inexorably bound up with the secrets of bonito fishing.  Accordingly, the initiation process in its every stage and aspect is rife with bonito imagery and symbolism. The magnificent initiation platforms of the final ceremony embody this nearly mystical relationship in their very architecture. The basic form of the platform itself symbolizes a bonito, with its staircases acting as analogue to the great fish’s mouth. Entering the stairs, the boys, richly adorned and successfully emerged from their trials, symbolically enter the body of the fish. It is a moment that echoes an earlier stage and intermediate ceremony in the course of the long initiation process: after each boy returns from his first expedition alongside the experienced fishers, after he has caught his first bonito sat between the legs of his elder and grasping the rod with which the fish is hooked, he returns to shore, now an official maraufu or initiate-in-progress, where a priest awaits to cut the first-caught bonito open and anoint the new maraufu with its red, human-like blood, letting it drip across arms and legs, elbows and knees, cheeks, tongue – and flow even into the boy’s very mouth. The blood of the divinely-appointed bonito will, imbibed by those who will soon no longer be boys, make the body strong, keep joints and muscles young and sprightly. So now, at the culmination of their ordeals, do the youngest men of the island pass into the mouth of the fish.
     

    left: “Malaohu Boy Going to Village for Feast”, Ulawa, drawn by R. Marau [Ivens, 1927: p.130-148] (3)
     
    right: [Fox, 1924: p. 348] (4)
     

    Ngora-Ngora village on Ulawa Island [Bernatzik, 1934: pl. 13, fig. 13] (5)
     
    This final ceremony, the end of the entire initiation process, is treated with great fanfare and celebration by the entire community. Hugo Bernatzik was one of the last observers of southeastern Solomon communities when they still could be conclusively called traditional. His photographs of ceremonial platforms show wooden carvings of frigate birds perched atop the platform’s poles, above support beams jutting out and ending in their own elaborate carvings of sharks and predatory fish. Bernatzik’s camera also accompanied him when he went with bonito fishermen out to sea. He succeeded in capturing the dynamic majesty of the catch so fully that even audiences from our own century must admit to being moved by the images that resulted.
     

    Solomon Islands, composite bonito hook, pearl shell, turtle shell with nylon lashings
     
    This elaborate, ceremonial culture of the bonito bore witness to an ancient tradition of fishing, one which finally began to collapse before the onslaught of Western civilization in the second half of the 20th century.“Fish Hooks of the Pacific Island: Vol. II” brings the extensive, profound research and discourse of Volume I to a triumphant conclusion, casting a much-needed light upon the extraordinary, diverse, and fragile human genius of the Pacific.
     
    “Solomon Islands, one-piece fish hooks, shell, pigments and plant fibre
     
    This limited-edition book is the ultimate resource on the fish hooks of the Pacific Islands. More than 450 fish hooks and dozens of related objects are presented here in their true size (1:1) for the very first time, spread across more than 450 pages and more than 80 full-page or fold-out plates, and accompanied by 500 accessory illustrations, 45 photos of people and islands, 50 maps, and comprehensive expert commentary.
    Foreword and texts by Daniel Blau and Klaus Maaz.
    Essays by Anthony JP Meyer and Sydney Picasso.
    30 x 25 cm, hard cover with embossing and dust cover.
    Please contact us for more information: fishhooks(at)danielblau.com
     

    appl Druck GmbH in Wemding, Bavaria
     
    Bibliography
    (1) Bernatzik, Hugo Adolf. Südsee (Leipzig, 1934)
    (2) Ivens, Walter George. Melanesians of the South-East Soloman Islands (London, 1927)
    (3) Ivens, Walter George. Melanesians of the South-East Soloman Islands (London, 1927)
    (4) Fox, Charles Elliot. The Threshold of the Pacific (London, 1924)
    (5) Bernatzik, Hugo Adolf. Südsee (Leipzig, 1934)
     
    ORDER HERE ON DANIELBLAU.COM
     

    Other Diversions

     
    MAGAZIN BLAU INTERNATIONAL British Museum - Online Collections Expedition Magazine, Penn Museum: Male Initiation in Aoriki (Salomon Islands) Friends of Tobi Island Frontiers in Marine Science: Na Vuku Makawa ni Qoli: Indigenous Fishing Knowledge (IFK) in Fiji and the Pacific Frontiers in Marine Science: The Role of Ancestral Seascape Discontinuity and Geographical Distance in Structuring Rockfish Populations in the Pacific Northwest Future Exhibitions and Installations at the Getty Centre, California Tavake Pakomio: Learning from our Ancestors: Exploring Ancestral Island Wisdom and Practices on Rapa Nui The Pacific Collection Access Project - French Polynesia, Google Arts & Culture The Serious, Sustainable (and Sometimes Celebratory) Indigineous Fishing Methods of Polynesia Women and Fishing in Traditional Pacific Island Culture Cook Islands: Traditional Fishing Methods 2012 Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum, California