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Roman Cieślewicz, Zoom – contre la pollution de l’œil (Zoom – against eye pollution), centered collages for Zoom magazine, 1971 (100,5 x 72,5 cm, © MAD, Paris / Christophe Dellière)

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Figures from «The generation and diversification of butterfly eyespot color patterns», in Current Biology, 16 October 2001

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Effects Of Psychoactive Drugs On Spiders

In 1948, Swiss pharmacologist Peter N. Witt started his research on the effect of drugs on spiders. The initial motivation for the study was a request from his colleague, zoologist H. M. Peters, to shift the time when garden spiders build their webs from 2am–5am, which apparently annoyed Peters, to earlier hours. Witt tested spiders with a range of psychoactive drugs, including amphetamine, mescaline, strychnine, LSD, and caffeine, and found that the drugs affect the size and shape of the web rather than the time when it is built. At small doses of caffeine (10 µg/spider), the webs were smaller; the radii were uneven, but the regularity of the circles was unaffected. At higher doses (100 µg/spider), the shape changed more, and the web design became irregular. All the drugs tested reduced web regularity except for small doses (0.1–0.3 µg) of LSD, which increased web regularity.

The drugs were administered by dissolving them in sugar water, and a drop of solution was touched to the spider’s mouth. In some later studies, spiders were fed with drugged flies. For qualitative studies, a well-defined volume of solution was administered through a fine syringe. The webs were photographed for the same spider before and after drugging.

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Eulàlia Grau, Discriminació de la Dona (Discrimination against women), exhibited at Galeria Ciento, 1977 © MACBA, Barcelona

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Gaganendranath Tagore, Untitled (The Poet), 1917, watercolor on paper, 17,5 x 12,1 cm

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Norman McLaren & Evelyn Lambart, LE MERLE (THE BLACKBIRD) [WHIMSY: A change of pace in a cartoon gem about a lovable, but looney, blackbird]. Poster from “7 Surprizes”, 1959 © Office national du Canada / National Film Board of Canada

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Robert Osborn, The Hangover, in SIGN IMAGE SYMBOL, pp. 184-199 (Edited by György Kepes, Vision+Value Series, New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1966)

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Margaret Peterson, Untitled tempera painting, n.d./c. 1960 (Margaret Peterson fonds, AR445, University of Victoria Libraries Special Collections and University Archives)

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Mose Tolliver aka MOSET (c. 1919–2006), Untitled [Rattlesnake Painting on Wood Panel], n.d./c. 1980, Paint on wood, Height: 81,28 cm x Width: 60,96 cm x Depth: 1,27 cm.

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Mount Lebanon Shaker Community, The All-Seeing Eye [Detail of Gift Drawing Attributed to Sister Sarah Bates] as it was printed in the article ‘The Gift to Be Simple: Shaker design’ from PORTFOLIO. A MAGAZINE FOR THE GRAPHIC ARTS, Cincinnati: Zebra Press, Volume 1, Number 1, Winter 1950. Unpaginated [100+ pp]. Frank Zachary [Editor], Alexey Brodovitch [Art Director]

Around the same time William Golden began his quest to develop a new CBS logo, Alexey Brodovitch, famous as the art director of Harper’s Bazaar, took on a new project – the publication of a magazine dedicated totally to graphic design. The magazine, Portfolio, was published without advertising, supported only by the subscriptions of those with a love for graphic design. Although Portfolio lasted only three issues, it achieved a reputation as the most significant publication on design during the twentieth century. The first issue of the magazine included an article titled, “The Gift to Be Simple,” (incidentally, part of the first line of the Shaker song, Simple Gifts) that featured a drawing, untitled and undated, attributed by style and choice of symbols to Sister Sarah Bates of the Mount Lebanon Shaker Community (now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art collection). It is a detail of the “all-seeing eye” selected by Brodovitch from the upper center of the drawing that caught Golden’s attention. Luckily for Golden, Brodovitch chose to reproduce the eye from a black and white negative and printed it as a high-contrast image, accentuating the difference between the iris and the pupil. Golden, seeing the potential in the image, handed off the concept for the eye logo to Kurt Weihs, who was able to refine the drawing for its intended use. Weihs was the one who appears most clearly to remember the connection between the CBS Eye and the Shaker drawing in Portfolio magazine. The missing link in the story is how Alexey Brodovitch came to do an article about Shaker gift drawings in the premiere issue of Portfolio.

↘︎ From a spirit communication, an iconic logo emerges: How a Shaker gift drawing inspired CBS (in Shaker Museum | Mount Lebanon’s Wordpress blog, 21/12/2016)

Mount Lebanon Shaker Community, Gift Drawing Attributed to Sister Sarah Bates (Philadelphia Museum of Art collection, New York)

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CBS Television Network’s promotional material in The New York Times (13/03/1969) with the William Golden’s 1951 iconic ‘CBS Eye’ logo, designed with the help of graphic artist Kurt Weihs.

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Zoran Antonio Mušič, Nous ne sommes pas les derniers (We Are Not the Last), 1970. Watercolor on paper signed, titled and dated, 59 x 75 cm. Collection of Patti Cadby Birch/Everett B. Birch, Spring Bay, St. Thomas, United States Virgin Islands (label verso). Mušic (1909–2005) was a Slovenian painter and graphic artist. In 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Venice and placed in the concentration camp in Dachau. While there, he created over 200 drawings documenting his life. He was able to preserve around 100 of these works after the liberation of the camp in April 1945. It was these drawings that served as the inspiration for his most acclaimed series, Nous ne sommes pas les derniers—this painting belongs to that series.

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Nigel Henderson, Photographs no. 55, no. 72, no. 74, and no. 95 from ‘Parallel of Life and Art’ exhibition catalogue [an exhibition of landscape, science and art held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) from 11 September–18 October 1953]. Black and white negative, 110 × 155 mm, with annotated envelope. Tate Archive Collection.

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Ana Carrondo, Sem título, n.d., dois azulejos pintados, 14 x 14 cm (Colecção TREGER SAINT SILVESTRE, © Marta Pina)

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Erica Baum, Postcard, January 2018, 10,2 x 15,2 cm. This postcard by Baum is part of a series devoted to artists’ postcards initiated by Primary Information in the wake of the Trump Administration, as well as the social and political tumult that preceded it.

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Paul Thek, Untitled [THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH WILL NOT FIGHT ANOTHER WAR... THEY DECIDE TO CIVILLY DISOBEY], 1975-1992, from a set of 28 etching on card/heavy paper.

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I) Leopoldo de Almeida, As Mulheres Portuguesas Gratas a Salazar (The Portuguese Women Grateful to Salazar), 1955. Sculpture placed in the garden near the official residence of the President of the Council of Ministers, removed after the Carnation Revolution once it was decapited. Source.

II) Isabel Brison, Estatuária Retirada em 1974 (Statuary Withdrawn in 1974), 2021. Photo collage of an imaginary garden with the headless sculpture which has been stored in a warehouse. Source.