A Convergence
of Convergences:
A Contest.
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For more information
about this contest,
click here.
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The Contest Resumes!
Contest Winner No. 39.
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Eggs And Bacon
Submitted by Rosamond Purcell, from her recently issued book of essays and photographs, Egg & Nest, with Linnea Hall, René Corado, and Bernd Heinrich. (Harvard University Press)
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Egg of the Common Murre
Variations in color and marking on the eggs of the Common Murre are dramatic, ranging from white to pale blue, dark blue with black splotches, honey-colored fine lines, and smoky smears. These markings suggest visual connections to other worlds, from the lines made by a ceramicist's glaze, to canvases by Jackson Pollack or Franz Kline, and even to what looks like a celestial map over an imagined pole.
The calligraphic effects so pronounced on blackbird eggs may appear over the entire surface of the shell on certain eggs of the Common Murre, dancing and twisting in lines reminiscent of Japanese writing or Chinese brush painting, executed with flourish and grace. In the example below I photographed the circumference of this egg one section at a time. Then, my husband Dennis and I assembled the pieces into a "Mercator" projection.
"Mercator" Projection of Egg
The effect of stitching together these slices creates a large mural of acrobatic monkeys swinging from vines, a young chimp riding a unicycle, gibbons in free-fall. But then, looking again, a "vine" becomes the outline of the back of a bull, emerging now like an ancient creature from the walls of Lascaux. I begin to think about the connections between avian and human art. In1964, as a self-portrait, Robert Rauschenberg made a pen-and-ink drawing of his fingerprint for a New Yorker profile.
Rauschenberg's fingerprint drawing
The whorls of the print are like patterns on an egg. The shape of the impression is itself like a bird's egg − slightly elongated, with one end narrower than the other.
And then, one day, while reading a book about the painter Francis Bacon, I opened a page to the artist's drawings from an exhibition catalogue of the work of Chaïm Soutine. These quick sketches of human figures were like the markings made when the egg turns or pauses as blood (for paint) lays down these traces. Bacon's drawing seemed to mirror, if not the content, then certainly the calligraphic style, of this particular egg.
Francis Bacon's sketch
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WESCHLER RESPONDS.
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Is that cool, or what?
But what is the deal with those Murre markings? (Common Murres, incidentally, are cliff-dwelling sea birds, who lay one egg at a time, the egg strikingly elongated and bottom heavy like that so as to prevent its rolling out of the nest, or rolling anywhere for that matter). How do the markings arise and, what are they for, evolutionarily speaking? Well, off to the web, where we find the following (via stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Color_of_Eggs.html):
Seabird species that nest in gigantic colonies tend to have eggs that
are extremely variable in both color and markings. Their colors, like
all egg colors, are from pigments produced by glands in the female's
oviduct. As the egg moves down that tube the colors are squeezed out
onto the shell. As ecologist Bernd Heinrich put it: ". . . the motion
of the egg affects the color patterns. It is as if innumerable brushes hold
still while the canvas moves. If the egg remains still there are spots, and if it moves while the glands continue secreting, then lines and scrawls result."
In other words, the Murre's egg is initially white in the womb, but as it enters the oviduct during the process of laying, that is, as the egg itself starts being expressed, it gets imprinted with all those amazing lines and whorls (patterns which in turn render the egg strikingly individual amidst the profusion of other such eggs, the easier to be identified by its mother or father, both of whom, incidentally, take turns sheltering the egg till it hatches).
Expression, indeed. For what else, in the end, is Francis Bacon or any other artist doing in the moment of (pro)creation, other than expressing, exuding, the essence of his personality onto the empty white canvas before him?
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OTHER WINNERS.
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1. Evolving, Evolved by Charlie Hopper
2. Primal Forces, Basic Colors by Andy Hunter
3. The End of the Beginning by Holly Dunsworth
Intermezzo by Lawrence Weschler
4. This Is Not an Ad by Jimmy Chen
5. Catskills Vagina by Dan Clem
6. The Antipodes by Chris Zic
7. Self-Made Constriction by Sam Gaskin
8. We Are the Son by Danny Erker
9. Painfully Unaware by Dan Park
10. Gutshot by Jason Torchinsky
Weschler's Second Interlude
11. Love and War by Kim Wood
12. Inside and Out There by Lena Webb
13. The March by Emily Marvosh
14. Feminine Divine Triptych by Margit Christenson
15. Time's Deliberate Convergence by Steve Denyszyn
16. A Rousseau/Hirshfield Convergence by Adam Webb
Beirut/Warsaw by Lawrence Weschler
17. Clothesline Raising Over Carlisle, Indiana by Charlie Hopper
Carnival of Convergences
Weschler's Fourth Interlude
Aftersquib to the Foregoing
18. Pelvises All the Way Down by John Peter Rickgauer
19. Ovary Night? by Maya Muñoz
20. Christ in Space by Jonathan Shipley
A Pair of Convergences Off of Tina Barney
Another Carnival of Convergences
21. Moral Confusion: Iraq, Munich, and Vietnam by Donald Rumsfeld
22. Seeing the Tree for the Forest by Walter Murch
An Addendum to the Foregoing, and a Visitor Challenge
23, 24, and 25. Far Out by Michael Benson, Brian Christian, and Walter Murch
26. Jewish Bunk Beds by Monica S. Bland
Those Damn Swedish Trees, Take 3: Convergence of the Blogs
27. Degenerate Boogie-Woogie by Lisa Lee
Carnival of Convergences No. 3
28. Sand and Moon by Alison Cornyn
Actaeon: An Ovidian Impromptu by Lawrence Weschler
29 and 30. Hoods and Veils by Vero Testa and Lauren Redniss
The Onion/Bickle Convergence by Lawrence Weschler
31. The Lone Figure Against the Armored Swarm by Michele Siegel
32. Muscle and Flow by Benjamin R. Cohen
An Addendum to the Foregoing: Cities, Brains, Orchestras by Lawrence Weschler
Saint and Princess by Lawrence Weschler
Beauty Queen and Baghdad Hummer by Lawrence Weschler
Carnival of Convergences No. 4
Laughing, Clapping, Constantly Forgetting: A Trill of Readerly Associations by Lawrence Weschler
33. Lithographica by R.A. Villanueva
34. Papal Fire (Papa Lux) by Nick Feia
Addendum to "Laughing, Clapping ..." and, More Specifically, to the Stalinist-Applause Anecdote by Lawrence Weschler
35. Disseminations: Internet, Dandelions, Flight Paths by Sarah Daegling
36. Black and White and in Color by Walter Murch
Carnival of Convergences No. 5
Lee Friedlander's Visionary Trees: An Addendum to the Last Chapters of Everything That Rises by Lawrence Weschler
37. Shipwrecked Desperation by Charles Mudede via Matt Haber
38. Life Forms by Ariel Winter
Cameras, Action! From Disney World to St. Peter's Square, the Mediative Flight From the Immediate by Lawrence Weschler
Carnival of Convergences No. 6
Convergent Postscripts by Lawrence Weschler
From Da Vinci to Duchamp, by Way of Russia by Lawrence Weschler
Venus on a Vespa, Berger on My Mind by Lawrence Weschler
39. Eggs and Bacon by Rosamond Purcell
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