A is for Aardvark : Editor's Notes

These notes identify Aki Beam's sources of inspiration for the individual book pages. Clicking on the letter will return you to that page, or use the links above to further explore the site.

A


Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow by Piet Mondrian. Oil on canvas. 1930.
Museum of Modern Art, New York


An aardvark

B-C


Birch bark


Toronto Parking logo

D-E

Glowing eyes (from Sesame Street segments in the seventies)


Street Light (Lampada — Studio di luce) by Giacomo Balla.
Oil on canvas. 1909

F-G

Design for “re-seeding the dream” fish-sewing project by Pam Hill.

The Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer. Oil on canvas. 1899.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

H-I

Queen Victoria

Camel Indian Print Top

J-K

Joe Clark, older.  
Aki Beam used a younger Clark from a 1990s Canadian History textbook.

King Stephen by Unknown artist. Oil on panel. Circa 1620. National Portrait Gallery, London.

L-M

The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti by  Ben Shahn.
Tempera on canvas.   1931-32.  Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.

Images from a catalogue of the travelling exhibit of Victorian Fairy Painting at the AGO (not the book depicted above).  

N-O

Images of Noah’s ark dominate Western Culture.  The Sunday-toys with the removable two-by-two animals were a great favourite of Aki Beam.

 
Macbeth - Act 5, Scene 1 - Dunsinane. Ante-room in the castle.  
Lady Macbeth, insane, continually rubbing at her hands:
“Out, damned spot! Out, I say! .… What, will these hands never be clean?”  
Aki Beam here depicted “Spot” as a small dog reminiscent of Dick and Jane illustrations.  
Really, a dog is the last thing you’d want around during a mental melt-down.

P-Q

American Gothic by Grant Wood. Oil on beaverboard. 1930.
Art Institute of Chicago.

Images, etchings and photos of “beach babies” of the 1920s.

R-S

Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X by Francis Bacon.
Oil on canvas. 1953

The Four Evangelists. The Book of Kells. C. AD 800.
Trinity College, Dublin.

T-U

Quarks are one of the two basic constituents of matter in the Standard Model of particle physics.
The top quark is a third-generation quark with a charge of +2/3.
It is the most massive quark. The word quark was coined by Murray Gell-Mann in its present sense. He claims to have taken it from the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark" in Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce.
Aki Beam found the image she used in a physics textbook from the early 1990s.

The Menaced Assassin by   René Magritte. Oil on canvas. 1926.
The Museum of Modern Arts, New York.

V-W

Various drawings and photographs of triumphal arches.

Some paper, when held up to the light, displays an area of translucent design: the watermark. This design is incorporated into the paper by one of several different methods during the paper manufacturing process. For this page, Aki Beam chose a W-based design and used blow pens for that extra-watery effect.

X-Y

 
1970s cartoon images of x-rays and 1930s office clerks
(pronounced clarks in Britain).

The Yellow Christ by Paul Gauguin. Oil on canvas 1889.
Albright-Knox Art. Gallery, Buffalo, NY.

Z

Großer Zoologischer Garten by August Macke, 1912.
Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund.

Air, Fire by Auguste Herbin. Oil on canvas. 1944. Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris.

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