http://tiny.cc/MCU4A

this one is a little big, here’s another that doesn’t look as good:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=48623906

meredith, i’ll bring you a dvd when i get back to oakland…

Ginny, that’s an exquisite tattoo.

My mom’s a biologist and my dad’s a deep-sea biophysicist; I grew up with scads of Haeckel plate reproductions lying around. Even all these years later, I’m still in awe of them.

Suzanne: I think it’s simply too good to be true, just a holiday jest. Still, one can dream! :)

I discovered of Häckel’s work when I moved into my first apartment. It was waiting for me, on the floor. Whoever moved out took all the furniture, but left behind some books in the living room, including a colored version of Art Forms in Nature. Since then, Bjork used his designs as a stage backdrop, I’ve seen some wonderful web design that incorporated his work, etc. He’s definitely gotten a lot of play in recent years.

But I think as far as art goes, the trend to put tentacles, marine life, etc., into artwork doesn’t come so much from Häckel directly as it does from getting inspired by stuff like Cthulhu Mythos, pervy Japanese woodcuts, etc. Häckel’s images definitely provide a wonderful reference for putting those kinds visuals into your art, but I agree with you that he’s too straight-forward to be the source; it comes from a weirder place, and it’s been discovered that his stuff lends itself amazingly well to it. Hence the reinterpretations. We got into it a little bit last year on this blog when I asked, “why do we all love tentacles so much, anyway?” People had some interesting things to say about that.