Crossroads of Curiosity
Four lightbox murals by David Normal, made from the British Library's 19th-century book illustrations. Burning Man, 2014; the British Library, London, 2015. Watch the artist talk about the work.
The Artist
David Normal is a painter, animator, and installation maker based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He got his start in the mid-1980s making fliers for the Bay Area hardcore punk scene, and by the early 1990s had begun building large-scale work for the Burning Man Festival.
In 2015 his paintings were the subject of a solo exhibition at the British Library in London, Crossroads of Curiosity. In 2019 he created Cathenge, a cat-temple for Burning Man that the San Francisco Arts Commission later presented as public art at Patricia’s Green in Hayes Valley, San Francisco, where it stood from October 2022 through March 2024.
He now works from a studio in West Oakland devoted to 3D printing and installation art.
The Work
- Year
- 2014
- Medium
- Digital collage, overpainted in acrylic, printed and shown as edge-lit lightbox murals
- Materials
- Polypropylene print media (a signmaker's medium), acrylic paint; framed in plexiglas in edge-lit redwood lightbox frames
- Dimensions
- Four panels, each 2.5 × 6 m (8′ × 20′). Painted stage printed at 3′ × 8′
- Software
- Adobe Photoshop
- Source imagery
- Exclusively the British Library's digitised collection of 19th-century book illustrations, “The Million Image Release”, which the Library released into the public domain
- Fabrication
- Redwood frames by Andrew Spalding. CNC-cut lattices at Burning Man by Jack “Opa” Haye. The British Library array by Max Hunter, with engineering by Erik Kneer, SE
More info about Crossroads at Burning Man
More info about Crossroads at the British Library
The Story
Burning Man Meets the British Library
David Normal talks about the creation of the Crossroads of Curiosity in this interview, recorded by British Library Labs during the exhibition.
Artist David Normal’s Crossroads of Curiosity is a suite of murals that extends the notion of a “cabinet of curiosity” outward from the rectilinear arrangement of objects in glass cases to encompass the world in a series of dramatic tableaux featuring provocative juxtapositions of vastly different times, places, and peoples.
Originally created for Burning Man 2014, Normal used Victorian Era book illustrations exclusively from the digitised collection of the British Library to create the artwork. Beginning as black and white collages, the four pieces were developed into 8’ x 20’ lightbox murals that were arrayed around the base of the Burning Man effigy to support the 2014 festival’s theme, “Caravansary”.
In 2015 the Crossroads of Curiosity was presented as an installation at the British Library in London. The murals were installed in a close array that formed an immersive space within the “Poet’s Circle”, an open air rotunda in the Piazza of the British Library. The murals were on display for five months and provided an interesting social space for visitors to the British Library, and glowing through the night they were seen by countless passengers going by in London’s double-decker buses. A gala opening was held on June 20th that featured talks by David Normal and Burning Man founder, Larry Harvey (who came to London for the opening) as well as a ceremonial procession and live music. During the course of the exhibition, David Normal often gave talks on the subject matter of the murals, what he called, “Lunch Time Travel Tours”, since they were often presented to people taking their lunch break in the Piazza.
Process
Each painting began as a black-and-white collage in Photoshop, printed faintly and then painted over in acrylic. The collages, in the same order as the paintings above:
More info about the paintings and collages.
More info about Crossroads at the British Library, including the plans, construction, and a time-lapse of the installation going up.
The Crossroads of Curiosity is a set of 4 paintings by David Normal based on antiquarian book illustrations from the collection of the British Library. The painting were displayed as giant lightboxes first at Burning Man 2014 and then at the British Library in 2015..
About the Crossroads of Curiosity —
David Normal’s Crossroads of Curiosity is an epic suite of lightbox murals that extends the notion of a “cabinet of curiosity” outward from the rectilinear arrangement of objects in glass cases to encompass the world in a series of dramatic tableaux featuring provocative juxtapositions of vastly different times, places, and peoples.
Crossroads of Curiosity was installed at Burning Man 2014 and had a 5 month exhibition at the British Library in 2015. The collage-based paintings were composed exclusively from the digitized antiquarian illustration collection of the British Library. Crossroads was essential to supporting the Burning Man Festival's 2014 theme, "Carvansary", in close collaboration with Larry Harvey, and was displayed prominently at the "Man Pavilion" where the Burning Man Effigy stood.
Crossroads at the British Library 2015 —
In 2015 the Crossroads of Curiosity was presented as an installation at the British Library in London. The murals were installed in a close array that formed an immersive space within the "Poet's Circle", an open air rotunda in the Piazza of the British Library. The murals were on display for five months and provided an interesting social space for visitors to the British Library, and glowing through the night they were seen by countless passengers going by in London's double-decker buses. A gala opening was held on June 20th that featured talks by David Normal and Burning Man founder, Larry Harvey (who came to London for the opening) as well as a ceremonial procession and live music. During the course of the exhibition, David Normal often gave talks on the subject matter of the murals, what he called, "Lunch Time Travel Tours", since they were often presented to people taking their lunch break in the Piazza.
Crossroads at Burning Man 2014 —
These murals were originally created for Burning Man 2014. The theme of that year's festival was 'Caravansary'. The Caravansary at Burning Man was conceived of as 'the crossroads of a dreamland: a bazaar of the bizarre wherein treasures of every sort, from every land and age, flow in and out to be flaunted, lost, exploited and discovered.'
About the Paintings —
David Normal’s Crossroads of Curiosity is an epic suite of lightbox murals that extends the notion of a “cabinet of curiosity” outward from the rectilinear arrangement of objects in glass cases to encompass the world in a series of dramatic tableaux featuring provocative juxtapositions of vastly different times, places, and peoples.
Crossroads of Curiosity was installed at Burning Man 2014 and had a 5 month exhibition at the British Library in 2015. The collage-based paintings were composed exclusively from the digitized antiquarian illustration collection of the British Library. Crossroads was essential to supporting the Burning Man Festival's 2014 theme, "Carvansary", in close collaboration with Larry Harvey, and was displayed prominently at the "Man Pavilion" where the Burning Man Effigy stood.
Ostrischizocracy —
Ostrischizocracy was the first of the four compositions to be made. In some respects it is the simplest, but in other respects it is the most comical of the four paintings. It sets the stage with a number of motifs that are used throughout the paintings: Roman bathes, unconscious women, androgynous prophets with empty books, and therianthropic hybrids of humans and birds. Look carefully at the series and you will find these motifs repeated and varied in a number of instances in the artwork.
Purcogitoresque —
Purcogitoresque is perhaps the most personal of the Crossroads series. David Normal personally identifies with the characters in the painting - particularly the artist, a Prince Myshkin like figure, who is seeking for his salvation through his own work. However, the figure of the Sultan who is simulataneously sacred and profane also appeals directly to the artist's own sensibilities since he finds beauty in the paradoxes and contradictions of human nature. The two dandies reaching out to a jellyfish as though hailing a cab represent Normal's own predilection for fashion and style, seemingly a pedestrian concern, while being preoccupied with truly otherworldly matters that transcend not only the latest trends, but the very fabric of space and time.
Conflamingulation —
Conflamingulation depicts the sublimation of aggression into absurdity. The violent impulse is transformed into a harmless charade in a cavern intermediate between the Biblical (Elijah's Cave of the School of the Prophets in Jerusalem), and the Classical (the Tepidarium of the Forum Bath of Pompeii). Here within this paradigmatic interregnum, the causes, mechanisms, and consequences of war are dissolved as though they were drugs being added slyly to wine to intoxicate unknowingly the viewer of the painting.
Curioscillotropy —
Curioscillotropy, of all the 4 Crossroads paintings, is the one that refers most clearly to the theme of 'Caravansary' (from Burning Man 2014). The painting is a Rube Goldberg like machine that plays with history. It shows the Mongols being expelled from China, the galleon trade ships opening a passage to the East, Crusades as the foundation of European cultural imperialism, and Maori's erupting forth apocalyptically to reap an atavistic revenge. All these things are here - and more displayed in the playful free associative manner that runs through all of the pieces.