Sunday, October 28, 2007

One of my favorite painters


Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer (September 30, 1865 - September 24, 1953 was a French Symbolist/Art Nouveau painter and potter.

He was born Lucien Lévy to a Jewish family in Algiers. In 1879 he began studying drawing and sculpture in Paris. In 1887 Lévy began making his living in southern France, overseeing the decoration of ceramics. His own tastes in pottery decoration were influenced by Islamic Art. In 1895 he left for Paris to begin a career in painting; around this time he visited Italy and was further influenced by art of the Renaissance.

In 1896 he exhibited his first pastels and paintings under the name Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer; he'd added the last two syllables of his mother's maiden name (Goldhurmer), likely to differentiate himself from other people named Lévy. His paintings soon became popular with the public and among fellow artists as well. He earned high praise for the academic attention to detail with which he captured figures lost in a Pre-Raphaelite haze of melancholy, contrasted with bright Impressionist colouration. His portrait of writer Georges Rodenbach is perhaps the most striking example of this strange and extraordinary synergy.

After 1901 Lévy-Dhurmer moved away from expressly Symbolist content, incorporating more landscapes into his work. He continued to draw inspiration from music and attempted to capture works of great composers such as Beethoven in painted form. He died in Le Vésinet in 1953.

Art Renewal Center: Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer

ArtMagick Galleries: Dhurmer

The Piano

Such a great animation: beautiful, gentle and sad.

Bringing you the best of bygone eras



Amazing collection of retro links: Retrolounge

"A child said, What is the grass?"


Walter Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and Realism, incorporating both views in his works. His works have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Whitman is among the most influential and controversial poets in the American canon. His work has been described as a "rude shock" and "the most audacious and debatable contribution yet made to American literature."

The Walt Whitman Archive

Leaves of Grass (1900)

Halloween


Halloween is the one of the oldest holidays still celebrated today. It's one of the most popular holidays, second only to Christmas. While millions of people celebrate Halloween without knowing it's origins and myths, the history and facts of Halloween make the holiday more fascinating.

The History of Halloween

Halloween website

Halloween Poems

Monday, October 15, 2007

Tomas Baginski: The Cathedral

Botanical wonders


Scientific marvels; drop-dead beautiful works of art; a genus onto themselves: these are just a few of the explanations given to describe the allure of a legendary, century-old bevy of exquisite glass blossoms and fruits.

In “Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers,” The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the Glass Flowers of Harvard.

The Corning Museum of Glass

Lisa Law - Hippie History


Lisa Law's story is one among thousands that emerged from American society in the turbulent 1960s. Americans in that era faced many controversial issues-from civil rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear arms, and the environment to drug use, sexual freedom, and nonconformity.

Many young people questioned America's materialism and cultural and political norms. Seeking a better world, some used music, politics, and alternative lifestyles to create what came to be known as the counterculture.

Lisa Law's photographs provide glimpses into the folk and rock music scenes, California's blossoming counterculture, and the family-centered and spiritual world of commune life in New Mexico. They are moments that she lived, witnessed, and recorded on the frontier of cultural change.

A Visual Journey: Photographs by Lisa Law 1965-1971

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Always look on the bright side of life


Monty Python Official Website

Monty Python's Complete Useless Web Site

Leonardo Solaas software art


Beautiful, enchanting - I could play with these programs for hours. 'Dreamlines' is my favorite, watching the image appear, move and change is magical.

Dreamlines is a non-linear, interactive visual experience. The user enters one or more words that define the subject of a dream he would like to dream. The system looks in the Web for images related to those words, and takes them as input to generate an ambiguous painting, in perpetual change, where elements fuse into one another, in a process analogous to memory and free association.

Autopoemador takes a poem, or any text, and makes a random audiovisual experience out of it. It is an automatic poem reader, that literally processes words and makes something different out of them: a language, chaos or order, in which clear understanding and communication do not matter any more.

Autopintador is a paint program with a will of its own. The user has a strokes palette and several control tools. When drawing, though, the strokes move around the screen by themselves, and eventually disappear. The outcome is a painting in movement, that results from the interaction between user and machine. It is a game of forms and colors, that discloses it’s possibilities with playing and experimentation.

Poetry with paint - the art of Naoto Hattori


"Some people think my visions are very weird and hard to understand. To me they are natural and flow freely from my mind. I don’t know when it developed, as I’ve been creating and visualizing imaginary worlds ever since I was a child. Now as an adult I paint my feelings and emotions — it is like poetry with paint.
It is not difficult for me to create my images, they come to me automatically. If I imagine a flying vagina with wings smoking out of a penis shaped bong, I see the vision clearly in my mind.
At times I am dumbfounded by my own abilities. I’ve been painting for 10 years, yet there seems no end to the flow of imagery—it grows day by day.
At first the images seem confusing and meaningless, but as I create they become clarified. Then I learn from the paintings. As my inner self is revealed, I feel great satisfaction and relief.
Some people open their mind to a more visionary world with drugs. While my visions may have similarities to drug induced hallucinations, I achieve this without drugs.
Also there are similarities to my visions and those found in dreams. Like dreams they are varied and can be sweet, nightmarish, or just funny and weird.

I paint whatever I imagine and don’t compromise or lie to myself. In this way I maintain purity of thought and the originality of my work."

- Naoto Hattori -

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Hide and Seek

Imogen Heap

The art of Michael Parkes


Michael Parkes is the world’s leading magical realist painter, sculptor, and stone lithographer. His decades of success as a fine artist stand out in the art world, where less than 1% of artists ever achieve the success in both the primary and secondary markets that Michael has achieved. His works are collected by celebrities, private collectors, and galleries around the world, and his body of work stands for the ages.

The World of Michael Parkes

Rage, Rage Against The Dying Of The Light


Dylan Thomas was born in Wales in 1914. He was a neurotic, sickly child who shied away from school and preferred reading on his own; he read all of D. H. Lawrence's poetry, impressed by Lawrence's descriptions of a vivid natural world. Fascinated by language, he excelled in English and reading, but neglected other subjects and dropped out of school at sixteen. His first book, Eighteen Poems, was published to great acclaim when he was twenty. Thomas did not sympathize with T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden's thematic concerns with social and intellectual issues, and his writing, with its intense lyricism and highly charged emotion, has more in common with the Romantic tradition. Thomas first visited America in January 1950, at the age of thirty-five. His reading tours of the United States, which did much to popularize the poetry reading as new medium for the art, are famous and notorious, for Thomas was the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination: he was flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his work aloud with tremendous depth of feeling. He became a legendary figure, both for his work and the boisterousness of his life. Tragically, he died from alcoholism at the age of 39 after a particularly long drinking bout in New York City in 1953.

Read poetry of Dylan Thomas here

Laurel and Hardy


Laurel and Hardy were an American-based comedy duo who became famous during the early half of the 20th century for their work in motion pictures. The members of the duo were the thin British-born-and-reared Stan Laurel and his heavier American partner from the state of Georgia, Oliver Hardy. The pair is considered among the most famous and finest double acts in cinema history. Each brought talents from his solo career to the team.

The two comedians worked together briefly in 1919 on The Lucky Dog, released in 1921. After a period appearing separately in several short films for the Hal Roach studio during the 1920s, they began appearing in movie shorts together in 1926, and Laurel and Hardy officially became a team in 1927. They became Hal Roach's most famous and lucrative stars. Among their most popular and successful films were the features Sons of the Desert (1933), Way Out West (1937), and Block-Heads (1938); and the shorts Big Business (1929), Helpmates (1932), and their Academy Award-winning short, The Music Box (1932).

The pair left the Roach studio in 1940; then appeared in eight low-budget comedies for 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. From 1945 to 1950, they did not appear on film and concentrated on their stage show. They made their last film, Atoll K, in France in 1950 and 1951 before retiring from the screen. In total, they appeared together in 106 films. They starred in 40 short sound films, 32 short silent films and 23 feature films, and in the remaining 11 films, had a guest or cameo appearance.


The Midnight Patrol (1933) 18 mins

Friday, October 12, 2007

René Magritte


René François Ghislain Magritte (November 21, 1898 – August 15, 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and amusing images.

Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, in 1898, the eldest son of Léopold Magritte, a tailor, and Adeline, a milliner. He began drawing lessons in 1910. In 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water. The image of his mother floating, her dress obscuring her face, may have influenced a 1927-1928 series of paintings of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants, but Magritte disliked this explanation.[1] He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels for two years until 1918. In 1922 he married Georgette Berger, whom he had met in 1913.

Magritte worked in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926 when a contract with Galerie la Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition. Depressed by the failure, he moved to Paris where he became friends with André Breton, and became involved in the surrealist group.

When Galerie la Centaure closed and the contract income ended, he returned to Brussels and worked in advertising. Then, with his brother, he formed an agency, which earned him a living wage.

During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. At the time he renounced the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, though he returned to the themes later.

His work showed in the United States in New York in 1936 and again in that city in two retrospective exhibitions, one at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, and the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992.

Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on August 15, 1967 and was interred in Schaarbeek Cemetery, Brussels.


Winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature


Doris Lessing, who has won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature has been one of Britain's most prominent writers for more than 50 years.
Her novels, most notably The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, weave political and sexual themes into a complex narrative thread.

Lessing's themes are big ones: racism, communism, terrorism and environmental destruction.

Her output ranges from romances through to science fiction and take in the most intimate internal dialogues and sweeping historical set-pieces.

Doris May Taylor is a child of the British Empire. Born in Persia - now Iran - in 1919, she was brought up in Southern Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - where her father owned a farm.

Her African childhood, amid the vastness of the bush and her time at convent schools, brought her a wealth of inspiration.

In 1949 after two failed marriages, the second to a hard-line communist, Gottfried Lessing, she left Africa, and most of her family, and moved to London to try her hand at writing.

Multi-layered tales

Lessing's first novel, The Grass is Singing, published the following year, was an instant bestseller.

The story of the wife of a white farmer and her affair with an African servant, the book broke new ground, both in terms of its outlining of an interracial relationship and in the sheer detail Lessing gave to her characters' internal lives.

Perhaps Lessing's most controversial novel was The Golden Notebook, published in 1962.

A multi-layered story about the different areas of one woman's personality, her passions and hatreds, it is by far the most complex, and longest, work Lessing has ever produced.


Lessing has written more than 30 novels
She has also produced startling works, such as the semi-autobiographical Children of Violence series and Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), a frightening and surreal examination of mental illness.

By the late 1970s, Lessing left the African-themed novel behind and moved into science fiction.

In the Canopus in Argos series, she outlines a dystopic vision of the future, with natural catastrophes and tyranny becoming the norm.

The critic, Paul Schlueter, noted that Lessing's "high seriousness in describing Earth's own decline and ultimate demise is as profoundly apocalyptic as ever".

More recently, Lessing has produced novels like The Good Terrorist (1985), a satire on romantic politics, and The Fifth Child (1988), about the havoc wreaked on a family by an antisocial and violent child.

Her latest work, The Cleft, is a sci-fi novel which imagines what happens to a mythical all-female world when men are introduced.

Speaking at the Hay literary festival in June, Lessing said the book had been partly inspired by her own experience of giving birth at 19 and the woman in the next bed, already a mother of two girls, harshly rejecting the son she had just had.

The writer also addressed her critics - saying she had been surprised by the "horrible" early reviews of The Golden Notebook.

"There's something abrasive in me because I have often made people very cross," she mused.

But she said as a writer it was important not to care what other people think and that the profession must honour that.

"We are free... I can say what I think. We are lucky, privileged, so why not make use of it?"

- BBC News 11.10.2007

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

The original illustrated catalog of ACME Products



ACME is a worldwide leader of many manufactured goods. From its humble beginnings providing corks and flypaper to bug collectors ("Buddy's Bug Hunt/1935") to its heyday in the American Southwest supplying a certain coyote, from Ultimatum Dispatchers to Batman outfits, ACME has set the standard for excellence.
For the first time ever, information and pictures of all ACME products, specialty divisions, and services featured in Warner Bros. cartoons (made by the original studio from 1935 to 1964) are gathered here, in one convenient catalog.

Patrick Durand - photographer



"As far as I can remember, I’ve always had two passions: Planes and Photography. Trying to combine them seemed to be a natural move. In general, cities are off-limits to low altitude flying. In this “forbidden territory” the photographer faces a real challenge: seizing the breathtaking geometry of landscapes seen in a purely vertical perspective."

Vertical cities, panoramics, aviation

Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo: Silencio

Ah.. dance to this music and be shamelessly romantic. Or dance for the memory of Che Guevara: Hasta la Victoria siempre!

Antoni Gaudi



The son of a coppersmith, Antoni Gaudi was born in Reus, Spain in 1852. He studied at the Escola Superior d'Arquitectura in Barcelona and designed his first major commission for the Casa Vincens in Barcelona using a Gothic Revival style that set a precedent for his future work.

Over the course of his career, Gaudi developed a sensuous, curving, almost surreal design style which established him as the innovative leader of the Spanish Art Nouveau movement. With little regard for formal order, he juxtaposed unrelated systems and altered established visual order. Gaudi's characteristically warped form of Gothic architecture drew admiration from other avant-garde artists.
Although categorized with the Art Nouveau, Gaudi created an entirely original style. He died in Barcelona in 1926.

Great buildings online:

Casa Batllo

Casa Mila

Colonia Guell

Park Guell

Sagrada Familia

Monday, October 8, 2007

The Sand Castle / Le Château de sable

A true classic in the art of film animation, directed by Jacobus Willem "Co" Hoedeman. Hoedeman has earned more than 80 international awards and honors throughout his career. "The Sand Castle" alone garnered 24 awards, including an Oscar in 1978 for best animated short.

A fable of great humor and appeal, The Sand Castle is the story of the Sandman and the creatures he sculpts out of sand. Under his direction, they build a castle and celebrate the completion of their new home, only to be interrupted by an uninvited guest. The wind blows, and the castle crumbles. The filmmaker leaves the door open to various interpretations. Sound film without words.

Anke M

I just love the photography of Anke Merzbach. Dark and strange, and so enchanting!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Anke M: Lea

Democratic Voice of Burma

Democratic Voice of Burma(or DVB) is a non-profit media organization based in Oslo, Norway. Run by Burmese expatriates, it makes radio and television broadcasts aimed at providing uncensored news and information about Burma (Myanmar), the country's military regime, and its political opposition.

Its mission is:

to provide accurate and unbiased news to the people of Burma,

to promote understanding and cooperation amongst the various ethnic and
religious groups of Burma,

to encourage and sustain independent public opinion and enable social and
political debate

to impart the ideals of democracy and human rights to the people of Burma.

This site is full of news and information you don't get anywhere else. And the photo section is worth looking at - though I must warn you, many of the pictures are graphic. But the situation in Burma isn't nice, so why should the images?

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

The Renaissance Connection

Welcome to The Renaissance Connection, the Allentown Art Museum's interactive educational web site. With the simple click of a mouse button, teachers, students, and art enthusiasts can travel 500 years into the past to discover many Renaissance innovations revealed through the Museum's Samuel H. Kress Collection of European art.
The site combines interactive time lines, historical maps, humorous activities, and interdisciplinary lesson plans, giving you the opportunity to become a Patron of the Arts, Design Your Own Innovation, and investigate Renaissance artworks in depth to discover how past innovations inform life today. Time travel has never been so easy, or so imaginative!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Stormy Monday

No one does it like T-Bone Walker.

Monday, June 18, 2007

John Lennon: Instant Karma

We can't say we didn't know: Darfur in pictures


Darfur - The Making of a Genocide


Darfur Eyewitness: Brian Steidle


TIME: Surviving Darfur

Promoting human rights


Amnesty International (AI) is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights.

AI’s vision is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.

In pursuit of this vision, AI’s mission is to undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination, within the context of its work to promote all human rights.

AI is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion. It does not support or oppose any government or political system, nor does it support or oppose the views of the victims whose rights it seeks to protect. It is concerned solely with the impartial protection of human rights.

AI has a varied network of members and supporters around the world. At the latest count, there were more than 2.2 million members, supporters and subscribers in over 150 countries and territories in every region of the world. Although they come from many different backgrounds and have widely different political and religious beliefs, they are united by a determination to work for a world where everyone enjoys human rights.

AI is a democratic, self-governing movement. Major policy decisions are taken by an International Council made up of representatives from all national sections.

AI's national sections, members and supporters are primarily responsible for funding the movement. No funds are sought or accepted from governments for AI’s work investigating and campaigning against human rights violations.

Made in Palestine


Palestinian Art

Welcome to Palestinian Art web site… this web site is engaged in the activities of young Palestinian artists living in Palestine and all over the world. The web site is the Gateway for the Palestinian's Art work experience to show it to the world and to archive all the related activities in this field. The web site contains a directory for important Art websites and a historical illustration for local and Global art development.


Resistance Art

Resistance Art is an initiative dedicated to celebrate the diversity and richness of Palestinian art and culture. It was founded in 2003, and is located in Toronto, Canada.

Made in Palestine

The exhibition Made in Palestine chronicles the modern history of the Palestinian people from Al Nakba (the Catastrophe of l948) to the present day. It gives a voice to a people struggling to keep their identity in the face of terrible odds—a brutal occupation by Israel punctuated by daily violence and daily sorrow. The exhibition reveals with powerful clarity the Palestinian side of the story. What is at stake here is of tremendous importance. The lives as well as the traditions and culture of an entire indigenous population are in grave danger of being extinguished.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

A man who makes a difference


Wildlife Photography by Hal Brindley

This site is basically an elaborate business card for a guy who likes to take pictures of wildlife. That's me. My name is Hal Brindley. The whole reason I wanted to get into this silly profession in the first place is that I am endlessly fascinated and amazed by animals. They make me laugh and cry and sometimes they make me wet my pants in terror.

My real goal in life is to travel the world and to learn about the incredible variety of creatures that fill it. When you start to learn about these beasts, you start to care about them.

That is what I hope to pass on to you, the notion that planet Earth was not designed for human beings to rule. We are just one of the many incredible by-products of evolution, like all the plants and animals and one-celled doo-dads that surround us. I'm not going to start hugging trees right here in front of you, but I do believe that we can consider the rest of our kin, the community of life, when we make our everyday decisions.

Many species have come and gone before us, and many more will come and go after us, I assure you. Even if we manage to accidentally wipe out 99% of life on this planet, including ourselves, life and evolution will go on. Still, it seems a shame to allow that to happen, to so rapidly undo what nature has taken hundreds of millions of years to come up with.

So I'm here to tell you, it doesn't have to happen. If you care, you can and will make a difference.

- Hal Brindley -




Andy Mckee: Drifting

Journeys through time and art

What an amazing site:
Timeline of Art History

The Timeline of Art History is a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world, as illustrated especially by the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection. The Museum's curatorial, conservation, and education staff—the largest team of art experts anywhere in the world—research and write the Timeline, which is an invaluable reference and research tool for students, educators, scholars, and anyone interested in the study of art history and related subjects. First launched in 2000, the Timeline now extends from prehistory to the present day. The Timeline will continue to expand in scope and depth, and also reflect the most up–to–date scholarship.

New tricks for an old dog


Windows XP Tips and Tricks

Just what the name says.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Magic!


Maggie Taylor

“Maggie Taylor sits squarely in the grand tradition of altered photography, a practice that goes back to the late Nineteenth Century. It was famously explored by surrealist photographers such as Man Ray, Raoul Ubac, Hans Bellmer, George Hugnet, and Maurice Tabard who use distortion, montage, solarization and other darkroom techniques in the 1930s….

Taylor’s medium is Adobe Photoshop ®; her main hardware tool apart from the computer, is the scanner, although she does supplement her imagery with standard photographs she takes. Her style is unmistakable – as alluring as it is puzzling – capturing a nostalgic atmosphere of Victorian twilight, each image presenting a bizarre twist. Her subjects are long gone people who had their portraits taken by equally long departed pre-modern photographers. She scans these portraits, then adds color, atmosphere, background, and incongruous elements, such as insects, birds, and fish, which catapult them into a dream world….The Style borders on that of children’s book illustration; the visual language is sentimental, whence their charm. The juxtapositions are incongruous and the meanings enigmatic, hence their fascination….”

Excerpt by Joel Simpson

Printed in “The New York Art World” - October, 2005

One Rat Short

"One Rat Short" is a work of love created by Charlex Films. It began as part of the effort to grow the company's CG department but eventually became much more than that. Originally, it was entitled "labratz" and as the title might suggest it mimicked the look and sensibility of worked already pioneered by other studios. As it evolved it took on a life of its own- it became my film- or as any director of an effort like this knows our film. We decided not to use anthropomorphic animation. We decided it would take place in two worlds- one so gritty, grimy and dark that the viewer needs to peer into the screen in order to make out the images- the other a sterile, white world so brightly lit that you feel the need to turn your head away from the screen. It was also important to me to keep the film looking as real as possible. One of the techniques we used was to give a lot of the camera work a hand-held feel and to keep it a little behind the action so that the scenes didn't seem staged. Lastly and most importantly I kept the story simple and tried to give it heart. One of my favorite short films, which I saw as a child was "The Red Balloon". I think the melancholic and innocent spirit of that film inhabits "One Rat Short."

Alex Weil, Director


Tales from the Indian Jungle


The Junglelook

Beautiful photographs by Sudhir Shivaram.

Aaron Copland - In Search of the American Sound


Copland and the American Sound

Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn in 1900. His artistic development spanned enormous transformation in the American experience—the fears of World War I and the Great Depression, the energy of the Jazz Age, the advent of modernism. And as the nation emerged as a world power, Copland wrote music that gave Americans a sense of their own identity and created a truly American sound.

Explore the sights, sounds and influences that brought Copland to write music that gave Americans a sense of their own identity and created a truly American sound. With excerpts from the original 13-instrument version of Appalachian Spring.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Giza Necropolis


The Giza Archives Project

The Old Kingdom Giza Necropolis (dating from about 2500 BCE) is the site of thousands of tombs, temples, and ancient artifacts. With this Web site the Giza Archives Project staff seeks to provide a comprehensive online resource for scholarly research on Giza.
The present web site contains six basic categories of materials, four of which derive from the original Harvard–MFA Expedition.

- about 22,000 black-and-white excavation photographs taken between 1902 and 1942
- about 3,106 Expedition Diary pages
- about 2,408 Object Register book pages (containing 19,544 individual object records)
- about 10,000 maps and plans, ranging from entire Giza cemeteries to individual burial shafts
- about 200 books and articles on Giza (a digital Library of PDF files)
experiments in Interactive Web technologies, such as zoomable satellite photos and 360-degree panoramic views of the site using Quicktime Virtual Reality (QTVR) and other technologies.

Peace Train by Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)

"All art is erotic"


Wikipedia: Gustav Klimt

Olga's Gallery: Gustav Klimt


"I have the gift of neither the spoken nor the written word, especially if I have to say something about myself or my work. Whoever wants to know something about me - as an artist, the only notable thing - ought to look carefully at my pictures and try and see in them what I am and what I want to do."

Gustav Klimt

Echoes


The Best of Pink Floyd

What else can I say but enjoy!

Friday, June 1, 2007

Neruda!


One of my favorite poets.

Pablo Neruda, tender, melancholy, sensuous, passionate

Wikipedia: Pablo Neruda

Poems of Pablo Neruda

This Chilean poet, and diplomat, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. His original name was Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, but he used the pen name Pablo Neruda for over 20 years before adopting it legally in 1946. Neruda is the most widely read of the Spanish American poets. From the 1940s on, his works reflected the political struggle of the left and the socio-historical developments in South America. He also wrote love poems.





Aqua Harp

My favorite piece of Animusic - so beautiful!


Tiger, tiger, burning bright..


Tigerhomes

Tigerhomes.org is a privately-run exotic animal sanctuary that strives to stimulate a global interest in wildlife conservation, education, and habitat protection via the Internet. We serve our goals by inviting our members, fans, teachers, students, and the general public directly into the naturalistic habitats and lives of the sanctuary resident Tigers, Lions, Leopards, Lemurs, and other rare and endangered animals.

A great site with a lot of information and many web cam links.

Labyrinth of imagination


The art of Alberto Pancorbo

A visitor to the labyrinth of Alberto Pancorbo's imagination is confronted at every turn with symbols both ancient and modern. They allude to human existence, struggle, and frequently, human insensitivity to the world. Caught in the chaos of urban life, traditional values are sometimes lost or forgotten, or rendered meaningless. Pancorbo has mastered a super-realistic style of painting that is capable of transforming the totally imaginary into the totally convincing.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Kalevala


Wikipedia: Kalevala

The Kalevala, Epic of the Finns (translated by John Martin Crawford)

Longfellows 'Song of Hiawatha' Kalevala's cousin?

The Nordic Roots of Tolkien's Middle Earth

The Kalevala is an epic poem which the Finn Elias Lönnrot compiled from Finnish and Karelian folklore in the 19th century. It is held to be the national epic of Finland and is traditionally thought of as one of the most significant works of Finnish language literature. Also Karelians in the Republic of Karelia and other Balto-Finnic speakers value Kalevala. The Kalevala is credited with some of the inspiration for the national awakening that ultimately led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The man, the moustache, the music


The official Frank Zappa website

Frank Zappa's Musical Language

A Tribute to the Grand Wazoo

Frank Zappa Quotations

Sons and daughters of Bast


All about the domestic cat

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats." - Albert Schweitzer

"I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul." - Jean Cocteau

"If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air." - Doris Lessing

Want to learn a little Esperanto?


Fun Esperanto

Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published the Unua Libro in 1887. The word itself means 'one who hopes'. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding.

Although no country has adopted the language officially, it has enjoyed continuous usage by a community estimated at between 100,000 and 2 million speakers. By some estimates, there are about a thousand native speakers.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Possibly one of the worst movies ever


Plan 9 from Outer Space

Plan 9 from Outer Space is a 1959 science fiction/horror film written, produced and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The films stars Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson and Maila "Vampira" Nurmi. The film also claims to posthumously star Bela Lugosi through use of archive footage, although Lugosi's character is primarily portrayed by chiropractor Tom Mason.

The plot of the film is focused on a race of extraterrestrial beings who are seeking to stop humans from creating a doomsday weapon that would destroy the universe. In the course of doing so, the aliens implement "Plan 9", a scheme to resurrect earth's dead as zombies to get the planet's attention, causing chaos.

By merit of its writing, unconvincing special effects, and multiple production errors visible in the final version of the film, Plan 9 from Outer Space is widely regarded as a leading candidate for the title of "worst movie ever made." It has also earned Edward D. Wood, Jr. a posthumous Golden Turkey Award as the worst director ever. (Wikipedia)


Running time 79 min

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí Domènech Marquis of Pubol


Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dalí.
- Salvador Dali


Virtual Dali

The Salvador Dali Photo Library

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Not just a pretty face


Leonardo DiCaprio Eco-site

I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled upon this site, it's well worth taking a look at. I especially enjoyed the two movies and the Bush record.

Road Runner & Wile E Coyote - Soup or Sonic

I love these classic cartoons - and I have a soft spot for all the Wile E Coyotes of this world!

Arte Maya Tz'utuhil


Maya Artists from the highlands of Guatemala

In three of the hundreds of communities that make up the vast Maya population of present day Guatemala Indian artists produce oil paintings about Mayan life. Those communities are Cakchiquel speaking San Juan Comalapa, and the Tz'utuhil speaking towns of Santiago Atitlan and San Pedro la Laguna. At present this website deals only with the Tz'utuhil-speaking artists, and mainly with the artists from San Pedro la Laguna and its close neighbor San Juan la Laguna.

A phonometrographer


Erik Satie

What I am by Erik Satie

Everyone will tell you I am not a musician. That is correct.
From the very beginning of my career I class myself a phonometrographer. My work is completely phonometrical. Take my Fils des Étoiles, or my Morceaux en forme de Poire, my En habit de Cheval or my Sarabandes - it is evident that musical ideas played no part whatsoever in their composition. Science is the dominating factor.
Besides, I enjoy measuring a sound much more than hearing it. With my phonometer in my hand, I work happily and with confidence.
What haven't I weighed or measured? I've done all Beethoven, all Verdi, etc. It's fascinating.
The first time I used a phonoscope, I examined a B flat of medium size. I can assure you that I have never seen anything so revolting. I called in my man to show it to him.
On my phono-scales a common or garden F sharp registered 93 kilos. It came out of a fat tenor whom I also weighed.
Do you know how to clean sounds? It's a filthy business. Stretching them out is cleaner; indexing them is a meticulous task and needs good eyesight. Here, we are in the realm of pyrophony.
To write my Pièces Froides, I used a caleidophone recorder. It took seven minutes. I called in my man to let him hear them.
I think I can say that phonology is superior to music. There's more variety in it. The financial return is greater, too. I owe my fortune to it.
At all events, with a motodynamophone, even a rather inexperienced phonometrologist can easily note down more sounds that the most skilled musician in the same time, using the same amount of effort. This is how I have been able to write so much.
And so the future lies with philophony.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Koko


The Gorilla Foundation

An interesting site dedicated to Koko (maybe the most famous gorilla in the world) and saving gorillas from extinction.

Stringfever!

As so many others, I enjoy and admire the talents of the Broadbent brothers. They are fun to watch - and very good with their instruments!




For the Indiana Jones inside you


Pictures of Lost Cities

This site feeds my imagination!

Secret Label


The Paintings of Shiori Matsumoto

Shiori is a young Japanese artists whose paintings have been influenced by surrealism, symbolism and modern illustration. Her art reminds me of Mark Ryder and Ray Ceasar - a bit disturbing but enchanting like sweet nightmares.

Friday, May 25, 2007

A familiar duck in a different world


The Art of Kaj Stenvall

The name of Kaj Stenvall rose to fame in the world of Finnish art about ten years ago when he began to paint a very familiar-looking duck in a variety of different settings. There was nothing in his subjects that hinted at a flavour of something Finnish except, a trace of melancholic in the landscape. The scenes depicted in his pictures are from the world at large and his duck often appears in absurd and universal settings. There really is nothing in his paintings that you could put your finger on to connect them to any particular corner of the world, especially not to Finland.

The Divine Garbo


A Tribute to Greta Garbo


THE SPHINX by Isabella Rosselini

Of the Swedes who made it big in Hollywood, Garbo was the star of the silent movies era; my mother, Ingrid Bergman, was the star of the sound era. That's how the press classified them.

When Mother first came to Hollywood, she immediately and politely sent Garbo some flowers and a note - she thought they could share some Swedish evenings: meatballs, aquavit, candles and relaxed conversation in their native tongue. Garbo sent a telegram accepting the invitation, but not until three months later, just as Mother was about to leave town. Mother told George Cukor, who was a friend of Garbo's, about it and Cukor laughed. "Of course, Greta wouldn't have sent the telegram unless she was certain you were leaving."

Mother greatly admired Garbo, whose understated style of acting was the same as her own. They shared that kind of Swedish spare and spartan elegance, the purity and straightforwardness. One knows they didn't lie. But their mystery and vulnerability were blended differently: Mother had a great deal of the latter; Garbo was enigmatic, magnetic and cool.

The only thing I remember Mother saying about Garbo, maybe because she often wondered about it, was: "She retired at 36. All those years afterward she got up in the morning with nothing to do. If you have children or grandchildren it's different, but she didn't have any. What can she possibly do all day?"

So I never met Garbo with Mother over a plate of Swedish meatballs. And when I think of her it's not as a real woman or even as an actress. Instead, I see a beautiful close-up with tears in her eyes, a man (I think) dying in her arms. I remember only Garbo's face, not what the tragic event was that caused her such desperation.

Garbo sticks in my brain as a series of stills. Cecil Beaton's, of course, but also frames from her movies. The way she walked in "Queen Christina," for example: fast, dynamic, decisive, masculine - like a premonition of feminist attitudes to come.

Athens, past and present


The Ancient City of Athens is a photographic archive of the archaeological and architectural remains of ancient Athens (Greece). It is intended primarily as a resource for students and teachers of classical art & archaeology, civilization, languages, and history, but this site is useful to all who have an interest in archaeological exploration and the recovery, interpretation, and preservation of the past.



Athens 21st Century




Athens is renowned all over the world for its millenary history, for spreading art, culture, science and philosophy throughout, thus being the cradle of modern western civilisation. Today, like 3000 years ago, Athens can claim its role of great cultural centre by hosting an increasing number of contemporary artists, researching new aesthetic trends, defending its past and at the same time ambitiously planning its future.