Monthly Archives: January 2011

Raven

Some remarkable feats of problem-solving have been observed in the species, leading to the belief that it is highly intelligent. Over the centuries, it has been the subject of mythology, folklore, art, and literature. In many indigenous cultures, including those of Scandinavia, ancient Ireland and WalesBhutan, the northwest coast of North America, and Siberia and northeast Asia, the Common Raven has been revered as a spiritual figure or god.

The Common Raven evolved in the Old World and crossed the Bering land bridge into North America. The brains of Common Ravens count among the largest of any bird species. Specifically, their hyperpallium is large (see avian pallium). For a bird, they display ability in problem solving, as well as other cognitive processes such as imitation and insight.

Juvenile Common Ravens are among the most playful of bird species. They have been observed to slide down snowbanks, apparently purely for fun. They even engage in games with other species, such as playing catch-me-if-you-can with wolves and dogs. Common Ravens are known for spectacular aerobatic displays, such as flying in loops or interlocking talons with each other in flight.

They are also one of only a few species who make their own toys. They have been observed breaking off twigs to play with socially.

Across its range in the northern hemisphere, and throughout human history, the Common Raven has been a powerful symbol and a popular subject of mythology and folklore.

In many post-conversion Western traditions, ravens have long been considered to be birds of ill omen, in part because of the negative symbolism of their all-black plumage and eating ofcarrion. In Sweden, ravens are known as the ghosts of murdered people, and in Germany as the souls of the damned. In Danish folklore, valravne that ate a king’s heart gained human knowledge, could perform great malicious acts, could lead people astray, had superhuman powers, and were “terrible animals”.

As in traditional mythology and folklore, the Common Raven features frequently in more modern writings such as the works of William Shakespeare, and, perhaps most famously, in the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. Ravens have appeared in the works of Charles Dickens, and J. R. R. Tolkien.

It continues to be used as a symbol in areas where it once had mythological status: as the National Bird of Bhutan, Official Bird of the Yukon territory, and on the Coat of Arms of the Isle of Man (once a Viking colony)..

Many indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America and northeast Asia revered it as a god. In Tlingit and Haida cultures, Raven was both a Trickster and Creator god. Related beliefs are widespread among the peoples of Siberia and northeast Asia. The Kamchatka peninsula, for example, was supposed to have been created by the raven god Kutkh. There are several references to Common Ravens in the Old Testament of theBible and it is an aspect of Mahakala in Bhutanese mythology.

The Norsemen believed that ravens Hugin and Munin sat on the god Odin‘s shoulders and saw and heard all, and a Raven banner standard was carried by such Viking figures as the Norse Jarls of Orkney, King Canute the Great of England, Norway and Denmark, and Harald Hardrada. In the British Isles, ravens also were symbolic to the Celts. In Irish mythology, the goddess Morrígan alighted on the hero Cú Chulainn‘s shoulder in the form of a raven after his death.

Wikepedia

How to Remove Wheat Paste

How to Remove Wheat Paste | eHow.com.

Wheat paste, commonly referred to as flour paste, rice paste or potato paste, is a simple liquid-based adhesive made from water and vegetable starch. The paste often is used in applying wallpaper and crafts such as book binding and collages. The adhesive is made by mixing equal portions of water and flour. Removing wallpaper or a paper on a craft that has been applied with wheat paste requires a few simple household items.

Read more: How to Remove Wheat Paste | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_6633851_remove-wheat-paste.html#ixzz1BseiE0Bn

Art and Science of Billboard Improvement

A Comprehensive Guide to the alteration of outdoor advertising by the billboard liberation front

Arcade Fire Site

The Wilderness Downtown.

My postcard:

Callie Curry aka Swoon

Swoon – All my aspiring art students watch it all but pay particular attention from 11:00 minutes on

Swoon is a Brooklyn-based artist whose life-sized woodblock and cut-paper portraits hang on walls in various states of decay in cities around the world. She has designed and built several large-scale installations, most notably the Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea at Deitch Projects in 2008. Her pieces have been collected by The Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, & the Tate Modern. Major pieces have appeared at PS1, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Black Rat Press. Swoon is also an instigator and a collaborator. She founded the Toyshop collective and the Miss Rockaway Armada, and is a member of Just Seeds and the Transformazium. Since 2006 she has organized four large-scale raft projects and floated down the Mississippi and Hudson rivers with them. Most recently, she and her collaborators designed a flotilla of sea-going rafts that invaded the 2009 Venice Biennale. Her artistic process is predicated on the belief that art is an immersive, provocative, and transformative experience for its participants. Although her aesthetics can be seen as an outgrowth of street art, her engagement with ethical living and making art share a close kinship with the idealism of off-grid, barter-based cultures and economies based on sharing. She uses scavenged and local materials and embraces print media as a potent means of action for social change.

Illusions on the cave wall

What is real and what is illusion?

What is perception? Is geometry real?

Unfortunately I never found out the name of the artist His mane is FELICE VARINI and the images have stayed with me.

https://i0.wp.com/www.qype.fr/uploads/photos/0087/1049/mus_e_arras2_gallery2.jpg?resize=170%2C224 Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Arras


Looking South                                                                 Looking North

Milton Glaser on using design to make ideas new | Video on TED.com

The legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser dives deep into a new painting inspired by Piero della Francesca. From here, he muses on what makes a convincing poster, by breaking down an idea and making it new.

If his career began and ended with “I [heart] N Y,” Milton Glaser would still be a legend. But over his multi-decade career, his body of work is sprinkled with similarly iconic images and logos. Full bio and more links

Art is ...

What ever

Paintings of Paris : Châtelet-Les Halles-Rivoli

The Grand Chatelet, the medieval fortress defending the access to the Grand Pont and the Ile de la Cité, also the seat of royal power, was destroyed in 1808 under Napoleon’s order. In 1862, the elegant square and the sumptuous Theatre du Chatelet were built up and inaugurated on its old location. From the 12th to the 20th century, the neighborhood was bustling with activity. The proximity of the Halles, the great central market and the « belly of Paris » has made the district the most crowded in the capital. Monet, Cortes Laloue, Luce remind us with great prowess.

via Paintings of Paris : Châtelet-Les Halles-Rivoli

Les Innocents Cemetary

the skeletons of decomposed cadavers went to the charniers, but their fatty residues remained in the earth. The plague of 1418 poured 50,000 dead into Les Innocents over a five-week period, and the hundred-years war brought more. The air of central Paris must have been already putrid then.

via Paris-Promenades – Paris’ Les Innocents Cemetary.

Saints Innocents Church, Cemetery and Fountain

The Fontaine des Innocents is a monumental public fountain located in the Les Halles district in the 1st arrondissement of ParisFrance. Originally called the Fountain of the Nymphs, it was constructed between 1547 and 1550 by architect Pierre Lescot and sculptor Jean Goujon in the new style of the French Renaissance. It is the oldest monumental fountain in Paris.[1]

The fountain was commissioned as part of the decoration of the city to commemorate the solemn royal entry of King Henry II into Paris in 1549. Artists were commissioned to construct elaborate monuments, mostly temporary, along his route, from the Port Saint-Denis to the palais de la Cité, passing by le Châtelet, the pont Notre-Dame and the cathedral. The fountain was placed on the site of an earlier fountain dating to the reign of Philip II of France, against the wall of the Cemetery of the Innocents, at the corner of rue Saint Denis (where the King’s procession passed) and rue aux Fers (today’s rue Berger), with two facades on one street, one facade on the other. It was meant to be not only a fountain but also a grand reviewing stand for local notables; it resembled the walls of a large residence, with water taps along the street at the street level, and stairway up to the loggia on the upper level, where officials stood on the balcony to greet the King. Its original name was the Fountain of the Nymphs.[2]

Once the procession had passed, the structure became a simple water fountain for the neighborhood, with taps, ornamented with lion heads, permanently trickling water.[3] The upper floor of the fountain was eventually turned into a residence, with windows and a chimney.[4]

Fontaine des Innocents

Fontaine des Innocents, c.1670

In 1787, for sanitary reasons, the cemeteries of Paris were moved outside the city walls, and the former cemetery of the Church of the Saints-Innocents, against whose wall the fountain stood, was transformed into a market square, the Marché des Innocents. The fountain was scheduled for destruction. It was saved largely by the efforts of writer Quatremere de Quincy, who wrote a letter to the Journal de Paris urging the preservation of “A masterpiece of French sculpture.”[5] The fountain was moved to the middle of a large basin in the market, raised on a stone pedestal decorated with four lions and four basins. The sculptor Augustin Pajou was commissioned to create a fourth facade for the fountain, in the same style as the other three, so that it could be free-standing.

File:Fontaine des Innocents1.jpg

Because of the poor water supply system of Paris, the fountain produced only a small flow of water. Under Napoleon Bonaparte, a new aqueduct was constructed from the River Ourcq, and finally the fountain gushed water, in such abundance that it threatened the sculptural decoration. The smaller bas-reliefs at the base of the fountain were removed in 1810 and placed in the Musée du Louvre in 1824.[6]

In 1858, during the Second French Empire of Louis Napoleon, the fountain was moved one more time to its present location on a more modest pedestal in the middle of the square; and six basins of pouring water, one above the other, were added on each facade.[7]


Marche et fontaine des Innocents

The market, fountain of Innocents, John James Chalon, 1822, Carnavalet

Monet,rue montorgueil, 1878

excerpted from: Wikipedia contributors, "Fontaine des Innocents," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fontaine_des_Innocents&oldid=387377415
(accessed January 12, 2011).