New York painter barks for art
"People don't buy a painting based on what it looks like. They want to have something by a genius and no one wants to say a dog is a genius."
Tillamook Cheddar has been drawing since she was six months old (I started when I was two). She began with a legal pad (I began with a house wall). She's wild about drawing (So am I). She bites if anyone interrupts her work (I don't, but I ought to).
Appeals court overturns Holocaust looted-art law, but Norton Simon suit continues
This is interesting. I had no idea that in California you can sue for the return of a looted artwork only within three years of discovering its whereabout.
The case is between Marei Von Saher of Connecticut and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. They are wrangling over Lucas Cranach the Elder's oil on board painting 'Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden' (1530).
Von Saher is the daughter-in-law of Jacques Goudstikker, a German-Jewish art dealer, who bought the painting in Berlin in 1931 from the Soviet government. The Soviets had, of course, confiscated the painting from a Russian aristocratic family during the Russian Revolution. After the Nazis came to power, Goudstikker left Germany for Holland and the Nazis forcibly bought the painting from his art firm. After the war, the Goudstikker family gave the painting to the Dutch government.
At this point, a heir of the Russian family, George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff turned up with a strong claim to the work and the Dutch government turned it over to him. Stroganoff-Scherbatoff then sold the painting to the American industrialist Norton Simon, who set up a namesake museum and displayed the work there.
Then, in 2001 , Von Saher discovered where the painting was and filed a suit against the Norton Simon Museum. The Museum is not willing to give up the work.
And, frankly, I don't see why they should. They got it from the Russian heir who had more claim to the work than Goudstikker did.
The work, incidentally, is valued at $24 million.
Body Art: Literally
Here is Andrew Krasnow, American sculptor, making art from human skin, specifically skin from dead white men. It's not morbidness or racism that drives him.
"The objective was to express my concerns about the war and that it would not be conducted in a way that was moral and ethical," he said. "Since that question wasn't permitted in a museum, the work became more complex, with all the inherent contradictions of what it means to be an American or, for that matter, to be human."
Gallery owner Robert Devcic said Krasnow uses only white skin because much of the suffering in the Americas has been caused by white people. "He uses skin to make the point that suffering is universal," he said. "It is tanned using the same process that you'd use for an animal skin."
I'm sure the dead white people, when they donated their bodies to medical science, didn't imagine their tanned hides would one day be turned into "mundane items including flags, boots and maps of America."
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I'm not arguing with Mr. Krasnow's political stance - I lean that way myself - but skinning uninvolved dead people isn't going to bring about any changes.
You need to skin live politicians for that.
Famed Nefertiti bust 'a fake': expert
This sounds like the time auld Mr. S took a drunken drive through the corn field and the next day all the folks thought it was an UFO that had cut such an unique field pattern and Mr. S couldn't summon up the nerve to disillusion everyone........
Or like the time when I, just for the heck of it, shaped fallen flower petals into a D on my friend D's car bonnet and she went around telling everyone that the chap, you know, who kept staring at her all the time, well, he had finally got around to some action and I didn't have the heart to tell her it wasn't so, he was still inactive........
I was thinking of my Grandfather today. He died, aged 90, on 12th August 2001. We were very close and it still hurts that he is not around anymore.
He was rather like the character in the film 'Good-bye, Mr. Chips', funny and sweet and very, very nice. A lovely man.
I get all choked up, sad and happy at the same time, when I see these clips -
Peter O Toole singing 'What a Lot of Flowers'
Petula Clark singing 'You and I'
I was reminded just how much after a recent comment on the Maysun In C blog.
Here are two of my favorites - 'Wooden Heart' from G.I.Blues and 'Crawfish' from King Creole. These two were amongst his best films. King Creole is based on the the Harold Robbins novel 'A Stone for Danny Fisher' ( a good read, by the way).
Crawfish is a duet with Kitty White, a jazz vocalist with a spine-tingling fantastic voice.
He looks so young and happy and carefree, it's heartbreaking to know what came later.
Anyway, so here's Crawfish -
And here's Wooden Heart -
Everyone's trying to be creative these days. Even the Israeli Defence Industry.
The Israeli arms company, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, unleashed the above video at the Aero India expo in Bangalore.
Israeli man dancing with Indian woman around flower bedecked missiles to a tune lifted from Slumdog Millionaire .
Talk of chutzpah.
It is so abominably bad that it will do very well on its own merit as a defence weapon.
Just show it to the terrorists and they will die laughing .
And India will not have to pay for the college educations of the children of Israeli defence contractors.
Update:
And from Columbia, we get Discreet Inners or the Armani of the Armor Business. Now the Indian politicians can have another option on which to splurge my tax money.
No money back, I believe, if the assassin ignores the classy "revolvers to Uzi submachine guns" proof suit and shoots you in the head. Or just blows you up.
