#Model for Sculpture to Be Seen from Mars

[dieletztepanzerhexe]

Sculpture to Be Seen From Mars, 1947

A ten-mile-long earthwork depicting an abstract human face, Noguchi’s Sculpture to Be Seen From Mars was, as the artist himself once put it, “a requiem for all of us who live with the atomic bomb” and alternatively “a flight of the imagination.” Prompted by the World War II atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which horrified Noguchi—“he often spoke of his fear of atomic annihilation,” Hayden Herrera writes in Listening to Stone—he began thinking about end-of-mankind scenarios. “It was in 1945, wasn’t it, when we dropped the atomic bomb?” Noguchi once reflected. “All of us were concerned about our place on earth, and that it might be rather precarious.”

For Noguchi, the monumental work was intended to be “an eternal reminder to the rest of the solar system that the planet earth, seemingly bent on self-destruction, once had its civilizations,” writes Friedman in the Imaginary Landscapes catalogue, hailing it as the artist’s “most impressive memorial to the futility of war.” The work, as Friedman points out, was also Noguchi’s way of showing his respect and reverence for ancient and indigenous monumental forms, such as the pre-Columbian geometric earthworks in the Andes. “‘Earth sculpture’ is nothing new,” Noguchi said. “It’s just a new name for an old thing.”

The earthwork also connected to Noguchi’s ongoing interest in outer space and the cosmos. When the art critic Lucy Lippard asked Noguchi to use a photograph of the project in her 1983 book Overlay, paralleling contemporary art with prehistoric sites and symbols, Noguchi replied, “I recently saw a reproduction of a face which was found in the landscape of Mars taken by the Viking Satellite. I think it would be very appropriate to show this version along with mine. I have written to the Mars Research Laboratory asking for this image and will send it to you if you are interested.” The connection of rocks across the universe was not lost on the artist. “Ultimately,” Noguchi told Calvin Tomkins in The New Yorker in 1980, “I like to think that when you get to the furthest point of technology, when you get to outer space, what do you find to bring back? Rocks!”

An incredibly moving, visionary concept that, as Friedman notes, in many ways preceded the land art and conceptual art movements that would emerge and flourish in the second half of the twentieth century, Noguchi’s memorial to mankind was intended for “some desert, some unwanted area.” It was, as the artist put it, “a sculpture just to be seen from the air so that, when you come to a landing, you will see the sculpture there.” That Noguchi was concurrently working on the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial suggests he was balancing both a belief in America’s future technological prospects and an acknowledgment of the bleak potential for mankind to destroy the planet and itself. Sculpture to Be Seen From Mars is today only memorialized in a single photograph of a model Noguchi had formed out of sand.

[thepapersnail]

Isamu Noguchi, sculpture to be seen from Mars, 1947 (model in sand, unrealized)

[t-jfh]

Sculpture by Isamu Noguchi

Isamu Noguchi - Grey Sun, 1967

Isamu Noguchi - Sculpture To Be Seen From Mars, 1947

Photo: model for unbuilt sculpture.

Isamu Noguchi - Seeking, 1974

Isamu Noguchi, 1983

Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) Japanese-American artist, sculptor and landscape architect.

The Noguchi Museum

•

[artemisdreaming]

Isamu Noguchi

Model for Sculpture to Be Seen from Mars, 1947 (no longer extant), sand. 

The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York. Photo: Soichi Sunami, image courtesy the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum.

Isamu Noguchi on Time and Furniture

More Isamu Noguchi: Here

[kawakawacollection]

noguchimuseum

'Sculpture to Be Seen from Mars,' 1947. Model in sand, now destroyed.

[the-paintrist]

Édouard Joseph Dantan - Studioscene - ca 1890

Édouard Joseph Dantan (Paris 26 August 1848 – 7 July 1897) was a French painter in the classical tradition. He was widely recognized in his day, although he was subsequently eclipsed by painters with more modern styles.

At the 1870 exposition of the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts Dantan received an honorable mention for his submission for the prix de Rome. In 1874 he won a third class medal for his painting of a monk carving a Christ in wood.[ In 1880 he won a second class medal for his painting Un coin d'atelier (a corner of the workshop). He received a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1889, and a number of his paintings were bought by the French state.

Dantan's works followed the academic tradition of painting, and were praised by his contemporaries. His technical mastery is illustrated by such paintings as Un coin d'atelier (1880), where he depicts his father working on a bas-relief in his studio, seen from behind. The studio is cluttered with paintings and sculptures. In the foreground, a nude woman is taking a break from modelling. A critic praised the painting for following all the rules of trompe-l'oeil and stereoscopic photography. Describing a painting of a group of sailors following a clergyman going to bless the sea, another critic said in 1881 "he has written a page before which believers and skeptics must raise their hats".

His Le déjeuner du modèle exhibited in the Salon in 1881 shows a model eating a plate of eggs in a break from the posing session. The scene is illuminated by a clear white light, with a delicate sense of reflected light. One reviewer said that Dantan had treated the subject with taste and grace, when it could easily have fallen into vulgarity. He was by no means limited to one genre. Other paintings at this time included one of his mother outdoors in her invalid chair, her face sad, a pastoral portrait of a young blonde woman in a blue dress, full of life, and of a poor fisherman dining in his miserable cabin on a piece of bread and an onion.

Later, Dantan's classical style fell out of fashion. Writing of the first exhibition of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in the Champ de Mars in 1890, Walter Sickert was scathingly critical of most of the paintings, making exceptions for a series of far-eastern landscapes by Louis-Jules Dumoulin, a painting by Édouard Manet, some portraits by Jules-Élie Delaunay and some studies by Dantan. He praised Dumoulin as a master, described Manet's work as brilliant and powerful, Delaunay's as respectable and Dantan's as conscientious.

[utopianatolia]

Kitaplar...

248) Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

sounds better, doesn’t it?’ ‘He is all my art to me now. I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the history of the world. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinoüs was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, model from him. Of course I have done all that. He has stood as Paris in dainty armor, and as Adonis with huntsman’s cloak and polished boar- spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms, he has sat on the prow of Adrian’s barge, looking into the green, turbid Nile. He has leaned over the still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water’s silent silver the wonder of his own beauty. But he is much more to me than that. I won’t tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that art cannot express it. There is nothing that art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done since I met Dorian Gray is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some curious way—I wonder will you understand me?—his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now re-create life in a way that was hidden from me before. ‘A dream of form in days of thought,’—who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible presence of this lad, —for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty,—his merely visible presence,—ah! I wonder can you realize all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in itself all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body,—how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is bestial, an ideality that is void. Harry! Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price, but which I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting it, Dorian Gray sat beside me.’ 

‘Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.’ ‘I hate them for it. An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. If I live, I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.’

There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral,—immoral from the scientific point of view.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly,—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion,—these are the two things that govern us. And yet ‘I believe that if one man were to live his life out fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream,—I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal,— to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man among us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the selfdenial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. 

but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well informed man,— that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à- brac shop, all monsters and dust, and everything priced above its proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some day you will look at Gray, and he will seem to you to be a little out of drawing, or you won’t like his tone of color, or something. You will bitterly reproach him in your own heart, and seriously think that he has behaved very badly to you. The next time he calls, you will be perfectly cold and indifferent. It will be a great pity, for it will alter you. The worst of having a romance is that it leaves one so unromantic

If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different

The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for optimism. And as for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.

before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night, and Portia the other. The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came,—oh, my beautiful love!— and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness, of the empty pageant in which I had always played. To-  for the first time, I became conscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, not what I wanted to say. You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. You have made me understand what love really is. My love! my love! I am sick of shadows. You are more to me than all art can ever be. What have I to do with the puppets of a play? When I came on to-night, I could not understand how it was that everything had gone from me. Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant. The knowledge was exquisite to me. I heard them hissing, and I smiled.

‘You said to me that Sibyl Vane represented to you all the heroines of romance—that she was Desdemona one night, and Ophelia the other; that if she died as Juliet, she came to life as Imogen.’ ‘She will never come to life again now,’ murmured the lad, burying his face in his hands. ‘No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. But you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died.

It was rumored of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic communion; and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement, and with the priest, in his stiff flowered cope, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, and raising aloft the jewelled lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the ‘panis caelestis,’ the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice, and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers, that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers, had their subtle fascination for him. As he passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals, and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the tarnished grating the true story of their lives.

Mysticism, with its marvellous power of making common things strange to us, and the subtle antinomianism that always seems to accompany it, moved him for a season; and for a season he inclined to the materialistic doctrines of the Darwinismus movement in Germany, and found a curious pleasure in tracing the thoughts and passions of men to some pearly cell in the brain, or some white nerve in the body, delighting in the conception of the absolute dependence of the spirit on certain physical conditions, morbid or healthy, normal or diseased.

108-111

The Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning,—poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book.

What of Art? Its a malady Love? An illusion Religion The fashinable substitute for Belief You are a sceptic. Never.Scepticism is the begining of Faith

[bygosscarmine]

Death and the Spring Goddess...Get Detention.

a Sky High Olympus AU fic (Warren x Layla)

4750-word one shot

PG/Teen at most for suggestive references

Olympus Academy technically floats above mortal reach, so only real gods or truly powerful demigods can get there. Because arcane laws are a traditional hobby of most pantheons, there is (of course) a rule that if you can get to the school, you can go to the school. (There is, in the margin of this bylaw, a rather hastily handwritten addendum that one has to be of the appropriate age of one's species or kind. One can well imagine why.) Persephone was wholly unknown to any of the gods until she arrived on the Academy Isle--piggyback on the world's fastest-growing conifer.

The fact that it seemed to continue growing once she'd hopped off it alarmed a great many of the adults in the area. Since the staff on campus included Minotaur the Reformed, the one-eyed giant Ted, and Hel, the average person might have thought this a little absurd. The ways of the gods are mysterious.

Anyway, Persephone (sixteen and bitter) had been planning this badass entry for at least two weeks now. She just strode right into the Administration Office without a backward glance--she could clean up later. Besides, she was making a point.

"I am Persephone, a daughter of Demeter," she announced, sweeping in the door, her floral Doc Martins planting against any comers.

Except--there was no one. The school office, a sort of half-way between Grecian and Gothic style, was deserted. Actually, when she looked closer there seemed to be a crowd of bodies behind a frosted glass door across the room. Annoyed, Persephone swept her kerchief hem with a hand (the right swirl required a little coaching) and headed to that door.

Belatedly, she noticed one person who had witnessed this botched entrance. He didn't seem to be all that interested, glancing up only briefly as she moved forward, He was young enough to be a student. Still, her steps faltered slightly. When she got close enough to hear words being spoken inside the Administrator's office, she got the distinct impression that this young man was trying not to hear them.

He sprawled in his chair as if unconcerned, but there was an intent look on his face. Or maybe he always scowled like that. He had overgrown black hair partly covering his eyes, often the sign of a perpetual sulker.

He shifted slightly, and looked out the window, away from her. Something was odd about his eyes, but she didn't quite catch what before they were hidden by the angle. Anyway, she had psyched herself up this morning to not be fazed by anything, so it was just as well. She reached the inner office.

"--it's apparent to everyone he is a recurrence of Hades, I don't think that is a question."

"You can't deny a boy his education based on old prejudices--"

"Old prejudices! Don't make me laugh. It's that boy, not some previous incarnation, who called up Cerberus to terrorize the cafeteria."

"Under extreme provocation!"

Persephone winced for the boy, despite her own preoccupations. She knocked, and counted it a service.

The abrupt silence seeped like chill around the doorjamb. Then an incredibly beautiful female with an incredibly unfriendly face peeked out.

"Yes?"

"I am Persephone, a daughter of Demeter. I am here to enroll at Olympus."

The woman gave her a quick up and down, a tad slow replacing her judgment of Persephone's sense of style with a smile of welcome.

"I'll be right with you, dear."

The rumbling inside resumed, but now about Demeter, and whether she had publicly announced any children in the last hundred years.

"She said a daughter of Demeter," came the voice of the goddess who'd seen her, "not the daughter of Demeter, so it could mean anything. But she's here, so if she wants to enroll she can. Excuse me."

As she stepped out of the office, it became obvious the goddess was Venus, or at least her most recent form. No one else would have dressed just like the headless installation that dominated the artisan's quarter of the city below, so that it was obvious to anyone her body had been the model. Or maybe anyone else caught trying it would have found themselves in a world of hurt. Venus wasn't known for sharing well with others.

Persephone tried not to be starstruck as she followed Venus to the front desk. That would be embarrassing. It was especially embarrassing to be starstruck by someone's butt just because it really looked just like the sculpture.

Hades was having a pretty ridiculous day already when a second freaking fertility goddess walked into the building. Dressed like an eco-terrorist, no less. She had on army boots, but they were embroidered with daisies or something. And she was wearing them with a green sundress, as if symbolism was an art completely lost on her and she instead chose to draw a chart.

He couldn't decide if her being bony and awkward was more disconcerting or comforting, in a redheaded nature deity.

He winced when she announced she was Demeter's daughter. His adoptive mom had versed him rigorously in all his past connections (as far as history could tell them) with past incarnations of various gods, and one thing he knew for sure was that he and that goddess found ways to hate each other in every lifetime.

His bio-mom thought worrying about former incarnations was laughable, and introduced her boyfriend as her "ex-brother" just to make him squirm. Meeting Rhea had explained a whole lot about his adoptive mom's attitude, really.

While Rhea continued to do a terrible job trying to keep him in this school, he watched the other fertility goddess in the building get the young one entered for classes. Green Dress seemed to be having trouble not staring at Venus's white drapery. Well, that was the whole point of the drapery, really.

Rhea wrenched open the door and emerged to glare at him.

"If you want to stay in this school and not be put down as unallied with Olympus, you need to come make some apologies."

About ten minutes earlier, Hades had been planning to tell them all to shove it up their unnaturally ageless backends. But there was a distant sound of shouting that the new kid seemed to be ignoring with intent. She hadn't relaxed like someone who had achieved their goal, either.

Maybe he didn't want to leave just yet. He went to do the most godly grovel he could muster.

Persephone had not come to Olympus for the better school environment. She quite liked it, especially when she found out that she could skip mythology class for a fairly advanced botany workshop as her personalize elective. No, she had come to get Zeus to do something about Earth's global warming.

Olympus Academy was the only standardized route for gods to get enrolled in Olympus as deities. Unlike she had hoped, though, Persephone couldn't get to the rest of Olympus from the levitating campus. Nor did it seem at all easy to approach the gods who could help her with her petition. So, to bide her time (and prepare for her political future), she made friends with the other students--when that was possible.

When it was not possible, she tried to at least not pick any fights.

All the students were technically young, not experienced as gods, and working toward being officially part of the Olympus Alliance. There were still clearly marked cliques and hierarchies.

She'd been a little astonished to be greeted with enthusiasm by a good number of her fellow students, despite the fact that her tree had taken up permanent residence in the squash court. (Some of the more athletic students soon adapted this into the world's highest jungle-gym, and even used it to sneak off campus for lunch. Persephone could not fly and did not think she was immortal enough to just try falling, so she had accepted her admittance to the campus dorm without any regrets.)

It was only after her first few weeks that she realized all the students who had befriended her belonged to a certain class at school. They were the nurturers, earth-mothers, healers, and emotion deities. As far as she could tell, they had the most fun anyway, so she had no regrets.

Still, there was no denying the Frights (as her new friend Pom called them) were somehow cooler.

Some of the Frights were loners, but the others had a loose network. Venus's younger sister Di wasn't always around, because she was intense about her archery training, but whenever she sat down she was instantly surrounded by girls with knife-sharp eyeliner and husky voices. She was thick as thieves with Mars, though apparently blood flowed when anyone suggested they were dating. When both of them were otherwise unoccupied there was an inevitable devolvement to war games of various forms.

So the first time Persephone made an absolute fool of herself was, naturally, in front of both of them.

The day before at lunch the Frights had been playing some card game. While the penalties for losing had been violent, at least it hadn't taken up the whole lawn where people ate lunch. (The weather was always good on Olympus, unless someone had really gotten Zeus upset. This happened only every few decades, and there were bomb shelters, not awnings, inside the school for these occasions.)

Today, though, it was a glorified version of capture the flag. Some god or other with constructive tendencies had offered up two hand-built forts for the Frights to guard, because of course they had.

"Persie, over here!" called Pomona.

While war was being set up, their own group had very sensibly settled within the line of oak trees. Since these trees were sacred to several gods (some of them adults) they were well out of the range of danger.

Pom was eating beautifully arranged sushi that did not come from meal services, and Persephone sighed as she unpacked her own lunch. It was apples, cheese, and peanut butter, and she hoped Pom wouldn't notice the apples weren't fancy ones.

"Did you hear that they're going to let Hades come back to class?" said a boy who went by Jay. This was clearly some kind of nickname, but Persephone had never seen any signs of what his godhood was, and had decided it might be better that way.

"Uh, did you not know he's been here?" said the guy who was resting his head on Jay's lap. Persephone had suspicions about him, but called him Eric anyway.

"This whole time? I haven't seen him."

Jay clearly thought this was a loss.

"He's been doing twelve-hour detentions, that's why," said Eric. "I hear him sometimes coming into the dorm. He's above my room, you know."

"Who's Hades?" Persephone asked Pom in a whisper.

"You haven't met him?" gasped Pom. Persephone should have known better than to try to have a surreptitious conversation with Pom. "He's like, the Fright of all Frights."

"Obviously, I've heard of Hades," Persephone said, blushing.

"Do you think it's true he appears when you say his name?" asked another girl, and the conversation mercifully turned to gossip.

It dawned on her slowly, as hints were made about what Hades had done to to earn near-constant detention, that he had to be the guy in the Administration Office that first day.

She was just trying to remember what she had noticed about his eyes when something hit her on the back of the head.

Hades had found a good corner where he could keep an eye on everyone while eating his lunch, and not be snuck up on from behind. He didn't usually eat lunch out on the grounds with the morons at school, but the structures that had gone up for today's wargame promised havoc. It was better witness havoc than try to piece it together by hearsay.

He wasn't watching, per se, when one of the jock morons pitched an apple at the nature crowd, but he saw it.

It hit the new redhead. She didn't always wear green, but today she had either worn or sprouted a crown of flowers. In a way, that kind of thing was asking those jocks to do something dumb. On the other hand, how thick did you have to be to use a piece of fruit to assault Spring Incarnate?

Dudes who grew up thinking of themselves as gods who might make something of themselves, apparently.

He set his dry sandwich down on his tray and leaned forward to watch what went down.

"Oops, sorry, Red!" came an amused masculine voice.

At first, Persephone just stared as the apple rolled by her then nestled against her knee as if seeking comfort. Then she understood--it hadn't been an accident.

She turned to look, already knowing who had spoken.

It was Ares, Mars' hanger-on. The guy had taken to lingering by her seat after Strategic Math, and while he hadn't exactly made a move, he probably would have, if she'd allowed him to make eye-contact.

"I brought you some more lunch, but it slipped out of my hand," he said. "You really don't need to diet for me."

Since one of Persephone's problems in putting together a good lunch was from all the sports-type guys complaining if anything vegetarian was served, this was particularly enraging.

She picked up the apple, stood, and threw it so hard and fast it had only grown a branch the thickness of her arm when it hit him in the face. (If she'd popped it up, it could have landed a grown tree. Hopefully entrapping Ares in its roots forever.)

"Nice arm," said Di from across the field. When she saw that Ares was bleeding from his nose, Di came Persephone's way. "I've got it--revenge plot."

Mars, kneeling at the foot of his fort to install some kind of whittled spikes, shrugged and said, "Sure. Fury of the women?"

"Persephone on my side with that arm, and Ares on your side with his."

There was a chuckle from some of the bystanders.

"No, I don't agree," Persephone said. "Di, you all are really cool, but no, I won't. I'm not good at games like this, and I don't care enough about it to get involved."

"Guess it'll have to be a good old kidnapping then," said Mars, grabbing Persephone.

Which was a really, really bad move.

Hades had his suspicions from that first day. After Rhea had stormed out, and Hades had been signing contracts about how much service he'd do to be taken off probation, there had been another meeting--and though the administrators were just as tense and argumentative as before, it wasn't about him. They had been interrogating Venus, and inspecting the files.

Something about Persephone besides her pine tree had disturbed them. Or maybe her pine tree had tipped them off to something, Hades couldn't be sure.

Today, he got to see it.

Persephone turned into Mars's grasp, only for him to shriek and let go, and then fall to the ground covering his head. Odd.

Turning the grass to blades beneath his feet was easy. And getting out of his grasp by leaning in rather than struggling was easy.

Unfortunately, by now there was the no-turning-back bubbling of power that occasionally overcame her, and while some small part of teenage Persephone wished to stop, the age-old nature goddess part was ready to take them all to pieces.

She did not. But it was very difficult to restrain herself. There had to be an outlet somewhere.

Her power curled out, lifting her usually straight hair into a nimbus, as it reached out in a circling pattern, telling her what she could do with her surroundings. All those standing in or between the forts were shouting, running for the forts to get off the stabbing grass.

The forts turned quickly to giant treehouses, formed of revived trees--different species now spliced together and creating strange bark-encased cages around the students who had been caught in them.

At the corners of her vision she saw things morphing and changing. At the edges of her hearing she heard shouts and crying. At the horizon of her existence, she knew she was losing herself, but the fierce expanding-green of Spring did not care.

The sacred oaks grew in dimension, until the crowd of nature-types at the foot of them were all hugging each other in the tightening gap between the trunks. Why didn't the idiots run? Hades did not get these guys.

Professor Apollo, looking harried, came running toward the meadow. He cast a look around, a white beard sprouting from his face with the stress, and then he bellowed, "Hades! I know you're here somewhere. Do something!"

Hades stood up and stepped forward.

An unnatural hush fell when the grass withered suddenly to brown all around them. The trees caging the Fright jocks ceased growing with creaks and instead became quiet carved wood again, though still in the shape of terrible trees.

His steps onto the lawn seemed to echo, though he knew no one but himself and Persephone would hear them.

She had turned jewel-green eyes toward him, her floating red hair swirling with the motion. She stayed still as she assessed her new enemy.

"Hey kid," he said, and with nerves his voice came out deep and rocky. "No one's really going to hurt you. You're all right. You're hurting the trees."

Step, step, step. He felt her waiting power crackle on his skin like a lick of sun. She had been wearing a purple dress today, a little more low-key nature goddess. Now, though, it was a raiment of flower petals, all fresh and even moving as though still unfurling, with a hem of twining stems where the fabric had been edged with lace.

Hades had accepted weeks ago that he was going to be aware of what this particular student was wearing at any given time. It wasn't just that she had that fertility goddess glow--it was that her power seemed to shout at his. It made sense; it was also a real headache. Now he had to declare that clash between them in front of the whole school.

Apollo's beard had stopped growing mid-chest,  but the teacher was still clutching it in his fingers with anxiety.

But Hades hadn't been watching lunchtime battles so carefully for nothing.

He knelt in front of Persephone, and reached out to hold the edge of her dress, careful not to crush any petals but only hold the tougher stems.

"I won't touch you," he said. "If you calm down, no one will hurt you. But if you don't, I will have to stop the oak trees, and that will hurt you a lot, won't it?"

"Since when," said a crone-voice that was not Persephone's, "are you a hostage negotiator, Hades?"

He laughed. "Since my mother declared feud on Zeus two thousand years ago. And since you, Demeter, kept hijacking your daughter's destiny. And in this life, since my step-dad decided to start beating my mom."

Not Rhea. When Rhea had finally checked in long enough to notice what was going on, she had the man put away for a long time. A long, long, long time. Long enough for Hades to get very good at being a god before they met again.

"Oh my god," said Persephone, herself again.

She blinked, and her eyes were fading to blue. Then she crumpled toward the ground, nearly knocking heads with him.

Persephone had not planned on having her first meeting with Zeus in a disciplinary hearing. Her new plans had all revolved around the upcoming harvest feast. All the gods who were on speaking terms with Zeus joined the students at Olympus High for the festival, so it was a brilliant opportunity. She had been drilling herself on rhetoric for the occasion.

Now she was next to Hades in the hot seats of the principal's office, while a ruggedly fifties-ish looking man tried to charm her. Zeus hardly ever died, so he was more like fifty-thousandish. It was gross he wanted to look young. At least Apollo had the grace to look like he tanned too much.

"It's understandable to get upset," Zeus was saying, "but you really have to be cautious not to do anything in anger you can't undo."

He would know, she thought. Though she took the whole Daphne thing more personally, at least Apollo wasn't a hypocrite. Also, Apollo had self-ordered a restraining order on himself that was upheld through all his lifetimes--something she had found out when doing research in the Olympus High library for possible leverage.

Anyway, a lecture from Zeus didn't weigh much with Persephone.

It was sitting next to Hades that was making her twitchy.

"So, in punishment," said Zeus so she started listening again, "I will go easy on you, as a first-time offender and fairly new goddess, dear. Hades, you will show her the ropes on your detention, and she will serve a hundred hours alongside you."

"Sir," objected Hades, "that's work in my domain. She doesn't belong there."

"Right. Which is why she's only doing a hundred hours."

He stood up and beamed at both of them, reminding Persephone strongly of a overly peppy soccer coach she had hated as a kid--particularly for the way he made up nicknames instead of using her full name.

"Have fun, children."

Zeus winked, and was gone.

Hades looked over at her, and overlaying his default scowl there was a hint of apology.

She remembered very clearly the shock of looking into his eyes earlier, when she'd wanted to kill him for messing with her plants. One eye was warm brown, the other a black that faded to ash-grey at the center. All of her fury had seemed to sink into that dead-bone eye, as if he was an abyss that power just fell into.

"So what hell is it that you're working on for detention?" she asked, to get him to stop looking at her.

Because of an undesirable attuning to his own name, Hades had heard a great deal of gossip in the last 24 hours. Some of it between teachers.

And as he had suspected, something about Persephone really freaked them out.

Hades was used to freaking people out, himself. He even enjoyed it. All the staff here expected him to freak them out a little and acted accordingly. Apparently, though, a really powerful nature goddess was way more daunting than the god of Death.

Which is probably why they had unanimously decided to balance the two of them against each other.

At least today it was waves of Persephone's own hatred for him practically growing into a wall between them, instead of Demeter's.

The girl looked a little pale. In Zeus's presence she had bristled but now these defenses had fallen away, and she looked small.

Only looked small, though; Hades could still feel her power filling the space around them in the hallway. But a god could feel small even if they had a lot of power.

So he didn't say anything, just led her to the maintenance part of the building and down the stairs. Down, and down. Though she started to get nervous, she didn't ask why they were going down so far. Maybe she put two and two together.

Then finally he opened the door at the very bottom, its bottom edge scraping still-unsmoothed dirt, and showed her in.

"So," Persephone said, staring around at what seemed to be a glorified basement. Not really even glorified, just massive. "Did you do all the decorating yourself?"

"It's a fixer-upper. A fixer-downer? I only claim responsibility for the two thirds at the back. You may noticed a distinct trend toward shoddy worksmanship that direction. What can I say, I'm a destroyer not a maker."

Apparently, Hades had been waiting the whole time they were descending to his 'realm' only to launch into a comic routine.

"Wow, the god of death has a sense of humor?"

"Wow, the goddess of fertility doesn't?"

She stamped a boot with frustration. "What did you call me?"

"I...didn't realize that was inappropriate."

"Fertility! As if the only thing a woman and springtime and nature can be about is being FERTILE. Listen, buddy, it's not all eggs and pollen. Being called a fertility goddess is essentially writing someone off as overly feminine and therefore probably useless."

His weird mismatched eyes on her made her skin crawl. She'd been trying to fend off the sense of his cold, burying power and now she was surrounded on all sides by rock. Not just rock, dead rock. Rock leeched of nutrients and good minerals.

"I'm sorry," he said, quietly. "Despite how it may seem, I have only the greatest regard for life and the living."

He turned away, and walked toward a distant corner of the square, cave-like place. His hands were in his pockets, but the line of his back was anything but relaxed and nonchalant. She realized after a second that he was heading toward a wheelbarrow full of heavy tools, and hurried to catch up.

Hades heard the scuffing of her ridiculous boots, shorter paces trying to catch up with his, and slowed just slightly. She didn't step up to his side, though, until they reached the spot where he'd left his gear at the raw edge of the cave.

"I'm sorry, this is rough work," he said, hauling out and offering her a choice between pickaxe and sledgehammer.

"What are we doing, anyway?" she asked.

"Enlarging hell, what does it look like?"

Why did he have to be sarcastic right now? Was it some mythic law, "All Hades will be stupid around spring-slash-nature goddesses"?

"No, but why does Zeus want you enlarging hell? Under Olympus?"

"We're not really...under Olympus any more."

"Fine, wherever we are."

He hesitated. "Just like more life is always being made...death is also always being made."

"You mean, this is literally going to become more underworld, with ghosts in it?" Persephone sounded horrified.

"No," he said. "This is my new throne-room. Gods of death don't leave when they die. Look, if you aren't going to do the bludgeoning work, get out that spade. You can shovel the debris instead."

She had an intently innocent look on her face. Hades had seen that look before--when the Minotaur dude had burst into the administration office, saying, "It won't stop! The tree is cutting into the mountain!"

The Minotaur's voice had sounded more like a squeal than speech. Hades had enjoyed that.

Now he turned slowly, and saw that a vine had started to break up the wall, weakening the stone. "Will that help?" she asked.

It was impossible.

There was nothing for a plant to grow in here. His presence in this underworld should have stopped her, made it a locus of lifelessness. But as he stared at her handiwork, already causing small stones to fall out of the wall, he also noticed that the power she'd been expending to ward him away was no longer concentrated between them.

Maybe it hadn't been hate. Maybe it was fear. Though apparently Persephone did not have much to fear from Hades.

He didn't tell her it was impossible, however, because she really didn't need any more encouragement. He started shoveling the rubble her vines were creating into the wheelbarrow, thinking this could either be the longest or shortest hundred hours of his life. He hoped he didn't screw it up.

"So what's your big goal in coming to Olympus, Persephone?"

"To end global warming. Unless you want the whole planet dead, of course," she said--with an actual smile, however barbed.

"Not at all," he demurred, scraping another shovel-full of falling rock together.

"And what about you, Hades? Something bigger than being on Zeus's team got you coming to this circus?"

"Preparing for my rightful throne, obviously," he said, waving around.

After a few moments more of her concentrating on coaxing her vines to fissure the rocks, and getting on gloves to encourage it to fall, she said, "I really can't believe I've gotten myself in trouble. Zeus may never listen to me now."

Hades didn't share that he thought Zeus had reason to worry about not pleasing her, rather than the other way around.

Not yet, anyway. After all, they had another ninety-nine and a half hours together.

[scifigeneration]

A sports car and a glitter ball are now in space – what does that say about us as humans?

by Alice Gorman

Two controversial objects have recently been launched in space, and their messages couldn’t be more different.

One is Elon Musk’s red sports car, a symbol of elite wealth and masculinity, hurtling towards Mars.

The other is a glittering geodesic sphere in Earth orbit, designed to give humans a shared experience and a sense of our place in the universe: the Humanity Star.

A red car for a red planet

On February 6 2018, Musk’s private space company SpaceX launched the much-vaunted Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Centre - from the same launch pad as Apollo 11 in 1969.

It’s a test launch carrying a dummy payload: Musk’s own personal midnight cherry Roadster, a sports car made by his Tesla company. The driver, dubbed Starman, is a mannequin in a SpaceX spacesuit.

For the ultimate road trip soundtrack, the car is playing David Bowie’s Space Oddity.

The car will enter an elliptical solar orbit, its furthest point from the Sun around the distance of Mars.

Musk thinks of it as future space archaeology.

Reactions include waxing lyrical about the speed the car will reach, lamenting the lost opportunity for a scientific experiment, and celebrating it as an inspirational act of whimsy.

Fear of flying

The Tesla Roadster might be an expendable dummy payload, but it’s primary purpose is symbolic communication. There’s a lot going on here.

There’s an element of performing excessive wealth by wasting it. Giving up such an expensive car (a new model costs US$200,000) could be seen as a sacrifice for space, but it’s also like burning $100 notes to show how how little they mean.

In the 1960s, anthropologist Victor Turner argued that symbols can encompass two contradictory meanings at the same time. Thus, the sports car in orbit symbolises both life and death. Through the body of the car, Musk is immortalised in the vacuum of space. The car is also an armour against dying, a talisman that quells a profound fear of mortality.

The spacesuit is also about death. It’s the essence of the uncanny: the human simulacrum, something familiar that causes uneasiness, or even a sense of horror. The Starman was never alive, but now he’s haunting space.

In a similar vein, the red sports car symbolises masculinity - power, wealth and speed - but also how fragile masculinity is. Stereotypically, the red sports car is the accessory of choice in the male mid-life crisis, which men use to rebel against perceived domestication.

A related cultural meme holds that owning a sports car is over-compensation. Have we just sent the equivalent of a dick pic into space?

Space graffiti

The brainchild of Peter Beck (founder of the New Zealand-based Rocket Lab), the Humanity Star was launched on 21 January 2018, but kept a secret until after it had successfully reached orbit.

In contrast to the lean and slightly aggressive lines of the sports car, the Humanity Star is a geodesic sphere of silver triangular panels. It’s a beach ball, a moon, a BB8, a space age sculpture. Its round shape is friendly and reassuring.

Similar satellites – with reflective surfaces designed for bouncing lasers – are orbiting Earth right now. But this satellite doesn’t have a scientific purpose. It’s only function is to be seen from Earth as its bright faces tumble to catch the light.

Astronomers weren’t happy, saying that it would confuse astronomical observations. It was even called “space graffiti”, implying that its visual qualities marred the “natural” night sky. Some lambasted Rocket Lab for contributing to the orbital debris problem. Instead of inspiration, they saw pollution.

Through the looking glass

Beck wants people to engage with the Humanity Star. In his words,

My hope is that everyone looking up at the Humanity Star will look past it to the expanse of the universe, feel a connection to our place in it and think a little differently about their lives, actions and what is important.

Wait for when the Humanity Star is overhead and take your loved ones outside to look up and reflect. You may just feel a connection to the more than seven billion other people on this planet we share this ride with.

This is the “Overview Effect” in reverse. We can’t all go to space and see the whole blue marble of the Earth from outside, inspiring a new consciousness of how much we are all together in the same boat. Beck has tried to create a similar feeling of a united Earth by looking outwards instead.

In nine months or so, the Humanity Star will tumble back into the atmosphere to be consumed. It will leave no trace of its passage through orbit.

The medium is the message

Ultimately, these orbiting objects are messages about human relationships with space. Both objects were launched by private corporations, inviting Earthbound people to share the journey. However, one reinforces existing inequalities, while the other promotes a hopeful vision of unity.

Beck and Musk’s intentions are irrelevant to how the symbols are interpreted by diverse audiences. Symbols can be multivalent, contradictory, and fluid - their meanings can change over time, and in different social contexts.

Every object humans have launched into the solar system is a statement: each tells the story of our attitudes to space at a particular point in time.

Alice Gorman is a Senior Lecturer in archaeology and space studies at Flinders University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

[averyizaak]

Stair Railing

Step railings are a prosperity feature with demanding development guideline necessities planned to keep you secure while investigating the various floors of your home. Whether or not you expect to present a DIY step railing with or without the use of a cost saving substitute way step railing pack, or enroll an originator to make a custom stairwell without any planning, the choice of step railings is a huge arrangement decision that can build up the speed for your space.While dated advance railings from past numerous years can make a home vibe depleted and disregarded, all around saved or restored model styles add allure and character to a period home. Contemporary advance railings can add a significant segment of style to another structure or cause a more prepared home to understand current.Check these stairway railings in various styles, materials, and plans to stir your own endeavor.

1.Modern Farmhouse

Dim cross metal advance railings add a cleaned present day farmhouse contact to this agreeable family-obliging parlor from Design by Emily Henderson. The white dividers show up distinctively corresponding to the striking dull railing.

2.Art Deco-Inspired

Inside engineer Michelle Salz-Smith of Studio Surface uncovered to us that she cooperated with a close by talented laborer to make the special, Art Deco-impelled stairwell railing above for a home in Del Mar, California. "We love conveying designing nuance to unanticipated spots like railings," Salz-Smith says. "Negative space should be seen as while choosing the layout of a railing. It should similarly play charmingly with other key arrangement segments."

3.Industrial Black

In this kitchen overhaul from Los Angeles-based Anne Carr Design discovered squares from the coastline, a reasonable dull stairway adds a mechanical touch to the light and vaporous vibe of the splendid kitchen space.

4.Iron Bars

In this mountain retreat from Design by Emily Henderson, everything was arranged considering straightforwardness, including the dim iron advance railing. "We arranged it to be so fundamental and smooth with no improving determining," Henderson forms on her blog, "beside the wood on top which organizes our wood on the floor."

5.White and Bright

In this vaporous, light-flooded receiving area from Design by Emily Henderson, a clear, faultless white direct railing lines the means all through the amazed space and goes probably as a guardrail to the lower level. The railing has an especially slim profile that it nearly disappears in the brilliant space, leaving the consideration on the points of view, designs and expressive format.

6.Sculptural

In this contemporary inside arrangement from Kara Mann, a sculptural white stairway is an incredible clarification that adds excessive structures and a characteristic vibe to the objective space. The sparkling white encased plan of the stairway is expanded by moderate dull railings that follow the curves of the stairwell from floor to floor, adding contrast.

7.Wood Slat Wall

In this home update by Jen Talbot Design, a stairway crossing various floors fuses fundamental handrails and a mass of floor-to-rooftop wood underpins that grant air and light to experience. Talbot alluded to the warm wood tones of the current stairway with an orange lounge chair. Else, she clung to an impartial scope of dull and rich whites that put the consideration on sculptural furniture with twists standing apart from the stairwells straight lines.

8.Walnut and Glass

In this redesigned period condo in London, Scenario Architecture kept the primary plan of the home rather than making an open-arrangement space. Nonetheless, they made a sensation of broad size and openness by patching up the stairway using warm walnut and glass that offers straightforwardness and allows light to channel through to the anteroom. The mixed materials feel new and current, anyway the streamlined arrangement feels sufficiently everlasting to last.

[rowanwhittington]

I did a scale model workshop with Lee Cadden, focussing on creating a human figure 1/25th my size. It is made up of a wire armature wrapped in tin foil to allow it to show up on camera. As I was making it, I created a character in my head and it ended up being an old man, shown fully in the last photo after I’d made a walking stick out of a spare piece of wire. This helped me when positioning it for the photos, establishing a narrative out of the miniature set pieces. 

I used yellow/white and red lights to follow the blood-like colour scheme of my work, and the colours of the set pieces worked harmoniously with this. I wanted the photos to explore isolation and loneliness, with the two chairs suggesting that another figure should be present. I hadn’t really played with narrative in my work in this way, and it was interesting to experiment with.

I also did a 3D model workshop, forming a bird out of cardboard and tape. I decided to elongate the body and bird to create a mutated, dramatic shape, which I thought would create some interesting shadows in the photos. Unfortunately many of my photos with both the scale model and 3D model came out blurry, however I think the photo I used shows the contrasting scale ad colour experimentation well. 

After working with sculpture, I decided to look into the work of Louise Bourgeois, who worked mainly in metal framed sculptures and exploring humanity and emotion through them.

Louise Bourgeois (25th December 1911 - 31st May 2010) was a French-American artist most notably known for her sculptural work and installations. Her work explores many themes, including family, sexuality and death, all of which connect to her childhood, allowing her work to become a therapeutic process. The New York Times stated that her work “shared a set of repeated themes, centred on the human body and its need for nurture and protection in a frightening world.”

Bourgeois was born in Paris to Josephine Fauriaux and Louis Bourgeois, owner of a gallery which dealt mainly in antique tapestries. They moved out of the city to Choisy-le-Roi a few years after her birth to set up a workshop for tapestry restoration, surrounding Bourgeois with art from an early age. 

Her mother, who she was particularly close with, died in 1932, prompting her to quit studying mathematics at the Sorbonne after two years there, although Bourgeois stated “I got peace of mind, only through the study of rules nobody could change,” in relation to maths and geometry. Her mothers death was especially impactful on Bourgeois due to her fathers continued affairs throughout her sickness and eventual end, including one lasting ten years with his daughters live in English tutor, with the theme of anger towards her father appearing often in her work. Her mother also is featured in her sculptures through the motif of a spider. Bourgeois said, “the spider is an ode to my mother [...] she was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver [...] Like spiders, my mother was very clever.” The spider represents women, and although at first seeming off-putting and frightening, in fact act as protectors, conveying strength and power.

‘Maman’, 1999, Louise Bourgeois

After her mothers death she began studying art, joining classes as a translator for English speaking students as this meant she was not charged tuition. Alongside this, she got a job leading tours at the Musee de Louvre, surrounding her with art both in school and at work. After graduating from the Sorbonne, Bourgeois studied art further at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts and Ecole du Louvre. She opened a print shop next to her father’s tapestry gallery, where she met American art professor and critic Robert Goldwater, who she married and had three sons with. In 1932 she moved with Goldwater to New York City, continuing schooling at the Art Students League of New York where she studied painting under Vaclav Vytlacil, a notable abstract painter. About painting, Bourgeois said, “The first painting has a grid: the grid is a very peaceful thing because nothing can go wrong ... everything is complete. There is no room for anxiety ... everything has a place, everything is welcome.”

This introduces another prominent theme in Bourgeois’ life and work: anxiety. Jerry Gorovoy, her assistant and friend, stated “she was very anxious - a trait she thought she inherited from her mother.” This anxiety can be seen in her 1993 piece, ‘Arch of Hysteria’.

Bourgeois had been in psychoanalysis from 1951 until the 1980s following the death of her father and depression that came alongside it. She started therapy with Dr Leonard Cammer, although switched to Dr Henry Lowenfeld the next year, a student of Sigmund Freud. There was a huge focus on hysteria in Freudian psychoanalysis, particularly that involving women. Within these fits, the women would contort their bodies into arches, although there is no physical reason for this reaction. Frediuans thought it to be a psycho-sexual reaction or one of the unlocking of repressed memories, and Bourgeois’ work explores a similar theme, with her sculptural work unlocking the psychological and emotional memories within her body. The sculpture was cast from Gorovoy’s body, then hung from the ceiling to reflect the fragility and vulnerability of humans. It could turn and spin, preventing it fro being in a stable condition, much like the psyche. Bourgeois made it highly polished so that the viewer could see their reflection on the body, connection them to the piece and introducing questions about the self upon view. 

In 2012 her work was exhibited in The Freud Museum London in ‘Louis Bourgeois: Return of the Repressed’. It came about after Gorovoy discovered two boxes of her writings containing over one thousand sheets recording her psychoanalysis and meetings with Lowenfeld. these writings provide the viewer with an insight into both her state of mind and working process. The curator, Phillip Larratt-Smith said, “the discovery of the psychoanalytic writings has enriched and augmented our understanding of Bourgeois’ work and life immeasurably. They represent a distinct contribution to art history as well as to the field of psychoanalysis.” Despite this, Bourgeois felt that psychoanalysis could not help her - “The truth is that Freud did nothing for artists, or for the artist’s problem, the artist’s torment,” “to be an artist involves some suffering. That's why artists repeat themselves - because they have no access to a cure.” Even Freud himself admitted “before the problem of the creative artist, psychoanalysis must lay down its arms,” in his 1926 essay ‘Dostoevesky and Parricide’. 

Upon researching Bourgeois I found myself entirely consumed by her life story, with my reading spanning multiple days. She fascinates me, and her perspective of involving personal traumas and memories within her work resonates with me, although perhaps less notably in this project. Despite not being a huge fan of all of her work, her creative process is one that will stick with me and somewhat mirrors that of my own work. I like to confront my own issues through art as a way of coping with them. It is entirely personal and means I can express these concerns without any judgement other than that of myself. This has been extremely healing and in my opinion, one of the most beneficial aspects of being a creative. 

Reference links:

https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/louise-bourgeois-at-freud-museum/2547

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/apr/06/louise-bourgeois-freud

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/mar/14/louise-bourgeois-feminist-art-sculptor-bilbao-guggenheim-women

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbXpUr3bZmI

[georgewagner]

Most searched for celebrity houses

With most of the world at various stages of lockdown, we’re all spending a lot more time in our homes right now. The same goes for the rich and famous, and because of social media such as Instagram Lives and TikTok, we’re seeing a lot more of their homes than normal as well.

It got us thinking – we know from our recent Rated People Home Improvement Trends Report that people get the inspiration for their own homes from a range of places, like Pinterest and magazines, but are people looking up celebrity homes too? And if so, whose houses are we searching for the most? We decided to delve into the data to find out.

We took hundreds of the most well-known people in the world, from actors to influencers, and analysed search data to see how many people were Googling their houses. The results are in.

World’s most searched for celebrity homes

1. Kim Kardashian – 168,000 6. Tom Brady – 93,400 2. =Kylie Jenner – 115,200 7. =Ellen DeGeneres – 86,400 2. =Will Smith – 115,200 7. =Eminem – 86,400 3. Elon Musk – 105,600 8. Jeffree Star – 82,800 4. Pewdiepie – 99,600 9. Ed Sheeran – 80,400 5. Lionel Messi – 98,400 10. Justin Bieber – 79,200

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A post shared by white + natural interiors (@white_and_natural_interiors) on Mar 14, 2019 at 11:22am PDT

Kim Kardashian’s house (above)

According to the data, Kim Kardashian’s house, that she shares with Kanye West and their four children, is the most searched for celebrity home in the world. Over 12 months, there are a huge 168,000 searches globally by those looking to take a peek into her famously minimalist LA home.

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A post shared by KYLIE JENNER HOUSE (@kyliejennerhouse) on Apr 28, 2020 at 1:14pm PDT

Kylie Jenner’s house (above)

Kim’s sister Kylie’s home is next on the list, she’s recently moved into a house worth $36.5 million that boasts seven bedrooms, 14 bathrooms and an outdoor and indoor home theatre.

Kylie’s home places joint second with the house of actor Will Smith, with their homes being searched for 115,200 times a year. Both their houses are also said to be in LA.

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Engel & Völkers

(@peter_raab_realtor) on Sep 9, 2019 at 3:47pm PDT

Tom Brady’s house (above)

Two sports stars’ homes feature in the top ten list – Argentinean footballer Lionel Messi’s, which is rumoured to be a Mediterranean-style villa in Barcelona, and American footballer Tom Brady’s. Tom is said to have recently purchased a home in Connecticut.

The only Brit’s home to make the top ten is Ed Sheeran’s. The award-winning musician has built an entire estate in Suffolk where he grew up that consists of five properties, and there are over 80,000 searches for it annually.

World’s most searched for royal homes

1. Prince Harry – 8,040 6. Queen Elizabeth II – 1,800 2. Meghan Markle – 5,040 7. Prince Andrew – 1,320 3. Prince William – 4,800 8. Princess Beatrice – 1,080 4. Kate Middleton – 4,200 9. Prince Edward – 720 5. Prince Charles – 3,960 10. Zara Phillips – 600

Although no royals’ houses appear in the top ten, all over the globe people search in their thousands to have a look into the houses (or rather palaces) of princes and princesses.

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A post shared by Lucas (@lucasmajuski) on May 12, 2020 at 9:39am PDT

Prince William’s house (above)

Perhaps reflective of their recent move to the US, Harry and Meghan’s homes are the first and second most searched for, followed by those of William and Kate. Although not officially confirmed, Harry and Meghan have reportedly been staying in an LA home owned by actor and director, Tyler Perry. We do know though, that Kate and William live at both Kensington Palace in London and Anmer Hall in Norfolk.

When William and Kate have invited cameras into their apartment in Kensington Palace, we’ve seen that it’s traditionally decorated with ornate touches such as oil paintings, sculptures and decorative vases.

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A post shared by British Royal Family (@britishmonarchy) on Oct 10, 2013 at 7:27am PDT

Buckingham Palace (above)

Surprisingly the home of the reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II’s house, only came in at 6th place. There are 1,800 searches globally for her home – she splits her time between Buckingham Palace in London, Windsor Castle in Windsor and Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

Buckingham Palace is currently undergoing £369 million renovations which includes updating the plumbing and electrics and making some general décor improvements. If you’re interested in seeing the works being made, follow the official @TheRoyalFamily account on Instagram.

World’s most searched for influencer homes

1. Pewdiepie – 99,600 6. Lilly Singh – 5,280 2. Jeffree Star – 82,800 7. Liza Koshy – 5,040 3. Shane Dawson – 21,600 8. Rosanna Pansino – 4,200 4. =Zoe Sugg – 19,200 9. Jaclyn Hill – 4,080 4. =James Charles – 19,200 10. Tanya Burr – 2,760 5. Mrs Hinch – 10,800

For many influencers, sharing their lives is all part of the job. So it’s perhaps not surprising that we’re curious about the houses they’re living in as well.

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A post shared by PewDiePie (@pewdiepie) on Jun 24, 2017 at 8:59am PDT

Pewdiepie’s house (above)

Pewdiepie, whose real name is Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, has the most Googled influencer house with 99,600 searches a year. Although originally from Sweden, he lives in Brighton with his wife and fellow influencer Marzia and they’re said to have recently bought a home in Japan too.

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A post shared by @gilinksygirl on Jun 17, 2018 at 9:55am PDT

Zoe Sugg’s house (above)

Three British influencers also make the list. Zoe Sugg’s house is searched for nearly 20,000 times a year, she lives with her boyfriend (and YouTuber) Alfie Deyes in a seven-bed house in Brighton which is decorated with subway tiles, velvet furniture, roll top baths and lots of plants. Cleaning Instagrammer Mrs Hinch, who famously has a very grey-hued décor style, has the 5th most searched for influencer home, and beauty guru Tanya Burr’s home is searched for nearly 2,800 times a year. Her London house has a minimal feel with dark floorboards and simple white furniture.

World’s most searched for sports stars’ homes

1.Lionel Messi – 98.400 6. Kawhi Leonard – 45,600 2. Tom Brady – 93,600 7. Virat Kohli – 42,000 3. Michael Jordan – 67,200 8. Roger Federer – 32,400 4. LeBron James – 60,000 9. Sachin Tendulkar – 30,000 5. Cristiano Ronaldo – 52,800 10. Stephen Curry – 22,800

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A post shared by KarlTotoro (@karltotoro) on Sep 1, 2019 at 4:43pm PDT

Michael Jordan’s house (above)

It seems like we’re not only interested in how sports stars play, but also what their homes are like. Footballers, cricketers, basketball players, American footballers and tennis players all make the top ten list of most searched for homes. Lionel Messi’s home is the one that’s Googled the most, which (from glimpses on Instagram) looks to be modern with stunning sea views. In second place is Tom Brady’s home which he shares with his wife and model Gisele Bündchen –  both their social media profiles show a chic home with a private gym and large kitchen with marble worktops.

If you’re feeling inspired after looking at some of the amazing houses of the rich and famous, find your nearest local tradesperson to make those home dreams a reality.

All search figures were acquired from Ahrefs, correct as of 29th April 2020.

The post Most searched for celebrity houses appeared first on Rated People Blog.

Most searched for celebrity houses published first on https://fanseeaus.tumblr.com/

[kafashionsofficial]

Fashion Tips: Designing at Home

Sew a patchwork quilt with Next in Fashion’s Daniel Fletcher

Creative director and star of Netflix’s Next in Fashion, Daniel W Fletcher has plenty to get on with while in social isolation, designing a collection for Fiorucci as well as one for his own brand. In his down time, he is taking up a DIY challenge to make a patchwork quilt based on a dress he made during the filming of Next in Fashion, using other designers’ leftover scraps. The design – inspired by concerns over the melting polar ice caps – is an arctic landscape.

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“Ever since the show, I’ve been inundated with requests to make similar quilted items, so I thought this was a good opportunity to show people how they can do so themselves.

“You can make it from any leftover fabrics you have. This time, I used some leftover damaged denim from my studio as the quilt base. I don’t imagine everyone has that lying around so use what you have.

“Heavier is better for the base so it can hold the appliqué – maybe some old curtains or an existing blanket that needs some love. If you don’t have enough to do a blanket, you could use the same technique to make a cushion. For the appliqué, it could be old clothes, tablecloths, tea towels – anything you can get your hands on.

“I went quite abstract with my pattern, but you could come up with a more elaborate design.

“Mine took me five hours on a sewing machine. You could hand sew it instead. It’s going to be a much longer process but could be very therapeutic, which is something we could all do with right now.”

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Difficulty level: intermediate Equipment needed: an old blanket (or similar), scraps of fabrics, thread and needle

How to:

“For the nitty-gritty, head over to my Instagram – my wonderful sister captured the whole process.”

A post shared by DANIEL w. FLETCHER (@danielwfletcher) on Mar 27, 2020 at 12:52pm PDT

Crochet a small rug with menswear designer Liam Hodges

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Liam Hodges has recently moved house, so his time in self isolation has been spent unpacking and making rugs.

“I learnt to crochet last October and have found it really relaxing. For our AW20 collection, we crocheted a lot of squares as embellishments. I’ve kept it up and even tried to make a skipping rope when I first went into isolation.

“I had been wanting to make some rag rugs and started working out how to crochet graphics into them. I made the graphic in Photoshop so that each pixel represented each crochet stitch.

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“I thought doormat-size was perfect. I have mine by the door to remind me to keep positive and take the [government] advice about staying in seriously.

“It took me around two and a half hours to complete and is made up of old, shredded T-shirts for the coloured section and yarn made using Wool and the Gang offcuts for the main black areas, so it is entirely made from waste.”

Difficulty level: intermediate Equipment needed: an old T-shirt, a crochet hook, yarn and scissors

How to:

“Use our how-to digital zine on Instagram, which has the pattern as well as instructions on how to crochet.”

A post shared by LIAM HODGES (@liam__hodges) on Mar 27, 2020 at 4:56am PDT

Sew a shark mascot with designer Christopher Raeburn

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Designer Christopher Raeburn’s team are adapting to the current situation by releasing weekly creative tasks via their #RaeburnAtHome initiative.

“This project is to make one of our shark mascots. We have always featured animals in our collections, initially as a way to highlight and support endangered species through our WWF UK partner. The Shark is one of our most popular animals; we keep it in our collections each season, but it always evolves.

“You need no more than one square metre of fabric – even less if you are conscious of pattern placement for waste reduction. Using a variety of smaller cuts of fabric is encouraged though as this adds pops of colour and texture to the final shark.

“Not only is reusing and repurposing old fabric a more interesting way of working, but extending the lifetime of garments is instrumental in reducing planetary impact. When people are spending more time at home than ever before, now is the chance to pull out those bits that we no longer use and give them new life.

“Unless you are an absolute master, it should keep you busy for about 10 hours. We only recommend a sewing machine for ease and speed – top marks for effort go to anyone tackles it by hand.”

Difficulty level: advanced Equipment needed: a sewing machine, fabric, scissors, thread and paper.

How to:

Sew a kimono-inspired garment with designer Edward Crutchley

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Designer Edward Crutchley’s lockdown aim is to set himself a project each day. His first was to cut a pattern for and sew a one-piece kimono-inspired garment. Next up is making miniature sculptures of the kings and queens of England using modelling clay.

“How to make Japanese clothes by John Marshall is a book I have on my shelf that I thought it would be great to lose myself in during isolation.

“I love traditional Japanese clothing and now is the perfect time to study. What I love about kimonos is that they are traditionally dictated by the fabric – they are the width they are because that is how wide the looms could weave. For a fabric geek like me, that’s a dream.

“A traditional kimono pattern looks like some different-length rectangles put together, but nothing is ever that simple and it takes a lot of skill to construct a traditional kimono properly. The one I made is much, much easier.

“I used three metres of fabric left over from the last collection, but you could make it with two metres if it’s 150cm wide, or you can easily add seams to the patterns or patchwork fabrics together. Repurposing old curtains or a bed sheet would be perfect.

“It took me around four hours to complete – there are only three seams and three hems. I tried to make it as simple as possible.”

Difficulty level: advanced Equipment needed: a sewing machine, two to three metres of fabric, thread, scissors, paper and dressmaking pins.

How to:

“The pattern I made is available to download for free here. The step-by-step sewing guide is saved on my Instagram highlights.”

Make a shrunken crisp-packet necklace with Tatty Devine

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While social distancing, Rosie Wolfenden and Harriet Vine, the designers behind Tatty Devine jewellery, are doing daily making challenges.

“It’s amazing for your mental health and the perfect antidote to these strange and unsettling times. This so-called shrinky necklace is something we did as kids. We first made one as Tatty Devine in 2001. It was very early days, when we made jewellery from whatever we could get our hands on. We enjoyed having to eat crisps.”

Difficulty level: beginner Equipment needed: old crisp packets (not foiled or metallic, such as Chipsticks or many supermarket own brands); a chain necklace (whether new or something you already own); greaseproof paper, a baking tray, a damp tea towel (for safety reasons), an old tea towel, a hole punch, a regular jump ring and two pairs of flat-nose pliers.

How to:

Set your grill to medium.

While the grill is warming, fold the greaseproof paper to make it into rough envelope shapes and pop your empty food packets inside – one wrapper per envelope.

Put the envelopes on a baking tray under the grill. The packet will start to shrink and curl up. You don’t want them to burn or blister so watch closely.

As soon as they are shrunken enough, remove the baking tray, quickly place a folded tea towel on top of the envelope and slam your hand down to flatten your “shrinky”.

Use a hole punch to make a hole somewhere on the packet.

Open a regular jump ring with the pliers and thread the packet on to the jump ring, then put the jump ring on to the necklace and close it.

You can stop with one pendant or layer up for a charm effect.

Knit a scarf with dancer Meshach Henry

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Despite having no previous knitting experience, dancer Meshach Henry has made three scarves in as many days, documented on Instagram by his partner, the Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw.

“I always said I would learn a new skill like plumbing or plastering if I ever had a lot of time on my hands. But they aren’t ideal skills to practice in this current situation. So, having seen knitting supplies in a craftshop window recently, I thought, ‘Here’s my new hobby.’

“I purchased a thick wool because it looked easier to use and less fiddly. I bought 10mm knitting needles, which I thought were an average size but later found out are strangely big – but I’m really happy with the chunky effect they produce.

“What I like about knitting is that you can see your physical product. As a dancer, I rarely get to see my own work, so to be able to see and hold this tangible thing is a whole new world for me.

“My intention is to move on to knitting jumpers. I want to create a matching jumper for every scarf, just to keep things interesting.”

Difficulty level: beginner Equipment needed: knitting needles and wool

How to:

“I taught myself by watching an eight-minute Knitting for Total Beginners tutorial on YouTube. The tutorial taught me how to cast on in the first instance. Then there are follow-up links to a second video that teaches you how to change knitting style and how to cast off.”

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Make drinking glasses with former British Vogue fashion director Lucinda Chambers

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Lucinda Chambers is co-founder of fashion brand Colville and online shopping platform Collagerie and was fashion director at British Vogue for 25 years.

“I was in Paris six months ago having a glass of water in the Bon Marché and I noticed the glass looked suspiciously like the end of a wine bottle.” When Chambers investigated she found a world of home crafters making their own tumblers from pre-used wine bottles.

“I found an inexpensive kit on Amazon,” she says. “Each glass is a labour of love as I sand them by hand; it’s strangely therapeutic.”

Difficulty level: medium Equipment needed: empty glass bottles, a glass cutter kit (available online, for instance from Amazon).

How to:

“The kit has everything you need to make the glasses: a stand, saw and markers that you place on the empty bottle at the height you require your finished glass to be. You can make French-style low tumblers or something taller. Once you’ve cut the bottle you need to sand the cut edge smooth.”

The internet is full of videos, such as this one, that show you more details.

This content was originally published here.

[porcileorg]

On Monira Al Qadiri’s ‘Holy Quarter’ (Capsule 12) @ Haus der Kunst, Munich (2020-01-31 – 2020-06-21)

Author: Magda Wisniowska – Munich, February, 2020.

Discussing the future The exhibition opening of Haus der Kunst’s ongoing Capsule program of focused one gallery exhibitions of international artists was preceded, as is customary, with a roundtable discussion between the artists and the curators. There were the usual questioning relating to the motives, themes, and ideas behind the work and each of the two artists, Sung Tieu and Monira Al Qadiri had the opportunity to speak. It was when asked by one of the curators to introduce the themes of her work, Al Qadiri said something unexpected regarding her upbringing in Kuwait—and having also grown up in Kuwait, I found it immediately striking. Al Qadiri said that in her work she often uses tropes associated with Kuwait’s pre-industrial past—the desert, pearl diving, camels—because as a Kuwaiti of the post-oil generation, these feel foreign to her. She is, of course, referring to a very familiar postcolonial experience, where the cultural practices different to the coloniser’s normative perspective become exotic, so much so, that for the colonised population, the Western counterpart to their indigenous culture might seem more normal than their own. Yet the term she used was not exotic or foreign, but “alien” in the sense of ‘the extra-terrestrial’ or ‘futuristic.’ What ought to have been part of her cultural heritage, was as distant and unrelatable as future planetary forces.  

The Local and the Philosophical I grew up outside Kuwait City in Fintas, in a newly-built modern block of flats close to the beach. Before it was demolished in the mid 80s, on the beach was a mosque and cemetery that we called “old” because it most likely dated from the 50s or 60s. Next to the mosque was a small harbour with fishing boats, around which sat elderly men, most former pearl divers, in small groups. One of these would bring his grandchildren with him and he taught us all how to swim by dragging a tin can in the water. This was 35 years ago. Roughly 35 years before, oil was discovered in Kuwait. In that short space of time, a new state was established, the old town almost completely demolished and a whole way of life destroyed. I recall this memory because the speed of change warrants our attention. Both the elderly man  and I were witness to an acceleration of the West’s project of enlightenment, not dissimilar to the kind described by Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani in ‘The Labor of the Inhuman.’ His brand of accelerationism urges the speeding up of man’s self-overcoming of reason through a continual interrogation of the category of the human. Interestingly in relation to Al Qadiri’s work, this type of rational and experimental labor Negarestani defines as “inhuman.” I would say Al Qadiri’s practice draws on the inhuman impulses lying at the heart of one specific nation’s economic and cultural development.

Alien Technology Al Qadiri’s capsule exhibition at Haus der Kunst consists of two pieces. The first looms large right as you enter, next to the staircase. It is one of Al Qadiri’s Alien Technology series, a massive fibreglass sculpture covered in shiny black iridescent paint. The work’s bulbous shape, which on the one hand, recalls a mythical artefact from a long lost ancient city, and on the other, science fiction, derives from the rotating teeth of an oilfield drill bit. Considering the oil industry’s importance, not only to Kuwait and its economy, but generally worldwide, its shape is relatively unknown and thus lends itself easily to speculation. In its previous smaller incarnations, the work’s connection to the sea was more prominent, its queer symmetry resembling that of a sea urchin or mollusc, but even at the large end of the scale as seen here at Haus der Kunst, the finish of its surface is pearl-like, like one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows. 

Holy Quarter Her second piece is the video work ‘Holy Quarter,’ a large scale projection accompanied by a number of smaller glass spherical forms, their smooth surfaces marred - or ornamented, as the case may be - by spikes, nodes and tubercles. The video is of the desert, the so called ‘Empty Quarter’ encompassing much of the southern Arabian peninsula, spreading across the Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. A landscape of ever-shifting sand dunes and gravel plains, its stark bareness comes as a shock even to those accustomed to the desert environments of Omani wadis, Saudi mountain ranges, or even Kuwait’s more modest ridges. As Al Qadiri shows, negotiating this landscape is profoundly disorientating. Early scenes of the cliffs at sunset are followed by views from above and within the earth, so that distance becomes uncertain and we can no longer tell the far from the near. The images are narrated by a disembodied voice, very slowly relating the tale of early 20th century arabist and explorer, Harry St. John Bridger Philby. In 1932 Philby set out to look for the mythic city of Ubar—for him, Wabar—but instead of finding the missing city, after many days of wandering he discovered what he thought was a volcano. In fact, he stumbled across the site of a meteor impact, the surrounding ground littered with black glass and chunks of iron meteorite. Al Qadiri’s narrative identifies the mythic beings of Wabar with the extra terrestrial nature of the meteorite. As the voice states, “We are Wabar, We are the body of dust… We crashed into the sand.” Philby is the “pale man” who “walked across the desert and disturbed our sleep.” In her narrative Al Qadiri also refers to the other famous shooting star, that is seen by the three wise men, and to the frankincense associated with them. Finally there is mention of the discovery of oil in the region, the “black pearl” that threatens the “cradle of life.”

Faster and faster When in his essay for Aesthetics after Finitude, Simon O’Sullivan questions Negarestani’s strategy of abductive interference, he asks how this might look like—if inhuman labor accelerates ever further beyond familiar categories and concepts, how can it be understood from the point of view of the human, who makes use of these categories and concepts? Negarestani finds Peirce’s form of creative guessing one such model, a kind of multimodal and synthetic form of reasoning that dynamically expands its capacities. O’Sullivan calls this “fictioning,” an experimental modelling of different realities that proceeds through imagining and imaging alongside more speculative reasoning. In her video work and sculptures, Al Qadiri produces narratives that  fictionalise reality, meaning that their speculation—their play of images and imagining—produces a different model of reality, one less familiar, alien, of the future. Or rather, they draw on the process of acceleration already present in the Middle Eastern post-oil realities to speed it up even further. As the voice of the Wabar in ‘Holy Quarter’ beckons, “So, come with us now, let us choose a different fate together.”

[greyparcel79-blog]

The Simon Bolivar Statue - Central Park at 6th Avenue

On April 17, 1921 the New-York Tribune noted that "Bolivar Hill," a knoll in Central Park near 83rd Street and the West Drive "has been for thirty years the center of a drama which had the elements of human interest, passion, gossip of the art world, comedy, tragedy and wasted fortune, to say nothing of international relations."  It all had to do with the Venezuelan Government's frustrated attempts to have a fitting memorial to Simon Bolivar in the park.

In 1883 it had commissioned Venezuelan sculptor Rafael de la Cova to create a monument to the hero.  Bolivar is credited with gaining independence from Spain for not only Venezuela, but Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Panama.    The completed statue, a gift to New York City, was dedicated on June 17, 1884.  On one side of the pedestal was the single word "Bolivar" and on the opposite "Venezuela to the City of New-York, 1883."

At the time The New York Times reported "Upward of 2,000 people witnessed the unveiling of the statue of Gen. Simon Bolivar, in Central Park, yesterday afternoon, and most of them were obliged to stand patiently beneath the pelting rays of the sun."  When the drapings came off the speeches and ceremony went on as planned.  Parks Commissioner Egbert Viele diplomatically pronounced "This statue is not merely a work of art...It is a tribute of esteem from a young republic of South America to her sister in the North."

But in fact everyone, perhaps more so the Venezuelan representatives, were aghast.  Rafael de la Cora's Boliva was a stiff, comic looking figure--what was a century later termed a "monster-piece."

The 1883 statue was, in a word, hideous.  (image from a vintage stereoscope card)

Before long the President of Venezuela, Joaquin Crespo, decided that the statue was "not fitting."  In 1896 his government commissioned Giovanni Turini to execute a replacement.  Completed in 1898, it was no more acceptable.  The New-York Tribune later said "Turini's Bolivar was modeled after a statue at Caracas, a pompous figure seated stiffly on a conventional Roman horse."

The New York Times politely said "A new statue ordered from another sculptor was not altogether satisfactory," while The National Sculpture Society "flatly rejected" the ungainly statue.  It was put in place.  The Venezuelan government refused to pay Turini his agreed-upon $75,000 commission (a rather stunning $2.3 million in today's money).  The New-York Tribune remarked "only $8,000 was paid."

In 1897 the Parks Commission could abide the hideous De la Cova statue no longer and "condemned" it, as worded by The New York Times.  The stone pedestal sat empty for 19 years until on the morning of April 4, 1916 New Yorkers awoke to find a bronze grouping of hounds in place.  In the dark of night a group of about a dozen men helped William Hunt Diedrich hoist his Levriers, or Greyhounds, into place.

Park police were not amused and the following day The New York Times reported "the playing dogs of Paris were thrown ten feet to the ground and 'damaged almost beyond repair.'"  Deiderich lamented that the Parks police had treated the gift "as a pretty woman sometimes spurns a flower."

Deidrich was perhaps unaware that the Venezuelan government had plans for the pedestal.  That year it sponsored a global competition to select a sculptor for a third stab at a respectable rendering of Bolivar.  Art critic Alexander Woollcott, writing in The Delineator a few years later remarked "Venezuela wanted to place a monument to him in Central Park, particularly as a quite painful equestrian statue of Bolivar had previously been taken out of that playground and hidden somewhere by New York's Municipal Art Commission."

Twenty artists competed and the winner was surprising, indeed.  Born in Ogdensburg, New York in 1869 Sally James Farnham had no artistic training.  The daughter of a U.S. Army colonel, she had traveled throughout Europe and Japan as a child where her father took her to art museums.  At the age of 32 she was hospitalized, recovering from a long illness.  The mother of three was bored and her husband, George Paulding Farnham, a jewelry designer for Tiffany & Co., suggested she use modeling clay to while away the time.

After her release from the hospital, Sally kept up her clay modeling.  As it turns out she was a long-time friend of Frederic Remington.  She took him a figure of a Spanish dancer, asking him if it were any good.  "Well, I'll be," he reportedly responded.  "I don't know how you learned it...but she's full of ginger.  Keep it up, Sally."  And she did.

At a time when female sculptors were rare, Farnham received the prestigious commission.  She worked on the 15-foot Bolivar statue in a rented Brooklyn studio while she simultaneously went through a divorce.  She depicted Bolivar in full military dress astride his prancing horse.  The South American described the statue in April 1921 as "shown in the attitude of acknowledging the shouts of an applauding populace, a gallant figure of a soldier and a gentleman."

Sally James Farnham at work in her Brooklyn studio.  The caption reads "The largest statue ever made by a woman." The Delineator, May 1921 (copyright expired)

Five years after winning the contest plans were made for the dedication.  Art critic Alexander Woollcott said Farnham's Bolivar outshown even Anna Hyatt Huntington's Jeanne d'Arc in Riverside Park.  "But this is a loftier figure, this one of Bolivar."  He called the Venezuelan gift a "towering monument that enters the annals of American sculpture as the largest work by a woman which history anywhere records."

The dedication was to be no small affair.  On April 17, 1921 the New-York Tribune announced that "Last week the great bronze was put in place on Bolivar Hill.  President Harding has accepted the invitation to assist at the unveiling on Tuesday."

Five days earlier The New York Herald had begun reporting on the luminaries already arriving in New York for the ceremony.  Dr. Estaben Gil-Borges, Venezuelan Minster of Foreign Relations, along with his wife and three children, arrived on April 11.  On the same ocean liner were five other high-ranking Venezuelan officials.  The newspaper added that now Charles E. Hughs, the Secretary of State, would be joining the President at the unveiling along with other cabinet members.

The unveiling ceremony, on April 19, was grand.  The Presidential party was escorted from the Waldorf Astoria by United States marines, soldiers and sailors and a detachment of sailors from the Brazilian battleship Minas Geraes.   At the park a squad of New York State Guardsmen fired the Presidential salute.  Two little girls, 7-year-old Patricia Paez MacManus and her sister Mariquita Paez MacManus, granddaughters of General Jose Antonio Paez, an associated of Simon Bolivar, pulled the cords to unveil the statue.

This time there was no disappointment.  Sally James Farnham's statue was deemed masterful.  The South American wrote "The bronze horseman fashioned by Mrs. Farnham is declared by all who have seen it to be a great work of art, worthy of our great city."

The Bolivar statue became the site of annual celebrations of the liberator's birthday.  But the beloved statue appeared threatened when President Franklin Roosevelt formed his War Production Board.  On August 7, 1942 Roosevelt endorsed a program to scrap bronze statues and recycle their metal into weapons of war. The New York Times explained "At his press conference he agreed with reporters that some of the statues and the guns used as monuments would serve a more useful purpose if junked...Some of the statues, he said with a smile, could be replaced after the war with--and here he paused to cough apologetically--something more artistic."

Art critic Edward Alden Jewell, writing in The New York Times on March 7, 1943, warned patriotic New Yorkers not to be too hasty.  "Supposing an inclusive call for scrap bronze to have been sounded, which of the hundreds of statues in our city are to be deemed of particular worth and which are not?  More simply put which are good and which are bad?"  He said "Before Art gives Mars the green light," the merits of the city statues should be weighed  Jewell compiled a jury of one sculptor; an architect; a "widely known collector," Chester Dale; a painter and himself to do just that.

The group was brutally honest in its condemnation of some statues which it said "should go into war's caldron."   Not surprisingly, the Bolivar statue passed with the esteem of the cultured and knowledgeable crew.  (As it turned out, very few bronzes were lost to the war effort.)

In 1945 Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia prompted the city to rename Sixth Avenue "The Avenue of the Americas" to honor Pan-American ideals.  A new plaza was designed in Central Park at the head of the avenue and on November 15, 1948 The New York Times announced plans had been approved by the United States State Department to move the statues of Simon Bolivar and José de San Martin to either side of its entrance.  The idea quickly became a political issue.

On September 11, 1949 Oren Root, candidate for Manhattan Borough President, railed against the project's high cost.  He saw no logical reason to move the statues and said "the amount seemed excessive and that the $495,000 might better be used to rehabilitate some school or hospital."

It created a stalemate that was broken by the Venezuelan Government.  On October 19 Parks Commissioner Robert Moses announced that Venezuela had "formally requested" the statue to be moved and offered to pay all expenses.  The $190,000 necessary to move Bolivar left the city taxpayers with a substantially reduced bill.

The second unveiling of the Bolivar statue, on April 19, 1951, was only slightly less impressive than the first.  A parade up Fifth Avenue included 3,000 marchers, 360 Venezuelan military cadets, and American and Venezuelan dignitaries who rode in automobiles.  Five bands joined in the procession as did hundreds of school children.

A crowd estimated at 15,000 pushed in to witness the unveiling.  The New York Times, April 20, 1951

But the best was to come.  The estimated crowd of 15,000 heard a message by President Harry Truman before G. Suarez Flamerich, President of Venezuela, unveiled the statue by pressing a button at Caracas, almost 2,000 miles away.

As had been the case for three decades, the yearly ceremonies on Bolivar's birthday continued for years.  One of the first important sculptures by a female artist, Sally James Farnham's monumental Simon Bolivar holds a commanding spot at the entrance to the Central Park.

photographs by the author

Source: http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-simon-bolivar-statue-central-park.html

[studio183-blog]

MEET THE DESIGNER FORM OF INTEREST

Please introduce yourself and your brand!

My name is Jessica. The name of my label is Form of interest. The dot is quite important because it is neither more nor less. Making fashion is only one way to have an influence on the world.

To cultivate bees might be more important !!!

I am a conceptual fashion designer, artist, teacher and heart fighter. The background of the label is based on the concept to see fashion as a kind of medium to visualize new constructs about society and humans. The collections are made for men and women but mostly for humans who want to express themselves. 

The umbrella term „Unisex“ only describes my openness towards new forms of being. What is a typical human? Who do we think we are? The way we describe ourselves does not fit in my imaginary fantasy of being. Fashion is a form beyond other mediums to communicate. 

This description gives me a lot of freedom to design for men and women — it can more be seen as a form of cultural study. Garments, images and videos are only the end results of my permanent search for answers — for asking questions. 

I am like an academical childish dreamer with a great sense for reality directed by my heart. Concerning this Form of interest. is not only a fashion brand, it is more a way of making some impact on the small world I live in.

What are the challenges of designing for both men and women?

I think there are some technical construction challenges in making clothes, but they are not really difficult to solve. First of all — designing for men and women means you need to deconstruct totally what you think what is typical menswear or womenswear. I was never interested to mold the different bodies to emphasize the typical men’s or women’s body. I never understood the way of trivial sexiness, which is so important for so many people and designers.

The meaning of clothes besides their functional description was always shifting throughout the history of fashion. For me there are no typical men’s clothes neither women’s clothes. My way of designing is a more sculptural research on the human body no matter what kind of gender.

Maybe this is part of my personal experience - when I was interested to wear oversized jackets, trousers and shirts as a teenager. The way the fabric built new shapes was quite interesting for me and is my understanding of fashion design. Finding new shapes through deconstruction.

To design for men and women does not mean that men need to wear skinny jeans and women boyfriend jeans. This is not what unisex garments mean. Unisex in my perspective is characterized by neutrality towards everyone who wears the garment. My way of designing has nothing to do with turning the gender codes around — this way of thinking would be too easy. I am more interested to develop garments which suit men and women in a contemporary society. At the same time it is also a kind of cultural study to break up old role models of men and women.

You can be everyone every day, but mostly you should be yourself without the discussed codes of society's perception of being a typical man or women. We live in a time when we are still forced to see horrible images about what is beautiful and sexy. My way of designing should build an opposition to rethink the classical aesthetics. It is entirely influenced by the Japanese understanding of what is beautiful and the way a garment sculpture is built. The garments mostly are oversized or asymmetric. This way of making cuts allows you to develop a shirt in the same time for a man or a woman.

However, not every garment in the collection is unisex. Unisex is about a heartily driven understatement of ego-driven personalities. We all are human and should not reduce ourselves by clothes and the first perception. Fashion should be a form of communication to describe authentically who you are or who you want to be.

What are your thoughts on the gender-neutral trend?

First of all, I believe it is quite important nowadays to call old role models into question, which are still part of our everyday Life. The gender neutral trend fits quite well in our contemporary time in which a lot of systems collapse to reform themselves. There is a new way of signification and empathy for humans which comes up. I am convinced we all have a female and a male side in us. But what concerns me is that we should not forget how important diversity is for societies.

Every trend is only good by thinking about it — and transfer it into real situations. In my everyday life, I experience, it is more important to be clever, to be dedicated,  authentic. This should be what we learn about the gender neutral trend. It is not about making men and women the same it is about loyalty, about calmness, and strength for diversity. The main problem is not being a man or a woman — it is a question about power.

I think what we can learn about the trend is to ask the question why humans want to be better or have more power over other humans? From this point of view it is more of an ego problem to describe humans by simple constructed words. Individuality is humanity and implies diversity without the need for power. Power is the problem and not what kind of sex you are :)

One of your collections appear to be inspired by outer space, what would you wear on Mars?

The background of the collection is the theory of Paul Watzlawick and radical constructivism.  Everyone is living in his or her own universe through constructing the world by experiences and the ability to think. The collection’s title “I am in another universe“ is quite philosophical. The deeper meaning describes the human ability of empathy to respect the universe and the beliefs, thoughts of other people. It is a statement for knowing that we all only can try to understand each other - and stand for acceptance. 

If you are aware of your own universe, you might get to a point of calmness and what we call reality could be different every day — it is only a form of communication and construction. What is real and what is fake can no longer be distinguished. It is a form of freedom to accept different behaviors and perceptions of others in our life. Compared to a life on Mars — it might feel the same. A feeling of adventure of not knowing — so I hope I could wear a bubble of laughing and smiling on Mars.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for …

Loyalty

Can you tell us about exciting plans for the year ahead?

There are a few exciting projects in the making. Form of interest. As a conceptual label includes not only garments and collections for men and women. Over and above that — I am quite interested to work with different creatives to have an interdisciplinary impact. I no longer think that single disciplines are modern. The connection between different fields bring out new sense and spontaneous challenges which only can emerge by leaving the familiar path to loose and find yourself again. This kind of process is only possible by challenging yourself and your creative world in connection with others. There will be different projects with artists, bands, friends and graphic designers. For the label itself I am still in the process to strengthen my vision of my label, and my inner wish to have a new impact of seeing the fashion system form anew.

Website: http://www.jessicadettinger.com/

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