Art
pharyngula | March 30, 2007Bill Donohue is hopping mad again — he's got another wild hare up his butt and is fuming over another insult to his very Catholic sensibilities:
Catholic League head Bill Donohue called it "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever".
The latest affront is a life-size sculpture of a naked man on a cross, made out of 200 pounds of chocolate, on display in New York just in time for Easter.
Come on, Bill, get over it. Shouldn't Abu Ghraib have been "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever"? How about the injustice of our war in the Iraq? What about the ongoing…
cevans | March 27, 2007
Welcome to the second in an ongoing series of Interviews with authors of Science Fiction. I'm lucky to have had a chance, recently, to review Portland local Thomas A. Day's A Grey Moon Over China, a totally postapocalyptic epic that takes the ongoing cultural fear of an energy crisis to a particularly dark and alienating place in the cosmos. He's an interesting writer for his sense of grand scope -- in the complexity of the narrative and the breadth of time it represents -- but also because of his background: he's worked in the aerospace industry, flown night-cargo planes, and developed…
pharyngula | March 25, 2007This week in our regular collection of reader-submitted cephaloweirdness, the theme is "domesticity".
Maybe you're the kind of person who doesn't have ordinary garden gnomes…
…and the iron work around your house has a theme…
…and you see this and think "AwwOOOOOOO!!! Hubba hubba!"
You know what's next, right?
And then you work and slave to get them the nicest toys…
…and a healthy diet so they grow big and strong…
…and next thing you know, their teenage buddies are all hanging about the house, making a mess of the place.
I'm just relieved there aren't any grandkids yet. Just think what…
omnibrain | March 25, 2007If you hadn't noticed, the posting was pretty light last week. Here's why:
You can visit my flickr page for the whole set - which should actually be growing by hundreds of photos in the next week or so as I add the other peoples pictures to the set.
omnibrain | March 18, 2007
I'll bet you'll never guess!
Give up?
It's a drunken orgy!
(from the old blog)
dmunger | March 15, 2007These two pictures represent the eye motions of two viewers as they scan a work of art with the goal of remembering it later. One of them is a trained artist, and the other is a trained psychologist. Can you tell which is which?
How about for this picture?
Art teachers have noted that when beginning students attempt to draw accurate portraits, they tend to exaggerate the size of key features: eyes and mouths are too big relative to the size of the head. Trained artists learn to ignore these temptations and draw the world as it really appears. Even world-famous artists such as Leonardo da…
aardvarchaeology | March 10, 2007
The spring issue of Antiquity, a journal for which I am proud to act as a correspondent, has come on-line and is being distributed on paper as well. It has a lot to offer those interested in Northern European archaeology: papers on the construction date of Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, England; on the late-1st Millennium temple at Uppåkra, Scania, Sweden; on mid-to-late 1st Millennium research as historical archaeology; on the Viking Period towns and trade network around the Baltic; and (as illustrated above) on voluptuous Late Magdalenian female silhouettes knapped in flint and found at…
pharyngula | March 9, 2007You're all wondering where the Friday Cephalopod might be…it's delayed. I'm spending my day in seclusion in my secret lair, hammering out some work that's already way overdue, and I don't have access to a scanner or my books or any technology beyond the necessities for writing. I will put it up later.
For now, you'll have to make do with some cephalart.
ksharpe | March 9, 2007While I wouldn't be surprised if he'd seen all the good cephalopod kitsch before, I would like to offer, in honor of squid-loving blogger PZ Myers' birthday today, an image of this scientifically-inaccurate but highly awesome painting of a T-Rex, a sperm whale, and a giant squid having it out in a dark and choppy sea—with a lightning bolt in the background.
The painting was done by Brandon Bird, whos work can be admired on his webpage.
Image: 'Bad Day on the High Sea,' by Brandon Bird, by permission of the artist.
ksharpe | March 8, 2007When weird-science group the Athanasius Kircher Society held its inaugural meeting in New York City this January, the meeting's flaming grand finale was a live onstage performance by a 20-foot-long Rube Goldberg contraption.
The device's designer, Jesse Ferguson, has posted a video of the machine in action in his Seattle apartment, just before it was dismantled to be shipped across the country for its star turn at the AKS. The video is here, and with flames galore and a real, live laser, it's guaranteed to titillate your inner pyro.
pharyngula | March 4, 2007It's been a while since I put up a collection of the beautifully weird cephalopod-themed stuff people send me. This one isn't entirely safe for work, but it's the weekend, and the naughty picture is lovely anyway.
pharyngula | March 2, 2007Adam Cuerden sent me a scan of this interesting article from the 1871 Illustrated London News, and I decided I was being terribly selfish keeping it to myself, so here you go — don't say I never share. The image that accompanies it is a wonderful example of old-time illustration; click on it for a larger version.
As the media usually does, it plays up the horrible danger of this alien creature.
THE EIGHT-ARMED CUTTLE
The aquarium at the Crystal Palace now contains, with many other interesting objects, several specimens of the poulpe, or eight-armed cuttle, Octopus vulgaris, obtained from…
aardvarchaeology | March 2, 2007
My excellent brother-in-law Peter Köhler is an artist of the well-educated, hip, productive and non-starving kind. He teaches and exhibits his work internationally, and now he's got something coming up at a gallery on Broadway in New York.
VERUS PAINTERS
Works by John Aslanidis, Susann Brännström, Peter Köhler, Karen Schifano, Lorraine Williams
March 8 - April 28, 2007
Opening reception Thursday, March 8, 6 to 8 pm
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11 am to 6 pm
Tobey Fine Arts is proud to present an exhibition of works by the international group of artists calling themselves the Verus…
aardvarchaeology | March 1, 2007
My friend Stefan Kayat is a truly original man of many talents. With his folk band, Herr Arnes Penningar, he plays eclectic reimaginations of traditional music, and he's also a draughtsman, a painter and occasionally a sculptor. Stefan's asked me to put up a pic of a piece he'd like to sell.
This trussed grey/off-white/purple imp could be named Strung Up or Well Hung. (Just how well he's hung can't be seen in the photograph.) Says Stefan:I made him out of papier-mâché, fabric, glue etc. over a skeleton of re-shaped wire-hangers. The eye is glass, the teeth and claws are PVC putty. He's…
pharyngula | February 26, 2007The pets got a little out of hand.
(Actually, it's from a page of photoshopped giant squid pictures. The squid haven't invaded the Netherlands…yet.)
pharyngula | February 13, 2007
And there's a whole page of delectable fantasies where that came from!
aardvarchaeology | February 12, 2007Saw three art exhibitions Sunday with the ladies of my family.
The Culture House, Kulturhuset, in central Stockholm shows US photographer Sally Mann's work, mainly selected from three collections: 1980s pictures of her kids (very controversial in the US back then because of child nudity, an issue few Swedes are able to get worked up about), 1990s landscapes from the southern US, and huge recent portraits of her grown-up kids where any documentary ambition is completely abandoned for out-of-focus fogginess. Absolutely wonderful stuff, and no photoshoppery, only analog chemical photography,…