▲Visual Arts▼

"As the youngest curator to direct the Venice Biennale in more than a hundred years, Gioni will test his gritty-yet-glamorous approach to modern art when the prestigious fair opens this summer. His International Exhibition, titled "The Encyclopedic Palace," takes its name from a project by 20th-century outsider artist Marino Auriti, an eccentric self-taught architect and philosopher manqué who devoted years of his life to the construction of a gigantic skyscraper-temple that would house the combined wisdom of the human race." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Two days after the long lost bones of Richard III were found in a parking lot, 528 years after his death, we can take a look at a 3D-printed reproduction of his face. The project, funded by the Richard III Society, was led by Caroline Wilkinson, Professor of Craniofacial Identification at the University of Dundee. She used 3D scanning and printing, with a technique called stereolithography, to reconstruct Richard III's head, based on his actual remains. An artist, guided by Wilkinson, then painted the colorless head and added glass eyes, a wig, a hat and the appropriate clothes. Richard III has always been one of the most mysterious and vilified kings in British history. Historically, he's always been portrayed as a malformed, hideous person. This 3D-printed replica of his face seems to contradict at least the claims about his appearance." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

@grossdm: "Ironic. Remains of Richard III, who said, "my kingdom for a horse" unearthed at same time kingdom revealed to be eating horse en masse." - Adriano

Image retouched and color-corrected (click on it to enlarge). One of my favorite rooms in the world :-) - Adriano

this is a rare treat: Monet photographed painting water lilies on giant canvas, http://ff.im/1dyzVh - Adriano

voir aussi http://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr... - Adriano from Bookmarklet

find the one where Monet looks like an Aikido master :-) - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Francis Bacon, who died in 1992, fetched the highest price when “Three Studies for a Self-Portrait” sold for £13.76 million. Presented in the form of a triptych, the 1980 “Three Studies” — each of which measures 35.5 by 30 centimeters, or 14 by 12 inches — thus sold within the estimate set at £10 million to £15 million plus the sale charge of more than 12 percent. Not bad for a work that made £3.81 million on its previous appearance at Sotheby’s London in June 2006." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Usual Suspects, American Beauty, now add #HouseOfCards for Spacey -- it's superb. Netflix financed and recently released the first season of 13 episodes -- that bet is going to pay off big time: prepare for becoming Lost in Binge Viewing of Streaming Episodes http://ff.im/10C1Sq Second season will be in production mid-spring @BeauWillimon \\ Theme soundtrack by Jeff Beal http://youtu.be/DbWcdaeYrsI - Adriano from Bookmarklet

only *after* watching the first season, check out the interesting remarks, observations, and discussion at http://www.vulture.com/2013... which includes @BeauWillimon the head writer of HoC. \\ Also TONS of spoilers and fails, 41-min podcast: https://soundcloud.com/slatera... Transcript http://www.slate.com/blogs... - Adriano

"Man Ray designed this chess set in 1920 using found objects from his studio. Most of the pieces are geometric models made for still-life drawing (the king is a pyramid, the queen a cone, the rook a cube, the pawn a sphere). The knight—the finial of a violin—was fashioned from a box of abandoned violin necks. Only a handful were ever produced (the maharajah of Indore commissioned a set made from silver-plated brass). This re-edition is rendered in wood, as Man Ray originally intended, and is based on a set housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art." - Adriano

MoMA show < 15 April 2013 http://www.moma.org/inventi... \\ See also http://infosthetics.com/archive... E.g. here's the graph for Paul Klee http://infosthetics.com/archive... - Adriano from Bookmarklet

* that's only my guess ;-) and my wish to be there swimming above Atlantis! - Adriano

+1 "So what's your hobby? Resurrection." \\ Curious to see how Mendes has evolved since directing "American Beauty" in 1999. It would be good to see Javier Bardem, an extraordinary actor... IMDb info http://www.imdb.com/title... ... listen to the theme song by Adele at http://ff.im/15XaMU - Adriano from Bookmarklet

+2 Roger Deakins, the nine-time-Oscar-nominated cinematographer... the Coen brothers’ cinematographer for 20 years. - Adriano

"Day-Lewis said that he felt a “great sadness” when the movie was done and that he still feels connected to it. “I’m woefully one-track-minded,” he said. “Without sounding unhinged, I know I’m not Abraham Lincoln. I’m aware of that. But the truth is the entire game is about creating an illusion, and for whatever reason, and mad as it may sound, some part of me can allow myself to believe for a period for time without questioning, and that’s the trick.” He laughed." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Story of 85 year-old Jiro Ono, considered by many to be the world's greatest sushi chef, proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat, sushi-only restaurant inauspiciously located in a Tokyo subway station: It is the first restaurant of its kind to be awarded a prestigious 3 star Michelin review, and sushi lovers from around the globe make repeated pilgrimage, calling months in advance and shelling out top dollar for a coveted seat at Jiro's sushi bar. For most of his life, Jiro has been mastering the art of making sushi, but even at his age he sees himself still striving for perfection, working from sunrise to well beyond sunset to taste every piece of fish; meticulously train his employees; and carefully mold and finesse the impeccable presentation of each sushi creation. At the heart of this story is Jiro's relationship with his eldest son Yoshikazu, the worthy heir to Jiro's legacy, who is unable to live up to his full potential in his father's shadow." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

On his commitment required to become and remain a master at a craft: "You must fall in love with your work. I do the same thing over and over, improving bit by bit. There is always a yearning to achieve more. I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top, but no one knows where the top is." --Jiro ONO - Adriano

Restaurant review w/ photos: "The sushi courses came out at a rate of one per minute. 19 courses in 19 minutes. No ordering, no real talking -- just making sushi and eating sushi. After the sushi is done you are motioned to leave the sushi bar and sit at a booth where you are served your melon. We took that melon at a leisurely 10 minute pace, leaving us with a bill of over $300 per... more... - Adriano

24 meets Dostoyevsky! amazing dialogue... "10-part web series created by Kiefer Sutherland, written and directed by Brad Mirman. Each episode (or "chapter") is between five and seven minutes long." \\ In its entirety at Netflix: http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie... Angst-ridden hit man confesses his sins to an astonished priest... no spoiler, just watch it unfold. - Adriano from Bookmarklet

in theatres 10 Jan 2013 -- Malick has not released a trailer for this film, only a still. \\ "After visiting Mont Saint-Michel, Marina and Neil come to Oklahoma, where problems arise. Marina meets a priest and fellow exile, who is struggling with his vocation, while Neil renews his ties with a childhood friend, Jane." http://www.imdb.com/title... - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Plot details are being kept under wraps, although the title refers to a tarot card that, when placed upright, represents [per Wikipedia], “change and new excitements, particularly of a romantic nature. It can mean invitations, opportunities, and offers.” But if the card is reversed, it means “unreliability and recklessness. It indicates fraud, false promises and trickery. It represents a person who has trouble discerning when and where the truth ends and lies begin.” Sounds like a good premise for a character drama." \\ Storyline: A man, temptations, celebrity, and excess. http://www.imdb.com/title... - Adriano from Bookmarklet

Natalie Portman while filming Terrence Malick's "Knight Of Cups" http://imgur.com/r... - Adriano

"The film by Martin McDonagh concerns the misadventures of Marty (Colin Farrel), a screenwriter with serious writer’s block, whose weirdo dog-snatching friends (Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken) get them all in big trouble when they steal the beloved pet Shih Tzu of an insane gangster (Woody Harrelson)." \\ See also http://www.imdb.com/title... - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Richter uses digital software to compose his picture planes, layering band upon colored band to build up a complex network of patterns. A single work, Richter’s Abstract Painting, 724-4, 1990, gives rise to all 19 paintings in the show. Working with strips of color from his earlier abstraction, Richter observes an exacting practice: slicing, mirroring, and repeatedly breaking down the colored bands into smaller and smaller striations. Richter then manually rearranges the developed patterns, creating wholly new ones, and riffs on the principle of chance, a long fascination of his. Once satisfied, Richter then rephotographs his creations and ends up with the digital prints on display; the final 8,190 striations maintain a sense of rhythm and ineffable order." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Creativity is in fact flourishing untrammeled in the applied arts, above all industrial design. Over the past 20 years, I have noticed that the most flexible, dynamic, inquisitive minds among my students have been industrial design majors. Industrial designers are bracingly free of ideology and cant. The industrial designer is trained to be a clear-eyed observer of the commercial world—which, like it or not, is modern reality. [P]eople today are avidly immersed in a hyper-technological environment, where their primary aesthetic experiences are derived from beautifully engineered industrial design." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Your average episode of “Breaking Bad” or “The Good Wife” or “Louie” will generate many times more debate and conversation – more actual excitement — than all except perhaps a half-dozen movies released this year (and most of those will involve superheroes). Film culture, at least in the sense people once used that phrase, is dead or dying. Back in what we might call the Susan Sontag era, discussion and debate about movies was often perceived as the icy-cool cutting edge of American intellectual life. Today it’s a moribund and desiccated leftover that’s been cut off from ordinary life, from the mainstream of pop culture and even from what remains of highbrow or intellectual culture." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

cf. chart at http://ff.im/12J7xe CINEMA getting worse since 1950s :: plotting the British Film Institute 1902-2012 rankings. - Adriano

2001 film by David Lynch: Mulholland Dr. -- ranked 28 of 250 top films since 1902 by the British Film Institute poll of 846 critics, academics, and distributors this year, http://goo.gl/mGwCh - Adriano

"The "Ecce Homo" a depiction of Christ crowned with thorns painted by local artist Elias Garcia Martinez has graced the wall of the Santuario de Misericodia Church in the village of Borja, near Zaragoza, Spain, for more than 120 years. But over the last 18 months its surface has deteriorated due to moisture in the church, causing parts of the painting to flake off. A woman in her 80s, upset at the worsening state of an image she loved to gaze on, took it upon herself to restore the artwork to its former glory, but with devastating results. The result was a botched repair in which the original face has been almost completely painted over with amateur brushstrokes and the image now resembles more ape than man." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

That lady later demanded payment from the Church for her work -- legal heads-up for those using her derivative image as avatar on social networks :-) - Adriano

"Arguably the film that most accurately captures the agonies of creativity and the circus that surrounds filmmaking, equal parts narcissistic, self-deprecating, bitter, nostalgic, warm, critical and funny. Dreams, nightmares, reality and memories coexist within the same time-frame; the viewer sees Guido’s world not as it is, but more ‘realistically’ as he experiences it, inserting the film in a lineage that stretches from the Surrealists to David Lynch." —Mar Diestro Dópido - Adriano

must see... only because Daniel Day-Lewis is one of best actors -- looks like a perfect casting. \\ "Drama focuses on the 16th President's tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

"Built beginning around 520 B.C., the city was a showcase for the empire's staggering wealth, with grand architecture, extravagant works of silver and gold, and extensive relief sculptures such as this one portraying envoys with offerings for the king. The height of Persian rule lasted from about 550 B.C. until 330 B.C., when Alexander the Great overthrew the ruling Archaemenid dynasty and burned Persepolis to the ground." - Adriano from Bookmarklet

via @atalanta1 \\ I had to look up the direct link http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf... since the photo was so strong and vivid -- as a reminder of how grand dynasties just come and go... - Adriano