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Without poets, without artists... everything would fall apart into chaos. There would be no more seasons, no more civilizations, no more thought, no more humanity, no more life even; and impotent darkness would reign forever. Poets and artists together determine the features of their age, and the future meekly conforms to their edit.
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Guillaume Apollinaire (Selected Writings)
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THING TO TRY: If you are asked to describe a suspect to a police sketch artist, describe in precise detail, the features of the police sketch artist. This is one of the rare instances where two people can do one self-portrait.
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Demetri Martin (This is a Book)
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He’s tall, with windblown black hair and dark brows. The line of his jaw is strong and covered by warm tawny skin and dark stubble, and when he folds his arms across his torso, the muscles in his chest and arms ripple, moving in a way that makes me swallow. And his eyes… His eyes are the shade of gold-flecked onyx. The contrast is startling, jaw-dropping even—everything about him is. His features are so harsh that they look carved, and yet they’re astonishingly perfect, like an artist worked a lifetime sculpting him, and at least a year of that was spent on his mouth. He’s the most exquisite man I’ve ever seen.
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Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1))
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All artists are crackpots. And it's their finest feature.
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Irving Stone (Lust for Life)
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[Women's magazines]ignore older women or pretend that they don’t exist; magazines try to avoid photographs of older women, and when they feature celebrities who are over sixty, ‘retouching artists’ conspire to ‘help’ beautiful women look more beautiful, ie less than their age...By now readers have no idea what a real woman’s 60 year old face looks like in print because it’s made to look 45. Worse, 60 year old readers look in the mirror and think they are too old, because they’re comparing themselves to some retouched face smiling back at them from a magazine.
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Dalma Heyn
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In fact, many features of hypomania--such as outgoingness, increased energy, intensified sexuality, increased risk-taking, persuasiveness, self-confidence, and heightened productivity--have been linked with increased achievement and accomplishment.
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Kay Redfield Jamison (Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament)
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Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me—they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has been invented by committee. If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team
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Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
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The worst feature of the Common Core is its anti-humanistic, utilitarian approach to education. It mistakes what a child is and what a human being is for. That is why it has no use for poetry, and why it boils the study of literature down to the scrambling up of some marketable "skill" [...] you don't read good books to learn about what literary artists do...you learn about literary art so that you can read more good books and learn more from them. It is as if Thomas Gradgrind had gotten hold of the humanities and turned them into factory robotics.
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Anthony Esolen
“
If life is a movie most people would consider themselves the star of their own feature. Guys might imagine they're living some action adventure epic. Chicks maybe are in a rose-colored fantasy romance. And homosexuals are living la vida loca in a fabulous musical. Still others may take the indie approach and think of themselves as an anti-hero in a coming of age flick. Or a retro badass in an exploitation B movie. Or the cable man in a very steamy adult picture. Some people's lives are experimental student art films that don't make any sense. Some are screwball comedies. Others resemble a documentary, all serious and educational. A few lives achieve blockbuster status and are hailed as a tribute to the human spirit. Some gain a small following and enjoy cult status. And some never got off the ground due to insufficient funding. I don't know what my life is but I do know that I'm constantly squabbling with the director over creative control, throwing prima donna tantrums and pouting in my personal trailor when things don't go my way.
Much of our lives is spent on marketing. Make-up, exercise, dieting, clothes, hair, money, charm, attitude, the strut, the pose, the Blue Steel look. We're like walking billboards advertising ourselves. A sneak peek of upcoming attractions. Meanwhile our actual production is in disarray--we're over budget, doing poorly at private test screenings and focus groups, creatively stagnant, morale low. So we're endlessly tinkering, touching up, editing, rewriting, tailoring ourselves to best suit a mass audience. There's like this studio executive in our heads telling us to cut certain things out, make it "lighter," give it a happy ending, and put some explosions in there too. Kids love explosions. And the uncompromising artist within protests: "But that's not life!" Thus the inner conflict of our movie life: To be a palatable crowd-pleaser catering to the mainstream... or something true to life no matter what they say?
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Tatsuya Ishida
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That man, especially when he slept, when his features were motionless, showed me my own face, my mask, the flawlessly pure image of my corpse […] in a state of perfect repose, this resemblance was strikingly evident, and what is death, if not a face at peace – its artistic perfection? Life only marred my double; thus a breeze dims the bliss of Narcissus; thus, in the painter’s absence, there comes his pupil and by the superfluous flush of unbidden tints disfigures the portrait painted by the master.
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Vladimir Nabokov (Despair)
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The studio also featured a large wall calendar with cryptic abbreviations, presumably reminders. Also doodles of gears, sprockets, and malformed genitalia, because artists were artists.
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Yoon Ha Lee (Phoenix Extravagant)
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I was born, slipping on a symphony of broken melancholy; created of pencils and crayons; i was not supposed to be this way. i guess i am a "disappointment". i paint and draw. i like to write poetry. The things I excel at could fit inside my shoe." Excerpt from the poem,"Pain"written in 1995, by E.H. Cato(my maiden name) featured in Volume 2 of the Rantings & Ravings Series, 2013.
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Emily H. Sturgill
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Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me—they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has been invented by committee. If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.
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Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
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A thought expressed is a falsehood." In poetry what is not said and yet gleams through the beauty of the symbol, works more powerfully on the heart than that which is expressed in words. Symbolism makes the very style, the very artistic substance of poetry inspired, transparent, illuminated throughout like the delicate walls of an alabaster amphora in which a flame is ignited.
Characters can also serve as symbols. Sancho Panza and Faust, Don Quixote and Hamlet, Don Juan and Falstaff, according to the words of Goethe, are "schwankende Gestalten."
Apparitions which haunt mankind, sometimes repeatedly from age to age, accompany mankind from generation to generation. It is impossible to communicate in any words whatsoever the idea of such symbolic characters, for words only define and restrict thought, but symbols express the unrestricted aspect of truth.
Moreover we cannot be satisfied with a vulgar, photographic exactness of experimental photoqraphv. We demand and have premonition of, according to the allusions of Flaubert, Maupassant, Turgenev, Ibsen, new and as yet undisclosed worlds of impressionability. This thirst for the unexperienced, in pursuit of elusive nuances, of the dark and unconscious in our sensibility, is the characteristic feature of the coming ideal poetry. Earlier Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe said that the beautiful must somewhat amaze, must seem unexpected and extraordinary. French critics more or less successfully named this feature - impressionism.
Such are the three major elements of the new art: a mystical content, symbols, and the expansion of artistic impressionability.
No positivistic conclusions, no utilitarian computation, but only a creative faith in something infinite and immortal can ignite the soul of man, create heroes, martyrs and prophets... People have need of faith, they need inspiration, they crave a holy madness in their heroes and martyrs.
("On The Reasons For The Decline And On The New Tendencies In Contemporary Literature")
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Dmitry Merezhkovsky (Silver Age of Russian Culture (An Anthology))
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When he was creating this picture, Leonardo da Vinci encountered a serious problem: he had to depict Good - in the person of Jesus - and Evil - in the figure of Judas, the friend who resolves to betray him during the meal. He stopped work on the painting until he could find his ideal models.
One day, when he was listening to a choir, he saw in one of the boys the perfect image of Christ. He invited him to his studio and made sketches and studies of his face.
Three years went by. The Last Supper was almost complete, but Leonardo had still not found the perfect model for Judas. The cardinal responsible for the church started to put pressure on him to finish the mural.
After many days spent vainly searching, the artist came across a prematurely aged youth, in rags and lying drunk in the gutter. With some difficulty, he persuaded his assistants to bring the fellow directly to the church, since there was no time left to make preliminary sketches.
The beggar was taken there, not quite understanding what was going on. He was propped up by Leonardo's assistants, while Leonardo copied the lines of impiety, sin and egotism so clearly etched on his features.
When he had finished, the beggar, who had sobered up slightly, opened his eyes and saw the picture before him. With a mixture of horror and sadness he said:
'I've seen that picture before!'
'When?' asked an astonished Leonardo.
'Three years ago, before I lost everything I had, at a time when I used to sing in a choir and my life was full of dreams. The artist asked me to pose as the model for the face of Jesus.
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Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
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He never looks you straight in the eye; or if he does, it is somehow vaguely, indefinitely; he does not pierce you with the hawk's eye or the falcon's gaze of a cavalry officer. The reason for that is that he sees, at one and the same time, both your features and those of some plaster Hercules standing in his room, or else he imagines a painting of his own that he still means to produce. That is why his responses are often incoherent, not to the point, and the muddle of things in his head increases his timidity all the more.
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Nikolai Gogol (The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol)
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If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.
”
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Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
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One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a “personal shopper” program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers’ desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry. After history’s first recorded instance of a focus group riot, the personal shopper program was extensively rewritten.
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John Scalzi (The Android's Dream)
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On my drive from Salt Lake City to Moab, Utah, I passed an eighteen-wheeler with mud flaps on the rear tires. The flaps were black and featured the silver silhouette of a very statuesque naked woman. I’m sure you’ve seen this artistic expression in your travels.
I wondered: has this ploy ever worked, like some kind of perverted fishing lure?
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Jim Flynn (Be Sincere Even When You Don't Mean It)
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Don't laugh, but your nose is such a comfort to me," and Amy softly caressed the well-cut feature with artistic satisfaction.
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Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Little Women #1))
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His features are so harsh that they look carved, and yet they’re astonishingly perfect, like an artist worked a lifetime sculpting him, and at least a year of that was spent on his mouth.
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Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1))
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The popular image of the Magician has certain features in common with that of the Artist: both are unselfishly devoted to lofty tasks-which frequently overlapped in the uomo universale of the Renaissance.
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Arthur Koestler (The Act of Creation)
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You are not listening to my moral remarks, Mrs. Laurence,"—and Laurie paused, for Amy's eyes had an absent look, though fixed upon his face.
"Yes I am, and admiring the dimple in your chin at the same time. I don't wish to make you vain, but I must confess that I'm prouder of my handsome husband than of all his money. Don't laugh,—but your nose is such a comfort to me," and Amy softly caressed the well-cut feature with artistic satisfaction.
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Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Little Women, #1))
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The waste is important. It’s only by doing something that serves no concrete survival function that artists are able to advertise their survival surplus. An underground bunker stocked with food, guns, and ammo may have been expensive and difficult to build (especially if it was built by hand), and it may well reflect the skills and resources of its maker. But it’s not attractive in the same way art is. The bunker reflects a kind of desperation of an animal worried about its survival, rather than the easy assurance of an animal with more resources than it knows what to do with. Thus impracticality is a feature of all art forms. But we can see it with special clarity in those art forms that need to distinguish themselves from closely related practical endeavors.
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Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
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The contrast is startling, jaw-dropping even—everything about him is. His features are so harsh that they look carved, and yet they’re astonishingly perfect, like an artist worked a lifetime sculpting him, and at least a year of that was spent on his mouth.
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Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1))
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Even then, retailers learned early that shoppers prefer their shopping suggestions not be too truthful. One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a “personal shopper” program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers’ desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry.
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John Scalzi (The Android's Dream)
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Moral for psychologists. -- Not to go in for backstairs psychology. Never to observe in order to observe! That gives a false perspective, leads to squinting and something forced and exaggerated. Experience as the wish to experience does not succeed. One must not eye oneself while having an experience; else the eye becomes "an evil eye." A born psychologist guards instinctively against seeing in order to see; the same is true of the born painter. He never works "from nature"; he leaves it to his instinct, to his camera obscura, to sift through and express the "case," "nature," that which is "experienced." He is conscious only of what is general, of the conclusion, the result: he does not know arbitrary abstractions from an individual case.
What happens when one proceeds differently? For example, if, in the manner of the Parisian novelists, one goes in for backstairs psychology and deals in gossip, wholesale and retail? Then one lies in wait for reality, as it were, and every evening one brings home a handful of curiosities. But note what finally comes of all this: a heap of splotches, a mosaic at best, but in any case something added together, something restless, a mess of screaming colors. The worst in this respect is accomplished by the Goncourts; they do not put three sentences together without really hurting the eye, the psychologist's eye. Nature, estimated artistically, is no model. It exaggerates, it distorts, it leaves gaps. Nature is chance. To study "from nature" seems to me to be a bad sign: it betrays submission, weakness, fatalism; this lying in the dust before petit faits [little facts] is unworthy of a whole artist. To see what is--that is the mark of another kind of spirit, the anti-artistic, the factual. One must know who one is.
Toward a psychology of the artist. -- If there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy. Frenzy must first have enhanced the excitability of the whole machine; else there is no art. All kinds of frenzy, however diversely conditioned, have the strength to accomplish this: above all, the frenzy of sexual excitement, this most ancient and original form of frenzy. Also the frenzy that follows all great cravings, all strong affects; the frenzy of feasts, contests, feats of daring, victory, all extreme movement; the frenzy of cruelty; the frenzy in destruction, the frenzy under certain meteorological influences, as for example the frenzy of spring; or under the influence of narcotics; and finally the frenzy of will, the frenzy of an overcharged and swollen will. What is essential in such frenzy is the feeling of increased strength and fullness. Out of this feeling one lends to things, one forces them to accept from us, one violates them--this process is called idealizing. Let us get rid of a prejudice here: idealizing does not consist, as is commonly held, in subtracting or discounting the petty and inconsequential. What is decisive is rather a tremendous drive to bring out the main features so that the others disappear in the process.
In this state one enriches everything out of one's own fullness: whatever one sees, whatever one wills, is seen swelled, taut, strong, overloaded with strength. A man in this state transforms things until they mirror his power--until they are reflections of his perfection. This having to transform into perfection is--art. Even everything that he is not yet, becomes for him an occasion of joy in himself; in art man enjoys himself as perfection.
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Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols / The Anti-Christ)
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Yet many creative spirits have found inspiration in the idea that the Creator might be, among other things, an artist whose esthetic motivations we can appreciate and share-or even, in daring speculation, that the Creator is primarily a creative artist. Such spirits have engaged our Question, in varied and evolving forms, across many centuries. Thus inspired, they have produced deep philosophy, great science, compelling literature, and striking imagery. Some have produced works that combine several, or all, of those features. These works are a vein of gold running back through our civilization.
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Frank Wilczek (A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design)
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Nervousness from earlier surged back into me. Goodness. He was honey poured over an athletic body. Short, sandy-blond curls outlined his face, which boasted full lips, high cheek bones, and long lashes that any woman would envy. Even with those soft features, his face appeared hard and sculpted by an artist.
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Kenya Wright (Flirting with Chaos (Crazy in Love, #1))
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The model stripped down naked and stood with her arms out to her sides while genderless cohorts sprayed her body with large silver canisters of foundation. They wore masks over there faces and sprayed her from head to toe like they were putting out a fire. They airbrushed her into a mono-toned six-foot-two column of a human being with no visible veins, nipples, nails, lips, or eyelashes. When every single thing that was real about the model was gone, the make up artist fug through a suite case of brushes and plowed through hundreds of tubes of flesh colored colors and began to draw human features onto her face. At the same time, the hair stylist meticulously sewed with a needle and thread strand after strand of long blond hairs onto her thin light brown locks, creating a thick full mane of shimmering gold. The model had brought her own chef, who cooked her spinach soup from scratch. The soup was fed to her by one of her lackeys, who existed solely for this purpose. The blond boy stood in front of her, blowing on the soup and then feeding it to her from a small silver child's spoon, just big enough to fit between her lips. the model's mouth was barely open, maybe a quarter of an inch wide, so that she would not crack the flesh colored paint.
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Margot Berwin (Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire)
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Traces of historical associations can long outlast actual contact. In the dense, subtropical forests from India across to the South China Sea, venomous snakes are common, and there is always an advantage in pretending to be something dangerous. The slow loris, a weird, nocturnal primate, has a number of unusual features that, taken together, seem to be mimicking spectacled cobras. They move in a sinuous, serpentine way through the branches, always smooth and slow. When threatened, they raise their arms up behind their head, shiver and hiss, their wide, round eyes closely resembling the markings on the inside of the spectacled cobra’s hood. Even more remarkably, when in this position, the loris has access to glands in its armpit which, when combined with saliva, can produce a venom capable of causing anaphylactic shock in humans. In behaviour, colour and even bite, the primate has come to resemble the snake, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Today, the ranges of the loris and cobras do not overlap, but climate reconstructions reaching back tens of thousands of years suggest that once they would have been similar. It is possible that the loris is an outdated imitation artist, stuck in an evolutionary rut, compelled by instinct to act out an impression of something neither it nor its audience has ever seen.
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Thomas Halliday (Otherlands: Journeys in Earth's Extinct Ecosystems)
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It's her. The woman from the photo."
The plate was foxed around the edges, but the painting at its center was still intact. The annotation beneath gave the title as Sleeping Beauty and the artist's name, Edward Radcliffe. The woman in the painting was lying in a fantastical treetop bower of leaves and flower buds, all of which were waiting in stasis for the chance to bloom. Birds and insects were interspersed amongst the woven branches; long red hair flowed in waves around her sleeping face, which was glorious in repose. Her eyes were closed, but the features of her face- the elegant cheekbones and bow lips- were unmistakable.
"She was his model," Elodie whispered.
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Kate Morton (The Clockmaker's Daughter)
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Authors introducing new characters often describe their features and dress first; when introducing a world, it seems polite to begin with its geography. It is a world of vast oceans and numberless tiny islands—an atlas would look strangely unbalanced to your eye, as if some ignorant artist had made a mistake and painted too much of it blue.
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Alix E. Harrow (The Ten Thousand Doors of January)
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Evidently, a given object took no particular amount of time to draw; instead the artist took the time, or didn’t take it, at pleasure. And,similarly, things themselves possessed no fixed and intrinsic amount of interest; instead things were interesting as long as you had attention to give them. How long does it take to draw a baseball mitt? As much time as you care to give it. Not an infinite amount of time, but more time than you first imagined. For many days, so long as you want to keep drawing that mitt, and studying that mitt, there will always be a new and finer layer of distinctions to draw out and lay in. Your attention discovers—seems thereby to produce—an array of interesting features in any object, like a lamp.
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Annie Dillard (An American Childhood)
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He wore a mask of elegance and indifference, his unusually handsome features taking on the appearance of a sculpture. But I had no idea what the artist was trying to say: Here’s a man in denial? Here’s a man without a soul? Here’s a man who will build empires and legacies, whose pride shaped the land? Or here is a man who for once in his life, doesn’t know who he is?
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Karina Halle (Dirty Angels (Dirty Angels, #1))
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the development of creative talent requires that the home feature enriching experiences that encourage the diversification of the intellect. The most diverse environments will be those of artistic creators, whereas the homes of scientific creators will fall somewhere between those of the artists
and those of individuals who fail to display any pronounced levels of creativity.
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Dean Keith Simonton (Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity)
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When the sun peeped into the girls' room early next morning...he saw a comical sight. Each had made such preparation for the fete as seemed necessary and proper. Meg had an extra row of little curl papers across her forehead, Jo had copiously anointed her afflicted face with cold cream. Beth had taken Joanna to bed with her to atone for the approaching separation, and Amy had capped the climax by putting a clothespin on her nose, to uplift the offending feature. It was one of the kind artists use to hold their paper on the drawing boards, therefore quite appropriate and effective for the purpose to which it was now put. This funny spectacle appeared to amuse the sun, for he burst out with such radiance that Jo woke up, and roused the girls with a hearty laugh at Amy's ornament.
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Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Little Women, #1))
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The relationship between the Sophotechs and the men as depicted in that tale made no sense. How could they be hostile to each other?”
Diomedes said, “Aren’t men right to fear machines which can perform all tasks men can do, artistic, intellectual, technical, a thousand or a million times better than they can do? Men become redundant.”
Phaethon shook his head, a look of distant distaste on his features, as if he were once again confronted with a falsehood that would not die no matter how often it was denounced. In a voice of painstaking patience, he said: “Efficiency does not harm the inefficient. Quite the opposite. That is simply not the way it works. Take me, for example. Look around: I employed partials to do the thought-box junction spotting when I built this ship. My employees were not as skilled as I was in junction spotting. It took them three hours to do the robopsychology checks and hierarchy links I could have done in one hour. But they were in no danger of competition from me. My time is too valuable. In that same hour it would have taken me to spot their thought-box junction, I can earn far more than their three-hour wages by writing supervision architecture thought flows. And it’s the same with me and the Sophotechs.
“Any midlevel Sophotech could have written in one second the architecture it takes me, even with my implants, an hour to compose. But if, in that same one second of time, that Sophotech can produce something more valuable—exploring the depth of abstract mathematics, or inventing a new scientific miracle, anything at all (provided that it will earn more in that second than I earn in an hour)—then the competition is not making me redundant. The Sophotech still needs me and receives the benefit of my labor. Since I am going to get the benefit of every new invention and new miracle put out on the market, I want to free up as many of those seconds of Sophotech time as my humble labor can do.
“And I get the lion’s share of the benefit from the swap. I only save him a second of time; he creates wonder upon wonder for me. No matter what my fear of or distaste for Sophotechs, the forces in the marketplace, our need for each other, draw us together.
“So you see why I say that not a thing the Silent One said about Sophotechs made sense. I do not understand how they could have afforded to hate each other. Machines don’t make us redundant; they increase our efficiency in every way. And the bids of workers eager to compete for Sophotech time creates a market for merely human work, which it would not be efficient for Sophotechs to underbid.
”
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John C. Wright (The Golden Transcendence (Golden Age, #3))
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Frederick Douglass, an early convert, became a theorist of photography. “Negroes can never have impartial portraits at the hands of white artists,” he said. “It seems to us next to impossible for white men to take likenesses of black men, without most grossly exaggerating their distinctive features.” But a photograph was no caricature. Douglass therefore sat, again and again, in a portraitist’s studio: he became the most photographed man in nineteenth-century America, his likeness taken more often than Twain or even Lincoln.
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Jill Lepore (These Truths: A History of the United States)
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Like the usurpers in the Italian Renaissance, they seek to gloss over the illegitimacy of their rô1e by offering tangible advantages and making a fine show; that explains their economic liberalism and their patronage of the arts. They employ art not merely as a means to fame and a propaganda instrument but also as an opiate to soothe the opposition. The fact that their art policy is often accompanied by a true love and understanding of art does not affect its social basis. The courts of the Tyrants are the most important cultural centres of the age and its greatest repositories of artistic production [...] Yet in spite of this activity at the courts, the art of the age of the Tyrants is not entirely a product of the court; the rationalistic and individualistic spirit of the age hindered the development of that solemn pageantry and those conventional forms which are characteristic of a court style. The only features in this art that we can ascribe to the court are its joy in the senses, its refined intellectuality, and its somewhat artificial elegance of expression—all features to be found in the older Ionian tradition but developed to a still higher degree at the courts of the Tyrants.
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Arnold Hauser (The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages)
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Sketchbooks are fascinating; they are a window into an artist's or designer's mind, revealing their unique way of looking at or thinking about the world. However, the sketchbook has become a much fetishised object featured in countless books, blog's and social-media accounts showcasing stylised and curated examples that few can emulate. It is no wonder that at some point on the Foundation course every student articulates anxiety or frustration over their own sketchbook: it's too big, too small, too messy, too contrived, I can't draw, what's it for?
So why do we work with a sketchbook and what is it really for?
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Lucy Alexander (The Central Saint Martins Guide to Art & Design: Key lessons from the world-renowned Foundation course)
“
A good writer is likely to know and use, or find out and use, the words for common architectural features, like "lintel," "newel post," "corbelling," "abutment," and the concrete or stone "hems" alongisde the steps leading up into churches or public buildings; the names of carpenters' or pumbers' tools, artists' materials, or whatever furniture, implements, or processes his characters work with; and the names of common household items, including those we do not usually hear named, often as we use them. Above all, the writer should stretch his vocabulary of ordinary words and idioms--words and idioms he sees all the time and knows how to use but never uses. I mean here not language that smells of the lamp but relatively common verbs, nouns, and adjectives. The serious-mined way to vocabulary is to read through a dictionary, making lists of all the common words one happens never to use. And of course the really serious-minded way is to study languages--learn Greek, Latin, and one or two modern languages. Among writers of the first rank one can name very few who were not or are not fluent in at least two. Tolstoy, who spoke Russian, French, and English easily, and other languages and dialects with more difficulty, studied Greek in his forties.
”
”
John Gardner
“
Because it wasn’t enough to be accompanied by the beast who scared the crap out of every god in Heaven, Xuanzang was assigned a few more traveling companions. The gluttonous pig-man Zhu Baijie. Sha Wujing, the repentant sand demon. And the Dragon Prince of the West Sea, who took the form of a horse for Xuanzang to ride. The five adventurers, thusly gathered, set off on their—
“Holy ballsacks!” I yelped. I dropped the book like I’d been bitten.
“How far did you get?” Quentin said.
He was leaning against the end of the nearest shelf, as casually as if he’d been there the whole time, waiting for this moment.
I ignored that he’d snuck up on me again, just this once. There was a bigger issue at play.
In the book was an illustration of the group done up in bold lines and bright colors. There was Sun Wukong at the front, dressed in a beggar’s cassock, holding his Ruyi Jingu Bang in one hand and the reins of the Dragon Horse in the other. A scary-looking pig-faced man and a wide-eyed demon monk followed, carrying the luggage. And perched on top of the horse was . . . me.
The artist had tried to give Xuanzang delicate, beatific features and ended up with a rather girly face. By whatever coincidence, the drawing of Sun Wukong’s old master could have been a rough caricature of sixteen-year-old Eugenia Lo from Santa Firenza, California.
“That’s who you think I am?” I said to Quentin.
“That’s who I know you are,” he answered. “My dearest friend. My boon companion. You’ve reincarnated into such a different form, but I’d recognize you anywhere. Your spiritual energies are unmistakable.”
“Are you sure? If you’re from a long time ago, maybe your memory’s a little fuzzy.”
“The realms beyond Earth exist on a different time scale,” Quentin said. “Only one day among the gods passes for every human year. To me, you haven’t been gone long. Months, not centuries.”
“This is just . . . I don’t know.” I took a moment to assemble my words. “You can’t walk up to me and expect me to believe right away that I’m the reincarnation of some legendary monk from a folk tale.”
“Wait, what?” Quentin squinted at me in confusion.
“I said you can’t expect me to go, ‘okay, I’m Xuanzang,’ just because you tell me so.”
Quentin’s mouth opened slowly like the dawning of the sun. His face went from confusion to understanding to horror and then finally to laughter.
“mmmmphhhhghAHAHAHAHA!” he roared. He nearly toppled over, trying to hold his sides in. “HAHAHAHA!”
“What the hell is so funny?”
“You,” Quentin said through his giggles. “You’re not Xuanzang. Xuanzang was meek and mild. A friend to all living things. You think that sounds like you?”
It did not. But then again I wasn’t the one trying to make a case here.
“Xuanzang was delicate like a chrysanthemum.” Quentin was getting a kick out of this. “You are so tough you snapped the battleaxe of the Mighty Miracle God like a twig. Xuanzang cried over squashing a mosquito. You, on the other hand, have killed more demons than the Catholic Church.”
I was starting to get annoyed. “Okay, then who the hell am I supposed to be?” If he thought I was the pig, then this whole deal was off.
“You’re my weapon,” he said. “You’re the Ruyi Jingu Bang.”
I punched Quentin as hard as I could in the face.
”
”
F.C. Yee (The Epic Crush of Genie Lo (The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, #1))
“
The clinical hallmark of manic-depressive illness is its recurrent, episodic nature. Byron had this in an almost textbook manner, showing frequent and pronounced fluctuations in mood, energy, sleep patterns, sexual behavior, alcohol and other drug use, and weight (Byron also exhibited extremes in dieting, obsession with his weight, eccentric eating patterns, and excessive use of epsom salts). Although these changes in mood and behavior were dramatic and disruptive when they occurred, it is important to note that Byron was clinically normal most of the time; this, too, is highly characteristic of manic-depressive illness. An inordinate amount of confusion about whether someone does or does not have manic-depressive illness stems from the popular misconception that irrationality of mood and reason are stable rather than fluctuating features of the disease. Some assume that because an individual such as Byron was sane and in impressive control of his reason most of the time, that he could not have been "mad" or have suffered from a major mental illness. Lucidity and normal functioning are, however, perfectly consistent with-indeed, characteristic of-the phasic nature of manic-depressive illness. This is in contrast to schizophrenia, which is usually a chronic and relatively unrelenting illness characterized by, among other things, an inability to reason clearly.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament)
“
but she would have traded them gladly for Mme Leroi’s permanent ability to be invited everywhere, just as, in a restaurant, a talented but unknown artist whose genius is written neither in the features of his diffident face nor in the outmoded cut of his threadbare jacket would readily change places with the young broker from the lowest ranks of society who is dining with two actresses at a neighboring table, and upon whom, in an obsequious and incessant bustle, owner, manager, waiters, pages dance attention; even the kitchen staff file out of the kitchen to salute him, as in fairy tales, while the sommelier comes forward, as dusty as his bottles, hobbling and dazed, as if, coming up from the cellar, he had twisted his foot before emerging into the light of day.
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Marcel Proust (The Guermantes Way (In Search of Lost Time, #3))
“
Matthew’s story of the resurrection emphasizes typically Matthean themes, and so on. But this is like what you get when different artists paint portraits of the same person. This painting is certainly a Rembrandt; that is indubitably a Holbein. The touch of the individual artist is unmistakable. And yet the sitter is fully recognizable. The artists have not changed the color of her hair, the shape of his nose, the particular half smile. And when we ask why such stories, so different in many ways and yet so interestingly consistent in these and other features, could have come into existence so early, all the early Christians give the obvious answer: something like this is what happened, even though it was hard to describe at the time and remains mind-boggling thereafter.
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”
N.T. Wright (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)
“
As part of the deal, Dylan appeared in a television ad for the iPod, featuring his new album, Modern Times. This was one of the most astonishing cases of flipping the script since Tom Sawyer persuaded his friends to whitewash the fence. In the past, getting celebrities to do an ad required paying them a lot of money. But by 2006 the tables were turned. Major artists wanted to appear in iPod ads; the exposure would guarantee success. James Vincent had predicted this a few years earlier, when Jobs had said he had contacts with many musicians and could pay them to appear in ads. "No, things are going to soon change,' Vincent replied. "Apple is a different kind of brand, and it's cooler than the brand of most artists. We should talk about the opportunity we offer the bands, not pay them.
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”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
The art show at the new branch of the Whitney met Eph’s exceedingly low expectations. One artist made small Lucite cubes filled with garbage purloined right from New York City trash bins. There were cigarette butts and fast-food wrappers and even blobs of moldy food. Eph could hear one nearby aesthete gush about the artist’s “urban truthfulness.” Another artist featured a painting of a rose done entirely in menstrual blood. The flaw, Eph thought, was that blood dried brown, not red, but nobody seemed to be pointing that out. He also wondered what it had to do with the “New Urban.” “There are no words,” said Eph, sotto voce in case the artist was lurking among the people nearby. “Art is meant to provoke,” said D’Arcy. “If you have a reaction, even a negative one, then the artist has succeeded
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”
Scott Johnston (Campusland: A Novel)
“
It would be futile to delude ourselves that at present, readers find every pathography unsavory. This attitude is excused with the reproach that from a pathographic elaboration of a great man one never obtains an understanding of his importance and his attainments, that it is therefore useless mischief to study in him things which could just as well be found in the first comer. However, this criticism is so clearly unjust that it can only be grasped when viewed as a pretext and a disguise for something. As a matter of fact pathography does not aim at making comprehensible the attainments of the great man; no one should really be blamed for not doing something which one never promised. The real motives for the opposition are quite different. One finds them when one bears in mind that biographers are fixed on their heroes in quite a peculiar manner. Frequently they take the hero as the object of study because, for reasons of their personal emotional life, they bear him a special affection from the very outset. They then devote themselves to a work of idealization which strives to enroll the great men among their infantile models, and to revive through him, as it were, the infantile conception of the father. For the sake of this wish they wipe out the individual features in his physiognomy, they rub out the traces of his life's struggle with inner and outer resistances, and do not tolerate in him anything of human weakness or imperfection; they then give us a cold, strange, ideal form instead of the man to whom we could feel distantly related. It is to be regretted that they do this, for they thereby sacrifice the truth to an illusion, and for the sake of their infantile phantasies they let slip the opportunity to penetrate into the most attractive secrets of human nature.
”
”
Sigmund Freud (Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood)
“
Do you know where we are?” he whispered. “Surely that is Baker Street,” I answered, staring through the dim window. “Exactly. We are in Camden House, which stands opposite to our own old quarters.” “But why are we here?” “Because it commands so excellent a view of that picturesque pile. Might I trouble you, my dear Watson, to draw a little nearer to the window, taking every precaution not to show yourself, and then to look up at our old rooms--the starting-point of so many of your little fairy-tales? We will see if my three years of absence have entirely taken away my power to surprise you.” I crept forward and looked across at the familiar window. As my eyes fell upon it, I gave a gasp and a cry of amazement. The blind was down, and a strong light was burning in the room. The shadow of a man who was seated in a chair within was thrown in hard, black outline upon the luminous screen of the window. There was no mistaking the poise of the head, the squareness of the shoulders, the sharpness of the features. The face was turned half-round, and the effect was that of one of those black silhouettes which our grandparents loved to frame. It was a perfect reproduction of Holmes. So amazed was I that I threw out my hand to make sure that the man himself was standing beside me. He was quivering with silent laughter. “Well?” said he. “Good heavens!” I cried. “It is marvellous.” “I trust that age doth not wither nor custom stale my infinite variety,” said he, and I recognized in his voice the joy and pride which the artist takes in his own creation. “It really is rather like me, is it not?” “I should be prepared to swear that it was you.” “The credit of the execution is due to Monsieur Oscar Meunier, of Grenoble, who spent some days in doing the moulding. It is a bust in wax. The rest I arranged myself during my visit to Baker Street this afternoon.
”
”
Arthur Conan Doyle (The Complete Sherlock Holmes)
“
I imagine you not telling me to whisper. I imagine you not saying oh don't say this literally. You want me to evoke as opposed to mere describing. You want me to be an invisible scribe that an octoepoose was hiding. I'm not sure if my facial features are an autograph that your Picasso smile is signing. Infamous for the mirror I shook when my sock puppets were pining? I am not just a fish that you gave wings to! I don't simply flop in the air whenever you brush some mannequinn's hair. There is a reason for the bad timing. Exquisite imbalances. A child enjoying the pink sky. I won't say that is my clue! Playing The Beatles on a kazoo is beautiful oooh ooooh
Your laughter is a woman with alot of eyeballs on her stomach that pretends that she doesn't see the colors of all them songs. In the pre dawn hours we dance with delusions and illusions. The eternal seamstress does not care for Frakenstein's dress(she still loves our unique caress ) She loves and laughs despite some so-called scientist. Where is that emperor and his nakedness! Darling, our atoms need never split. We compliment in so many ways that all our night's and days have become one swirling sunrise/sunset that only true lovers can scoff at(those who shhhhh) The flower is not passive or apologetic. It blooms through the fractured net. Floating magnetic(eep eeep)
You are not just some seductress. You are the leader of an elite group of intergalactic seductress impersonators who reveal corruption but then choose to love.
We embrace conclusions that make the puddle heart awake with ethereal drum beat gongs. You think of a heroic poodle in the dark. We both know that the trapeze artist that followed us was not a cliche. He smelled differently. He had never met a floating lady that showed him how to appreciate a symphony without taking away his love for a good rock n roll melody. I am not sure I can only whisper of such realities. I am not sure I can only whisper of such realities.-
”
”
Junipurr- Sometimes Trudy
“
AGNES EGGLING: mid- to late 30s; preferably heavyset. Bit player / character actress in the German film industry. GREGOR BAZWALD (BAZ): early to mid-30s. Homosexual who works for the Berlin Institute for Human Sexuality. PAULINKA ERDNUSS: mid-30s, but looks a little younger. Actress in the German film industry; a featured player on her way to becoming a minor star. ANNABELLA GOTCHLING: mid-40s. Communist artist and graphic designer. VEALTNINC HUSZ: mid-40s. Cinematographer. Hungarian exile. Missing an eye, he wears spectacles with one lens blackened. ROSA MALEK: mid- to late 20s. Minor functionary of the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands). EMIL TRAUM: mid- to late 20s. Slightly higher-ranking functionary of the KPD. DIE ALTE: a woman, very old but hard to tell how old—somewhere between 70 and dead-for-20-years. White face and rotten teeth. Dressed in a nightgown, once white but now soiled and food-stained. GOTTFRIED SWETTS: ageless; when he looks good he could be 30, when he looks bad he could be 50 (or more). Distinguished, handsome, blond, Aryan. ZILLAH KATZ: contemporary American Jewish woman. 30s. BoHo/East Village New Wave with Anarcho-Punk tendencies.
”
”
Tony Kushner (A Bright Room Called Day)
“
natural personality, or maybe he was simply capable of greater perspective than everyone else. Maybe he wasn’t quite as addled by drugs and alcohol. For whatever reason, Michael stayed on the sidelines as the rest of the band fought like a pack of starving wolves who have come across a carcass in the wilderness. Previous tours, especially in the first couple of years, had always featured a fair amount of ball-busting and the occasional argument that was required simply to clear the air. For the most part, though, we had a blast on the road. It was a nonstop party punctuated by spectacularly energetic concerts. There had been a lightness to it all, a sense of being part of something special, and of wanting to enjoy every minute. But now the levity was gone. Even though they spent hardly any time together offstage, the boys were at each other’s throats constantly, either directly or through a conduit—usually me. Two more quick stories, both involving Al. We were all sitting outside by the hotel pool one day. A guy named Mike had been flown in for a couple days to take care of the boys’ grooming needs. Mike was a hairdresser or stylist or whatever you want to call him. Point is, he was really good at his job, an artistic
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”
Noel E. Monk (Runnin' with the Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and the Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen)
“
Compare with Greek art, modern classical art is lacking in warmth and immediacy; it has a derived, retrospective, and, even in the Renaissance, a more or less classicistic character. It It is the reflection of a society which, filled with reminiscences of Roman heroism and medieval chivalry, tries to appear to be something which it is not, by following an artificially produced social and moral code, and which stylizes the whole pattern of its life in accordance with this fictitious scheme. Classical art describes this society as it wants to see itself and as it wants to be seen. There is hardly a feature in this art which would not, on closer examination, prove to be anything more than the translation into artistic terms of the aristocratic, conservative ideals cherished by this society striving for permanence and continuity. The whole artistic fromalism of the Cinquecento merely corresponds to the formalized system of moral conceptions and decorum which the upper class of the period imposes on itself. Just as the aristocracy and the aristocratically minded circles of society subject life to the rule of a formal code, in order to preserve it from the anarchy of the emotions, so they also submit the expression of the emotions in art to the censorship of definite, abstract, and impersonal forms.
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”
Arnold Hauser (The Social History of Art: Volume 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque)
“
And in this way — whereas an artist who had been reading memoirs of the seventeenth century, and wished to bring himself nearer to the great Louis, would consider that he was making progress in that direction when he constructed a pedigree that traced his own descent from some historic family, or when he engaged in correspondence with one of the reigning Sovereigns of Europe, and so would shut his eyes to the mistake he was making in seeking to establish a similarity by an exact and therefore lifeless copy of mere outward forms — a middle-aged lady in a small country town, by doing no more than yield whole-hearted obedience to her own irresistible eccentricities, and to a spirit of mischief engendered by the utter idleness of her existence, could see, without ever having given a thought to Louis XIV, the most trivial occupations of her daily life, her morning toilet, her luncheon, her afternoon nap, assume, by virtue of their despotic singularity, something of the interest that was to be found in what Saint-Simon used to call the ‘machinery’ of life at Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade herself that her silence, a shade of good humour or of arrogance on her features, would provide Françoise with matter for a mental commentary as tense with passion and terror, as did the silence, the good humour or the arrogance of the King when a courtier, or even his greatest nobles, had presented a petition to him, at the turning of an avenue, at Versailles.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7])
“
The other strikingly modern feature of the type of poet which Euripides now introduced into the history of literature is his apparently voluntary refusal to take any part whatever in public life. Euripides was not a soldier as Aeschylus was, nor a priestly dignitary as Sophocles was, but, on the other hand, he is the very first poet who is reported to have possessed a library, and he appears to be also the first poet to lead the life of a scholar in complete retirement from the world. If the bust of him, with its tousled hair, its tired eyes and the embittered lines round the mouth, is a true portrait, and if we are right in seeing in it a discrepancy between body and spirit, and the expression of a restless and dissatisfied life, then we may say that Euripides was the first unhappy poet, the first whose poetry brought him suffering. The notion of genius in the modern sense is not merely completely strange to the ancient world; its poets and artists have nothing of the genius about them. The rational and craftsmanlike elements in art are far more important for them than the irrational and intuitive. Plato’s doctrine of enthusiasm emphasized, indeed, that poets owed their work to divine inspiration and not to mere technical ability, but this idea by no means leads to the exaltation of the poet; it only increases the gulf between him and his work, and makes of him a mere instrument of the divine purpose. It is, however, of the essence of the modern notion of genius that there is no gulf between the artist and his work, or, if such a gulf is admitted, that the genius is far greater than any of his works and can never be adequately expressed in them. So genius connotes for us a tragic loneliness and inability to make itself fully understood. But the ancient world knows nothing of this or of the other tragic feature of the modern artist—his lack of recognition by his own contemporaries and his despairing appeals to a remote posterity. There is not a trace of all this—at least before Euripides. Euripides’ lack of success was mainly due to the fact that there was nothing in classical times that could be called an educated middle class. The old aristocracy took no pleasure in his plays, owing to their different outlook on life, and the new bourgeois public could not enjoy them either, owing to its lack of education. With his philosophical radicalism, Euripides is a unique pheno menon, even among the poets of his age, for these are in general as conservative in their outlook as were those of the classical age —in spite of a naturalism of style which was derived from the urban and commercial society they lived in, and which had reached a point at which it was really incompatible with political conservatism. As politicians and partisans these poets hold to their conservative doctrines, but as artists they are swept along in the progressive stream of their times. This inner contradiction in their work is a completely new phenomenon in the social history of art.
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”
Arnold Hauser (The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages)
“
One could not imagine a process more open to the elephantine logic of the Bible-smasher than this: that the sun should be created after the sunlight. The conception that lies at the back of the phrase is indeed profoundly antagonistic to much of the modern point of view. To many modern people it would sound like saying that foliage existed before the first leaf ; it would sound like saying that childhood existed before a baby was born. The idea is, as I have said, alien to most modern thought, and like many other ideas which are alien to most modern thought, it is a very subtle and a very sound idea. Whatever be the meaning of the passage in the actual primeval poem, there is a very real metaphysical meaning in the idea that light existed before the sun and stars. It is not barbaric; it is rather Platonic. The idea existed before any of the machinery which made manifest the idea. Justice existed when there was no need of judges, and mercy existed before any man was oppressed.
The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists, as the mother can love the unborn child. In creative art the essence of a book exists before the book or before even the details or main features of the book; the author enjoys it and lives in it with a kind of prophetic rapture. He wishes to write a comic story before he has thought of a single comic incident. He desires to write a sad story before he has thought of anything sad. He knows the atmosphere before he knows anything. There is a low priggish maxim sometimes uttered by men so frivolous as to take humour seriously a maxim that a man should not laugh at his own jokes. But the great artist not only laughs at his own jokes; he laughs at his own jokes before he has made them.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton (Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens)
“
Mental Accounting Alarm clocks and Christmas clubs are external devices people use to solve their self-control problems. Another way to approach these problems is to adopt internal control systems, otherwise known as mental accounting. Mental accounting is the system (sometimes implicit) that households use to evaluate, regulate, and process their home budget. Almost all of us use mental accounts, even if we’re not aware that we’re doing so. The concept is beautifully illustrated by an exchange between the actors Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman in one of those extra features offered on DVDs. Hackman and Hoffman were friends back in their starving artist days, and Hackman tells the story of visiting Hoffman’s apartment and having his host ask him for a loan. Hackman agreed to the loan, but then they went into Hoffman’s kitchen, where several mason jars were lined up on the counter, each containing money. One jar was labeled “rent,” another “utilities,” and so forth. Hackman asked why, if Hoffman had so much money in jars, he could possibly need a loan, whereupon Hoffman pointed to the food jar, which was empty. According to economic theory (and simple logic), money is “fungible,” meaning that it doesn’t come with labels. Twenty dollars in the rent jar can buy just as much food as the same amount in the food jar. But households adopt mental accounting schemes that violate fungibility for the same reasons that organizations do: to control spending. Most organizations have budgets for various activities, and anyone who has ever worked in such an organization has experienced the frustration of not being able to make an important purchase because the relevant account is already depleted. The fact that there is unspent money in another account is considered no more relevant than the money sitting in the rent jar on Dustin Hoffman’s kitchen counter.
”
”
Richard H. Thaler (Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness)
“
What is the meaning of the antithetical concepts Apollonian and Dionysian which I have introduced into the vocabulary of Aesthetic, as representing two distinct modes of ecstasy? — Apollonian ecstasy acts above all as a force stimulating the eye, so that it acquires the power of vision. The painter, the sculptor, the epic poet are essentially visionaries.
In the Dionysian state, on the other hand, the whole system of passions is stimulated and intensified, so that it discharges itself by all the means of expression at once, and vents all its power of representation, of imitation, of transfiguration, of transformation, together with every kind of mimicry and histrionic display at the same time.
The essential feature remains the facility in transforming, the inability to refrain from reaction (—a similar state to that of certain hysterical patients, who at the slightest hint assume any role). It is impossible for the Dionysian artist not to understand any suggestion; no outward sign of emotion escapes him, he possesses the instinct of comprehension and of divination in the highest degree, just as he is capable of the most perfect art of communication. He enters into every skin, into every passion: he is continually changing himself.
Music as we understand it today is likewise a general excitation and discharge of the emotions; but, notwithstanding this, it is only the remnant of a much richer world of emotional expression, a mere residuum of Dionysian histrionism. For music to be made possible as a special art, quite a number of senses, and particularly the muscular sense, had to be paralysed (at least relatively: for all rhythm still appeals to our muscles to a certain extent): and thus man no longer imitates and represents physically everything he feels, as soon as he feels it. Nevertheless that is the normal Dionysian state, and in any case its primitive state. Music is the slowly attained specialisation of this state at the cost of kindred capacities.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols)
“
Linguistic and musical sound systems illustrate a common theme in the study of music-language relations. On the surface, the two domains are dramatically different. Music uses pitch in ways that speech does not, and speech organizes timbre to a degree seldom seen in music. Yet beneath these differences lie deep connections in terms of cognitive and neural processing. Most notably, in both domains the mind interacts with one particular aspect of sound (pitch in music, and timbre in speech) to create a perceptually discretized system. Importantly, this perceptual discretization is not an automatic byproduct of human auditory perception. For example, linguistic and musical sequences present the ear with continuous variations in amplitude, yet loudness is not perceived in terms of discrete categories. Instead, the perceptual discretization of musical pitch and linguistic timbre reflects the activity of a powerful cognitive system, built to separate within-category sonic variation from differences that indicate a change in sound category. Although music and speech differ in the primary acoustic feature used for sound category formation, it appears that the mechanisms that create and maintain learned sound categories in the two domains may have a substantial degree of overlap. Such overlap has implications for both practical and theoretical issues surrounding human communicative development.
In the 20th century, relations between spoken and musical sound systems were largely explored by artists. For example, the boundary between the domains played an important role in innovative works such as Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and Reich's Different Trains (cf. Risset, 1991). In the 21st century, science is finally beginning to catch up, as relations between spoken and musical sound systems prove themselves to be a fruitful domain for research in cognitive neuroscience. Such work has already begun to yield new insights into our species' uniquely powerful communicative abilities.
”
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Aniruddh D. Patel (Music, Language, and the Brain)
“
Fine art galleries are the excellent setups for exhibiting art, generally aesthetic art such as paints, sculptures, and digital photography. Basically, art galleries showcase a range of art designs featuring contemporary and traditional fine art, glass fine art, art prints, and animation fine art. Fine art galleries are dedicated to the advertising of arising artists. These galleries supply a system for them to present their jobs together with the works of across the country and internationally popular artists.
The UNITED STATE has a wealth of famous art galleries. Lots of villages in the U.S. show off an art gallery. The High Museum of Fine art, Alleged Gallery, Henry Art Gallery, National Gallery of Art Gallery, Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Agora Gallery, Rosalux Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, The Alaska House Gallery, and Anchorage Gallery of History and Art are some of the renowned fine art galleries in the United States. Today, there are on the internet fine art galleries showing initial artwork.
Several famous fine art galleries show regional pieces of art such as African fine art, American art, Indian fine art, and European art, in addition to individual fine art, modern-day and modern fine art, and digital photography. These galleries collect, show, and keep the masterpieces for the coming generations. Many famous art galleries try to entertain and educate their local, nationwide, and international audiences. Some renowned fine art galleries focus on specific areas such as pictures. A great variety of well-known fine art galleries are had and run by government.
The majority of famous fine art galleries supply an opportunity for site visitors to buy outstanding art work. Additionally, they organize many art-related tasks such as songs shows and verse readings for kids and grownups. Art galleries organize seminars and workshops conducted by prominent artists. Committed to quality in both art and solution, most well-known fine art galleries provide you a rich, exceptional experience. If you wish to read additional information, please visit this site
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Famous Art Galleries
“
THE PARTY
And at last the police are at the front door,
summoned by a neighbor because of the noise,
two large cops asking Peter,
who had signed the rental agreement, to end the party.
Our peace can’t be disturbed, one of the officers states.
But when we receive a complaint we act on it.
The police on the front stoop wear as their shoulder patch
an artist’s palette, since the town likes to think of itself as
an art colony, and indeed, Pacific Coast Highway
two blocks inland, which serves as the main north-south street,
is lined with commercial galleries featuring
paintings of the surf by moonlight
—like this night, but without anybody on the sand
and with a bigger moon. And now Dennis,
as at every party once the police
arrive at the door, moves through the dancers,
the drinkers, the talkers, to confront the uniforms and
guns, to object, he says, to their attempt to stop
people harmlessly enjoying themselves, and to argue
it isn’t even 1 a.m. Then Stuart, as usual,
pushes his way to the discussion happening at the door
and in his drunken manner tries to
justify to the cops Dennis’ attitude, believing he can
explain things better to authority, which of course
annoys Dennis, and soon those two
are disputing with each other, tonight exasperating Peter,
whose sole aim is to get the officers to leave
before they are provoked enough to demand to enter
to check ID or something, and maybe smell the pot
and somebody ends up arrested
with word getting back to the landlord
and having the lease or whatever Peter had signed
cancelled, and all staying here evicted.
The Stones, or Janis, are on the stereo now,
as the police stand firm like time, like
death—You have to shut it down—as the dancing inside
continues, the dancers forgetting for a moment a low mark
on a quiz, or their draft status, or a paper due Monday,
or how to end the war in Asia, or some of their poems
rejected by a magazine, or the situation
in Watts or of Chavez’s farmworkers,
or that they wish they had asked Erin rather than Joan
to dance.
That dancing, that music,
the party, even after the cops leave
with their warning Don’t make us come back
continues, the dancing has lasted for
years, decades, across a new century, through the fear of
nuclear obliteration, the great fires, fierce rain,
Main Beach and Forest Avenue flooded,
war after war, love after love, that dancing
goes on, the dancing, the party, the night,
the dancing
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Tom Wayman
“
When you work with other producers or artists and you are about to do a collaboration or a feature. Don't judge them based on the work they have done. Judge them on the song or feature they want you on. If it is for you and you can work on it. Lots of artists lost big hits , because they judged other artists and producers based on the work they did before, not the work they are being called to do.
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D.J. Kyos
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3D Art Outsourcing & Game Art Design Companies By Game Art Outsourcing Studio
A 3D game art outsourcing company can outsource the game art to extra game developers. Game art is separated into two categories which are 2D and 3D game art. In 2D art outsourcing, game developers outsource their 2D oriented design to the game artists. 2D game artist focus in produce the thought as well as the texture of the game. 3D game artist deliberate on fabricating the animation of games; which include models and 3D environment. It is also potential to get a game art company that has artists who focus in both 2D and 3D game art. Game 3D Art Outsourcing company give lots of reward to game developers.
The major advantage is that game developers are able to delegate all their work to diverse companies so that the work get concluded in a very short length of time. This, therefore, make it feasible for a game developer to discharge a game in lesser phase of time. Time full in developing a game is very central since if the game take too long to be unconfined, technology worn in the game may quickly be out of manner. Hence, it is very significant for 3D Game Designer to outsource their gaming growth work to guarantee that all games are out in ideal occasion, i.e., while there is publicity in the market.
3D Game outsourcing company make it potential for a game developer to construct games of finest value. It is well-known by professional and while game developers rush with their work in arrange to try and cut the occasion really required in increasing a game, quality of the pastime is regrettably compromised. On the other pass, if they break down the labor into programming, art, level scheming and sound engineering, they can shun poverty of superiority. It is potential to outsource every work to the diverse team of game development company.
By receiving in touch with encoding and Art Outsourcing Studio game designers, it is probable to get the best entity for each part of game conniving. When the labour is outsourced, every section will have adequate time to focus in their area and once everything has been mutual together, a superb game is shaped. As a game developer, it is very significant to outsource your Game Art Design Company frequently. This is because hiring diverse game art designers make your games exclusively diverse each time.
This is incredibly significant if you want to market a game effectively because it must have amazing completely diverse to offer as compare to your previous games. For example, it should contain the upgrade of features that were liked by patrons who used last account. Doing that is very easy as you only require a long term game outsourcing company for your game art and design.
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GameYan
“
be funny nor attempt to deal analytically with social ills.4 Even the original title (Gangway!) and the original setting (warring Catholics and Jews in a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story) held little promise for commercial or artistic success. In addition, the show would feature no stars, and the cast—consisting primarily of dancers—might be inexperienced kids pulled from the streets of New York (if the New York press was to be believed), not from dance rehearsal halls. The score, written by a classical music conductor, would be dissonant and fiendishly difficult to play and sing and would include—of all things—a fugue. The teenagers, whose dialogue was written by a middle-aged Jewish playwright, would speak in an invented street slang, uttering lines like “womb to tomb” and “cracko Jacko.” The backers’ meetings continually and repeatedly failed to attract investors for producer Cheryl Crawford, who finally dumped the project shortly before rehearsals were to begin. It is no surprise that no one thought this show would succeed.
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Elizabeth A. Wells (West Side Story: Cultural Perspectives on an American Musical)
“
In the years before Stanley Kubrick became Stanley Kubrick, the man had been a photographer by trade as well as an avid student of film. He had made two small feature films, almost completely by himself, with the second, Killer’s Kiss, being the more notable and successful. It was a small film but its tone and style, especially done on a self-financed shoestring budget, caught the eye of United Artists. The best thing to come from that film was that UA told Kubrick that when he came up with something else, they’d like to take a look at it. Alexander Singer, who later
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Lionel White (The Snatchers / Clean Break (The Killing))
“
examination of the artistic and rhetorical elements used in the major Old Testament passages, the rhetorical critic accents the wholeness and unity of many chapters and books. The rhetorical critic shows that many repetitions or seemingly unusual features in fact add to the dramatic force or stylistic beauty of the work. Such an artistic analysis stresses the harmony and value of the final written passage as we find it today and thus serves the useful function of enriching our daily scriptural reading with a deeper appreciation
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Lawrence Boadt (Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction)
“
2D Game Comic Book Concept Art Service by 3D animation Studio – Austin, Texas
CLIENT: THIBAUD
PROJECT: CONCEPT ART
CATEGORY: CONCEPT ART
Concept art is a visual representation that tells a story or conveys a certain look. It is commonly used in film and video games to convey a vision and set the tone for an entire game or movie. 2D/3D Concept Art provides a strong reference point that helps align the creatives working on the project. Generally the Concept Artist must be adept at any style, any genre and any element, be it character design, creature design or setting.
GameYan Studio – game art outsourcing studio for feature films and could work as a production house to do entire 3D development for any animated movie. Our professional team of Concept Artist can develop a variety of 3D art content for movie and video games along with low optimized characters for mobile and virtual reality interactive games by 3D Production Animation Studio.
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GameYan
“
Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas. A good example of this is genetics. You have a mother and you have a father. You possess features from both of them, but the sum of you is bigger than their parts. You're a remix of your mom and dad and all of your ancestors.
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Austin Kleon (The Steal Like an Artist Audio Trilogy)
“
Shake Shack- The now multinational, publicly traded fast-food chain was inspired by the roadside burger stands from Danny's youth in the Midwest and serves burgers, dogs, and concretes- frozen custard blended with mix-ins, including Mast Brothers chocolate and Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie, depending on the location.
Blue Smoke- Another nod to Danny's upbringing in the Midwest, this Murray Hill barbecue joint features all manner of pit from chargrilled oysters to fried chicken to seven-pepper brisket, along with a jazz club in the basement.
Maialino- This warm and rustic Roman-style trattoria with its garganelli and braised rabbit and suckling pig with rosemary potatoes is the antidote to the fancy-pants Gramercy Park Hotel, in which it resides.
Untitled- When the Whitney Museum moved from the Upper East Side to the Meatpacking District, the in-house coffee shop was reincarnated as a fine dining restaurant, with none other than Chef Michael Anthony running the kitchen, serving the likes of duck liver paté, parsnip and potato chowder, and a triple chocolate chunk cookie served with a shot of milk.
Union Square Café- As of late 2016, this New York classic has a new home on Park Avenue South. But it has the same style, soul, and classic menu- Anson Mills polenta, ricotta gnocchi, New York strip steak- as it first did when Danny opened the restaurant back in 1985.
The Modern- Overlooking the Miró, Matisse, and Picasso sculptures in MoMA's Sculpture Garden, the dishes here are appropriately refined and artistic. Think cauliflower roasted in crab butter, sautéed foie gras, and crispy Long Island duck.
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Amy Thomas (Brooklyn in Love: A Delicious Memoir of Food, Family, and Finding Yourself)
“
Stheno – Fantasy Female 3D Character Dallas - Texas
CLIENT: ART
PROJECT: LOW POLY CONCEPT CHARACTER
CATEGORY: 3D GAME CHARACTERS
STHENO IS THE CONCEPT OF THE GORGON SISTERS
We develop Low Poly Character With Micro Detail Texture for CGI Open World Game. It's a Fantasy Female 3D Character of GORGON SISTERS.
Gameyan is movie and game art outsourcing studio in India provide 2D and 3D model, texture, shading, rig and animation for all games (mobile, PS, Xbox, Desktop) and feature movie film animation, cartoon series, TV commercial.
Our professional team of artists can develop a variety of 3D art content for movie and video games along with low optimized characters for mobile and virtual reality interactive games.
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GameYan
“
This Venus is also an abstraction. It is clearly a human body, but a heavily distorted one, with features that are well beyond realism. The breasts are colossal, and the head is tiny. She has a huge waist, and engorged labia. These enhanced sexual characteristics are also seen in some of the other Palaeolithic Venus figurines, which has led to speculation that these were fertility charms, or even goddesses of fertility. Some people have suggested that they might be pornography. While there is no shortage of art by men depicting sexualised women, we cannot know the motivation of the Venus sculptor. The similarities between the few Venus figurines that remain do suggest a sexual dimension to their existence, and imagining that they are fertility amulets is no more or less speculative than considering that they are the fantasy of a Palaeolithic artist. We’re not sure why the heads are often small: it might be to do with perspective, that you can’t actually see your own head, so relatively from one’s own vision it is small, and looking down, breasts may look disproportionally larger; though that doesn’t account for the fact that the artist could’ve seen the heads and bodies of other people. Maybe it was an artistic choice. If in one million years’ time, you discovered a Francis Bacon portrait or the Bayeux tapestry isolated out of any context, you might have questions about what was on the minds of those artists. We will never know what the Palaeolithic sculptors were thinking. What we do know is that their minds were not different to our own.
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Adam Rutherford (The Book of Humans: A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War and the Evolution of Us)
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In Shakespeare’s London, most plays were only performed a handful of times before being discarded and replaced with ‘the latest thing’. This provides a stark contrast to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s schedule in current times. Shakespeare’s theatre, just like the rock music of Dylan’s decades, was inherently influenced by changes in fashion and style. Relentless demands for novelty and hits drove both industries and this had an impact on our two artists in fundamental ways. Just as Dylan went after the latest, but deeply unpleasant, studio sound in the mid-Eighties and jumped, or rather sank, into the pop video market, so Shakespeare had to move into whatever area the current fashion dictated. If plays featuring prostitutes and witches were in demand, then that is what was written. Popular entertainers need to remain fashionable.
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Andrew Muir (Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It)
“
FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) printers There is no hard and fast classification of the FDM 3D printers
Cartesian 3D Printers: These are the most common type, operating on a straightforward Cartesian coordinate system with linear rails guiding movement along the X, Y, and Z axes. They are recognized for their simplicity and reliability.
Delta 3D Printers: Delta printers employ a triangular configuration of three arms attached to moving carriages at the printer's apex. The print head hangs from these carriages, executing precise movements to craft the intended object. Delta printers excel in speed and consistency, particularly in producing tall items.
CoreXY 3D Printers: CoreXY printers utilize a distinctive belt-driven mechanism to maneuver the print head across the X and Y axes. This design separates the print head's motion from that of the build platform, resulting in swifter and more accurate prints. Enthusiasts favor CoreXY printers for their speed and precision.
Polar 3D Printers: Polar printers feature a circular build platform and a print head that moves both radially and vertically. This configuration facilitates continuous rotation of the print bed, enabling the creation of objects with intricate geometric shapes. Polar printers are commonly employed for crafting artistic and sculptural pieces.
SCARA 3D Printers: SCARA (Selective Compliance Articulated Robot Arm) printers utilize a robotic arm mechanism to navigate the print head in a two-dimensional plane. This design offers rapid and precise movement, making SCARA printers ideal for producing small, intricate objects with exceptional accuracy.
Each variant of FDM 3D printer has its own strengths and is tailored to diverse applications, spanning from hobbyist endeavors to industrial-scale manufacturing.
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Locanam 3D Printing
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Rae Ripple is a Texas welder and artist and has been featured on the Down to Business podcast, Monster Garage on Discovery Channel, and has been published in Welder magazine. She is partnered with AlumaReel, Hypertherm, Lincoln Electric, FastCut CNC, Flame Technologies Inc., and Benchmark Abrasives. She has painted murals all over Texas and has installed metal work all over the world. She currently lives in Big Spring, Texas, with her fiancé and two children.
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Rae Ripple
“
I have seen big artist doing song covers for the song that was supposed to be their original songs, because they looked down on another person and turned down a feature, without hearing the song.
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D.J. Kyos
“
The first known published text of the classic fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast" was written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740 and collected in her compilation La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins. To say that the story met with favor is an understatement. By 1756, "Beauty and the Beast" was so well known that Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont wrote an abridged edition of it that would become the popular version included in collections of fairy tales throughout the nineteenth century (although Andrew Lang went back to de Villeneuve's original for his groundbreaking anthology The Blue Fairy Book, first published in 1891 as the beginning of a twelve-book series that would revolutionize the anthologizing of fairy tales for young read ers). Fifteen years later. Jean-François Marmontel and André Ernest Modeste Grétry adapted de Villeneuve's story as the book for the opera Zémire et Azor. the start of more than two centuries of extraliterary treatments that now include Jean Cocteau's famous 1946 film La Belle et la Bête, Walt Disney's 1991 animated feature Beauty and the Beast, and countless other cinematic, televi sion, stage, and musical variations on the story's theme.
More than 4,000 years after it became part of the oral storytelling tradi tion, it is easy to understand why "Beauty and the Beast" continues to be one of the most popular fairy tales of all time, and a seemingly inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists working in all mediums. Its theme of the power of unconditional love is one that never grows old.
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Various (Beauty and the Beast and Other Classic Fairy Tales)
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Requiring caretaking and at the same time providing solace, “textiles are often mobilized in the face of trauma, and not just to provide needed garments or coverings but also as a therapeutic means of comfort, a safe outlet for worried hands, a productive channel for the obsessive working through of loss,” explains one art historian.17 Fabric is a special category of thing to people—tender, damageable, weak at its edges, and yet life-sustaining. In these distinctive features, cloth begins to sound like this singular planet we call home. Cloth operates as a “convincing analogue for the regenerative and degenerative processes of life, and as a great connector, binding humans not only to each other but to the ancestors of their past and the progeny of their future,” fiber artist Ann Hamilton has written. “Held by cloth’s hand,” she continues, “we are swaddled at birth, covered in sleep, and shrouded in death. A single thread spins a myth of origin and a tale of adventure and interweaves people and webs of communication.
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Tiya Miles (All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake)
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And yet, consider the dramatic conclusion to Valentiner’s essay. In his final sentence he highlighted two qualities above all others that made The Lacemaker a masterpiece. First, “The face of the girl is unusually pretty, as the features are smaller than in some of the artist’s other types.” Vermeer had painted a girl, in other words, who suited modern taste. In a second way, too, Valentiner noted approvingly, Vermeer had transcended the bounds of his own era. He had managed “a subtlety in the distribution of light and diffusion of color rarely to be found in the genre paintings of Holland in the seventeenth century.” It was as if Vermeer lived in the same world as twentieth-century art connoisseurs.
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Edward Dolnick (The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century (P.S.))
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He’s tall, with windblown black hair and dark brows. The line of his jaw is strong and covered by warm tawny skin and dark stubble, and when he folds his arms across his torso, the muscles in his chest and arms ripple, moving in a way that makes me swallow. And his eyes… His eyes are the shade of gold-flecked onyx. The contrast is startling, jaw-dropping even—everything about him is. His features are so harsh that they look carved, and yet they’re astonishingly perfect, like an artist worked a lifetime sculpting him, and at least a year of that was spent on his mouth. He’s
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Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1))
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He’s tall, with windblown black hair and dark brows. The line of his jaw is strong and covered by warm tawny skin and dark stubble, and when he folds his arms across his torso, the muscles in his chest and arms ripple, moving in a way that makes me swallow. And his eyes… His eyes are the shade of gold-flecked onyx. The contrast is startling, jaw-dropping even—everything about him is. His features are so harsh that they look carved, and yet they’re astonishingly perfect, like an artist worked a lifetime sculpting him, and at least a year of that was spent on his mouth.
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Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1))
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BayFestSD.com hosts the San Diego Bayfest and Mission Bayfest, premier music festivals in San Diego known for featuring top reggae and alternative rock artists. Held at scenic venues like Waterfront Park, these festivals showcase renowned acts such as Sublime, Atmosphere, and Goldfinger. Our mission is to create unforgettable experiences through well-organized events, VIP offerings, diverse food vendors, and exclusive merchandise, enriching San Diego’s cultural landscape with live music.
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Bayfest San Diego
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Kannada writing is one of the most seasoned and most extravagant scholarly customs in India, tracing all the way back to north of 1,000 years. Known for its significant narrating and graceful profundity, Kannada authors includes a great many sorts, from exemplary stories to contemporary books, verse, and social discourses. Veera Loka Books praises this heritage by offering an organized assortment of works by eminent Kannada writers, furnishing perusers with admittance to immortal stories and current points of view.
Tradition of Kannada Writing
Kannada authors has delivered a portion of India's best writers and writers, contributing fundamentally to Indian scholarly legacy. Throughout the long term, Kannada creators have investigated subjects of reasoning, otherworldliness, social change, and individual personality. Works from artists like Pampa, Ranna, and Basavanna mirror the early graceful customs and philosophical idea in Kannada, while present day creators like Kuvempu, U. R. Ananthamurthy, and S. L. Bhyrappa bring complex accounts that dig into society, culture, and the human mind.
Veera Loka Books: A Center for Kannada Writing
Veera Loka Books is committed to advancing Kannada writing by furnishing perusers with admittance to exemplary and contemporary works by acclaimed Kannada writers. From books and brief tales to verse assortments and youngsters' books, Veera Loka Books offers something for each peruser, encouraging a more profound association with the language and culture of Karnataka.
Highlighted Kannada Writers Accessible at Veera Loka Books
Kuvempu - Known as Karnataka's most memorable Jnanpith awardee, Kuvempu is commended for his verse and books that reflect profound otherworldliness and human qualities. His works, like Malegalalli Madumagalu and Sri Ramayana Darshanam, are immortal works of art that keep on moving perusers across ages.
U. R. Ananthamurthy - A focal figure in present day Kannada writing, Ananthamurthy is famous for his striking stories that question social and social standards. His original Samskara, a significant investigate of standing and conventionality, is a fundamental perused for anybody investigating Kannada writing.
S. L. Bhyrappa - Known for his point by point, philosophical narrating, Bhyrappa's books frequently tackle topics of custom, history, and existential inquiries. Works like Parva and Saartha grandstand his scholarly profundity and sharp perceptions of society.
Poornachandra Tejaswi - As the child of Kuvempu, Tejaswi cut his own specialty in Kannada writing with works that feature provincial life, nature, and human connections. His books like Karvalo offer a one of a kind viewpoint on life in Karnataka.
Vaidehi - A main female voice in Kannada writing, Vaidehi's accounts are praised for their responsiveness, particularly in portraying ladies' encounters. Her works point out the subtleties of daily existence and social issues, making them interesting and powerful.
Why Pick Veera Loka Books?
Veera Loka Books is in excess of a book shop - it's a stage to encounter the best of Kannada writing. By offering works from observed Kannada writers, Veera Loka Books assists perusers with interfacing with their social roots, find novel thoughts, and appreciate enthralling stories. Whether you're a long lasting peruser or new to Kannada writing, Veera Loka Books gives the ideal choice to begin or develop your excursion into this lively scholarly custom.
Investigate the huge universe of Kannada writing with Veera Loka Books and drench yourself in stories that mirror the essence of Karnataka.
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Kannada authors
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Preamble
The Klassik Era was a cultural and musical revolution that swept through Kenya and East Africa in the early 2010s. It was a time of bold experimentation, fearless expression, and unapologetic individuality that challenged the norms of mainstream music and culture. For the first time, young people from the ghettos and slums of Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu could see themselves represented and celebrated in the music and arts scene, and their voices and stories were given a platform like never before.
The Klassik Era was characterized by a fusion of different musical genres and styles, from hip-hop and reggae to dancehall and afro-pop, to create a sound that was uniquely Kenyan and African. It was a time when young artists and producers like Blame It On Don (DON SANTO), Kingpheezle, Jilly Beatz, Tonnie Tosh, Kenny Rush, and many others came together under Klassik Nation, a record label that would change the face of Kenyan music forever.
The Klassik Era was also marked by a sense of community and camaraderie, with young people from all walks of life coming together to support each other's art and creativity. It was a time when collaborations and features were the norm, and when artists and producers worked together to create something new and exciting.
But the Klassik Era was not without its challenges and controversies. It was a time when the Kenyan music industry was dominated by a few powerful players who controlled the airwaves and the mainstream narrative, and who were resistant to change and innovation. It was a time when artists and producers had to fight tooth and nail to get their music played on the radio and to gain recognition and respect from their peers.
Despite these challenges, the Klassik Era left an indelible mark on the Kenyan music industry and on the cultural landscape of Africa. It was a time of creativity, passion, and rebellion that inspired a generation of young people to dream big and to believe that anything was possible. This book is a tribute to that era and to the artists and producers who made it all possible.
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Don Santo (Klassik Era: The Genesis)
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Papa actually looked somewhat cool. He wore a leather jacket, sunglasses pushed up on his forehead, and an expensive cotton dress shirt untucked over jeans. Behind him was the palest non-albino human being I had ever seen. A shock of orangey blond stuck straight up from his ovoid head like a toy troll. His head was cocked upward; his smile seemed like a plastic snap-on attachment, and his features were flattened as if pressed back by an invisible stocking. Though he claimed online to be an avid weight-lifter, his body and face were doughy. Technically, he was a small person. He just had a certain genetic softness. This
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Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
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donated skeletal collection; one more skull was just a final drop in the bucket. Megan and Todd Malone, a CT technician in the Radiology Department at UT Medical Center, ran skull 05-01 through the scanner, faceup, in a box that was packed with foam peanuts to hold it steady. Megan FedExed the scans to Quantico, where Diana and Phil Williams ran them through the experimental software. It was with high hopes, shortly after the scan, that I studied the computer screen showing the features ReFace had overlaid, with mathematical precision, atop the CT scan of Maybe-Leoma’s skull. Surely this image, I thought—the fruit of several years of collaboration by computer scientists, forensic artists, and anthropologists—would clearly settle the question of 05-01’s identity: Was she Leoma or was she Not-Leoma? Instead, the image merely amplified the question. The flesh-toned image on the screen—eyes closed, the features impassive—could have been a department-store mannequin, or a sphinx. There was nothing in the image, no matter how I rotated it in three dimensions, that said, “I am Leoma.” Nor was there anything that said, “I am not Leoma.” To borrow Winston Churchill’s famous description of Russia, the masklike face on the screen was “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Between the scan, the software, and the tissue-depth data that the software merged with the
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Jefferson Bass (Identity Crisis: The Murder, the Mystery, and the Missing DNA (Kindle Single))
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The truth is there isn’t anything to me at all. All I know is that I can’t sleep well, I can’t dream well and I’m quite in love with you. That’s all there is to me. My greatest feature is my admiration for you. I know it’s not healthy. Like my insomnia. Like my dreamless nights. You make living alright. My nightmares come when I think of a night without Valeria. That’s when I realise you’re dead. That’s when I remember you’ve been gone for years. That’s when I remember I’m awake. And I wait for this dream called Life to leave me to my peace once and for all and forever.
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F.K. Preston (The Artist, The Audience, and a Man Called Nothing)
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Christmas of 1930 saw Santa Claus working for Coca-Cola. Before then he did not wear a suit and generally preferred to wear blue or green. The artist Haddon Sundblom dressed him in the company colors, bright red with white piping, and gave him the features familiar to us all. Every child’s friend has a white beard, laughs all the time, travels by sleigh, and is so plump that no one can figure out how he gets down the world’s chimneys loaded with presents and carrying a Coke in each hand. Neither
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Eduardo Galeano (Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone)
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Money Facts
The Lira was the basic unit of Italian currency from 1861, when Ital was unified, to 2002. That year, Italy adopted the euro, the currency of the European Union (EU). Today, fifteen EU states use the euro. One euro is divided into 100 cents. Bills come in values of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 euros. Coins come in values of 1 and 2 euros as well as 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cents. In 2008, US$1.00 equaled about 0.63 euros, and 1.00 euro equaled US$1.58.
On the front of each euro note is an image of a window or a gateway. On the back is a picture of a bridge. These images do not represent any actual bridges or windows. Instead, they are examples from different historical periods.
Each country designs its own euro coins. Italy chose to honor its greatest artists. Its 2-euro coin shows a portrait by the Renaissance artist Raphael. The 1-euro coin shows a drawing of the human body by Leonardo da Vinci. Other Italian coins show a statue of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Sandro Botticelli’s painting Birth of Venus. The 1-cent coin, the smallest, features Castel del Monte, a thirteenth-century castle near Bari.
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Jean Blashfield Black (Italy (Enchantment of the World Second Series))
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Try describing a few of the most wildly successful pop albums of the twentieth century without mentioning the artist and title. A concept rock album about a fictional Edwardian military band, featuring musical styles borrowed from Indian classical music, vaudeville, and musique concrete, its sleeve design including images of Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Marilyn Monroe, Carl Gustav Jung, Sir Robert Peel, Marlene Dietrich, and Aleister Crowley? That’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles, one of the biggest selling records of all time. How about a record exploring the perception of time, mental illness, and alterity? Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, which has to date sold around 45 million copies worldwide. Ask any of those 45 million who bought a copy of The Dark Side of the Moon if they thought themselves pretentious for listening to an album described by one of the band members as “an expression of political, philosophical, humanitarian empathy,” and the answer would almost certainly be no.
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Dan Fox (Pretentiousness: Why It Matters)
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Cizek had used art as the point of entry of his thinking into a whole new world of education—an avenue that had never occurred to me. He realized that children by nature are capable of real, indeed often great, art; that artistic activity is natural for them; and that adult interference in the natural development of children as artists was detrimental to that development. From that starting point, he made a leap into the entire realm of education and child development, concluding that the natural, unhindered growth of children enables them to reach their full potential as human beings, and that adult interference in general is more of a liability than an asset in this process of growth. That leap, from art to all domains of maturation, was an intuitive one for Cizek and his followers. It was not until I read the article referred to in the opening paragraph of this section that I not only gained an understanding of the real basis for Cizek’s intuitive leap, but I also achieved a new and enriching perspective on the nature of education, one that I had hitherto hardly noticed. The key is the observation that certain activities are universal, transcultural, and therefore related to the very essence of being a human. Even more significant and telling—and here once again Cizek hit upon the truth, albeit not consciously—is the fact that these same activities are engaged in by children from the earliest age, and therefore are not, indeed cannot be, the products of sociocultural influences. This places these activities in the realm of biological evolution rather than the realm of cultural history.50 And because these three activities—making music, decorating things, and talking—are the outcome of hundreds of millions of years of evolution, they must represent in and of themselves an important aspect of the exalted place humans occupy in the natural world. In other words, these activities not only represent the outcome of evolution, but they also represent important features that account for the specific place that the Homo sapiens species occupies in the natural order. To allow children—and indeed adults—to engage in these three activities to their heart’s desire is to allow them to realize their fullest potential as human beings. External interference in their exercise, although perhaps sometimes justifiable for social reasons (man is, after all, a social animal too, another aspect of evolution), always involves some diminishing of their ability to become what they by nature are inclined to be. Once this is realized, it is almost impossible to comprehend the enthusiasm with which educators and child development specialists advocate systems for coercing children, against their clear inclination and will, to curtail these activities in favor of an externally imposed adult agenda. Although there might have been some economic justification for such curtailment in the industrial age, there is no longer the slightest pretext of an advantage gained through the suppression of the natural, evolved behavior of children. In
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Russell L. Ackoff (Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track)
“
Of all the theaters I miss from the 1950’s and before, the Hudson Theatre tops the list. It was built in what was then called Union Hill, early in December 1907. It was actually known as “The Hudson Burlesque,” and it featured striptease artists such as Lili St. Cyr, Gypsy Rose Lee and Tempest Storm. Being too young to get into the theatre on my own, I usually offered an adult standing in line some money to take me in. Once inside, I would head for the front of the theatre to the fire exit on the right side of the orchestra seating. It was all prearranged with my friends waiting outside! With one kick, the door would open, allowing them to come streaming in. There were not enough ushers to catch us all, so some of us would invariably be caught and evicted; only to try and gain access again. It was all great fun! Its demise came in 1957 after the theatre owners took out the comedy acts and replaced them with more featured strippers. Society balked, arrests were made and the curtain came down!
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Hank Bracker
“
Here, this is for you," the girl said, holding out one of the pages on which she'd been drawing.
"Oh, I... well, thank you." Meg reached out and took the sketch between her fingers.
Gazing down, her eyes widened. Instead of the typical childish scribble she'd expected, she discovered two well-rendered figures. The style was a bit loose, and still immature with a tendency to distort the proportions. Even so, it was refined enough enough to have captured remarkably accurate likenesses of her and Cade seated side by side on the sofa. Esme might be only be nine years of age, but already she was an exceptional artist, better than many adults would ever hope to be.
"This is... extraordinary," Meg said.
"It's you and Cade," the girl offered, clutching a small fist against her yellow wool skirt. "Do you like it?"
"I most certainly do. How could I not? You've drawn Cade and me so perfectly. It's beautiful."
The girl's oval features came alive with a pleased smile. "Good night, Miss Amberley. I'm glad you're going to be my sister."
At a sudden loss for what she knew would never be, Meg settled on the only honest reply she could offer.
"Sweet dreams, Esme.
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Tracy Anne Warren (Tempted by His Kiss (The Byrons of Braebourne, #1))
“
We do not use writing exclusively to attain perspective upon our self-referential human existence. We dedicate our essayistic existence to witnessing the variegated acts of life. Our craniums serve as a personal planetarium, a full-dome personal theater where we can replay video and audio educational films documenting our scented and tactile observations. We feature recollections of evocative experiences, vivid daydreams, and frightful nightmares. A vast array of scientific visualizations and artistic depictions supplement our personal slideshow, knowledge we employ to frame our evolving self under the celestial sky and navigate our earthy existence.
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
The Hudson Burlesque
Of all the theaters I miss from that era, the Hudson Theatre tops the list. It was built in what was then called Union Hill, early in December 1907. We called it the Hudson Burlesque, and it featured striptease artists such as Lili St. Cyr, Gypsy Rose Lee and Tempest Storm. Being too young to get into the theatre on my own, I usually offered an adult standing in line some money to take me in. Once inside, I would head for the front of the theatre to the fire exit on the right side of the orchestra seating. It was all prearranged with my friends waiting outside! With one kick, the door would open, allowing them to come streaming in. There were not enough ushers to catch us all, so some of us would invariably be caught and evicted, only to try to gain access again. It was all great fun!
“I don't think there is such a thing as being too raunchy when it comes to the art form of burlesque.” Christina Aguilera, American singer-songwriter and actress.
From the upcoming book “Seawater One.
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Hank Bracker
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true randomness sometimes produces repetition, but when users heard the same song or songs by the same artist played back-to-back, they believed the shuffling wasn’t random. And so the company made the feature “less random to make it feel more random,” said Apple founder Steve Jobs.12 One
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Leonard Mlodinow (The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives)
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Grace leaned forward, studying him up close, able to make out some of his facial features in the clay mask: strong brow, broad cheekbones, prominent jawline and chin. As a flavorist, she was familiar with kaolin clay, a virtually tasteless edible mineral often used as an anti-caking agent in processed foods, various toothpastes, and originally kaopectate. But she'd never encountered the raw product out of the lab, and certainly not like this. She leaned closer to him.
He smelled of sediment and mostly sweat, a decidedly masculine note, the precise replication of which one could base an entire career, and then some. Even the most skilled perfumers in the world, experts in the animal secrets of civet and ambergris, couldn't get it just right. It was a human thing. And she'd studied it, androstadienone and most of the known male pheromones, and she knew the effects certain concentrates could have on certain women. She'd written the reports and seen the CT scans of activity in women's brains. Still, knowing about it intellectually and rationally did not in any way lessen what it was doing to her right now, the effect it was having on her senses and her body. 'Can he tell?' she wondered.
Lean and broad-shouldered, he had the build of a man who spent his days using his body in labor. She could see it in the way the mud set into the ridged musculature of his forearms, like the russeting across a firm apple. Still, the inner details of him escaped her. His hair was caked with dry clay, and she thought of the figures she'd seen artists craft in their hillside studios in Montmartre, with the Sacre-Coeur church on the summit above and the bawdy Moulin Rouge crowds teeming below. He looked like that, an unglazed unfinished sculpture of a man, but for his eyes, vast and deep, and very much alive, as if he were trapped inside his statued body.
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Jeffrey Stepakoff (The Orchard)
“
Fundamentals of Esperanto
The grammatical rules of this language can be learned in one
sitting.
Nouns have no gender & end in -o; the plural terminates in -oj
& the accusative, -on
Amiko, friend; amikoj, friends; amikon & amikojn, accusative
friend & friends.
Ma amiko is my friend.
A new book appears in Esperanto every week. Radio stations in
Europe, the United States, China, Russia & Brazil broadcast in
Esperanto, as does Vatican Radio. In 1959, UNESCO declared the
International Federation of Esperanto Speakers to be in accord with
its mission & granted this body consultative status. The youth
branch of the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers, UTA,
has offices in 80 different countries & organizes social events where
young people curious about the movement may dance to recordings
by Esperanto artists, enjoy complimentary soft drinks & take home
Esperanto versions of major literary works including the Old
Testament & A Midsummer Night’s Dream. William Shatner’s first
feature-length vehicle was a horror film shot entirely in Esperanto.
Esperanto is among the languages currently sailing into deep space
on board the Voyager spacecraft.
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Esperanto is an artificial language
constructed in 1887 by L.
L. Zamenhof, a polish
oculist.
following a somewhat difficult period
in my life. It was twilight & snowing on the
railway platform just outside
Warsaw where I had missed
my connection. A man in a crumpled track suit
& dark glasses pushed a cart
piled high with ripped & weathered volumes—
sex manuals, detective stories, yellowing
musical scores & outdated physics textbooks,
old copies of Life, new smut,
an atlas translated,
a grammar, The Mirror, Soviet-bloc comics,
a guide to the rivers &
mountains, thesauri, inscrutable
musical scores & mimeographed physics books,
defective stories, obsolete sex manuals—
one of which caught my notice
(Dr. Esperanto
since I had time, I traded
my used Leaves of Grass for a copy.
I’m afraid I will never be lonely enough.
There’s a man from Quebec in my head,
a friend to the purple martins.
Purple martins are the Cadillac of swallows.
All purple martins are dying or dead.
Brainscans of grown purple martins suggest
these creatures feel the same levels of doubt
& bliss as an eight-year-old girl in captivity.
While driving home from the brewery
one night this man from Quebec heard a radio program
about purple martins & the next day he set out
to build them a house
in his own back yard. I’ve never built anything,
let alone a house,
not to mention a home
for somebody else.
Never put in aluminum floors to smooth over the waiting.
Never piped sugar water through colored tubes
to each empty nest lined with newspaper shredded
with strong, tired hands.
Never dismantled the entire affair
& put it back together again.
Still no swallows.
I never installed the big light that stays on through the night
to keep owls away. Never installed lesser lights,
never rested on Sunday
with a beer on the deck surveying
what I had done
& what yet remained to be done, listening to Styx
while the neighbor kids ran through my sprinklers.
I have never collapsed in abandon.
Never prayed.
But enough about the purple martins.
Every line of the work
is a first & a last line & this is the spring
of its action. Of course, there’s a journey
& inside that journey, an implicit voyage
through the underworld. There’s a bridge
made of boats; a carp stuffed with flowers;
a comic dispute among sweetmeat vendors;
a digression on shadows;
That’s how we finally learn
who the hero was all along. Weary & old,
he sits on a rock & watches his friends
fly by one by one out of the song,
then turns back to the journey they all began
long ago, keeping the river to his right.
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Srikanth Reddy (Facts for Visitors)
“
Ritual characterizes every aspect of life here, and even mundane, daily activities take on an ageless quality. The daily rhythm begins at dawn, as the fishermen launch boats from countless harbors, an event that has taken place for centuries. The women go to market, exchanging greetings and comments. Ritual rules the care and time taken with every detail of the midday meal, from the hearty seafood appetizers to the strong, syrupy coffee that marks the end of the feast. The day winds down with the evening stroll, a tradition thoroughly ingrained in the culture of the Greek Isles. In villages and towns throughout the islands, sunset brings cooler air and draws people from their homes and the beaches for an enjoyable evening walk through town squares, portside promenades, and narrow streets.
Ancient crafts still flourish in the artisans’ studios and in tidy homes of countless mountain villages and ports. Embroidery--traditionally the province of Greek women--is created by hand to adorn the regional costumes worn during festivals. Artists craft delicate silver utensils, engraved gems, blown glass, and gold jewelry. Potters create ceramic pieces featuring some of the same decorative patterns and mythological subjects that captured their ancestors’ imagination.
Weddings, festivals, saints’ days. And other celebrations with family and friends provide a backdrop for grave and energetic Greek dancing. For centuries--probably ever since people have lived on the islands--Greek islanders have seized every opportunity to play music, sing, and dance. Dancing in Greece is always a group activity, a way to create and reinforce bonds among families, friends, and communities, and island men have been dancing circle dances like the Kalamatianos and the Tsamikos since antiquity. Musicians accompany revelers on stringed instruments like the bouzouki--the modern equivalent of the lyre.
While traditional attire is reserved mainly for festive occasions, on some islands people still sport these garments daily. On Lefkada and Crete, it is not unusual to find men wearing vraka, or baggy trousers, and vests, along with the high boots known as stivania. Women wear long, dark, pleated skirts woven on a traditional loom, and long silk scarves or kerchiefs adorn their heads. All the garments are ornamented by hand with rich brocades and elaborate embroidery. All over the Greek Isles, Orthodox priests dress in long black robes, their shadowy figures contrasting with the bright whites, blues, and greens of Greek village architecture.
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Laura Brooks (Greek Isles (Timeless Places))
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Before he stepped into the elevator, Ken stopped at the art gallery at the back of the lobby. Every few months the courthouse featured a new exhibit by a local artist.
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Block Frederic (Race to Judgment)