Large Canvas Quotes

It’s in our nature to want to watch our human frailties played out on a huge, epic canvas. Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama: fathers and sons, star-crossed lovers, warring brothers, martyred heroes. Tales that taught us the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility. It’s the everyday stuff of everyman’s life, but it’s writ large, and we love it.

Once upon a time, there was a king who ruled a great and glorious nation. Favourite amongst his subjects was the court painter of whom he was very proud. Everybody agreed this wizzened old man pianted the greatest pictures in the whole kingdom and the king would spend hours each day gazing at them in wonder. However, one day a dirty and dishevelled stranger presented himself at the court claiming that in fact he was the greatest painter in the land. The indignant king decreed a competition would be held between the two artists, confident it would teach the vagabond an embarrassing lesson. Within a month they were both to produce a masterpiece that would out do the other. After thirty days of working feverishly day and night, both artists were ready. They placed their paintings, each hidden by a cloth, on easels in the great hall of the castle. As a large crowd gathered, the king ordered the cloth be pulled first from the court artist’s easel. Everyone gasped as before them was revealed a wonderful oil painting of a table set with a feast. At its centre was an ornate bowl full of exotic fruits glistening moistly in the dawn light. As the crowd gazed admiringly, a sparrow perched high up on the rafters of the hall swooped down and hungrily tried to snatch one of the grapes from the painted bowl only to hit the canvas and fall down dead with shock at the feet of the king. ’Aha!’ exclaimed the king. ’My artist has produced a painting so wonderful it has fooled nature herself, surely you must agree that he is the greatest painter who ever lived!’ But the vagabond said nothing and stared solemnly at his feet. ’Now, pull the blanket from your painting and let us see what you have for us,’ cried the king. But the tramp remained motionless and said nothing. Growing impatient, the king stepped forward and reached out to grab the blanket only to freeze in horror at the last moment. ’You see,’ said the tramp quietly, ’there is no blanket covering the painting. This is actually just a painting of a cloth covering a painting. And whereas your famous artist is content to fool nature, I’ve made the king of the whole country look like a clueless little twat.

She always imagined that evil played out on a large canvas- wars, concentration camps, gas chambers, the partitioning of nations. Now she realized that evil had a domestic side, and its very banality protected it from exposure.

Each miracle writes for us in small letters something that God has already written, or will write, in letters almost too large to be noticed, across the whole canvas of Nature.

Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter "repented," changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again. That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.

There are always a few bored audience members at an opera, especially by the time act four comes along. Those particular eyes would be wandering around the hall, searching for something, anything, interesting to watch. Those eyes would land on the little demon downstage right, unless they were distracted. Right on cue, a large stage lamp broke free of its clamp in the rigging and swung on its cable into the back canvas. [...] On his way though the lobby minutes later, Artemis was highly amuse to overhear several audience members gushing over the unorthodox direction of the opera's final scene. The exploding lamp, muse one buff, was doubtless a metaphor for Norma's own falling star. But no, argued a second. The lamp was obviously a modernistic interpretation of the burning stake that Norma was about to face. Or perhaps, thought Artemis as he pushed through the crowd to find a light Sicilian mist falling on his forehead, the exploding lamp was simply an exploding lamp.

Sand as far as the eye can see, between the last hills and the sea -- the sea -- in the cold air of an afternoon almost past, and blessed by the wind that always blows from the north. The beach. And the sea. It could be perfection -- an image for divine eyes -- a world that happens, that's all, the mute existence of land and water, a work perfectly accomplished, truth --truth -- but once again it is the redeeming grain of a man that jams the mechanism of that paradise, a bagatelle capable on its own of suspending all that great apparatus of inexorable truth, a mere nothing, but one planted in the sand, an imperceptible tear in the surface of that sacred icon, a minuscule exception come to rest on the perfection of that boundless beach. To see him from afar he would be no more than a black dot: amid nothingness, the nothing of a man and a painter's easel. The easel is anchored by slender cords to four stones placed on the sand. It sways imperceptibly in the wind that always blows from the north. The man is wearing waders and a large fisherman's jacket. He is standing, facing the sea, twirling a slim paintbrush between his fingers. On the easel, a canvas.

To a High Grade who has lived long enough, the past is just a tiny pixel in a large, high-resolution canvas.

The canvas is on the easel now, as large and white as a sheet that has never been slept in. My paintings have become larger and larger as I have grown older. As a young painter you are overwhelmed by the complexity of your subject. Every crease, every dimple, is an equally startling revelation. It’s like your first girl. You don’t understand her. You can only copy her – hesitantly. Later you become shamelessly yourself. You create in your image – as nearly life-size as possible.

Recently I've been working very hard and quickly; in this way I try to express the desperately fast passage of things in modern life. Yesterday, in the rain, I painted a large landscape with fields as far as the eye can see, viewed from a height, different kinds of greenery, a dark green field of potatoes, the rich purple earth between the regular rows of plants, to one side a field of peas white with bloom, a field of clover with pink flowers and the little figure of a mower, a field of tall, ripe, fawn-coloured grass, then some wheat, some poplars, on the horizon a last line of blue hills at the foot of which a train is passing, leaving an immense trail of white smoke over the greenery. A white road crosses the canvas, on the road a little carriage and some white houses with bright red roofs alongside a road. Fine drizzle streaks the whole with blue or grey lines.

In the forest, while the others settled the baskets and dishtowels under the trees, Jacques helped Michel rub down the horses and fasten around their necks the gray-brown canvas nose bags, in which the horses chomped their jaws, opening and closing their large brotherly eyes or chasing away a fly with an impatient hoof.

Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will how through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter "repented," changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again. That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged now and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.

I should think of the universe as a giant painting rendered in more than three dimensions; some scientists say eleven, some say fewer, some say more, but no one knows—or will ever know—for sure. In an art gallery, when you stand too close to a large canvas executed in only two dimensions, you can see the artist’s brushstrokes and certain details clearly, but you can’t understand either the full effect of the piece or the artist’s intentions. You have to step back and step back again, and sometimes yet again, in order to grasp the totality of the work. To understand the universe, our world, and all life in the world, you have to step out of time, which for living humanity is not an option, because we are a part of this painting, characters within it, able to perceive it only as a continuing series of events, episodes. However, because we are conscious creatures with the gift of reason, we can seek and learn and extrapolate from what we learn, and conceive the truth.

Ashman had caught sight of a large unframed canvas leaning against a wall, and stumbled toward it to bend down and take a closer look. His expression twisted with confusion, then disgust. “It’s perverse, your obsession with capturing ugliness so beautifully.

It was a painting of a wolf pack prowling toward the front of the canvas. All five wolves were highly detailed. Each different from the next. At the center a large wide black wolf with blue eyes showed its fangs. To his right, a tall lean gray and brown wolf that was built for speed. Next to him, a tan and white wolf that had a more playful look on its face. To the left of the black wolf was a gray one, tall, majestic, certain. Next to him was another dark gray wolf with haunted eyes. It was the best painting I’d ever done.

Aomame established several classes in her best area, women’s self-defense techniques. She made a large canvas dummy in the shape of a man, sewed a black work glove in the groin area to serve as testicles, and gave female club members thorough training in how to kick in that spot. In the interest of realism, she stuffed two squash balls into the glove. The women were to kick this target swiftly, mercilessly, and repeatedly. Many of them took special pleasure in this training, and their skill improved markedly, but other members (mostly men, of course) viewed the spectacle with a frown and complained to the club’s management that she was going overboard.

Memories are peculiar...You think the past is there, all fixed and stable, but it is really chock full of surprises and endlessly susceptible to change...So maybe it is true that we are constantly rewriting our past; they are not something fixed and unchangeable for all time. There is a basic structure, of course, a canvas stretched across boards, which cannot be remodeled at will, but the surface of that canvas can be shaded, rearranged, touched up, continually worked on to correspond to the needs of the present. In fact, the present moment is largely the focal point from which you shape the direction of your future and juggle the implications of your past.

Aomame established several classes in her best area, women’s self-defense techniques. She made a large canvas dummy in the shape of a man, sewed a black work glove in the groin area to serve as testicles, and gave female club members thorough training in how to kick in that spot. In the interest of realism, she stuffed two squash balls into the glove. The women were to kick this target swiftly, mercilessly, and repeatedly. Many of them took special pleasure in this training, and their skill improved markedly, but other members (mostly men, of course) viewed the spectacle with a frown and complained to the club’s management that she was going overboard. As a result, Aomame was called in and instructed to rein in the ball-kicking practice

To admirers and students of Anthony Trollope, the interest of this play, now printed for the first time and from the original manuscript, is out of all proportion to its artistic qualities. So far as is known, Trollope wrote only two plays during the prolific five and thirty years of his life of authorship. The genre was uncomfortable to him. It limited his elbow-room and forbade him the subtle accumulation of detail that was his genius. He liked a large canvas and a crowded one. Unrivalled as a manipulator of interdependent groups and individuals, he loved to sustain the interest and vitality of half a dozen societies, weaving them into one absorbing narrative. The more one reads his novels, the more one marvels at the skill with which he takes the reader from one set of characters to another; at the knowledge of human nature that enabled him to present so many personalities from so many walks of life; at the technique that could keep each individual distinct, and at the same time each group of individuals generically alike.

At least she was good at archaeology, she mused, even if she was a dismal failure as a woman in Tate’s eyes. “She’s been broody ever since we got here,” Leta said with pursed lips as she glanced from Tate to Cecily. “You two had a blowup, huh?” she asked, pretending innocence. Tate drew in a short breath. “She poured crab bisque on me in front of television cameras.” Cecily drew herself up to her full height. “Pity it wasn’t flaming shish kebab!” she returned fiercely. Leta moved between them. “The Sioux wars are over,” she announced. “That’s what you think,” Cecily muttered, glaring around her at the tall man. Tate’s dark eyes began to twinkle. He’d missed her in his life. Even in a temper, she was refreshing, invigorating. She averted her eyes to the large grass circle outlined by thick corded string. All around it were make-shift shelters on poles, some with canvas tops, with bales of hay to make seats for spectators. The first competition of the day was over and the winners were being announced. A woman-only dance came next, and Leta grimaced as she glanced from one warring face to the other. If she left, there was no telling what might happen. “That’s me,” she said reluctantly, adjusting the number on her back. “Got to run. Wish me luck.” “You know I do,” Cecily said, smiling at her. “Don’t disgrace us,” Tate added with laughter in his eyes. Leta made a face at him, but smiled. “No fighting,” she said, shaking a finger at them as she went to join the other competitors. Tate’s granitelike face had softened as he watched his mother. Whatever his faults, he was a good son.

In the first place, this is a history of Europe’s reduction. The constituent states of Europe could no longer aspire, after 1945, to international or imperial status. The two exceptions to this rule—the Soviet Union and, in part, Great Britain—were both only half-European in their own eyes and in any case, by the end of the period recounted here, they too were much reduced. Most of the rest of continental Europe had been humiliated by defeat and occupation. It had not been able to liberate itself from Fascism by its own efforts; nor was it able, unassisted, to keep Communism at bay. Post-war Europe was liberated—or immured—by outsiders. Only with considerable effort and across long decades did Europeans recover control of their own destiny. Shorn of their overseas territories Europe’s erstwhile sea-borne empires (Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal) were all shrunk back in the course of these years to their European nuclei, their attention re-directed to Europe itself. Secondly, the later decades of the twentieth century saw the withering away of the ‘master narratives’ of European history: the great nineteenth-century theories of history, with their models of progress and change, of revolution and transformation, that had fuelled the political projects and social movements that tore Europe apart in the first half of the century. This too is a story that only makes sense on a pan-European canvas: the decline of political fervor in the West (except among a marginalized intellectual minority) was accompanied—for quite different reasons—by the loss of political faith and the discrediting of official Marxism in the East. For a brief moment in the 1980s, to be sure, it seemed as though the intellectual Right might stage a revival around the equally nineteenth-century project of dismantling ‘society’ and abandoning public affairs to the untrammelled market and the minimalist state; but the spasm passed. After 1989 there was no overarching ideological project of Left or Right on offer in Europe—except the prospect of liberty, which for most Europeans was a promise now fulfilled. Thirdly, and as a modest substitute for the defunct ambitions of Europe’s ideological past, there emerged belatedly—and largely by accident—the ‘European model’. Born of an eclectic mix of Social Democratic and Christian Democratic legislation and the crab-like institutional extension of the European Community and its successor Union, this was a distinctively ‘European’ way of regulating social intercourse and inter-state relations. Embracing everything from child-care to inter-state legal norms, this European approach stood for more than just the bureaucratic practices of the European Union and its member states; by the beginning of the twenty-first century it had become a beacon and example for aspirant EU members and a global challenge to the United States and the competing appeal of the ‘American way of life’.

Stupendous carnage was painted on the canvas, A depiction of repulsion was executed around the structure. It revealed its dark emblem by painting its sinister Red. Three intertwined bloated eyes are encrusted together, awfully deformed - the horrendous stench of decay can be smelt from it, for it exudes a sulfurous aroma of rotting animals. A torn torso of a butchered rabbit laid on the eye sockets, with all its arms, legs, and head severed off. A sludge-like, bubbling, dripping fluid oozed from the abnormally large eyes, leaving the ground deserted to rust and becoming the midst of a terrible famine. Blood Gushes from the slashes of each hideous eye, gouging out gore from the torn skin, spluttering and erupting gasping cries as it struggles in its own twisted misery of giving birth, as it was preparing to give shape-shifting life to a black-glass body, horn-like entity, unlike any childbirth you have ever witnessed. Satanic was this creature, whose muscle mass was disintegrated. All of his blood was squeezed out, forlorn and cold to the touch. The thorns on his head were intertwined into horns. A serpent's nose and wolf-like fangs were all this child had, as he had no gift of sight or hearing, he had only the smell of terror as his power.

I placed the tubes of paint on the palette and selected a small canvas. I prepared the palette with an assortment of colors, then closed my eyes, remembering the way the moors had looked when I rode into town with Lord Livingston. He'd been so different on that drive into the village before he left for London. Had that been the side of him that Lady Anna had fallen in love with? I dipped my brush into the black paint and then mixed in some white until I'd created the right shade of gray, then touched the brush to the canvas. I loved the feeling of the paintbrush in my hand. He'd been kind to buy me the art supplies, but I remembered how he'd behaved in the dining room and at other times before that. 'How could he be so cruel, so unfeeling?' Once I'd painted the clouds, I moved on to the hills, mixing a sage green color for the grass and then dotting the foreground with a bit of lavender to simulate the heather. I stepped back from the canvas and frowned. It needed something else. But what? I looked out the window to the orchard. The Middlebury Pink. 'Who took the page from Lady Anna's book? Lord Livingston?' I dabbed my brush into the brown paint and created the structure of the tree. Next I dotted the branches with its heart-shaped leaves and large, white, saucer-size blossoms with pink tips.

Early on as news of the sextuple execution in Fort Smith spread, rooted itself in the umber soil of the western Indian Nations, and grew inthe the solid stalk of legend, the men whom Marshal Fagan appointed to swell the judge's standing army abanddonded the practice of introducing themselves as deputy U.S. marshals. Instead, when they entered the quarters of local law enforcement officers and tribal policemen to show their warrants, they said: "We ride for Parker." Sometimes, in deference to rugged country or to cover ground, they broke up and rode in pairs or singles, but as the majority of the casualties they would suffer occurred on these occasions, they formed ragged escorts around stout little wagons built of elm, with canvas sheets to protect the passengers from rain and sun for trial and execution. With these they entered the settlements well behind their reputations. The deputies used Winchesters to pry a path between rubbernecks pressing in to see what new animals the circus had brought. Inside, accused felons, rounded up like stray dogs, rode in manacles on the sideboards and decks. At any given time-so went the rumor-one fourth of the worst element in the Nations was at large, one fourth was in the Fort Smith jail, and one fourth was on its way there in the 'tumbleweed wagons.' "That's three-fourths," said tenderheels "What about the rest?' "That fourth rides for Parker.

In the seven weeks that it took for Longwood to be refurbished and extended, Napoleon stayed at a pretty bungalow called The Briars, closer to Jamestown, with the family of the East India Company superintendent William Balcombe, where he had one room and a pavilion in their garden.66 This period was his happiest on St Helena, not least because he struck up an unlikely, charming and innocent friendship with the second of the Balcombes’ four surviving children, Betsy, a spirited fourteen-year-old girl who spoke intelligible if ungrammatical French and to whom Napoleon behaved with avuncular indulgence. She had originally been brought up to view Napoleon, in her words, as ‘a huge ogre or giant, with one large flaming eye in the centre of his forehead, and long teeth protruding from his mouth, with which he tore to pieces and devoured little girls’, but she very soon came to adore him.67 ‘His smile, and the expression of his eye, could not be transmitted to canvas, and these constituted Napoleon’s chief charm,’ she later wrote. ‘His hair was dark brown, and as fine and silky as a child’s, rather too much so indeed for a man as its very softness caused it to look thin.’68 The friendship began when Napoleon tested Betsy on the capitals of Europe. When he asked her the capital of Russia she replied, ‘Petersburg now; Moscow formerly’, upon which ‘He turned abruptly round, and, fixing his piercing eyes full in my face, he demanded sternly, “Who burnt it?” ’ She was dumbstruck, until he laughed and said: ‘Oui, oui. You know very well that it was I who burnt it!’ Upon which the teenager corrected him: ‘I believe, sir, the Russians burnt it to get rid of the French.’69 Whereupon Napoleon laughed and friendship with ‘Mademoiselle Betsee’, ‘lettle monkee’, ‘bambina’ and ‘little scatterbrain’ was born.

Ah, my dear friend Hassim, seems our paths cross once again, how fortunate for this humble Sheik.” As Abdullah spoke in his usual self deprecating manner I realized that a favor was on the tip of his tongue and that I was about to be offered a quid-pro-quo. We were sitting crossed legged on large fat pillows with gold fringe. The tent was large with partitions dividing living, sleeping and cooking space. It was made from heavy cotton canvas erected on thick poles in the center giving the structure a peaked circus tent appearance. The women serving us were young, wearing harem pants low on their hips with cropped gauze tops made from sheer silk. Their exposed midriffs were flat and toned, their belly buttons were decorated in precious stones that glittered in the torch light as they moved. They were bare footed with stacks of gold ankle bracelets making the only sound we heard as they kept our glasses filled with fresh sweet tea and our communal serving trays piled high with dates and sugar incrusted sweets of undetermined origin. Abdullah took no notice of these women, his nonchalance intrigued me as I was obviously having trouble keeping my mind focused on the discussion at hand, this was all part of the Arab way, when it came to negotiation they had no peers. “So my dear friend, tell me, the region is on fire is there a solution?” I spoke in a deliberate and flat tone, little emotion just concern, one friend to another. “We were shocked by the American response in Egypt and Libya, never had we seen them move so fast with such efficiency. The fall of Gadaffi was unexpected and Mubarak’s fate stunned us; he had been a staunch supporter of the US in this region we fully expected the Obama administration to prop him up one more time, as they had done so many times in the past.” I looked carefully at Abdullah,

went off, without waiting for serving men, and unsaddled my horse, and washed such portions of his ribs and his spine as projected through his hide, and when I came back, behold five stately circus tents were up—tents that were brilliant, within, with blue, and gold, and crimson, and all manner of splendid adornment! I was speechless. Then they brought eight little iron bedsteads, and set them up in the tents; they put a soft mattress and pillows and good blankets and two snow-white sheets on each bed. Next, they rigged a table about the centre-pole, and on it placed pewter pitchers, basins, soap, and the whitest of towels—one set for each man; they pointed to pockets in the tent, and said we could put our small trifles in them for convenience, and if we needed pins or such things, they were sticking every where. Then came the finishing touch—they spread carpets on the floor! I simply said, "If you call this camping out, all right—but it isn't the style I am used to; my little baggage that I brought along is at a discount." It grew dark, and they put candles on the tables—candles set in bright, new, brazen candlesticks. And soon the bell—a genuine, simon-pure bell—rang, and we were invited to "the saloon." I had thought before that we had a tent or so too many, but now here was one, at least, provided for; it was to be used for nothing but an eating-saloon. Like the others, it was high enough for a family of giraffes to live in, and was very handsome and clean and bright-colored within. It was a gem of a place. A table for eight, and eight canvas chairs; a table-cloth and napkins whose whiteness and whose fineness laughed to scorn the things we were used to in the great excursion steamer; knives and forks, soup-plates, dinner-plates—every thing, in the handsomest kind of style. It was wonderful! And they call this camping out. Those stately fellows in baggy trowsers and turbaned fezzes brought in a dinner which consisted of roast mutton, roast chicken, roast goose, potatoes, bread, tea, pudding, apples, and delicious grapes; the viands were better cooked than any we had eaten for weeks, and the table made a finer appearance, with its large German silver candlesticks and other finery, than any table we had sat down to for a good while, and yet that polite dragoman, Abraham, came bowing in and apologizing for the whole affair, on account of the unavoidable confusion of getting under way for a very long trip, and promising to do a great deal better in future! It is midnight, now, and we break camp at six in the morning. They call this camping out. At this rate it is a glorious privilege to be a pilgrim to the Holy Land.

To paint after nature is to transfer three-dimensional corporeality to a two-dimensional surface. This you can do if you are in good health and not colorblind. Oil paint, canvas, and brush are material and tools. It is possible by expedient distribution of oil paint on canvas to copy natural impressions; under favorable conditions you can do it so accurately that the picture cannot be distinguished from the model. You start, let us say, with a white canvas primed for oil painting and sketch in with charcoal the most discernible lines of the natural form you have chosen. Only the first line may be drawn more or less arbitrarily, all the others must form with the first the angle prescribed by the natural model. By constant comparison of the sketch with the model, the lines can be so adjusted that the lines of the sketch will correspond to those of the model. Lines are now drawn by feeling, the accuracy of the feeling is checked and measured by comparison of the estimated angle of the line with the perpendicular in nature and in the sketch. Then, according to the apparent proportions between the parts of the model, you sketch in the proportions between parts on the canvas, preferably by means of broken lines delimiting these parts. The size of the first part is arbitrary, unless your plan is to represent a part, such as the head, in 'life size.' In that case you measure with a compass an imaginary line running parallel to a plane on the natural object conceived as a plane on the picture, and use this measurement in representing the first part. You adjust all the remaining parts to the first through feeling, according to the corresponding parts of the model, and check your feeling by measurement; to do this, you place the picture so far away form you that the first part appears as large in the painting as the model, and then you compare. In order to check a given proportion, you hold out the handle of your paintbrush at arm's length towards this proportion in such a way that the end of the thumbnail on the handle coincides with the other end of the proportion. If then you hold the paintbrush out towards the picture, again at arm's length, you can, by the measurement thus obtained, determine with photographic accuracy whether your feeling has deceived you. If the sketch is correct, you fill in the parts of the picture with color, according to nature. The most expedient method is to begin with a clearly recognizable color of large area, perhaps with a somewhat broken blue. You estimate the degree of matness and break the luminosity with a complimentary color, ultramarine, for example, with light ochre. By addition of white you can make the color light, by addition of black dark. All this can be learned. The best way of checking for accuracy is to place the picture directly beside the projected picture surface in nature, return to your old place and compare the color in your picture with the natural color. By breaking those tones that are too bright and adding those that are still lacking, you will achieve a color tonality as close as possible to that in nature. If one tone is correct, you can put the picture back in its place and adjust the other colors to the first by feeling. You can check your feeling by comparing every tone directly with nature, after setting the picture back beside the model. If you have patience and adjust all large and small lines, all forms and color tones according to nature, you will have an exact reproduction of nature. This can be learned. This can be taught. And in addition, you can avoid making too many mistakes in 'feeling' by studying nature itself through anatomy and perspective and your medium through color theory. That is academy.

These portraits were extraordinary enough, but dominating the whole room was a painting the like of which I’d never seen before, of a small girl, perhaps four or five years old, encased in a stiff satin dress as wide as a table at the hips, very strange on a child. Las Meninas, it was called, which means The Maids of Honour, and sure enough the princess was surrounded by courtiers, a nun, a finely dressed female dwarf and a small boy, or perhaps he was another dwarf, prodding a dog with his foot. To the left, a painter with a comically Spanish moustache – a likeness, I supposed, of Velázquez himself – stood in front of a huge canvas, facing out as if he was painting not the little girl but the viewer, specifically me, Douglas Timothy Petersen, the illusion so convincing that I wanted to crane around the canvas to see what he’d made of my nose. A mirror on the back wall showed two other figures, the girl’s parents I guessed, Mariana and Philip IV, the large-chinned gentleman on the wall to my left. Despite being distant and blurred, it seemed that they were the true subject of the artist’s portrait, but nevertheless the artist, the little girl, the female dwarf all seemed to stare out of the painting at me with such level intensity that I began to feel rather self-conscious, and confused, too, as to how a painting could have so many subjects: the little princess, the ladies in waiting, the artist, the royal couple, and me. It was as disorientating as the moment when you step between two mirrors and see infinite versions of yourself stretching into, well, infinity. Clearly there was ‘a lot going on’ in this painting too, and I’d return with Albie soon.

She swallowed hard, feeling like a stroke of paint on a canvas far too large for her to comprehend.

MYTH-1: Handmade items are costly! The items are modest yet the commitment of the craftsmen behind the items we offer is costly The vast majority of the cycles engaged with making the item are finished by the creator – the plan, however, the choice of the materials, the working out of how to cause the materials to go together, gathering the item, capturing the item, advertising the item, planning the bundling, and posting, conveying, or action selling. In spite of this, the items that the fasten organization offers you are truly sensible. Haven't viewed our list? here you go! (click here) Have you ever discovered such wonderful hand-made items at such modest rates?? I GUESS NOT! MYTH-2: HAND-MADE PRODUCTS ARE NOT STYLISH On the off chance that you believe that way, I have an inquiry for you – did your grandmother convey such a shopping pack when went out to get for food supplies or did she have such telephone and individual embellishment sacks? Certainly not. The crafted works are not, at this point unfashionable or old-fashioned. Actually, they are intended for pioneers. Simply being an aspect of the pattern and following it has neither rhyme nor reason. Be the person who sets it MYTH-3: HANDMADE GOODS ARE OF POOR QUALITY I can't envision how individuals have such misguided judgment. The machine-made merchandise is to some degree bargained with quality. In any case, with regards to hand made items, they are taken well consideration of by the craftsmen as referenced above, there is no trade-off with the quality. They are made of cotton and jute which are solid and strong. They are lightweight and simple to deal with. MYTH-4: THEY ARE SAME OLD PATTERNS You can't quit lecturing about the handcrafted items which are extremely extraordinary as it will never be equivalent to some other the explanation being that they are delivered by the hands of a craftsman and not a machine. The sack so made is a result of devotion, love, energy, and the enthusiasm to serve the client. Individuals love block prints due to the strong and straightforward plans that can be made, yet that effortlessness finds a way to accomplish. The strategy is brilliant for pictures with only a couple of tones and fewer subtleties however can be hard to use for pictures with bunches of little content, or extremely fine subtleties that will, in general, sever the square with such a large number of employments. One of the benefits of square printing is that it very well may be done on a surface of practically any size and surface. I print on texture, paper, canvas, wood, and different materials, and you don't need to stress over fitting it through a printer or a press. MYTH-5: HANDMADE PRODUCTS ARE NOT LONG LASTING Recollect the last cowhide sack you had? Which lost its covering not long after getting wet in a downpour or subsequent to utilizing it for 3-4 times. That is not the situation with hand-made cotton packs. They are launderable which makes it look clean with each utilization. No problem with the upkeep.

A single dot on a canvas is not a painting and a single bet cannot resolve a complex theoretical dispute. This will take many questions and question clusters. Of course it’s possible that if large numbers of questions are asked, each side may be right on some forecasts but wrong on others and the final outcome won’t generate the banner headlines that celebrity bets sometimes do. But as software engineers say, that’s a feature, not a bug. A major point of view rarely has zero merit, and if a forecasting contest produces a split decision we will have learned that the reality is more mixed than either side thought. If learning, not gloating, is the goal, that is progress.

It was as large as a chicken’s egg. An ornate letter ‘S’, inlaid with many small green stones, glinted dully in the diffused light shining through the tent’s canvas roof.

The column of flames coming from the dragon wasn’t as large as its mother’s had been, but it was enough to do some damage. The fire latched onto the sails first, and the canvas quickly began to burn. Flaming bits of sail and parts of the mast started to fall onto the deck of the ship, and then my breath caught in my chest when I saw the open barrels of black powder scattered around the cannons. Those fucking idiot orcs. “Oh, shi--

Originally the Indians made their tepees of buffalo hides, but since the destruction of the buffalo herds by the white man, domestic cow hides have been used, as well as canvas. New buffalo-hide tepee covers were made every spring. The size of the tepee depended somewhat on the number of horses the tribe or family had, because it required several horses to transport a large tepee. The poles were made of lodgepole pine, cedar, spruce, or any other straight tree. Flexible poles were not used. The poles averaged about 25 feet in length and tapered from 4 to 1 inch in diameter. In warm weather the lower part of the tepee was raised up on the poles to allow the breeze to blow through. In cold weather the space around the bottom between the stakes and the ground was packed with sod to hold it down tightly and to keep out the snow and drafts. When the tepee was new it was nearly white. But by spring, the smoke and the weather had darkened it at the top and the skins became quite transparent. At night the campfires made the tepees look like large Japanese lanterns. On the Great Plains the wind is usually from the west and for that reason the tepees were set up with the smoke hole facing the east. The flaps, or smoke hole ears, as they are called, were used to control the drafts and to keep the wind from blowing down the smoke hole. In case of a storm they could be lapped over to close the smoke hole completely.

You still talk to your horses.” I jerked and Sackett shifted, not liking the spike of energy that shot through me or the fact that my fingers had yanked at his mane. Moses stood silhouetted in the barn door, holding what looked to be a large canvas in his hand. I hadn’t realized I was still talking to Sackett, and I did a quick examination of what I’d just said. I believe I had just uttered an embarrassing rant on Moses not being allowed in Georgia. Oh, Lord, I prayed fervently, you can make the blind man see and the deaf man hear, so it shouldn’t be too much to ask to make this man forget everything he’s just seen and heard. “What does Sackett think about those new, stricter laws in Georgia?” I looked up at the rafters, “Hey, thanks for comin’ through for me, Lord.

The whole place is now beginning to close down. At some of the booths the flares have been extinguished, and the occupants are busy packing up their wares and taking down their tents and wooden stalls. Huge vans have appeared upon the scene, and men in shirt sleeves are busily engaged in packing them. We accost a small dirty youth and ask him if the fair is moving. ‘We’ll be on the road in twa hours,’ he replies briefly. ‘What a life!’ ejaculates Tony. ‘Aye, it’s a fine life,’ echoes the boy. ‘Ye get seeing the wurrld in a fair.’ All mystery has departed from the fortune teller’s tent; it is merely a heap of dirty canvas. A large, fat woman with greasy black hair, and a red shawl pinned across her inadequately clad bosom, is dancing about with a flaming torch in her hand, directing operations in a shrill shrewish voice. ‘Guthrie’s sybil!’ says Tony sadly. ‘I’m afraid we’ve stayed too long at the party.’ ‘I think it is rather fun,’ I reply. ‘I like seeing things that I’m not meant to see

Make it large', life is a canvas. You can paint it to be 'a dot' or masterpiece it to be 'the universe

INSIDE OF MY KISS   Drawing my fingers and hands down from the lower portion of her neck passed her stomach I kiss her once more. Gradually guiding her hands down my chest with our fingers partly intertwined I drag them all the way down in an oily residue that slides like warm agave. I watch as her eyes soften, her mouth becoming the place for my lips to escape to. Little spatters of paint graze our legs and feet as she desperately tries to find refuge inside of my kiss, our bodies soon becoming one. Naked and partially covered in paint we move across the floor over a large piece of canvas that captures every stir and motion. As paint and sweat smear across this surface giving memory to our intense romance an organic and spontaneous masterpiece is made. Again I surrender myself inside of her breathtaking kiss that warms me. Smudged into this colorful muck our love is made once again and to a tune that never grows tired. Here in this place where time stands still there is nothing that can take the place of this bond and this passion that continues to become more with each kiss. Taken by the instinctive beauty of solicitude we now lead each other in poetic faith. Inside the splendor of each breath and each kiss do we make all that there is to make, our love only intensifying within each passing moment.

By early afternoon the Carpathia had passed the last of the ice and could begin to pick up speed, but at 4:00 p.m its engines were stopped. Father Anderson then appeared on deck in his clerical garb, followed by Carpathia crewmen carrying four corpses sewn into canvas bags. These were the bodies of two male passengers, one fireman, and one seaman, that had been brought aboard from the lifeboats. Each of the canvas bags in turn was laid on a wide plank and covered with a flag. As the words “Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the deep” were read aloud, the bodies were tipped into the sea one at a time. A large crowd stood nearby with heads bared. The canvas bags had been weighted so that the bodies would fall feet first but one of them struck the water flat. A Carpathia passenger wrote that he would never forget the sound of that splash. One of those buried at sea was first-class passenger William F. Hoyt, the heavy man who had been pulled into Boat 14 and died shortly thereafter. When May Futrelle learned that a large man had been lifted into one of the lifeboats, she questioned the crew of Boat 14 but soon realized that the man they described could not have been her husband. She also heard that Archibald Gracie had been pulled under with the ship and worked up her courage to ask him if he had suffered as he was being dragged down. Gracie reassured her that if he had never come up, he would have had no more suffering, giving May some comfort that perhaps Jacques had not endured an agonizing death. That afternoon Charles Lightoller had a serious talk with the three other surviving officers, Pitman, Boxhall, and Lowe, about what lay ahead. It was agreed that their best hope for escaping what Lightoller called “the inquisition” that awaited in New York was to immediately board the Cedric, scheduled to sail for Liverpool on Thursday. Their case was taken to Bruce Ismay who sent a message to Philip Franklin suggesting that the Cedric be held for the Titanic’s crew and himself. Ismay also asked that clothes and shoes be put on board for him. The cable was signed “Yamsi,” his coded signature for personal messages.

Suzanne began to work prolifically. She took familiar subjects: nudes, her maid Catherine, her dogs, and flowers – the beauty of which she had now come to appreciate. She also began work on a large canvas, The Moon and the Sun and the Brunette and the Blonde (1903).24 Her painting reflected her altered state of mind.

If you have recently purchased your RV, then do make a mistake by just storing it in the storage unit. Also, you should choose the right storage units like RV storage Daphne AL. It is important to prepare your RV before storing it. Here, we have described some steps that your need to follow before sending your RV into hibernation mode. You should follow the below-mentioned tips to keep your RV safe during the winter season: 1. Completely Winterize Water System The large-size RVs have washing machines, ice machines, dishwashers, etc. You need to follow some extra water system winterization steps. You should drain off all the appliances and make sure that not even a single unit is left behind. You should ensure that antifreeze reaches all the faucets. This tip will prevent your pipes from cracking. 2. Remove Batteries You should disconnect the batteries because the winter season can damage these as well. You should store the fully charged batteries in a dry and warm spot. Never store your battery on a concrete floor. Otherwise, you will get a dead battery at the end of the season. Choose the storage unit with a climate control facility like storage units Daphne AL so that your batteries do not drain out. 3. Apply Wax Coating You should protect the exterior of your RV by applying a wax coating. First of all, clean the exterior while checking the cracks, and patch the crack with sealant. Finally, apply the layer of wax to it. 4. Clean And Dry Your Awning You should clean and dry the awning while thoroughly cleaning the exterior of the RV during wax application. You will be able to complete two steps in one go. It is very important to ensure that the fabric of the awning is completely dry so that there would be no mold formation. Finally, send the RV to the closed storage unit like storage Daphne AL A similar rule applies to the pop-up or fold-out trailers with canvas sidings.

This canvas of human prehistory is distinctively modern. The renowned theorist of culture W. J. T. Mitchell once remarked that dinosaurs are the quintessential modernist animal, since in Shakespeare’s time no one knew such creatures had ever existed. In a similar way, until quite recently most Christians assumed anything worth knowing about early humans could be found in the Book of Genesis. Up until the early years of the nineteenth century, ‘men of letters’ – scientists included – still largely assumed that the universe did not even exist prior to late October, 4004 BC, and that all humans spoke the same language (Hebrew) until the dispersal of humanity, after the fall of the Tower of Babel sixteen centuries later.1 At that time there was as yet no ‘prehistory’. There was only history, even if some of that history was wildly wrong. The term ‘prehistory’ only came into common use after the discoveries at Brixham Cave in Devon in 1858, when stone axes, which could only have been fashioned by humans, were found alongside remains of cave bear, woolly rhinoceros and other extinct species, all together under a sealed casing of rock. This, and subsequent archaeological findings, sparked a complete rethinking of existing evidence. Suddenly, ‘the bottom dropped out of human history.

I glance down at my body, tempted to poke at my hips. I find it funny how every single thing in this world reminds me of art. A large canvas is still a pretty one.

It is seventeen years since she sailed slowly up the Mekong, in a slow boat with canvas awning, to Savannakhet, a large clearing in the virgin forest-land, surrounded by grey rice fields. At night, clusters of mosquitoes on mosquito nets. He cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, picture her at twenty-two, sailing up the Mekong. He cannot picture that face as a young face. He cannot imagine the eyes of an innocent girl seeing what she can see now. He is walking more slowly now. It is already too hot. Gardens everywhere on this side of the town. The funeral scent of oleanders. The land of oleanders. He never wants to see those flowers again. Never. Not anywhere. He had too much to drink last night. He drinks too much. There is a dull ache in the back of his neck. His stomach is queasy. The pink oleanders melt into the pink sky at dawn. The piled-up heaps of lepers scatter and spread. He thinks of her. He tries to think of her, nothing but her: a girlish figure seated on a couch, overlooking a river. She is gazing in front of her, no, he cannot see her, she is lost in the shadows. He can only see her surroundings: the forest, the Mekong river. A crowd of about twenty people has gathered in the metalled road. She is ill. At night she weeps, and it is thought that the best thing would be to send her back to France. Her family are alarmed. They never stop talking. They talk too much, too loudly. Wrought-iron gates in the distance, sentries in khaki uniform. Already they are guarding her, as she will be guarded for the rest of her life. It would be a relief to everyone if she would give vent to her boredom in an angry outburst. It would not surprise them if she were to collapse before their eyes, but no, she is still sitting silently on her couch when Monsieur Stretter arrives, and carries her away in his official launch. He told her: 'I shall leave you in peace. You are free to return to France whenever you wish. You have nothing to fear.' And all this, when he, he, Charles Rossett–he stops in his tracks–oh! he, at this period of Anne-Marie Stretter's life, was no more than a child.

1908 was also the year in which Picasso bought his first picture by Henri Rousseau: this was a very large canvas, the portrait of Yadwigha, a kind Polish schoolmistress. “It obsessed me from the moment I saw it,” he told Florent Fels. “I was walking along the rue des Martyrs. A second-hand dealer had piles of canvases all along the front of his shop. A head stuck out, a woman’s face with a hard look … French penetration, clarity, decision. A huge canvas. I asked the price. ‘Five francs,’ said the dealer, ‘You can paint over it.’ It is one of the most revealing French psychological portraits.

Back in the ’70s, the only way I encountered cauliflower was boiled to hell and drenched with a butter or cheese sauce. Worse, to me as a kid, raw cauliflower looked kind of like brains. After those early cauliflower traumas, I wasn’t in a hurry to give it a second chance. But proper cooking techniques can elevate this seemingly mundane vegetable to the culinary heights it deserves. Cauliflower is insanely delicious when it is roasted so its edges go all crispy and caramelized and it tastes mysteriously rich and complex. I’m keeping it simple and mostly unadorned here, but I love that cauliflower is a great canvas on which you can improvise with all sorts of flavors: I often add a bit of anchovies or raisins or grated lemon zest. Serves 4 Scant ½ cup extra virgin olive oil 4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled 4 spring onions or large scallions, trimmed and chopped 1 medium head cauliflower or Romanesco (about 2 pounds), cored and broken into florets ½ teaspoon fine sea salt Freshly ground black pepper 6 bay leaves, preferably fresh 1 cup white wine 1 lemon A small handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves, torn Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Add the garlic and cook just until it starts to color, a minute or so, then add the spring onions and cook until you can smell the aromatics, another minute or so. Add the cauliflower and season with the salt and pepper to taste. Then let the cauliflower just sit, without stirring, for 5 minutes. You want to get some great, deep color on it, and that’s how you do it—no stirring. After 5 minutes, check the underside of a cauliflower piece. Nice and browned? Great.

Nature morte à la chaise cannée,” in which he glued a piece of oilcloth that imitated chair-caning to an oval canvas; then over and around it he painted some ordinary café objects—a glass and a sliced lemon, severely analysed, a newspaper with the first three letters of Journal large and plain, a trompe-l’oeil pipe-stem. The result, which he framed with rope, is a bewildering array of different realities at a variety of levels, fused into a whole by some magic peculiar to Picasso: it is also the very first of all the collages and the forerunner of what the theorists, though neither Picasso nor Braque, were to call synthetic Cubism.

I was being transported through the air in a large canvas sack by a gargoyle, fleeing a crew of invading creatures, beside a black alicorn ridden by a vampire.

We were disappointed that we had not been able to find any survivors on the sunken ships, but after six days of sounding, we were sure no one was alive within them. While our diving crews were occupied sounding the ships and freeing the USS Tennessee, the shipyard constructed two diving barges, each one twenty feet wide and thirty feet long. Buoyancy was provided by three cylindrical pontoons. Wooden planks formed the deck, while corrugated sheet metal on the roof provided protection from the elements. A long pipe spanned the upright stanchions along the side of one barge, which provided an area to hang the divers’ rubberized canvas dresses. Along the opposite side were hangers for the four sets of lifelines and air hoses. A large workbench was situated in the middle of the barge. Installed at one end was a wooden diving ladder that led down to the water four feet below. Next to the ladder was a table that held the diving telephone equipment. Four dressing stools were neatly stacked near the table.

In The Archangel Raphael Leaving Tobias' Family, Rembrandt leaves dirt on the shadowed soles of Raphael's feet as he flies off, illuminated in glory. Passing by the painting, one sees the dramatic action, the melodramatic emotions, and the re-created narrative events of the Bible. Slowed down a bit, the viewer sees light across a large muscular calf, a strong and sharply shaped ankle, and then dirty feet. The angel who tells us he only pretended to eat - this to explain away all traces of his apparent earthliness as a fallen creaturely being - is here on the canvas with dirty feet, carrying soil, the created, to the creator. Van Gogh had rightly said there are mysteries in these paintings. They are mysteries of device and design, not of messianic significance. They require a docent and not a priest, a creative critic to guide the view of specific images, not a guardian of mysteries and master of their enigmatic authority. Dirty feet on the soles of an archangel famous for his annunciations give the viewer a point of view on the inescapably human nature of the narrated God. Raphael may no eat. He may believe he creates an illusion to satisfy the religious desire for mythological consistency, but even archangels deceive themselves as well as others. Humans sometimes do the same in inventing the transcendence they need or think they want - creating a regime from which the priestly classes rule, even theorizing the alienation of the divine. Deceit is an essential device of cultural adaptation. It constructs needed beliefs that at high and low levels of thought or action complement their existence with modes of self-defense, which protect them from not only needed analysis but also the importance of failure.

That this woman talking to him had large, melting brown eyes and long brown hair the color of a doe’s, on a face meant for an artist’s canvas, all attached to a nifty little compact body that could tempt the gods meant nothing. She was insane.

the shadows. “Why do you think they invented chess?” “He’s got you there,” said the captain, following Fletcher. Jake jogged slightly to catch up as Captain Chenoweth continued. “These guys are exactly who we need to get you to your destination. They’ve got contacts throughout the area, and we should be able to slip through without anyone even knowing we’re coming.” “But why should anyone care?” Captain Chenoweth pointed back the way they’d come, toward the coastal village. “Those people down there didn’t know us, but they were ready to kill you. Now, no matter what started this little conflict, don’t think for a second anyone here cares which side you’re on. In their eyes America is their enemy, and they’re likely to kill us all simply to vent their frustration. Either that, or they’ll capture us and hold us for ransom – maybe do what those wannabe terrorists did and chop our heads off, posting it on the internet for shits and giggles. We’re not sitting in your little ivory bubble anymore. Highly polished principles won’t wash well here.” The words felt like a slap in the face. “You think I’m that naive?” he eventually mustered after an awkward pause. Captain Chenoweth gave a short whistle, and the SEAL team dropped back from their defensive positions, jogging up the short hill and clambering into the rear of one of the virtually invisible trucks. “I think it’s time to go, sir.” And with that simple statement, Captain Chenoweth relayed volumes to Jake, who nodded silently and walked toward the large truck, its back tray covered by a canvas roof stretched over a high, metal frame. Jake saw the SEAL team seated alongside Fletcher and three of his men, two bench-seats running the length of the tray. He climbed awkwardly into the back of the truck as its engine roared to life. The tray reeked of livestock; the musky scent of animal feces mixed with grass or hay and wet fur. Jake gagged, but otherwise remained silent, still stinging from the captain’s indirect rebuke. Complaining of the stench would only serve to lower him further in their esteem. Captain Chenoweth climbed in alongside

There are large and stately studios, panelled and high, in strong stone houses filled with gleaming brass and polished oak. There are workaday studios – summer perching-places rather than settled homes – where a good north light and a litter of brushes and canvas form the whole of the artistic stock-in-trade. There are little homely studios, gay with blue and red and yellow curtains and odd scraps of pottery, tucked away down narrow closes and adorned with gardens, where old-fashioned flowers riot in the rich and friendly soil. There are studios that are simply and solely barns, made beautiful by ample proportions and high-pitched rafters, and habitable by the addition of a tortoise stove and a gas-ring. There are artists who have large families and keep domestics in cap and apron; artists who engage rooms, and are taken care of by landladies; artists who live in couples or alone, with a woman who comes in to clean; artists who live hermit-like and do their own charing. There are painters in oils, painters in water-colours, painters in pastel, etchers and illustrators, workers in metal; artists of every variety, having this one thing in common – that they take their work seriously and have no time for amateurs.

The local market The local village or town market is often open-air, with canvas-covered stalls. The traders sell a variety of goods, from salami and prawns (shrimps) to feather dusters and straw hats. The customers meet to exchange news and talk about local affairs. This market, with a nut stall in the foreground, is in a village near Rome. Supermarkets are gradually becoming more common in large Italian towns, as they are in other European countries.

Maruti was called upon to take a difficult decision soon after the first bookings had been made. The pick-up truck, a purely commercial vehicle that was part of the original project along with the 800 and the van, got a very poor response—bookings of just 2,000. In the project report, the pick-up truck was expected to account for 20 per cent of total production. The booking response showed that the customers did not want this vehicle, and manufacturing it in small volumes would not be viable. The company realized it had made a serious error of judgement in not recognizing that petrol-driven commercial vehicles could never compete with diesel-driven ones, as the government-determined price of diesel was much lower than petrol. SMC had estimated that the pick-up truck would be very successful because of good experience in other Asian countries. In Pakistan, it was used for rural transport, after being fitted with a canvas top, and sold in large numbers. However, India had a vehicle called the Tempo, which carried a load slightly more than the pick-up truck and ran on diesel. The highly value-conscious Indian customers immediately realized that the pick-up truck would always lose out to the Tempo, because of the Tempo’s lower operating costs. Realizing that the truck would be a failure, Maruti decided to drop its production and to write off the costs incurred till then in tooling and other related activities. This experience was a reminder to Maruti on the importance of correctly assessing the behaviour of Indian customers, and the dangers of transferring experience of other countries to India, without careful examination.

feeling like a stroke of paint on a canvas far too large for her to comprehend.

In the first place, this is a history of Europe’s reduction. The constituent states of Europe could no longer aspire, after 1945, to international or imperial status. The two exceptions to this rule—the Soviet Union and, in part, Great Britain—were both only half-European in their own eyes and in any case, by the end of the period recounted here, they too were much reduced. Most of the rest of continental Europe had been humiliated by defeat and occupation. It had not been able to liberate itself from Fascism by its own efforts; nor was it able, unassisted, to keep Communism at bay. Post-war Europe was liberated—or immured—by outsiders. Only with considerable effort and across long decades did Europeans recover control of their own destiny. Shorn of their overseas territories Europe’s erstwhile sea-borne empires (Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal) were all shrunk back in the course of these years to their European nuclei, their attention re-directed to Europe itself. Secondly, the later decades of the twentieth century saw the withering away of the ‘master narratives’ of European history: the great nineteenth-century theories of history, with their models of progress and change, of revolution and transformation, that had fuelled the political projects and social movements that tore Europe apart in the first half of the century. This too is a story that only makes sense on a pan-European canvas: the decline of political fervor in the West (except among a marginalized intellectual minority) was accompanied—for quite different reasons—by the loss of political faith and the discrediting of official Marxism in the East. For a brief moment in the 1980s, to be sure, it seemed as though the intellectual Right might stage a revival around the equally nineteenth-century project of dismantling ‘society’ and abandoning public affairs to the untrammelled market and the minimalist state; but the spasm passed. After 1989 there was no overarching ideological project of Left or Right on offer in Europe—except the prospect of liberty, which for most Europeans was a promise now fulfilled. Thirdly, and as a modest substitute for the defunct ambitions of Europe’s ideological past, there emerged belatedly—and largely by accident—the ‘European model’. Born of an eclectic mix of Social Democratic and Christian Democratic legislation and the crab-like institutional extension of the European Community and its successor Union, this was a distinctively ‘European’ way of regulating social intercourse and inter-state relations. Embracing everything from child-care to inter-state legal norms, this European approach stood for more than just the bureaucratic practices of the European Union and its member states; by the beginning of the twenty-first century it had become a beacon and example for aspirant EU members and a global challenge to the United States and the competing appeal of the ‘American way of life’.

…on the large white canvas…was refracted the life-size apparition of a very pretty and quite young red-haired woman. The vision, transparent flesh, miraculously photochrome, was dancing.…The movements had the quality of flow of Life itself, thanks to the process of serial photography which, on a six-yard- long ribbon, can capture ten minutes of the motions of a being on microscopic glass-slides, later reflected back through a powerful lamposcope.…Suddenly a flat and heavy voice, silly and harsh resounded.…The gestures, gazes, lip movements…were reproduced.