Posts resume 24th Sept 2012

My mom, who is 75, wants to go up to teeny tiny town near Rapid City, to see her sister, who is 80. They live in a house in the boonies and have no internet.

I'll be back online on Monday the 24th and promise not to miss another day.

Please bear with me, your patience is appreciated!

60 is the New 40

On August 10, 2012, the Cheyenne chapter of the AARP hosted a seminar called Gray Matters - which was free and provided a free lunch - unfortunately fish and cheesecake, blech - from 4 to 6 was a reception for all travelers who had come in for the AARP National Spelling Bee to be held on the 11th.

I attended that and it was a lot of fun. The emcee introduced a few folks, we talked about words, there was a "mock" spelling bee (which only consisted of about 20 people getting up and being questioned on one word...._ and so on. And there were finger foods there - Chinese food to be precise. Don't know where they got it from or if they cooked it on site (Little America is a hotel and resort where people come to play golf among other things) but it was delish.

The spelling bee started at the ungodly hour of 8:30 am (Well...8:30 is not so ungodly but I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 to get there in time for registration, etc.) It started with 4 rounds of 25 words each - which was a Written Test.

The first 25 words were extremely easy. They asked words like "Greetings" and "Navel" and "Mince." I suppose a few might have been considered difficult... "Animus" and "Lacuna."

The second 25 words were equally easy, but I did miss MUGWUMP.

I assume they did this just to help everyone settle the nerves and get new people used to what was going on. People had trouble hearing some of the words (hey, they were all over 50 and most over 60) and the Pronouncer  would come down and tell them the word face to face and have them say it back, etc. Indeed, the Pronouncer did an excellent job.

Third round was where they started asking the difficult words.

I missed:
QUESTIONARYINERCALATE
TUATARA
SKOSH
VIRIDITY
WIMBLE

The fourth round was the real killer. I only got 12 out of 25 right. I missed:

FELICIFIC
DOVEKIE
FLYTING
NAPERY
COTYLEDONARY
WELTSCHMERRZ
OPPUGNER
AECIOSPORE
SYNCYTIAL
KNUR
IRIDIUM
TUYERE
HYOSCYAMINE

I then stayed for the Oral rounds and was joined by one of my friends from my Scrabble Club. (I think an audience could have assembled for the Written rounds, too. There were chairs there and family were in them...but I think most people only wanted to come see the Oral rounds where you actually saw the speller's faces as opposed to their backs, etc.)

Two of the people I met last night at the reception made it to the Orals. One of them it was his first trip to the Bee and he was successful his first time out. Made it through about 10 rounds. (In the Orals, you miss two words and you're out.) Another one was an elderly woman from Minnesota who also got through about 10 rounds before being knocked out.

There were three sisters and a brother who had come as a sort of family reunion. The eldest sister made it to the Oral rounds but was bounced after only two rounds. This was too bad and it was because she was a bit unlucky - she got two 6-syllable words in a row while some of the others were getting much easier ones (but still, not ones I could have spelled). But she was disqualified along with several other people in the same round, so hopefully she didn't feel too bad.

The words in the Oral Rounds were extremely difficult. Several times more difficult than the toughest words in the final round of the Written.

But, had I studied for a year, I think I could have handled them.

And it is my intention to study for a year and  get into the Orals next year.

So, why is the title of this blog entry 60 is thenew 40?

Because it is.

People are living longer. You don't want to outlive your money and more importantly you don't want to outlive your sense of enjoyment of life. And learning new things every day is enjoyment and keeps the mind active.

The AARP Spelling Bee is held every year, and it gives you an excellent reason to travel to Cheyenne and see The Cowboy State. You'll meet lots of interesting people.

You do have to study.

I studied very desultorily for about a month...combine all the time I studied and it was about 10 hours. Not nearly enough, but then, I'm a good speller so the Written Rounds were relatively easy - except for that killer last round.

Why learn words that you'll never, ever say in real life?Well, because they're interesting. And the concepts of what you'll learn, you can apply in other areas. So it's a win win.

So start planning to live a long, healthy, active, intellectual life, and do it now, however old you might be!

Native American Painters: Richard Aitson

From Wikipedia:

Richard Aitson (born 1953) is a Kiowa-Kiowa Apache bead artist, curator, and poet from Oklahoma.

Background

Richard Aitson was born on December 26, 1953 in Anadarko, Oklahoma.

His mother was the Kiowa traditionalist Alecia Keahbone Gonzales (1926–2011), who taught the Kiowa language at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. Aitson's Kiowa name means "Buffalo Rider." His family has had many artistic accomplishments and he comes five generations of respected beadworkers.

Aitson attended the Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire; Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio; and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In 1976, Aitson produced documentaries for the Bicentennial Commission about Native American events. He worked at the Squash Blossom Gallery in Aspen, Colorado in 1979, which is where he first curated art shows. He has since curated many group shows, including "Winter Camp 2000" at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. He taught Native American literature at Anadarko High School and also taught at Bacone College as an Adjunct Professor of Art.

Beadwork

Aitson jumped into beadworking out of necessity. He was invited to joined the prestigious Kiowa Gourd Clan and had to learn beading to create his gourd dance regalia. Aitson describes his art as "contemporary-traditional" and he creates beaded dance regalia for the Native American community as well as bead art for fine art collectors and museums.
He is known in particular for his fully beaded, functional cradleboards, but he also makes miniature cradleboards with extremely minute beads. "I am touched by the art of the World War years and the Reservation Era because in my opinion, that is when the finest Kiowa beadwork was produced," he writes. "Quality beads and supplies were extremely scarce, yet remarkable and ingenious beadwork that bridged the ancient and the future was quietly created."

Writing

Aitson writes poems inspired by traditional Kiowa oral history. His work, as Alan Velie writes, "combines the dream vision with animism to produce striking powerful imagery. He is inspired by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

Exhibits and honors

In 1992, Aitson had a solo exhibition at the US Department of Interior's Southern Plains Indian Museum in Anadarko.His work has earned numerous awards, including the Red Earth Festival's Grand Award in 1997 and the Southwest Museum's Jackie Autry Purchase Prize in 2005.^[9] Many examples of his work are part of the permanent collection at the Sequoyah National Research Center in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The Spirit of 76

 From Wikipedia:
Archibald MacNeal Willard (August 22, 1836–October 11, 1918) was an American painter who was born and raised in Bedford, Ohio.

Willard joined the 86th Ohio Infantry in 1863 and fought in the American Civil War. During this time, he painted several scenes from the war and forged a friendship with photographer James F. Ryder. Willard painted The Spirit of '76 in Wellington, Ohio after he saw a parade pass through the town square. Willard also painted three murals in the main hall of the Fayette County courthouse in Washington Court House, Ohio: The Spirit of Electricity, The Spirit of Telegraphy, and The Spirit of the Mail.

Willard is buried in Wellington, Ohio at the Greenwood Cemetery. There is a Willard Drive in Bedford and a Willard Avenue in nearby Garfield Heights named after him.

Willard's most famous work is The Spirit of '76 (previously known as Yankee Doodle), which was exhibited at the Centennial Exposition. The original is displayed in Abbot Hall, Massachusetts, with several later variations painted by Willard exhibited around the country (including in the United States Department of State). Of note, he used his father as the model for the middle character of the painting.

I crave your indulgence

My mother's sister is visiting for three days.


My mom's deaf as a post, my dad can't be bothered to get out of his chair, so I will be doing the entertaining - the chauffeuring and the talking and the communicating - for the next three days.


So I'll be posting back here Thursday.


Thanks for your patience.

Franz Marc: Haystacks in the Snow

English: "Haystacks in the Snow," oil on canvas, by the German artist Franz Marc. 79.5 cm x 39.37 cm (31.3 in. x 39.37 in.) Courtesy of the Franz Marc Museum, Germany. Image courtesy of The Athenaeum. Date 1911(1911)

Source The Athenaeum

Salvador Dali's Atomicus

In 1941, American photographer Philippe Halsman met the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí in New York City and they began to collaborate in the late 1940s. The 1948 work Dali Atomicus explores the idea of suspension, depicting three cats flying, water thrown from a bucket, an easel, a footstool and Salvador Dalí all seemingly suspended in mid-air. The title of the photograph is a reference to Dalí's work Leda Atomica (at that which can be seen in the right of the photograph behind the two cats.) Halsman reported that it took 28 attempts to be satisfied with the result. This is the unretouched version of the photograph that was published in LIFE magazine. In this version the wires suspending the easel and the painting, the hand of the assistant holding the chair and the prop holding up the footstool can still be seen. The frame on the easel is still empty. The copyright for this photo was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office but according to the U.S. Library of Congress was not renewed, putting it in the public domain in the United States and countries which adopted the rule of the shorter term.

Salvador Dali's Persistence of Memory

The Persistence of Memory (Spanish: La persistencia de la memoria; Catalan: La persistència de la memòria) is a 1931 painting by artist Salvador Dalí, and is one of his most recognizable works. The painting has been in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City since 1934. It is widely recognized and frequently referenced in popular culture.

Description
The well-known surrealist piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch.[2] It epitomizes Dalí's theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time. As Dawn Ades wrote, "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order".[3] This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether this was in fact the case, Dalí replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert cheese melting in the sun.

Although fundamentally part of Dalí's Freudian phase, the imagery precedes his transition to his scientific phase by fourteen years, which occurred after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

It is possible to recognize a human figure in the middle of the composition, in the strange "monster" that Dalí used in several period pieces to represent himself – the abstract form becoming something of a self-portrait, reappearing frequently in his work. The orange clock at the bottom left of the painting is covered in ants. Dalí often used ants in his paintings as a symbol for death, as well as a symbol of female genitalia.

The figure in the middle of the picture can be read as a "fading" creature, one that often appears in dreams where the dreamer cannot pinpoint the creature's exact form and composition. One can observe that the creature has one closed eye with several eyelashes, suggesting that the creature is also in a dream state. The iconography may refer to a dream that Dalí himself had experienced, and the clocks may symbolize the passing of time as one experiences it in sleep.

The Persistence of Memory employs "the exactitude of realist painting techniques" to depict imagery more likely to be found in dreams than in waking consciousness.

Versions
Dalí returned to the theme of this painting with the variation The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954), showing his earlier famous work systematically fragmenting into smaller component elements, and a series of rectangular blocks which reveal further imagery through the gaps between them, implying something beneath the surface of the original work; this work is now in the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, while the original Persistence of Memory remains at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Dalí also produced various lithographs and sculptures on the theme of soft watches late in his career. Some of these sculptures are the Persistence of Memory, the Nobility of Time, the Profile of Time and the Three Dancing Watches

Franz Marc: Horse in a Landscape

Da Vinci's Notebooks: Vetruvian Man

The Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing created by Leonardo da Vinci circa 1487.[1] It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the famed architect, Vitruvius. The drawing, which is in pen and ink on paper, depicts a male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less often, Proportions of Man. It is stored in the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, Italy, and, like most works on paper, is displayed only occasionally.

The drawing is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described[4] by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise De Architectura. Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the Classical orders of architecture. Leonardo's drawing is traditionally named in honor of the architect.

Self-portrait of Rembrandt

Rembrandt's Abduction of Europa

Abduction
The mythographers tell that Zeus was enamored of Europa and decided to seduce or ravish her, the two being near-equivalent in Greek myth. He transformed himself into a tame white bull and mixed in with her father's herds. While Europa and her female attendants were gathering flowers, she saw the bull, caressed his flanks, and eventually got onto his back. Zeus took that opportunity and ran to the sea and swam, with her on his back, to the island of Crete. He then revealed his true identity, and Europa became the first queen of Crete. Zeus gave her a necklace made by Hephaestus[19] and three additional gifts: Talos, Laelaps and a javelin that never missed. Zeus later re-created the shape of the white bull in the stars, which is now known as the constellation Taurus. Some readers interpret as manifestations of this same bull the Cretan beast that was encountered by Hercules, the Marathonian Bull slain by Theseus (and that fathered the Minotaur). Roman mythology adopted the tale of the Raptus, also known as "The Abduction of Europa" and "The Seduction of Europa", substituting the god Jupiter for Zeus.

According to Herodotus' rationalizing approach, Europa was kidnapped by Minoans who were seeking to avenge the kidnapping of Io, a princess from Argos. His variant story may have been an attempt to rationalize the earlier myth; or the present myth may be a garbled version of facts — the abduction of a Phoenician aristocrat — later enunciated without gloss by Herodotus.

The Boy in the Red Vest

The Boy in the Red Vest (also known as The Boy in the Red Waistcoat) [1] is an 1894/95[2] painting (Venturi 681) by Paul Cézanne. It depicts a boy in traditional Italian attire. On February 10, 2008, the painting was stolen from Foundation E.G. Bührle in Zürich, Switzerland.[3] It was the museum's most valuable painting and is valued at $91 million.[4] The painting stolen from Zurich was recovered in Serbia on April 12, 2012[5] 4 versions of the painting exist. From the New York Times: 2 Paintings Stolen From Zurich Museum Didn’t Get Far (Feb 21, 2008)

ZURICH (AP) — A frantic search for four stolen Impressionist paintings led to a most unlikely place: the parking lot of a mental hospital just a few hundred yards from the scene of the crime. There, in the back seat of an unlocked car, a painting by Monet and another by van Gogh were found Monday in perfect condition, the authorities said Tuesday. The paintings, together worth $64 million, were still under the display glass used by the private museum from which they were stolen in a Feb. 10 armed robbery, director Lukas Gloor said. “I am incredibly relieved that two paintings have returned,” Mr. Gloor said. “We’re very happy that both the paintings are in absolutely impeccable shape.” The other paintings taken from the from the E. G. Bührle Collection — by Cézanne and Degas — remain missing, the police said. In all, the four paintings are worth an estimated $163 million. Art experts have suggested that the robbers took advantage of what appeared to be an easy target — a low-security museum — without knowing much about art or how difficult it can be to sell such well-known works. The robbers took the first four paintings they came across when they raided the museum shortly before closing on a Sunday afternoon. Although they managed to take the most valuable painting in the collection, Cézanne’s “Boy in a Red Vest,” they passed over the second most valuable picture, another Cézanne. Mr. Gloor said he suspected that the robbers abandoned the two paintings, which were the largest of the four, because their size complicated transporting them. They were discovered Monday in the back seat of a white sedan in a parking lot in front of the University Psychiatric Clinic. It was not known how long the car had been there, the police said. An employee of the clinic making a check of the lot noted the car because it was unlocked. The police sealed off the area, examined the car and hauled it away. The police had said initially that a white vehicle might have been used by the three robbers when they made their escape. The clinic is about 500 yards from the museum. The recovered paintings — Monet’s “Poppies Near Vétheuil” and van Gogh’s “Blossoming Chestnut Branches” — will be returned to the museum in the coming days, Mr. Gloor said. “But we must not forget,” he added, “that two more paintings of our collection are still missing,” including the “Boy in a Red Vest,” which is worth $91 million.

From The Guardian: Cezanne masterpiece believed recovered by Serbian police Police in Serbia believe they have recovered an impressionist masterpiece by Paul Cezanne worth at least £68m that was stolen at gunpoint in one of the world's biggest art heists four years ago, a police official has said. "We believe the painting is Cezanne's Boy in a Red Waistcoat and three suspects were detained in connection with that," said a police official. "Experts in Serbia and abroad are trying to ascertain whether the painting is an original. This painting is worth tens of millions of euros," the official added. The canvas was one of four paintings stolen from a Swiss art gallery in 2008 by a trio of masked robbers who burst in just before closing time and told staff to lay on the floor. The paintings were reportedly worth over £100m at the time and the heist was the biggest art theft in Swiss history and one of the largest in the world. The painting was stolen in 2008 from the Emil Georg Bührle gallery in Zurich, a private collection founded by a second world war arms dealer and entrepreneur. Two of the stolen canvasses, one by Claude Monet and the other by Vincent van Gogh, were recovered days later abandoned in a car, but the other two – the Cezanne and a painting by Edgar Degas, have been missing for the last four years. Cezanne's Boy in a Red Waistcoat is thought to have been painted around 1888 and depicts a boy in traditional Italian dress – a red waistcoat, a blue handkerchief and a blue belt. Three other versions of the painting are in museums in the United States. Last October, Serbian police recovered two paintings by Pablo Picasso stolen in 2008 from a gallery in the Swiss town of Pfäffikon, near Zurich. The police official said law enforcement agencies from several countries had co-operated in the investigation that led to the apparent recovery of the Cezanne masterpiece. Serbia's state prosecutor is expected to issue a statement or give a press briefing on the case later on Thursday.

Rembrandt: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee is a painting of 1633 by the Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt van Rijn that was in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, Massachusetts, United States, prior to being stolen on March 18, 1990. The painting depicts the miracle of Jesus calming the waves on the Sea of Galilee, as depicted in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is Rembrandt's only seascape. It is widely believed, because of the fourteen people in the boat, that Rembrandt painted himself in the boat along with the twelve disciples and Jesus.[1] The crewmember looking out towards the viewer of the painting has been suggested as being a self-portrait of Rembrandt.

On the morning of March 18, 1990, thieves disguised as police officers broke into the museum and stole The Storm on the Sea of Galilee and 12 other works. It is considered the biggest art theft in US history and remains unsolved. The museum still displays the paintings' empty frames in their original locations.

The Card Players, by Paul Cezanne

Painting above of "The Card Players", one of five in the series with the umbrella title "The Card Players", is the most expensive painting ever sold to date. (Note that for many years, prices fetched by paintings have been artificially inflated by billionaires wanting them for their collections, and don't necessarily reflect the merit of the piece.)

The Card Players is a series of oil paintings by the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. Painted during Cézanne's final period in the early 1890s, there are five paintings in the series. The versions vary in size and in the number of players depicted. Cézanne also completed numerous drawings and studies in preparation for The Card Players series.

Overview
The series is considered by critics to be a cornerstone of Cézanne's work during the early-to-mid 1890s period, as well as a "prelude" to his final years, when he painted some of his most acclaimed work.

Each painting depicts Provençal peasants immersed in smoking their pipes and playing cards. The subjects, all male, are displayed as studious within their card playing, eyes cast downward, intent on the game at hand. Cézanne adapted a motif from 17th century Dutch and French genre painting which often depicted card games with rowdy, drunken gamblers in taverns, replacing them instead with stone-faced tradesmen in a more simplified setting.

Whereas previous paintings of the genre had illustrated heightened moments of drama, Cézanne's portraits have been noted for their lack of drama, narrative, and conventional characterization. Other than an unused wine bottle in the two-player versions, there is an absence of drink and money, which were prominent fixtures of the 17th century genre. A painting hung in an Aix-en-Provence museum, near the artist's home, by one of the Le Nain brothers that depicts card players is widely believed to have been an inspiration for the works by Cézanne.

The models for the paintings were local farmhands, some of whom worked on the Cézanne family estate, the Jas de Bouffan. Each scene is depicted as one of quiet, still concentration; the men look down at their cards rather than each other, perhaps the cards being their sole means of communication outside of work. One critic described the scenes as "human still life", while another speculated the men's intense focus on their game mirrors that of the painter's absorption in his art.

Paintings
While there are, in total, five paintings of card players by Cézanne, the final three works were similar in composition and number of players (two), causing them to sometimes be grouped together as one version. The exact dates of the paintings are uncertain, but it is long believed Cézanne began with larger canvases and pared down in size with successive versions, though research in recent years has cast doubt on this assumption.

The largest version, painted between the years 1890-1892, is the most complex, with five figures on a 134.6 x 180.3 cm (53 × 71 in) canvas. It features three card players at the forefront, seated in a semi-circle at a table, with two spectators behind. On the right side of the painting, seated behind the second man and to the right of the third, is a boy, eyes cast downward, also a fixed spectator of the game. Further back, on the left side between the first and second player is a man standing, back to the wall, smoking a pipe and presumably awaiting his turn at the table. It has been speculated Cézanne added the standing man to provide depth to the painting, as well as to draw the eye to the upper portion of the canvas.

As with the other versions, it displays a suppressed storytelling of peasant men in loose-fitting garments with natural poses focused entirely on their game. Writer Nicholas Wadley described a "tension in opposites", in which elements such as shifts of color, light and shadow, shape of hat, and crease of cloth create a story of confrontation through opposition. Others have described an "alienation" displayed in the series to be most pronounced in this version. The painting is owned and displayed by the Barnes Foundation museum in Merion, Pennsylvania.

A more condensed version of this painting with four figures, long thought to be the second version of The Card Players, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. At 65.4 x 81.9 cm (25 3/4 x 32 1/4 in), it is less than half the size of the Barnes painting. Here the composition remains virtually the same, minus the boy, with viewers' perspective slightly closer to the game, but with less space between the figures. In the previous painting, the center player as well as the boy were hatless, whereas this version has all the men hatted. Also gone are the shelf to the left with vase and lower half of a picture frame in the center of the wall, leaving only the four pipes and hanging cloth to join the smoking man behind the card players.

The painting is brighter, with less focus on blue tones, than the larger version. X-ray and infrared studies of this version of The Card Players have shown layers of "speculative" graphite underdrawing, as well as heavy layers of worked oil paint, possibly suggesting it was the preliminary of Cézanne's two largest versions of the series, rather than the second version as historically believed. The underdrawing has also led analysts to believe Cézanne had difficulty transferring the men, previously painted individually in studies, onto one canvas.

It has been speculated Cézanne solved this "spacial conundrum" in the final three versions of The Card Players, by eliminating spectators as well as any other "unnecessary detail" and displaying only the "absolute essentials": two players immersed in their game. The scene has been described as balanced but asymmetrical, as well as naturally symmetrical with the two players being each other's "partner in an agreed opposition". The man on the left is smoking a pipe, wearing a tophat with a downcast brim, in darker, more formal clothing, seated upright; the man to the right is pipeless, in a shorter hat with upcast brim, lighter, more loosely fit clothing, and hunched over the table.

Even cards themselves are contrasting light and dark hues. In each of the two-player paintings, a sole wine bottle rests in the mid-part of the table, said to represent a dividing line between the two participants as well as the center of the painting's "symmetrical balance".

Of the three versions, perhaps the best known and most often reproduced is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. It is also the smallest at 47.5 x 57 cm (17 3/4 x 22 1/2 in). The Orsay painting was described by art historian Meyer Schapiro as "the most monumental and also the most refined" of the versions, with the shapes being simpler but more varied in their relationships. It is the most sparsely painted, and generally considered the last of the Card Players series.

There is a shift of axis to the scene, in which the player to the left is more completely in the picture, chair included, with the appearance of being nearer to u His partner to the right is cut off from the scene at his back, and the table is displayed at an angle to the plane. Critics have described a "deception of restraint" in Cézanne's use of color; gradated area of thinly applied, "priming" color used for solid forms and their appearance of structure is met with lilac and green used to "liven" the canvas, as well as the bright, deep color used on the lower half for the tablecloth. This version of the series was also part of a high-profile theft of eight Cézanne paintings from a traveling show at Aix in August 1961. The most valuable of the stolen works, The Card Players was released as a four-color postage stamp by the French government in recognition of the loss, all of which were recovered after a paid ransom several months later.

The other two-player paintings are in the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and in a private collection. In February 2012, Vanity Fair reported that the royal family of Qatar had, during 2011, purchased their version of the painting for a record 250 million USD from the private collection of Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos. The report has yet to be confirmed by outside sources.

Studies and sketches
Cézanne created a substantial number of studies and preparatory drawings for "The Card Players" series. While it had long been believed he began the series with the largest paintings and subsequently worked smaller, 21st century x-rays of the paintings as well as further analysis of preparatory sketches and studies has led some scholars to believe Cezanne used both the studies and the smaller versions of "The Card Players" to prepare for the larger canvases.

Over a dozen initial sketches and painted studies of local farm workers were made by Cézanne in preparation for the final paintings. It has been speculated his models sat for the studies rather than the finished works themselves, and the painter possibly sketched preliminary work in an Aix cafe.

Some of the studies have been well regarded as stand-alone works of their own volition, particularly the accompaniment piece "Man with a Pipe", displayed alongside "The Card Players" at the Courtauld Gallery in London. The former, along with two similar paintings of smokers undertaken in the same period, are considered by many to be some of Cézanne's most masterful portraits.

Exhibitions
In 2010-11, a joint exhibition was curated by the Courtauld Gallery in London and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to display The Card Players paintings, early studies and sketches of the series, and accompanying works. The exhibition ran in London from October 21, 2010 to January 16, 2011 and in New York from February 9, 2011 to May 8, 2011. It was described as the first exhibition devoted to the series as well as the largest collection of Cézanne's Card Players paintings to ever be exhibited together. The exhibition included the paintings owned by the Courtauld, Metropolitan, and Musée d'Orsay. The versions at the Barnes Foundation and in a private collection were displayed as prints, due to the Barnes' policy of not lending and the private collector declining to release the work.

The mini-series of men smoking pipes sometimes referred to as "The Smokers" was also included with over a dozen other studies and sketches, however a legal dispute also prevented the Hermitage Museum's version of "Man with a Pipe" from traveling to New York

The Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa (La Gioconda or La Joconde, or Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo) is a half-length portrait of a woman by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, which has been acclaimed as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world."

The painting, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, is in oil on a poplar panel, and is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. The ambiguity of the subject's expression, frequently described as enigmatic, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modeling of forms and the atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work.

Subject and title
A note by Agostino Vespucci 1503 in a book at Heidelberg University states that Leonardo was working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.

The painting's title Mona Lisa stems from a description by Giorgio Vasari: "Leonardo undertook to paint, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife...." In Italian, ma donna means my lady. This became madonna, and its contraction mona. Mona was thus a polite form of address, similar to Ma’am, Madam, or my lady in English. Though traditionally spelled "Mona" (as used by Vasari), in modern Italian, this short form of madonna is now usually spelled Monna. The title is therefore sometimes given as Monna Lisa, but this is rare in English. "Monna Lisa" is the normal spelling in modern Italian.

Vasari's account of the Mona Lisa comes from his biography of Leonardo published in 1550, 31 years after the artist's death, and which has long been the best known source of information on the provenance of the work and identity of the sitter. That Leonardo painted such a work, and its date, were confirmed in 2005 when a scholar at Heidelberg University discovered a margin note in a volume of Cicero printed in 1477. It had been written by Leonardo's contemporary Agostino Vespucci and likened Leonardo to Apelles, who is mentioned in the text.

The margin note states that Leonardo was at that time working on a painting of Lisa del Giocondo and is dated October 1503. At his death in 1525, Leonardo's assistant Salai owned a portrait named in his personal papers as la Gioconda which had been bequeathed to him by the artist. Italian for "jocund", "happy" or "jovial", La Gioconda ("the jocund one") was a pun on the feminine form of the sitter's married name Giocondo.

In French, the title La Joconde has the same meaning.

The sitter, Lisa del Giocondo, was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany and the wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. The painting is thought to have been commissioned for their new home and to celebrate the birth of their second son, Andrea.

Over the years there have been several alternative views. Some scholars have argued that Lisa del Giocondo was the subject of a different portrait, identifying at least four other paintings as the Mona Lisa referred to by Vasari. Several other individuals have been proposed as the subject of the painting including Isabella of Naples, Cecilia Gallerani, Costanza d'Avalos, Duchess of Francavilla‎, Isabella d'Este, Pacifica Brandano or Brandino, Isabela Gualanda, Caterina Sforza, and Leonardo himself. Today the consensus of art historians is that the painting depicts Lisa del Giocondo, which has always been the traditional view.

History
Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503 or 1504 in Florence, Italy. According to Leonardo's contemporary, Giorgio Vasari, "...after he had lingered over it four years, left it unfinished...." Leonardo, later in his life, is said to have regretted "never having completed a single work".

In 1516 Leonardo was invited by King François I to work at the Clos Lucé near the king's castle in Amboise. It is believed that he took the Mona Lisa with him and continued to work after he moved to France. On his death the painting was inherited, among other works, by his pupil and assistant Salai. The king bought the painting for 4,000 écus and kept it at Palace of Fontainebleau, where it remained until given to Louis XIV. Louis XIV moved the painting to the Palace of Versailles. After the French Revolution, it was moved to the Louvre, but spent a brief period in the bedroom of Napoleon in the Tuileries Palace.

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) it was moved from the Louvre to the Brest Arsenal. During World War II, the painting was again removed from the Louvre and taken safely, first to Château d'Amboise, then to the Loc-Dieu Abbey and Château de Chambord, then finally to the Ingres Museum in Montauban.

Theft and vandalism
The painting's fame was emphasized when it was stolen on 21 August 1911. The next day, Louis Béroud, a painter, walked into the Louvre and went to the Salon Carré where the Mona Lisa had been on display for five years. However, where the Mona Lisa should have stood, he found four iron pegs. Béroud contacted the section head of the guards, who thought the painting was being photographed for marketing purposes. A few hours later, Béroud checked back with the section head of the museum, and it was confirmed that the Mona Lisa was not with the photographers. The Louvre was closed for an entire week to aid in investigation of the theft.

French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who had once called for the Louvre to be "burnt down," came under suspicion; he was arrested and put in jail. Apollinaire tried to implicate his friend Pablo Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated.

At the time, the painting was believed to be lost forever, and it was two years before the real thief was discovered. Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia had stolen it by entering the building during regular hours, hiding in a broom closet and walking out with it hidden under his coat after the museum had closed. Peruggia was an Italian patriot who believed Leonardo's painting should be returned to Italy for display in an Italian museum. Peruggia may have also been motivated by a friend whose copies of the original would significantly rise in value after the painting's theft. After having kept the Mona Lisa in his apartment for two years, Peruggia grew impatient and was finally caught when he attempted to sell it to the directors of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; it was exhibited all over Italy and returned to the Louvre in 1913. Peruggia was hailed for his patriotism in Italy and served six months in jail for the crime.

During World War II, the painting was again removed from the Louvre and taken safely, first to Château d'Amboise, then to the Loc-Dieu Abbey and Château de Chambord, then finally to the Ingres Museum in Montauban. In 1956, the lower part of the painting was severely damaged when a vandal doused the painting with acid. On 30 December of that same year, a young Bolivian named Ugo Ungaza Villegas damaged the painting by throwing a rock at it. This resulted in the loss of a speck of pigment near the left elbow, which was later painted over.

The use of bulletproof glass has shielded the Mona Lisa from more recent attacks. In April 1974, a handicapped woman, upset by the museum's policy for the disabled, sprayed red paint at the painting while it was on display at the Tokyo National Museum. On 2 August 2009, a Russian woman, distraught over being denied French citizenship, threw a terra cotta mug or teacup, purchased at the museum, at the painting in the Louvre; the vessel shattered against the glass enclosure. In both cases, the painting was undamaged.

Aesthetics
Leonardo used a pyramid design to place the woman simply and calmly in the space of the painting. Her folded hands form the front corner of the pyramid. Her breast, neck and face glow in the same light that models her hands. The light gives the variety of living surfaces an underlying geometry of spheres and circles. Leonardo referred to a seemingly simple formula for seated female figure: the images of seated Madonna, which were widespread at the time. He effectively modified this formula in order to create the visual impression of distance between the sitter and the observer. The armrest of the chair functions as a dividing element between Mona Lisa and the viewer.

The woman sits markedly upright with her arms folded, which is also a sign of her reserved posture. Only her gaze is fixed on the observer and seems to welcome him to this silent communication. Since the brightly lit face is practically framed with various much darker elements (hair, veil, shadows), the observer's attraction to it is brought to even greater extent. The woman appears alive to an unusual measure, which Leonardo achieved by his new method not to draw the outlines, "mainly in two features: the corners of the mouth, and the corners of the eyes" (Gombrich), as firmly as that had been the use, before (sfumato).

There is no indication of an intimate dialogue between the woman and the observer as is the case in the Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (Louvre) painted by Raphael about ten years later, and undoubtedly influenced by the work.

The painting was among the first portraits to depict the sitter before an imaginary landscape and Leonardo was one of the first painters to use aerial perspective. The enigmatic woman is portrayed seated in what appears to be an open loggia with dark pillar bases on either side. Behind her a vast landscape recedes to icy mountains. Winding paths and a distant bridge give only the slightest indications of human presence. The sensuous curves of the woman's hair and clothing are echoed in the undulating imaginary valleys and rivers behind her. The blurred outlines, graceful figure, dramatic contrasts of light and dark, and overall feeling of calm are characteristic of Leonardo's style. Owing to the expressive synthesis that Leonardo achieved between sitter and landscape it is arguable whether Mona Lisa should be considered as a traditional portrait, for it represents an ideal rather than a real woman. The sense of overall harmony achieved in the painting—especially apparent in the sitter's faint smile—reflects the idea of a link connecting humanity and nature.

Mona Lisa has no clearly visible eyebrows or eyelashes. Some researchers claim that it was common at this time for genteel women to pluck these hairs, as they were considered unsightly. In 2007, French engineer Pascal Cotte announced that his ultra high resolution scans of the painting provide evidence that Mona Lisa was originally painted with eyelashes and with better visible eyebrows, but that these had gradually disappeared over time, perhaps as a result of overcleaning. For modern viewers the nearly-missing eyebrows add to the slightly abstract quality of the face.

There has been much speculation regarding the painting's model and landscape. For example, that Leonardo probably painted his model faithfully since her beauty is not seen as being among the best, "even when measured by late quattrocento (15th century) or even twenty-first century standards." Some art historians in Eastern art, such as Yukio Yashiro, also argue that the landscape in the background of the picture was influenced by Chinese paintings; however, this thesis has been contested for lack of clear evidence.

Conservation
The Mona Lisa has survived for more than 500 years, and an international commission convened in 1952 noted that "the picture is in a remarkable state of preservation." This is partly due to the result of a variety of conservation treatments the painting has undergone. A detailed analysis in 1933 by Madame de Gironde revealed that earlier restorers had "acted with a great deal of restraint."

Nevertheless, applications of varnish made to the painting had darkened even by the end of the 16th century, and an aggressive 1809 cleaning and revarnishing removed some of the uppermost portion of the paint layer, resulting in a washed-out appearance to the face of the figure. Despite the treatments, the Mona Lisa has been well cared for throughout its history, and although the panel's warping caused the curators "some worry", the 2004–05 conservation team was optimistic about the future of the work.

At some point in its history, the Mona Lisa was removed from its original frame. The unconstrained poplar panel was allowed to warp freely with changes in humidity, and as a result, a crack began to develop near the top of the panel. The crack extends down to the hairline of the figure. In the mid-18th century to early 19th century, someone attempted to stabilize the crack by inlaying two butterfly-shaped walnut braces into the back of the panel to a depth of about 1/3 the thickness of the panel. This work was skillfully executed, and has successfully stabilized the crack. Sometime between 1888 and 1905, or perhaps at some point during the picture's theft, the upper brace fell out. A later restorer glued and lined the resulting socket and crack with cloth. The flexible oak frame (added 1951) and cross braces (1970) help to keep the panel from warping further.

The picture is currently kept under strict, climate-controlled conditions in its bulletproof glass case. The humidity is maintained at 50% ±10%, and the temperature is maintained between 18 and 21 °C. To compensate for fluctuations in relative humidity, the case is supplemented with a bed of silica gel treated to provide 55% relative humidity.

Frame
Because the Mona Lisa's poplar support expands and contracts with changes in humidity, the picture has experienced some warping. In response to warping and swelling experienced during its storage during World War II, and to prepare the picture for an exhibit to honor the anniversary of Leonardo's 500th birthday, the Mona Lisa was fitted in 1951 with a flexible oak frame with beech crosspieces. This flexible frame, which is used in addition to the decorative frame described below, exerts pressure on the panel to keep it from warping further. In 1970, the beech crosspieces were switched to maple after it was found that the beechwood had been infested with insects. In 2004–2005, a conservation and study team replaced the maple crosspieces with sycamore ones, and an additional metal crosspiece was added for scientific measurement of the panel's warp.

The Mona Lisa has had many different decorative frames in its history, owing to changes in taste over the centuries. In 1909, the Comtesse de Béhague gave the portrait its current frame, a Renaissance-era work consistent with the historical period of the Mona Lisa. The edges of the painting have been trimmed at least once in its history to fit the picture into various frames, but no part of the original paint layer has been trimmed.

Cleaning and touch-up The first and most extensive recorded cleaning, revarnishing, and touch-up of the Mona Lisa was an 1809 wash and revarnishing undertaken by Jean-Marie Hooghstoel, who was responsible for restoration of paintings for the galleries of the Musée Napoléon. The work involved cleaning with spirits, touch-up of colour, and revarnishing the painting. In 1906, Louvre restorer Eugène Denizard performed watercolour retouches on areas of the paint layer disturbed by the crack in the panel.

Denizard also retouched the edges of the picture with varnish, to mask areas that had been covered initially by an older frame. In 1913, when the painting was recovered after its theft, Denizard was again called upon to work on the Mona Lisa. Denizard was directed to clean the picture without solvent, and to lightly touch up several scratches to the painting with watercolour. In 1952, the varnish layer over the background in the painting was evened out. After the second 1956 attack, restorer Jean-Gabriel Goulinat was directed to touch up the damage to Mona Lisa's left elbow with watercolour.

In 1977, a new insect infestation was discovered in the back of the panel as a result of crosspieces installed to keep the painting from warping. This was treated on the spot with carbon tetrachloride, and later with an ethylene oxide treatment. In 1985, the spot was again treated with carbon tetrachloride as a preventive measure. Display On 6 April 2005—following a period of curatorial maintenance, recording, and analysis—the painting was moved to a new location within the museum's Salle des États. It is displayed in a purpose-built, climate-controlled enclosure behind bulletproof glass. The renovation of the gallery where the painting now resides was financed by the Japanese broadcaster Nippon Television. About 6 million people view the painting at the Louvre each year. A charcoal and graphite study of the Mona Lisa attributed to Leonardo is in The Hyde Collection, in Glens Falls, New York.

Fame
Historian Donald Sassoon catalogued the growth of the painting's fame. During the mid-19th century, Théophile Gautier and the Romantic poets were able to write about Mona Lisa as a femme fatale because Lisa was an ordinary person. Mona Lisa "...was an open text into which one could read what one wanted; probably because she was not a religious image; and, probably, because the literary gazers were mainly men who subjected her to an endless stream of male fantasies." During the 20th century, the painting was stolen, an object for mass reproduction, merchandising, lampooning and speculation, and was reproduced in "300 paintings and 2,000 advertisements". The subject was described as deaf, in mourning, toothless, a "highly-paid tart", various people's lover, a reflection of the artist's neuroses, and a victim of syphilis, infection, paralysis, palsy, cholesterol or a toothache. Scholarly as well as amateur speculation assigned Lisa's name to at least four different paintings and the sitter's identity to at least ten different people.

Visitors generally spend about 15 seconds viewing the Mona Lisa. Until the 20th century, Mona Lisa was one among many and certainly not the "most famous painting" in the world as it is termed today. Among works in the Louvre, in 1852 its market value was 90,000 francs compared to works by Raphael valued at up to 600,000 francs. In 1878, the Baedeker guide called it "the most celebrated work of Leonardo in the Louvre". Between 1851 and 1880, artists who visited the Louvre copied Mona Lisa roughly half as many times as certain works by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Antonio da Correggio, Paolo Veronese, Titian, Jean-Baptiste Greuze and Pierre-Paul Prud'hon.

From December 1962 to March 1963, the French government lent it to the United States to be displayed in New York City and Washington, D.C. In 1974, the painting was exhibited in Tokyo and Moscow.

Before the 1962–1963 tour, the painting was assessed, for insurance purposes, as valued at $100 million; the insurance was not bought. Instead more money was spent on security. As an expensive painting, it has only recently been surpassed, in terms of actual price, by four other paintings: the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt, which was sold for $135 million, the Woman III by Willem de Kooning sold for $138 million in November 2006, and No. 5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock sold for $140 million in November 2006 and one painting from The Card Players series by Paul Cezanne sold for a record of more than $250million.

Although these figures are greater than the 1962 figure at which the Mona Lisa was valued, the comparison does not account for the change in prices due to inflation – $100 million in 1962 is approximately $720 million in 2010 when adjusted for inflation using the US Consumer Price Index.

Speculation
Although the sitter has traditionally been identified as Lisa del Giocondo, a lack of definitive evidence has long fueled alternative theories, including Leonardo's mother Caterina in a distant memory and the possibility that Leonardo used his own likeness. Other aspects of the painting that have been subject to speculation are the original size of the painting, whether it is the original, why it was painted, and various explanations for how the effect of an enigmatic smile was achieved.

Legacy
The avant-garde art world has made note of the undeniable fact of the Mona Lisa's popularity. Because of the painting's overwhelming stature, Dadaists and Surrealists often produce modifications and caricatures. Already in 1883, Le rire, an image of a Mona Lisa smoking a pipe, by Sapeck (Eugène Bataille), was shown at the "Incoherents" show in Paris. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential modern artists, created L.H.O.O.Q., a Mona Lisa parody made by adorning a cheap reproduction with a moustache and a goatee, as well as adding the rude inscription, when read out loud in French sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" literally translated: "she has a hot ass". This is a manner of implying the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and availability. This was intended as a Freudian joke, referring to Leonardo's alleged homosexuality. According to Rhonda R. Shearer, the apparent reproduction is in fact a copy partly modelled on Duchamp's own face.

Salvador Dalí, famous for his surrealist work, painted Self portrait as Mona Lisa in 1954. In 1963 following the painting's visit to the United States, Andy Warhol created serigraph prints of multiple Mona Lisas called Thirty are Better than One, like his works of Marilyn Monroe (Twenty-five Coloured Marilyns, 1962), Elvis Presley (1964) and Campbell's soup (1961–1962)

Movable Books

The term pop-up book is often applied to any three-dimensional or movable book, although properly the umbrella term movable book covers pop-ups, transformations, tunnel books, volvelles, flaps, pull-tabs, pop-outs, pull-downs, and more, each of which performs in a different manner. Also included, because they employ the same techniques, are three-dimensional greeting cards.

Pop-up types
Design and creation of such books in arts is part of paper engineering, a term not to be confused with paper engineering- the science of paper making. It is akin to origami in so far as the two arts both employ folded paper. However, origami in its simplest form doesn't use scissors or glue and tends to be made with very bendy paper, pop-ups rely on glue, scissors and stiff card. What they have in common is folding.

Transformations
Transformations show a scene made up of vertical slats. By pulling a tab on the side, the slats slide under and over one another to "transform" into a totally different scene. Ernest Nister, one of the early English children's book authors, often produced books solely of transformations. Many of these have been reproduced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Volvelles
Volvelles are paper constructions with rotating parts. An early example is the Astronomicum Caesareum, by Petrus Apianus, which was made for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles in 1540. The book is full of nested circular pieces revolving on grommets.

Tunnel books
Tunnel books (also called peepshow books) consist of a set of pages bound with two folded concertina strips on each side and viewed through a hole in the cover. Openings in each page allow the viewer to see through the entire book to the back, and images on each page work together to create a dimensional scene inside. This type of book dates from the mid-18th century and was inspired by theatrical stage sets. Traditionally, these books were often created to commemorate special events or sold as souvenirs of tourist attractions. (The term "tunnel book" derives from the fact that many of these books were made to commemorate the building of the tunnel under the Thames River in London in the mid-19th century.) In the United States, tunnel books were made for such attractions as World's Fairs and the New York Botanical Gardens.

Recently the tunnel book format has been resurrected by book artist Carol Barton and others as a sculptural book form. Artists are interested not only in the book's interior views, but also in treating the side accordions and covers as informational and visual surfaces.

History
The audience for early movable books were adults, not children. It is believed that the first use of movable mechanics appeared in a manuscript for an astrological book in 1306. The Catalan mystic and poet Ramon Llull, of Majorca, used a revolving disc or volvelle to illustrate his theories.[1] Throughout the centuries volvelles have been used for such diverse purposes as teaching anatomy, making astronomical predictions, creating secret code, and telling fortunes. By 1564 another movable astrological book titled Cosmographia Petri Apiani had been published. In the following years, the medical profession made use of this format, illustrating anatomical books with layers and flaps showing the human body. The English landscape designer Capability Brown made use of flaps to illustrate "before and after" views of his designs.

While it can be documented that books with movable parts had been used for centuries, they were almost always used in scholarly works. It was not until the 18th century that these techniques were applied to books designed for entertainment, particularly for children.

The first real pop-up books were produced by Ernest Nister and Lothar Meggendorfer. These books were popular in Germany and Britain during the 19th century.

The great leap forward in the field of pop-up books came in 1929 with the publication of the Daily Express Children's Annual Number 1 "with pictures that spring up in model form". This was produced by Louis Giraud and Theodore Brown. Four more Daily Express Annuals followed and then Giraud setup his own publishing house, Strand Publications, this produced the groundbreaking series of Bookano books. There were seventeen Bookanos before the series came to an end with the death of Giraud in 1949. In the United States, in the 1930s, Harold Lentz followed Giraud's lead with the production of the Blue Ribbon books in New York. He was the first publisher to use the term "pop-up" to describe their movable illustrations.

The next advance in the field was made by the astoundingly prolific Vojtěch Kubašta working in Prague in the 1960s. His lead was followed by Waldo Hunt in the USA with his founding of Graphics International. He and two companies he established, Graphics International and Intervisual Books, produced hundreds of pop-up books for children between the 1960s and 1990s. Although intended for U.S. audiences, these books were assembled in areas with lower labor costs: initially in Japan and later in Singapore and Latin American countries such as Colombia and Mexico. Hunt's first pop-up book was Bennett Cerf's Pop-Up Riddle Book, published by Random House as a promotion for Maxwell House Coffee and showcasing the work of humorist Bennett Cerf, who was then president of Random House.

The team of Waldo Hunt and Christopher Cerf created a total of 30 more children's pop-up books for publication by Random House, including books that featured Sesame Street characters. According to Bennett Cerf (in his book At Random), pop-up books were profitable for Random House.[2] In addition to his collaborations with Christopher Cerf at Random House, Hunt produced pop-up books for Walt Disney, a series of pop-up books based on Babar, and titles such as Haunted House by Jan Pienkowski and The Human Body by David Pelham.

Notable works
Some pop-up books receive attention as literary works for the degree of artistry or sophistication which they entail. One example is STAR WARS: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy, by Matthew Reinhart. This book received literary attention for its elaborate pop-ups, and the skill of its imagery, with the New York Times saying that "calling this sophisticated piece of engineering a 'pop-up book' is like calling the Great Wall of China a partition" The 1967 Random House publication Andy Warhol's Index, was produced by Warhol, Chris Cerf and Alan Rinzler, and included photos of celebrities together with pop-up versions of Warholesque images such as a cardboard can of tomato paste, as well as a plastic tear-out recording, an inflatable silver balloon, and other novelties.

Easter Pause

So sorry to have missed so many days of posting - unexpected family matters cropped up.

And now it's Easter, so more family matters.

Will get back on track Monday.

Thanks for your patience.

Leonardo da Vinci: part 1. Experiment

Just checking to see if these JPGS will show up in readable fashion.

Georges Braque

Violin and Candlestick

From Wikipedia
Georges Braque (13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.

Early life Georges Braque was born on 13 May 1882, in Argenteuil, Val-d'Oise. He grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father and grandfather. However, he also studied artistic painting during evenings at the École des Beaux-Arts, in Le Havre, from about 1897 to 1899. In Paris, he apprenticed with a decorator and was awarded his certificate in 1902. The next year, he attended the Académie Humbert, also in Paris, and painted there until 1904. It was here that he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia.

Fauvism
His earliest works were impressionistic, but after seeing the work exhibited by the artistic group known as the "Fauves" (Beasts) in 1905, Braque adopted a Fauvist style. The Fauves, a group that included Henri Matisse and André Derain among others, used brilliant colors to represent emotional response. Braque worked most closely with the artists Raoul Dufy and Othon Friesz, who shared Braque's hometown of Le Havre, to develop a somewhat more subdued Fauvist style. In 1906, Braque traveled with Friesz to L'Estaque, to Antwerp, and home to Le Havre to paint.

In May 1907, he successfully exhibited works of the Fauve style in the Salon des Indépendants. The same year, Braque's style began a slow evolution as he became influenced by Paul Cézanne, who had died in 1906, and whose works were exhibited in Paris for the first time in a large-scale, museum-like retrospective in September 1907. The 1907 Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne greatly affected the avant-garde artists of Paris, resulting in the advent of Cubism.

Cubism
Braque's paintings of 1908–1913 reflected his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective. He conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, seeming to question the most standard of artistic conventions. In his village scenes, for example, Braque frequently reduced an architectural structure to a geometric form approximating a cube, yet rendered its shading so that it looked both flat and three-dimensional by fragmenting the image. He showed this in the painting "House at L'estaque".

Beginning in 1909, Braque began to work closely with Pablo Picasso, who had been developing a similar style of painting. At the time Pablo Picasso was influenced by Gauguin, Cézanne, African tribal masks and Iberian sculpture, while Braque was interested mainly in developing Cézanne's ideas of multiple perspectives. “A comparison of the works of Picasso and Braque during 1908 reveals that the effect of his encounter with Picasso was more to accelerate and intensify Braque’s exploration of Cézanne’s ideas, rather than to divert his thinking in any essential way.” Braque’s essential subject is the ordinary objects he has known practically forever.

Picasso celebrates animation, while Braque celebrates contemplation. Thus, the invention of Cubism was a joint effort between Picasso and Braque, then residents of Montmartre, Paris. These artists were the style's main innovators. After meeting in October or November 1907, Braque and Picasso, in particular, began working on the development of Cubism in 1908. Both artists produced paintings of monochromatic color and complex patterns of faceted form, now termed Analytic Cubism.

A decisive time of its development occurred during the summer of 1911, when Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso painted side by side in Céret in the French Pyrenees, each artist producing paintings that are difficult—sometimes virtually impossible—to distinguish from those of the other. In 1912, they began to experiment with collage and papier collé.

French art critic Louis Vauxcelles first used the term Cubism, or "bizarre cubiques", in 1908 after seeing a picture by Braque. He described it as 'full of little cubes', after which the term quickly gained wide use although the two creators did not adopt it initially. Art historian Ernst Gombrich described cubism as "the most radical attempt to stamp out ambiguity and to enforce one reading of the picture—that of a man-made construction, a colored canvas." The Cubist style spread quickly throughout Paris and then Europe.

“ The things that Picasso and I said to one another during those years will never be said again, and even if they were, no one would understand them anymore. It was like being roped together on a mountain. ”
— Georges Braque

The two artists' productive collaboration continued and they worked closely together until the beginning of World War I in 1914, when Braque enlisted with the French Army. In May 1915, Braque received a severe head injury in battle at Carency and suffered temporary blindness. He was trepanned, and required a long period of recuperation.

Later work Braque resumed painting in late 1916. Working alone, he began to moderate the harsh abstraction of cubism. He developed a more personal style characterized by brilliant color, textured surfaces, and—after his relocation to the Normandy seacoast—the reappearance of the human figure. He painted many still life subjects during this time, maintaining his emphasis on structure. One example of this is his 1943 work, Blue Guitar, which hangs in the Allen Memorial Art Museum. During his recovery he became a close friend of the cubist artist Juan Gris.

He continued to work during the remainder of his life, producing a considerable number of paintings, graphics, and sculptures. Braque, along with Matisse, is credited for introducing Pablo Picasso to Fernand Mourlot, and most of the lithographs and book illustrations he himself created during the 1940s and '50s were produced at the Mourlot Studios. He died on 31 August 1963, in Paris. He is buried in the cemetery of the Church of St. Valery in Varengeville-sur-Mer, Normandy, whose windows he designed. Braque's work is in most major museums throughout the world.

Style
Braque believed that an artist experienced beauty "… in terms of volume, of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty [he] interpret[s] [his] subjective impression...” He described "objects shattered into fragments… [as] a way of getting closest to the object…Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space”. He adopted a monochromatic and neutral color palette in the belief that such a palette would emphasize the subject matter.

Although Braque began his career painting landscapes, during 1908 he, alongside Picasso, discovered the advantages of painting still lifes instead. Braque explained that he “… began to concentrate on still-lifes, because in the still-life you have a tactile, I might almost say a manual space… This answered to the hankering I have always had to touch things and not merely see them… In tactile space you measure the distance separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure the distance separating things from each other. This is what led me, long ago, from landscape to still-life” A still life was also more accessible, in relation to perspective, than landscape, and permitted the artist to see the multiple perspectives of the object. Braque's early interest in still lifes revived during the 1930s.

During the period between the wars, Braque exhibited a freer style of Cubism, intensifying his color use and a looser rendering of objects. However, he still remained committed to the cubist method of simultaneous perspective and fragmentation. In contrast to Picasso, who continuously reinvented his style of painting, producing both representational and cubist images, and incorporating surrealist ideas into his work, Braque continued in the Cubist style, producing luminous, other-worldly still life and figure compositions. By the time of his death in 1963, he was regarded as one of the elder statesmen of the School of Paris, and of modern art.

Israeli Art Market on the Rise

From Huffington Post: Israeli Art Market on the Rise
Temperature isn't the only thing heating up in the Middle East -- the Israeli art market is on the rise, attracting international attention. The turnover in the last decade topped $180 million, reaching an all-time high of $36 million in 2007 before the global financial crisis. Though the crisis caused a dip in revenue, signs of recovery were seen starting in the second half of 2009. That said, Israeli art can only demand modest prices, as recent auctions in Tel Aviv and London exemplify. "There's a glass ceiling in Israeli art, unfortunately ... contemporary artists cannot obtain above €50,000-60,000, and I think it will take time for these prices to rise because the market is still developing and opening," says Tel Aviv gallery owner Shiri Benartzi. Currently, Mordechai Ardon holds the Israeli art record with a hammer price of $643,200 for Timepecker.

Israeli auction house Tiroche recently held a two-part Israeli and International Art sale on January 28th and February 4th to great success. Part A saw a 88% sell through rate, and of the 315 lots sold, 199 exceeded their high estimates. The realized prices were also optimistic, with the top three lots all going to Nahum Gutman for $178,250, $149,500 (pictured above), and $126,500. Another notable achievement was realized for Lesser Ury, whose Landscape sold for $74,750 (pictured left), nearly four times its estimate.Part B also reached a similarly high sell through rate, but with much tamer bids.

Still, there would appear to be a huge difference between the auctions held abroad and those in Tel Aviv, at least when comparing Bonhams' luck to Tiroche's. Last year Bonhams teamed up with Tel Aviv auction house Montefiore to sell items at its New Bond Street location. Their latest Israeli Art and Judaica sale on February 29th concluded with less-than-successful results: of 119 lots offered, only 45 sold, mostly within their estimates. The top bid went to modern Israeli artist Reuven Rubin, at'Les Oliviers' by Reuven Rubin £91,250 for Les Oliviers (pictured right). From there prices dropped to £63,650 for Jerusalem wedding by Huvy, then fell to the £30,000 level, and steadily decreased from that point. "The Israeli market is relatively small in numbers compared to the global market," Benartzi explains. "It is estimated to be $15 million a year, which can be just one artwork sold in Sotheby's in New York; but for us, we are a relatively young country and our market is developing rather slowly."

Sotheby's and Christie's also conduct their annual Israeli art sales abroad in New York, where interest in Israeli artists seems to be growing. "We are now in the position where we have Israeli artists who are participating in international exhibitions, like for example the Venice Biennial. We had two artists, one is Sigalit Landau and the other is Yael Bartana representing Poland, which I think was never heard of, and we are getting a lot of attention from the global art market into Israel," says Benartzi.

Benartzi and Aya Shoham (pictured below right), co-owners of Art Station Gallery, have established ArtFI - the country's first ever Fine Art and Finance Conference. As gallery owners, they realized the need to expand the Israeli market andShiri Benartzi and Aya Shoham further establish the nation's art economy. "What we wanted to do is open this market to new people and explain to them what the art market is comprised of, who are the people working in it, tell them about the financial power of artworks ... We want to be the opening point for new collectors, to be the place for knowledge for people who are already in the market, and for people who work in this industry to learn about new global tendencies, to learn from the most important professionals in the art world." On the event's roster are art market experts such as Sotheby's Saul Ingram, Senior Director, Head of Business Development in Europe; the Mei/Moses Art Index founder, Prof. Michael Moses; and the CEO of Christie's Israel, Roni Gilat-Baharaff.

In general, the Middle Eastern art market has enjoyed a boost in the last few years, with major collectors and philanthropists establishing new art fairs and museums in places like Dubai, and the recent revolutionary uprisings in several countries placing the media spotlight on the region's artists. But can Israeli art be included in this genre, or does it thrive within its own bubble? "We are not part of the Middle East market because we cannot participate in it, of course," explains Benartzi. "We cannot go to Dubai, and including us in the 'Middle East' is something for foreigners more than how we look at ourselves. But because there is a lot of interest in the Middle East, Israel is gaining from this rather larger interest."

Besides the regional tensions, what is it that sets Israeli art apart from its neighbors or from Europe and the United States? "All of the artists working in Israel have a lot of interesting things to say about this place we live in, and if you would look at each and every [Israeli] artist that works internationally, the thing that bothers them comes from their background, this is the subject they are dealing with," says Benartzi. Take for example Biennial artist Yael Bartana: she created a film trilogy, inventing a story about a new political movement calling Polish Jews back to their native Poland; the rhetoric and themes mimic that of the early founders of the Israeli state,Yael Bartana, film still from and the events of the final film use several symbols to reference the murder and funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. "If I would compare art from other conflict areas, it's much more "in-your-face," Benartzi comments. "In Israeli art, you wouldn't see it in the first place, but then when you get in deeper and deeper into the subjects and learn more about the artist, you'd be surprised to learn how much this place impacts their work. So it's not in-your-face, it's much more intelligent."

Still, the art market in Israel has a long way to go to catch up to New York and London, and though the prices are rising, Benartzi is still amazed at the high quality artwork you can acquire at prices much lower than worldwide levels. "We want to raise the interest from Israel and outside of Israel. We want to explain to people the benefits of art, and how important it is for us to have a strong culture and art in order to be a stronger nation ... this is one fundamental of society and the strength of the society. You can see the new Tel Aviv Museum [expansion] and the renovation of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, they have unbelievable international collections at worldwide standards. We have a lot to be proud of, and we've reached a point where its time to say we do have a strong art economy, look what we've done here!" That's the goal of the ArtFI conference, which opens March 21st and kicks off Tel Aviv's Art Weekend. "As opposed to everything that happens in Israel, we still have a very strong spirit and we manage to do something big that does not involve anything other than art and this is the biggest achievement," exclaims Benartzi.

The Art of Video Games

From Going Out Guide (Washington, DC): The Art of Video Games
"The Art of Video Games," a technologically impressive but intellectually inert exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, belongs in a history or technology museum, not in an institution devoted to art. Despite its title, it fails to grapple with questions about the definition and boundaries of art, questions that tend to make people squeamish in a democratic society that would rather everything be art than anyone feel excluded from the realms of sanctified culture.

Which is not to say that the 40-year history of video games hasn't produced supremely sophisticated aesthetic experiences. Or that the virtual worlds summoned by designers of the best of the 80 games on display aren't every bit as "artistic" as the best scenic design for theater or the movies. Or that people can't have emotional reactions to the events within a game, though it is clear that this aspect of gaming is a work in progress rather than a fully achieved goal.

But is it in fact the case, as game designer Jenova Chen says, that "everything is an art"? Or are there important lines that demarcate entertainment and art? Exhibition curator Chris Melissinos hedges in the wall text that introduces the show: "Using the cultural lens of an art museum, viewers can determine whether the games on display are indeed worthy of the title 'art.' "

Very likely, some of these games, and even more in the future, rise to that level. But the exhibition doesn't address what distinguishes merely entertaining games from great ones, and what models designers should pursue if they want to achieve greater artistic substance.

Instead, it focuses on technology, presented as if the overriding force driving most game design is basic verisimilitude. In one display, we see basic actions - running, climbing, flying - depicted from the earliest era of design in the 1980s to the the past decade in which humans and monsters move with an almost cinematic believability. The goal of ever-improved believability is echoed in video clips featuring prominent designers and industry leaders, though several of them also stress a drive toward moral complexity.

The bulk of the exhibition is contained in two rooms, both ordered chronologically. One features five playable games that trace the gaming history from the simple but addictive graphics of the 1980 Pac-Man to the soothing and seamless experience of Chen's 2009 Flower. The other contains consoles that feature video and audio recordings devoted to particular games over five basic periods of video game history, tracing the evolution of graphics from the 1977 Atari Combat, in which players opposed each other with rudimentary, pixelated tanks, to the cinematic interactivity of Nintendo's Wii, Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360. Melissinos says his goal was to include the three "voices" of the medium, the designers, the games themselves and the players or gamers, who were invited to vote online for the games they wanted in the show.

To the extent that aesthetic issues are addressed, it is in the interplay of technology and its limitations with the almost universal ambition of designers to create more fully immersive and realistic-seeming game environments. The exhibition focuses on games created for the home market, for consoles such as the Atari, rather than the more visually complicated experience of the arcade video. And so a subtheme is the compromise and innovation forced upon designers as they downsize arcade games for the more limited graphics of machines that, for many years, used cartridges or tapes.

One obvious question, if you want to nibble around the edges of the broader debate about whether video games are art or not, is the audience's relationship to old and outdated games. No one would suggest that the Masses of the 15th-century composer Josquin des Pres offer an inferior experience to the music of the 19th-century Richard Wagner. But for the bulk of the gaming community, and for many designers presented in this exhibition, game design is about progress, about ever-new and improved products.

There is a good deal of groupthink in evidence throughout the exhibition, which was sponsored in part by the Entertainment Software Association Foundation and is being supported by the Entertainment Consumers Association. Both are nonprofits, and the latter explicitly says it isn't supported by the industry, though it often advocates for policies closely aligned with the interests of gaming manufacturers. A spokeswoman for the museum says all decisions about content were made independently of and after the involvement of the two groups.

But the layout of the exhibition stresses corporate identity rather than artistic or aesthetic themes, and the walls are covered with the trademark TM symbol and familiar brands: Nintendo, Microsoft, Mattel, Sega. The exhibition designers deserve credit for creating a manageable acoustic environment, with each console producing a limited but audible amount of sound. It's a noisy exhibition, but not cacophonous. But it also feels commercial, like a giant Apple store.

Most of the people interviewed for the exhibition stress the same themes. They are largely convinced that video games are a revolutionary moment in culture, that their future lies in narrative and emotional connection, and that the illusion of participation is what distinguishes video games from other arts.

They may all be correct in their understanding, but the exhibition needs to question it more thoroughly. If one examines the history of photography (which struggled to find an aesthetic unique from painting) and film (which worked to define itself against theater), it's not clear that simply aiming at cinematic realism is the best goal for an independent video game art. The fetish for narrative is understandable, given the close connection between gaming and the movie industry. But it's not as if we live in a society that wants for narrative experiences. If anything, we are too much inundated with narrative, from movies, television and the Web, to the point that one author has reasonably asked if we are "amusing ourselves to death."

And while the role of agency - the ability to make decisions and influence outcomes - does indeed distinguish video games from many other art forms, it's not clear that this enhances the form's aesthetic impact. Many of these games leave one with little time to actually look at what the designers have created. The dynamics of play are so absorbing that there's no role for contemplation.

Many art forms are fundamentally resistant to the kind of participation celebrated in the gaming world. The fact that you can't reach into the pages of a novel by Charles Dickens to avert disaster, or assuage the pain in a crucifixion painting from the Renaissance, or save the young courtesan from death in an opera by Verdi is part of the moral and aesthetic project of experiencing them as art. A certain kind of passivity, a submission to the artist's vision, may be essential to art. It's entirely possible that great art disempowers as much as it empowers.

Video games emerged technologically with computers, but they have equally deep roots in escapist entertainments such as science fiction and fantasy role playing (Dungeons and Dragons is cited as inspiration by several designers). The late 1970s and '80s were a time of collective anxiety about America's declining power, the collapse of our industrial economy and the emergence of new cultural and economic forces such as Japan. Video games, like role playing, may well be a compensatory response to broad feelings of impotence, hence their often obsessive focus on the illusion of agency and control over the world.

Fundamentally, there's an argument about consciousness embedded in these games, an argument that hasn't been teased out in this exhibition. In games, the world is often seen down the barrel of a gun, or as if through the window of a human-like machine moving through space. You experience these worlds from a commanding but solitary point of view, and you must actively look for things in order to see them. Actual consciousness is very different, full of distraction and peripheral data, more scattered and impressionistic than anything offered up by video games.

Not all games take the idea of control to the hyperbolic extremes of the shoot'em-up and action and adventure genera. The player is definitely steering the experience in Flower, but it's a meandering sort of power. Nor are all games relentlessly focused on narrative, and some, such as Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, revel in a visually pleasing abstraction.

But the exhibition does little to underscore what is aesthetically novel about the best games on display, opting instead for inclusiveness and a broad history of their evolution. And there is virtually nothing about the visual precedents for game design, the longer history of art that must surely be lurking in the consciousness of the best game designers. Nor are classic controversies addressed, such as racism in games including Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, or the purported and widely disputed connection between violent games and violent behavior, a perennial sideshow for opportunistic politicians but still an unsettled sociological question. If the exhibition had been less focused on including large numbers of games, and thus broad publicity for the major game companies, it might have given greater focus to the more positive trends in the industry, the greater role of women in game design, and the increased popularity of games that don't involve combat of any sort.

At the very least, one would like an exhibition that makes critical distinctions, that tells us which games are better than others, and why. What must a game do to become art? And when will the medium itself begin to look more like the art world than the entertainment industry?

I'd propose some of the following: We'll know it's art when old games are as interesting to people as new ones; when particular games play a role in changing the actual world, just as novels such as "The Sorrows of Young Werther," "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "The Jungle" altered ideas of identity and politics; when the best games are richly self-referential to an accepted canon of classic games; and when the contemplation after playing a game is more pleasing than the game itself. They may well be art, and some games may already meet some or all of those criteria - which are by no means definitive of all art.

The problem with "Video Games as Art" isn't that it can't answer these basic questions, it's that it doesn't ask them.