királypuccsnak

Taking advantage of the quiet ahead of Easter with the Diet not in session and the regent installed by the Allies Miklós Horthy settled in for a long weekend at the palace, former king and last Hapsburg Austro-Hungarian emperor Karl I. (IV. Károly) attempted on this day in 1921 to retake the throne, encouraged by royalists and his close entourage.

la pista automobilistica

Completed in 1923, this historical aerial photograph of the Lingotto building in Turin once housed the automotive factory of Fiat, with raw materials uniquely loaded on the ground floor and the assembly line moving up a helix of five storeys for completion with finished models emerging on a rooftop test track. Production of cars was eventually mothballed in 1982 but Renzo Piano redesigned the complex, preserving its character and race track—seen in the original 1969 heist movie The Italian Job—as a corporate headquarters and multipurpose centre with a hotel and convention space.

gleichgewicht

The 1989 animated short (Trickfilm) by twin brothers Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein Balance won an Academy Award in that category for the following spring’s Oscars, on this day in 1990. Five individuals confined to a floating platform must cooperate lest their world tips over, complicated by the introduction of a mysterious, heavy chest. The Lauensteins have gone on to work on feature length animation and commercial works including station idents for MTV.

7x7

a tree grows in brooklyn: a map of New York’s great perennials  

no wine before its time: an interview with the director of Orson Welles’ infamous commercial for Paul Masson’s California champagne  

foley artists: the talented individuals who help make supplemental sounds for nature documentaries  

what level of wood panelling is this: McMansion Hell yearbook 1979—previously  

riding the rails: the portfolio of Wang Fuchun (RIP), celebrated photographer best known for capturing the narrative train travel  

schwarzschild radius: the Event Horizon Telescope—previously—takes another picture of the black hole  

hempire state: New York poised to legalise cannabis

churchapella

Charting at number one this week in 1989 and holding that top position for both UK and US singles, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” from her eponymous studio album, a collaboration with Patrick Leonard and Prince, was described as an introspective song, one track on a record of confessionals. Use of religious imagery was controversial at the time and Pope John Paul II urged the faithful to boycott the artist as well as Pepsi who sponsored her concert tour.

the penitent thief

As opposed to the impertinent thief to his left who challenges Jesus to save them both and prove that he is the Christ, the condemned robber to his right named by the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (see previously) as Dismas asks that Jesus remember him in heaven. To the latter, Jesus replied “Amen I say to you today you will be with me in Paradise,” who venerated with a feast on this day in the Roman Martyrology and on Good Friday itself in the Eastern Orthodox Church and is the patron of the incarcerated, especially those sentenced for death, and the contrite.

beep, beep—I’m a sheep

Not to cast aspersions on the artist, only the medium which potentially threatens to undo what progress we’ve made on being better stewards of the environment and recommodifies green-washing and all its attendant woes, we were delighted to come across this Beeple Generator—via Waxy—but definitely will not be trying to pass it off as some NFT worth millions and compounded with every trade. Though is anything stopping us?  What do you think? Of course billionaires swapping priceless works of art amongst each other, deprived of seeing the light of day—see previously—earns a commission in the transaction and taking a photograph of a work of art hanging in a gallery doesn’t diminish its value for the museum but rather enhances it but something very different is going on with this interpretation of ownership and identity.