artistique apparu

Having later significant influence on contemporaries like Edward Hopper, born this day in 1881 (†1946) Léon Spilliaert, graphic artist and Symbolist painter, spent his formative years sketching the Belgian countryside. The autodidact was able to ply his talents as a career and was commissioned to illustrate anthologies of short-fiction in a Brussels journal that published writers in the same genre, which channelled the gothic components from Romanticism and Impressionism to form a distinct visual and poetic movement in France, Belgium and Russia. Before moving on to executing his own works with studies in landscapes, coastal scenes and brooding dreamscapes Spilliaert especially enjoyed illustrating the works of the representative writers of the movement, Paul Verlaine and Edgar Allan Poe.

daft gif

Via the always excellent Everlasting Blört, we are treated to the award-winning and widely-featured artwork of Katy Daft. Her animations and illustrations are not only addressing the Zeitgeist but recount narratives of acceptance, positivity and growth. More to explore at the links above.

dunandunate

Thanks to expanded cabinet of curiosities of our faithful chronicler, we not only pick up a bit new of vocabulary to add to our quiver, we also learn that among other projects mellowing at Oxford English Dictionary’s laboratory there is a growing compilation of non-words (see also)—submissions that did not quite make the cut for inclusion under one criteria or another.
The titular term is one file kept in a rather clandestine and unpublished repository of words that may yet see the light of day—like the spork and skort or freegan and locavor that’s now in common-parlance—refers to the overuse of a word or phrase that has recently been acquired into the speaker’s own range. Other failed words of note include polkadodge, the dance that two people engage in when trying to pass one another but move in the same direction, or from circa 1993, a vidiot, a term to describe someone inept at programming a VCR. The entire list, however, remains a guarded secret. I am not privy to the terms etymology of course but reminds me of the overwhelming and parroted amount of times the phrase “done and dusted” came up in the media a few years back.

merrie melodies

Under the supervision of Tex Avery (though credited as ‘Fred,’ see previously here and here), the animated short A Wild Hare was released and shown in cinemas in the United States on this day in 1940. The cartoon features hunter Elmer Fudd and admonishing theatre audiences with his signature line and features the first official appearance of his nemesis Bugs Bunny—also employing the catch-phrase “What’s up, Doc?”

vita panteleímon

Sharing his feast day with the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus and counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers in Western traditions—as one of the Holy Unmercenary Healers in Orthodox contexts, meaning that he did not expect or accept payment for his services, Saint Pantaleon (from the Greek Παντελεήμων for all-compassionate, *275 - †305) was one of the personal physicians to Roman Emperor Galerius who was won over to the church by a local bishop that taught faith was the better medicine.
Finding himself invested with miraculous healing powers, Pantaleon evangelised and eventually drew out the ire of his chief patient, who ordered him put to death, calling his miracles trickery. His executioners employed various means of torture to him, including nailing his hands to his head, which mostly backfired until giving up the ghost himself. He is venerated across Europe—especially in Italy where he is said to furnish lottery numbers in the dreams of winners and as the target of gentle ridicule San Pantaleone is the origin of the word pantaloons and associated slap-stick. After the mutiny was suppressed, the Russian Imperial battleship Potemkin was reflagged as the Panteleimon—Пантелеи́мон.

7x7

you gotta eat them plums: an arcade version of William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just to Say” (see previously)—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links

op art: more on the Hungarian-French artist Victor Vasarely (see previously, born Győző Vásárhelyi, *1906 – †1997) whose work informed the movement

earth for scale: ESA solar probe finds new “campfire” phenomena on the Sun

manhatta: a 1921 short considered America’s first avant-garde experiment set to the verse of Walt Whitman

slob serif: awful typefaces (not this one) for awful protests—via Memo of the Air

primary pigments: more colour stories (see also) from Public Domain Review

hasta la pasta: the history behind linguini, fusilli and every variety in between

e.o. 9981

Though unable to yet influence the country as a whole, on this day in 1948 US president Harry S. Truman was able to impel social justice forward with his issuance of an executive order (see previously) the culmination of years of struggle and advocacy that was finally heeded and which abolished discrimination on the basis of “race, colour, religion or national origin” in the armed forces and led to the end of segregation in the military for the Korean War and thereafter.

dum spiro spero

The global observance of Esperanto Day (Esperanto-Tago, see previously) falls on this the anniversary of the publication of the first book (Unua Libro) in the constructed auxillary language by author, activist and linguist Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof in Russia in 1887 under the pseudonym Doctor Esperanto. Before the end of the year, there were also Polish, French and German versions of this grammar which attempted to resolve international problems by couching them in a common and intelligible language.