quodlibet

From the Latin term for whatever one wishes (“what” + “pleases”), as a subgenre of the trompe-l’œil technique of hyper-realistic rendering refers to desk notions painted and arranged as to appear just left lying around and in artistic disarray, we find the aesthetic in its highest form of expression in the works of Antwerp and Copenhagen court painter Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts (*1625 – †1675). Though the “deceive the eye” style didn’t receive that particularly categorisation until around 1800 when French artist Louis-Léopold Boilly titled one of his pieces as such—the reverse of a canvas with a cat, a log and a dried fish peering through, an homage possibly to Gijsbrechts’ own strikingly modern and meta creation—artists have been developing a flair for the realistic and forced perspective since Antiquity. Much more to explore with Public Domain Review at the link above.

home box office

We enjoyed this curated gallery featuring the minimal encapsulations of movie poster (see also) executed by graphic designer Chungkong, which served to highlight the not only the commercial blockbusters of shared experience but those certain cinematic shibboleth of obscure choices—both by the creator and collector—that yet resonate nostalgic but are still cult enough to carry distinction. Peruse through an assortment of over twelve hundred filmic properties and artefacts assiduously catalogued and distilled in an instantly recognisable fashion at the artist’s website above.

fortuna favet fortibus

Controversial and polluting Indian energy-extraction concern Adani, which operates the Carmichael Coal Mine in Queensland and has proposed a channel through the Great Barrier Reef for coal export announced in a sort of “under new management” charade that it would be changing its name for Australian operations to Bravus—presuming it was Latin for brave. This false-friend however means rather the opposite, signifying something crooked, with principles for sale like a soldier of fortune or hired assassin and fortis (already taken) seems to be what they were going for. Incidentally the plaudit bravo/brava (huzzah) originally carried that same sense of mercenary, cut-throat boldness before it was reduced to praise for a job well-done.

business as usual

On this day of convention breaking-firsts for US governance—historic departures that were long overdue but nonetheless whose time had arrived—first with Jeanette Rankin in 1916 becoming the first woman elected to federal public office, representing Montana in the House of Congress, then in 1989 with Douglas Wilder and David Dinkins as the first African Americans elected respectively as a state governor (Virginia) and as mayor of a major city (New York), next in 2000 with Hilary Clinton elected senator representing the state of New York—the first former First Lady to have an independent political career, Kamala Devi Harris is announced as the vice president-elect of the United States, highest office held by a female (and daughter of Jamaican and South Asian immigrants as well), deputy to former vice-president and forty-sixth president Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior, unseating the incumbent, impeached Donald John Trump.

das wiesbadener manifest

Declared on this day in 1945 from their base of operations (collection point) in the occupied capital of Hessen, the officers that comprised the special commission of the Monuments Fine Arts and Archives organisation (the MFAA, the group also known as the Monuments Men) was a stern rejection that European treasure should be taken to the United States as plunder and the spoils of war.  The recovery and restitution efforts beginning earlier that summer, the programme’s first director CPT Walter I Farmer of the US Army Corps of Engineers received a large shipment of Nazi-looted art and antiquities, and soon the enormity of the task was apparent, prompting the issuing of the manifesto, announcing: “We wish to state that, from our own knowledge, no historical grievance will rankle so long or be the cause of so much justified bitterness as the removal for any reason of a part of the heritage of any nation even if that heritage may be interpreted as a prize of war.” Over seven hundred thousand objects and artefacts were catalogued by the organisation, stolen from museums (works from the Berlin Gemäldegalerie and Nationalgalerie including Botticelli, Rembrant, Rubens and Cranach), private collections, Jewish citizens and political dissidents and were kept safeguarded from reparation claims and trophies of war that had been taken back to America were repatriated, President Truman getting involved with the debate and ordering paintings and sculptures returned to Germany in 1948.

patience is a virtue

 

your daily demon: bifrons

From the Latin for “two-faced” like Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, endings, transitions, borders and thresholds, the infernal earl who rules sixty legions of spirits and governs the second quadrant of Scorpio, is ascendant from the seventh through the twelfth of November. This demon according to the Ars Goetia and other sources imparts knowledge of herbs and the curative properties of precious stones and has the ability to shift the departed in their plots from one place to another.

8x8

photos veritables: antique pre-prepared vacation picture albums  

necessitous men are not free men: FDR’s 1944 second, more equitable Bill of Rights 

conformal cyclic cosmology: Nobel winning astrophysicist Roger Penrose shares his Universe origin hypothesis 

la sape: Tariq Zaida documents the fashion of the sapeurs and sapeuses of Brazzaville and Kinshasa—reminding me of this other subculture  

author, poet, composer: the amazing virtuosity of Gordon Parks 

das neue europa mit dem dauernden frieden: revisiting an early proposal for the European Union, divided into Kantons converging on Vienna (previously) 

dss43: Deep Space Communication Complex re-establishes link with Voyager 2 

scarfolk & environs: a road & leisure map for uninvited tourist