7x7

la pittrice: the outstanding life and career of female Italian Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola

sentoculture: artist and drafter Honami Enya creates cross-sections of Japanese communal bathhouses

blockhead: good old Howie Schultz explores running as a third party candidate

all the rembrants: Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum displays all the works in its accession (previously) by the Old Master

sent from my iphone: Apple curates some superlative photographs taken by telephone

newlyweds: exploring the kitsch and social conventions of the mid-century honeymoon resorts of the Niagara Falls

muse and museum: the enigmatic subject of some two-hundred fifty Andrew Wyeth paintings he’d kept secret from everyone 

styx

From the BBC Monitoring desk, we learn that years of neglect and crumbling infrastructure may be turned the Athens’ advantage and lead to the revival of an ancient and storied river that used to course through the city unimpeded but has been buried for decades after a post-war building boom.
Flowing down from Mount Hymettus and emptying into Phakeron Bay, the banks of the River Ilisos (Ιλισός, a demi-god, son of Demeter and Poseidon) was a favourite spot for Socrates and his pupils as well as being dotted with shires and temples to Zeus, Diana and Pan along its route. Rather than repairing the tunnel that contains the river, the plan is to return it to the surface and line its banks with a public park, emanating from the Pantheatnaic Stadium—the venue for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

sede vacante

With already burgeoning anti-Catholic sentiment channeled and thrust to the next level with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln whose conspirators included Mary Elizabeth Surratt, a practising Catholic and hung by the neck until dead, and her son John Harrison Surratt—fugitive from justice who fled to Europe and briefly served as a Pontifical Zouave (the Papal States’ infantry—pictured in uniform) before being recognised and extradited back to the US, on this day in 1867, America suspended consular relations with the Holy See—diplomacy not to be restored until 1984. In the interim, special envoys and emissaries were appointed to negotiate deals and coordinate participation on specific political and humanitarian issues. Kindred sympathies between Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II both over their shared crusade against Communism and a bond formed after each survived assassination attempts in 1981.

hachimoji

From the Japanese 八文字 for eight letters, researchers at Harvard are reported to have successful synthesised a DNA analogue that incorporates additional four artificial base-pairs to complement the four natural ones that assumes the familiar double-helix structure. For moment, this potential expanded genetic repertoire could not escape the laboratory as it requires constant chemical nourishment that does not occur in natural biology but the potential is there for some incredible applications—including the search for extra-terrestrial life, pathology, enhanced data storage and nano-scale engineering.

idle, torrent

We are quite enjoying these soothing amorphous abstractions, courtesy of Colossal, as they grow and disperse across the screen from artist Alex Moy. The dripping transformations and ink-traps made us think of that psychedelic Sesame Street interstitial animated piece with the Yo-Yo Man and the Lost Kid. “Try to remember everything I passed but when I go back, make the first thing the last.” More to explore at the links above.

falsche flagge

Having become a metonym for actions facilitated or at least capitalised upon by authorities to forward their own interests and selectively deny elements of the opposition—or mere scapegoats (Caper emissarius)—their civil rights, the Reichstag Fire occurred this night in 1933.  Though later investigations and court proceedings suggest that the act was that of a lone arsonist (though pyromaniacal tendencies were never established), Nazi leadership—including the newly named Chancellor Adolf Hitler with just a week to go before a decisive vote that would eventually grant the party and executive plenary powers—that there was a vast conspiracy of Communists working to keep Germany down.
Firefighters extinguished the blaze by 23:30 but the complex was gutted and heavily damaged. Immediate consequences were cemented the very next day, when at the request of Hitler and Hermann Göring, President Paul von Hindenburg signed an incendiary decree into law that suspended the right to appeal unreasonable detention, freedom of the press, public-assembly and the expectation to privacy over the telephone or in the mail. These strictures were in place throughout the Dritte Reich. Parliamentary sessions were held in the Kroll Opera (accounting for the theatrics and stage-craft) adjacent to the ruins of the Reichstag building.