Month: June 2015

Pakistan National Monument

Pakistan National Monument

The blooming flower-shaped Pakistan monument is located in the Shakarparian Hills and is spread over a total area of 2.8 hectares. – signifying the four provinces and three territories of Pakistan.The four main petals of the monument signifiy the four provinces (Punjab, Sinhd, Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) whereas the three smaller petals represent the three territories (Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Kashmir and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas).

Designed by the architect Arif Masoud, the inner walls of the petals are decorated with murals. The central platform is the shape of a five-pointed star which is surrounded by a water body. A metallic crescent surrounding the star is inscribed with sayings of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and poetry of Allama Iqbal.

Down by the Old Mill Stream

Photographer Unknown, (Down by the Old Mill Stream)

“Down by the Old Mill Steam”, written by Tell Taylor, became one of the most popular songs of the 1900s. The publisher, Forster Music Publisher, Inc., sold four million copies.

Taylor wrote the song in 1908 while sitting on the banks of the Blanchard River in Findlay, Ohio. It is said that his friends persuaded him not to publish the song, believing it had no commercial value. Forster Music published it in 1910 and introduced it to the public with performances by the vaudeville quartet ‘The Orpheus Comedy Four’. The group performed it at a Woolworh store in Kansas City, selling all one thousand copies of its sheet music that Taylor had brought to the event. It is now a staple song for barbershop quartets.

Pixiu Dragons

Pixiu Dragons, Jade, China

Pixiu (also called Tianlu or Bixie) is one of the five auspicious animals of traditional Chinese culture (the other four are the dragon, phoenix, turtle and kylin). The Chinese people call it “fortune beast.” This lion-looking beast has the head of dragon, the body of a horse and the legs of a kylin and is able to fly. The Pixiu is both ferocious and powerful so it works as a security guard of Heaven, resisting demons and ghosts. Just like the dragon and the kylin, the Pixiu brings happiness good luck for people and has an exorcising function. What is different from the kylin is that the Pixiu is a ferocious animal and has strong will in protecting its master.

Running Through the Jungle

Artist Unknown, (Running Through the Jungle, Computer Graphics, Gay Film Gifs

“His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.”

― Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

Léon Bonnat

Léon Bonnat, “Jacob Wrestling the Angel”, 1876. Pencil and Black Chalk on Paper, 20 ¾ x 14 ½ Inches, Collection of the Dahesh Museum of Art

This is either a highly finished study for, or a variant after, a painting that Léon Bonnat exhibited at the Salon in 1876. With its emphasis on tensed musculature and the interaction of anatomical forms, this work illustrates perfectly how integral the numerous life drawings of nude male models, called académies because of their role as the most fundamental part of academic training, were to an artist’s formation of fully realized narrative compositions.

As an artist and a teacher, Léon Bonnat was adamant in the fundamental importance of skillful drawing. In a letter translated and published in The American Magazine of Art in 1916, Bonnat declared: “Drawing and form: from those foundations we never stray; we cannot, we ought not to, because they are the conditions absolutely requisite to eternal beauty; and from antique art to contemporary, in passing through all the great epochs…it is by form and drawing alone that the world has been enriched with so many masterpieces.”

“Jacob Wrestling the Angel” illustrates the Biblical passage from Genesis 32:23-31 in which Jacob spends an entire night wrestling with a mysterious angel after crossing the river Jabbok with his family. This enigmatic combat has been variously interpreted as man’s struggle against God, against Satan, or against himself.

Beth Cavener Stichter

Beth Cavener Stichter, “A Rush of Blood to the Head”, Clay

Clay sculptor, Beth Cavener Stichter has a unique approach to the artistic expression of the emotional human experience, through animals. Titled “A Rush of Blood to the Head,” the title of a Coldplay song, her sculpture depicts two male goats standing on their hind legs, their mouths locked in a passionate embrace.

“I select animal subjects since the animal body is removed just enough from my own to establish a distance, yet the personal relationship is irresistible. Here, I become far enough away from myself to unravel questions previously tangled in a self-conscious quagmire.”

Her creatures seem to embody the same consequences as humans, yet they are cloaked in animal skin. “Beneath they are experiencing the impacts of aggression, territorial desires, isolation, pack mentality … I want to pry at those uncomfortable, awkward edges between animal and human.”

Klaus Nomi, “Total Eclipse”

Klaus Nomi, “Total Eclipse”, Live 1981

Klaus Sperber (January 24, 1944 – August 6, 1983), better known as Klaus Nomi, was a German countertenor noted for his wide vocal range and an unusual, otherworldly stage persona.

Nomi was known for his bizarrely visionary theatrical live performances, heavy make-up, unusual costumes, and a highly stylized signature hairdo which flaunted a receding hairline. His songs were equally unusual, ranging from synthesizer-laden interpretations of classical music opera to covers of 1960s pop standards like Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” and Lou Christie’s “Lightnin’ Strikes”. He is remembered in the US as one of David Bowie’s backup singers for a 1979 performance on Saturday Night Live.

Nomi died in 1983, alone in Manhattan’s Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center at the age of 39, as a result of complications from AIDS. His ashes were spread over New York City.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)