This is Prague, where Franz Kafka lived. Admittedly, Kafka is too depressing to actually read. The last thing I read was "The Metamorphosis" and it was the saddest thing ever. Kafka himself was a nice person, very charming and sweet. Unfortunately he had an insidious attachment to an oafish father whose approval he couldn't get. And he knew it. But it allowed him to define modern paranoia and become immortal.
Over the last ten years, a company called "Octavo" embarked on digitally photographing some of the world ’s great books from some of the greatest libraries. These books were photographed at very high resolution (in some cases at over 200 megabytes per page).
This site contains all of the books (about 400) that have been digitized to date. These range over a wide variety of topics and rarity. The books are presented so that the viewer can examine all the pages in medium to medium-high resolution.
The following list of attractions is thanks to Abraham M. Rudy who visited the park countless times from the late 1950s to the closing of the park.
* Train - that more or less circled a portion of the Park (individual "locomotive" type yellow and black cars that sat 2 to 3). The train ride had a "pay off" (a short and mild roller coaster-ish type ending that had you nearly running down a mannequin dressed as a engineer that swung out of harms way at the last minute).
* Autopia - Mini cars in bright colors that took a winding course around a portion of the Park but without any real control.
* Carousel - Parker Carousel #316.
* Boat ride - A very narrow boat ride that wound through a simple FantasyLand that was available for birthday parties. The area remained open for Birthdays through park's closing, but the boat ride ceased operating some years before.
* Pony Rides - A stable of sorts was West of the Park, same side of the street, sharing the parking lot to the West, around where the Hard Rock Café is today. The Pony Rides (nearly identical to those offered at the Griffith Park pony rides today) were open on the weekends, offered fast, medium and slow horses that would do two laps around a track of sorts (white wooden fences separated the concentric circles of track . . . innermost for slow, middle for medium, and the outside track for the fast horses). They gave you a short whip or crop for fast. (Editor's note: Ponyland was adjacent to Beverly Park, but was not owned by David Bradley.)
* Ferris Wheel - There was a Ferris Wheel right next to the ticket booth, with its back to LaCienega and circling E to W or W to E (depending on the direction). The cars was not enclosed, a simple bench seat with a rail in front of you.
* Fun House - A "Fun House" (mobile as opposed to walk through .. . 2 riders in a car, side by side) that came with it's own legend (or urban legend) -- this may actually have been confirmed -- about a famous dead body being used as one of the props. The old Long Beach Pike fun house may share this story . . . I'm no sure which, if any, is actually the proud owner of the corpse.
* Carousel - A small kiddie carousel with roundish fishes that 1 or 2 very small children could sit in. I don't recall if the fish went up and down or simply around.
* Food - A Hot Dog stand and the best roasted peanuts in red and white stripped I can ever recall tasting. Popcorn and cotton candy.
* Goldfish - At one time, goldfish in the little cement canal that carried the small boat. Whether for the taking or not, they were often taken.
* Grounds - The ground of the Park and of the parking lot was made up of gravel atop earth. Always clean, always raked, always light gray to off-white. And a chain link fence surrounding.
Dadd painted this work in the Bethlem Hospital where he was sent after murdering his father and being declared insane. The scene was drawn from his imagination. It shows the ‘fairy-feller’ poised to split a large chestnut which will be used to construct Queen Mab’s new fairy carriage. The subject, shifting scale and style of the painting all contribute to a sense of the fantastic that fits Herbert Read’s idea of an imaginative tradition that runs through to Surrealism. The work might also have fitted the Surrealists’ interest in the art of the insane.
The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke is a Richard Dadd painting. It was commissioned by George Henry Hayden, who was head steward at Bethlem Royal Hospital at the time. He was impressed by Dadd's artistic efforts and asked for a fairy painting of his own. Dadd worked on the painting for nine years - paying microscopic attention to detail, as well as a layering technique producing near-3D results - and it is generally regarded as his most important work. However, Dadd himself considered the painting to be unfinished, and as such added the suffix of "Quasi" to its title.
A short-story writer and novelist of Ukranian origin, Gogol worked as a clerk in St. Petersburg while writing his first works. This experience influenced seminal works such as The Overcoat. Dead Souls, his final work offers caricatures human folly and sin. A realistic but fantastic writer, Gogol believed strongly in the unique power of the Orthodox Church to save Russia from impending doom.
Arnold Böcklin, 1829-1901. Regarded at the end of the nineteenth century as the leading Germanic painter of his time, Böcklin was deeply influenced by ancient Italian art and painted mainly mythological compositions, filled with gods, centaurs, tritons and sirens, whose predominant themes are the cycles of nature and life, war, and death. Böcklin was also inspired by the secretive, mythological landscapes of the Nazarene painter Heinrich Franz Dreher.
Böcklin, along with Anselm Feuerbach and Hans von Marées, were categorized as the 'German Romantics' and were opposed to the popular Salon art of the day. A contemporary historian spoke of Böcklin as the founder "of a sort of strangely symbolic neo-Romanticism."
Böcklin disliked giving titles to his pictures and declared that he painted in order to make people dream:
"Just as it is poetry's task to express feelings, painting must provoke them too. A picture must give the spectator as much food for thought as a poem and must make the same kind of impression as a piece of music."
A flickr user, Annabelle13, has the most surreal and haunting group of collages. She also has two blogs that are quite beautiful. Check them out.
Some people on flickr have photographs of this rococo masterpiece. I never knew about it.
Michelangelo was so passionate and emotional. I love the mannerist style. The reaching of the two hands toward each other is a pinnacle of humanist iconograhy. This gorgeous photo was blogged from flickr.
It was a blast from the past to see this on flickr. I used to go on this ride and thought it was really under the ocean!
The Lewis Chessmen in the British Museum were probably made in Norway, about AD 1150-1200
Found on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland
The chess pieces consist of elaborately worked walrus ivory and whales' teeth in the forms of seated kings and queens, mitred bishops, knights on their mounts, standing warders and pawns in the shape of obelisks.
(Written by RobRoyAus on Flickr)
