Byzantine icons

The Byzantine icons seems the most holy and sacred. This is from St. Catherine's monastery in Sinai.

Divna Ljubojevik

I just discovered this wonderful singer on YouTube. She sings Byzantine Orthodox sacred songs. Usually those hymns are sung by rumbling voiced monks. Her voice is angelic.

Pantages Theatre Lights

Pantages Theatre Lights, originally uploaded by disneymike.

This gives a small glimpse of the grandeur of this former deco movie palace.

Meh.

My aunt invited me to go with her and my cousin to see "Wicked" at the Pantages Theater. This theater is an old Hollywood movie palace and it is incredible!! The art deco details have been renovated to sublime perfection. That was the best part of the evening. Yeah, Wicked is lavish. Yeah, it's impressive to look at. Yeah, the singers are incredibly good. But....the songs were boring and all sounded the same, the volume was earsplitting (I had to stuff napkin pieces in my ears), and the story is downright stupid. But if people are enjoying it, I say, let them.

Giovanni Bellini

Pieta, 1505. Bellini was a Venetian painter, like Carpaccio, I see the same stillness and airlessness in their paintings. This isn't a criticism, it's just how they strike me. Bellini's famous pupils were Giorgione and Titian.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Francisco Goya, El sueño de la razon produce monstruos, 1799.

Los Caprichos, the collection from which this comes, is extremely disturbing and this is the only etching I can look at. It also has the best title.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

The Round Tower, ca. 1761
Title Page for Prisons, ca. 1761

Piranesi etched some amazing views of Rome that are incredibly detailed and huge, but I couldn't find reproductions of them. His drawings of "Imaginary Prisons" are just as good. What fantastic, ominous visions he had.

Row well and live

Row well and live, originally uploaded by vidalia_11.

R.I.P. Charlton Heston. I only learned today that he was very liberal in the 1960s. He was also extremely witty. Thanks for the memories, Charlton.

Piero della Francesca

Ideal City, ca. 1470.
della Francesca was obsessed with studying perspective, and this is a beautiful example of his obsession.

Carafa Chapel (1489-91)

The frescoes were painted by Filippino Lippi. They're located in the church Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome. Wouldn't it be fantastic to attend services in a church with gorgeous frescoes on every wall?

Wassily Kandinsky (1886-1944)

Kandinsky is very cool. I just realized it and now appreciate him.
Yellow, Red, Blue (1925)
Composition VIII (1923)

Give Us The Teachings of His Majesty

For we no want no devil philosophy.

Bob Marley (1945-1981)

Vittore Carpaccio (1450-1525)

The Dead Christ (1520)
Portrait of a Knight (1510)

Gustave Moreau (see previous post) was influenced by this Venetian Renaissance artist, and made copies of Carpaccio's paintings when visiting Italy. Carpaccio is a precursor of the Venetian style. His paintings are incredibly detailed and some of the details are pretty strange. I didn't include a painting of St. George Killing the Dragon because all the corpses and body parts lying on the ground were too disturbing! The Dead Christ has similar gruesome aspects but it's not quite as scary. To me, it almost looks like Dali painted it.

Gustave Moreau

Hesiod and the Muse (1891) Musee d'Orsay

I picked up a small book at the library on Gustave Moreau and realized that his paintings are gorgeous. I'd always thought they were too complicated and impressionistic, but I was confusing him with Redon. The paintings are exquisitely detailed. He worked extremely hard on his art, making many preliminary drawings and sketches. As a young man, he went to Italy and copied many famous artworks there. People wanted to buy them, but he kept them as reference materials.

Great master drawings

I want to draw, but have already lowered my sights to sketching. It got me interested in the drawings of the great masters. This is a study of the Madonna's draperies by Leonardo da Vinci.

African dwarf frogs

Photo © Johnny Jensen, Johnny Jensen's Photographic Library.

I just lurv these adorable little frogs. I used to have some. You can't believe how funny and cute they are. I hand fed them some frozen fish food. They also love to eat brine shrimp.
JJ's Photographic Library

Maksim Mrvica

I was browsing around YouTube when I came across this rather gorgeous young pianist. He was playing a Chopin piece in a disco like theater, dressed in punkish attire. He played so beautifully. I saw some of his other videos, they're all good. When he played, he sometimes looked up to the ceiling in a mystical way. I really liked that.

A Greeting for the New Year

A Greeting for the New Year, originally uploaded by lake.sider.

A lot has happened since my last post. I'll try to be less neglectful of my blog! 2008 is going to be great. Happy New Year, everybody!

Freshwater stingrays

People have these as pets in their aquarium. They are the cutest things ever.

Scientists Find Oldest Living Animal, Then Kill It

From www.foxnews.com:

British marine biologists have found what may be the oldest living animal — that is, until they killed it.

The team from Bangor University in Wales was dredging the waters north of Iceland as part of routine research when the unfortunate specimen, belonging to the clam species Arctica islandica, commonly known as the ocean quahog, was hauled up from waters 250 feet deep.

Only after researchers cut through its shell, which made it more of an ex-clam, and counted its growth rings did they realize how old it had been — between 405 and 410 years old.

Another clam of the same species had been verified at 220 years old, and a third may have lived 374 years. But this most recent clam was the oldest yet.

"Its death is an unfortunate aspect of this work, but we hope to derive lots of information from it," postdoctoral scientist Al Wanamaker told London's Guardian newspaper. "For our work, it's a bonus, but it wasn't good for this particular animal."