the contextual life

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Museums function like the homes of the nobility to which the public at certain hours are admitted as visitors. … as soon as a work is placed in a museum it acquires the mystery of a way of life which excludes the mass.

—John Berger, Understanding a Photograph (1968)

Museums function like the homes of the nobility to which the public at certain hours are admitted as visitors. … as soon as a work is placed in a museum it acquires the mystery of a way of life which excludes the mass.

—John Berger, Understanding a Photograph (1968)

Saturday, December 15, 2012

After his return to France in 1821, [Théodore] Géricault was inspired to paint a series of ten portraits of the insane, the patients of a friend, Dr. Étienne-Jean Georget, a pioneer in psychiatric medicine, with each subject exhibiting a different affliction. There are five remaining portraits from the series, including Insane Woman. The paintings are noteworthy for their bravura style, expressive realism, and for their documenting of the psychological discomfort of individuals, made all the more poignant by the history of insanity in Géricault’s family, as well as the artist’s own fragile mental health.

(via Wikipedia)

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Picasso produced hundreds of great paintings; Ralph Ellison wrote one great novel. Art is hard, but literature is murder.

Joe Queenan / One for the Books

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Travel Posters for Loch Ness and Other Homes of Mythical Beasts

[more]

Thursday, November 15, 2012

LEGO Model Of New York City, Based On Google Maps’ Satellite Imagery

[via]

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

The Map and the Territory / Michel Houellebecq

Monday, October 29, 2012

The pumpkin carvings of Ray Villafane

[via]

Saturday, October 27, 2012

“Books did not need to be beautiful back in the Fifties, because nothing else was beautiful back then. Books were simply there: you read them because they were diverting or illuminating or in some way useful but not because the books themselves were aesthetically appealing.” Joe Queenan / One for the Books

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The art of Phil Noto

Bruce Lee

[via]

Despite his aversion to writing, Lucas began painstakingly composing his own science-fiction story: It centered on the adventures of two bickering robots (the future R2-D2 and C-3PO), inspired by the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy as well as the clownish hobo peasants of Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress.

George Lucas’s Force

Despite his aversion to writing, Lucas began painstakingly composing his own science-fiction story: It centered on the adventures of two bickering robots (the future R2-D2 and C-3PO), inspired by the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy as well as the clownish hobo peasants of Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress.

George Lucas’s Force