Facebook In Legal Trouble After Censoring That 19th Century Painting (NSFW)

January 23, 2015, 5:49 pm

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This post originally appeared on artnet News.
by Coline Milliard




Social media giant Facebook has been taken to court by a French user whose account was closed down after he posted an image of Courbet's racy painting L'Origine du Monde (1866). According to Le Figaro, the world-famous oil-on-canvas was part of a promo for an art history video about the artwork, broadcasted by the highbrow TV channel Arte.

The plaintiff, a Parisian schoolteacher described by his lawyer Stéphane Cottineau as “a decent man, cultivated, and attached to the transmission of knowledge," is seeking the reactivation of his Facebook account as well as €20,000 in damages.

The American company's get-out clause is that, by opening an account, every Facebook user agrees any dispute will be taken to court in California, home to the company's headquarters. On Thursday, Facebook asked Paris's civil court to declare that it lacks jurisdiction over the case.

Facebook's lawyer Caroline Lyannaz has argued that that French consumer laws don't apply to Facebook as the service is free of charge and use of the social network is voluntary.

But the plaintiff's lawyer Cottineau described Facebook's clause as “abusive." “Following your logic," he said, “none of France's 22 million Facebook users will ever be able to go to a French court should a disagreement occur."

The case has been unraveling since 2011. According to Ouest France, Pau's civil court ruled in 2012 that it had jurisdiction over the matter. Paris's civil court is expected to give its decision on March 5, 2015.

Like several social media sites, Facebook has a strict no-nudity policy, one which is currently hotly contested by the likes of Lena Dunham and Miley Cyrus with the hashtag #Freethenipple.

Originally commissioned by an Ottoman diplomat, Khalil Bey, and once owned by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Courbet's painting appears as controversial as it was a century and a half ago. In February of last year, a group of philatelists was denied the request to have it printed on postal stamps (see Non! French Mail Turns Down Request to Print L'Origine Du Monde Stamps).

More recently, the Musée d'Orsay, which houses the painting, filed a sexual exhibitionism complaint against performance artist Deborah de Robertis after she sat down in front of the iconic artwork, and recreated it in the flesh (see Artist Enacts Origin of the World at Musée d'Orsay—And, Yes, That Means What You Think).



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Artist Transforms Nude Bodies Into Mesmerizing Living Sculptures (NSFW)

January 23, 2015, 5:49 pm

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Warning: This post contains lots of (painted) nudity. Read at your own risk.

The human body is a work of art in itself. Few know this better than artist Ben Hopper, who, in his series "Transfigurations," transforms the bare physiques of dancers and circus performers into living sculptures, more like 3D Jackson Pollock paintings or John Chamberlain sculptures than human beings.



With the help of a little paint and powder, Hopper creates masks for the entire body, encasing the identity of the subject in an abstracted, mysterious form, something not quite human, not quite sculpture. Choosing to work primarily with dancers and circus performers, Hopper arranged his subjects into highly contorted formations, each limb and trunk twisted into a nearly unrecognizable shape. When asked about his hopes for the project, Hopper explained to The Huffington Post: "It's the mystery and the darkness. It's all beautiful to me."



"Each photo is charged with kinetic energy, only heightened by the bold streaks of body paint and splatters of white powder," wrote Stephanie Chan on Beautiful Decay. "Some of the photographs look like cubist paintings because of the contrast between black, white, and human flesh along with the seemingly impossible angles and feats of flexibility performed by the subjects. The body paint looks almost like strokes of charcoal, creating depth while also the illusion of two-dimensionality."

If you love the bewilderment of optical illusions and the ever entrancing beauty of body paint on an unclothed stranger, look no further. Check out Hopper's series below and visit his Facebook and Twitter to learn more about the artist.

Meet 'Teacher,' The Futuristic Machine That's Going To Show You How To Draw

January 23, 2015, 5:49 pm

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Before we the design world knows it, skyscrapers will rotate, dresses will be 4-D printed, and bridges will be non-orientable. Oh, and tiny machines will teach us all how to draw. Welcome to the future!

The aforementioned machine comes courtesy of Saurabh Datta, a student at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. He produced "Teacher," a wearable piece of robotics that gently forces your arm into the motions of drawing simple shapes. For the science nerds, his creation involves force feedback and haptic response systems (think of the technology involved in video game joysticks and computer mice). For those not familiar with the essential elements of haptic devices, Datta explained the inspiration for "Teacher" in simpler terms:

"I remember when I started first learning alphabets my teachers used to hold my hand with the pen and trace on the paper multiple times, the letters. After letting me go I would do it over and over again and finally it achieved a muscle memory and I could do it by myself. I’m taking this metaphor of the importance of holding hands when learning a new skill."


"Teacher" is similar to Datta's previous work with "Forced Fingers."

So far, there have been three iterations of "Teacher," prototypes made by salvaging printers and reusing their encoders with Arduino, plus a few EMG nodes. The three tiny teachers demonstrate the possibility of machine-led instruction -- a relationship between humans and technology that would rely on a person's ability to let the machine take control in some instances. For Datta though, the perfect scenario would involve both learning and teaching from robotics.

"We can be better in designing an enabling system rather than just service robots, systems that allow us to do things ourselves better or making us better in certain things rather than doing it for us all the time."

"The whole notion is to understand when machines start knowing more about you and they start showing that to you as feedback," Datta adds on his website. "Sometimes [feedback] may appear against our will, how do you act upon it? On one hand it can act as a a teacher and on the other it might appear as machines are operating us."


"Now you can strap you hand in and move you wrist along with the fingers and the machine record the movement," Datta writes in a statement online. "Next it repeats the motion and forces your hand and wrist to go to those previous positions creating a machine rhythm."

You can see a preview of "Teacher" in all its glory in the two videos above and below. Datta recently unveiled his work at the 9th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction at Stanford University, so we can't wait to see where "Teacher" ends up. For more on Datta, check out his past project -- a smart umbrella that allows users to check levels of pollution in the atmosphere. Like we said, welcome to the future.

The World's Darkest Children's Book Illustrator Receives Long Overdue Exhibition

January 23, 2015, 5:49 pm

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In the world of children's books, writer and illustrator Tomi Ungerer is somewhat of an outsider.

Far from the norms of happily ever after, his stories are dark, abnormal and frightening even for many adults. In The Three Robbers, a trio of thieves accidentally kidnap a young orphan named Tiffany, who eventually softens their hearts and leads them to use their stolen loot to help other abandoned children. And then there's No Kiss For Mother, about a cat named Piper Paw who despises being kissed by his mother -- not "good‐morning kisses, licky kisses" nor "soggy kisses!"

Ungerer's work is currently on view at the Drawing Center, in a stunning exhibition titled "Tomi Ungerer: All in One."



"Most of my children's books have fear elements," Ungerer told NPR. "But I must say, too, to balance this fact, that the children in my books are never scared... I think fear is an element which is instilled by the adults a lot of time." While many grown-ups deemed Ungerer's style a bit too sinister for the younger set, he had faith in kids' abilities to fight through fear, a skill he himself learned growing up on the French-German border during World War II. "I remember even in the bombings and whatever, we were always joking away."

Now, at 83 years old, Ungerer lives with his wife in a remote region of Ireland near Cork. He began his career in New York in the mid-1950s, living there until the '70s when he moved to a farm in Nova Scotia as a form of self-imposed exile. Over the years, he's accomplished a lot. "I’ve done over 150 books, I write as much as I draw, and I have my sculptures and my architectural designs. I have my fingers in so many behinds," he told Art News. If you detect a hint of bawdiness in Ungerer's tone, you're not off base. The artist has long dabbled in erotic drawings, including an illustrated Kama Sutra starring frogs, titled "Joy of Frogs."



He was widely blacklisted in the 1960s when word of his graphic images hit the children's literature circuit. At a conference surrounded by people in the youth publishing business, he famously declared "If people didn’t fuck, you wouldn’t have any children, and without children, you would be out of work." In a later interview with The Times, he softened his edges a bit, explaining "Eroticism is a safari."

Aside from his erotic drawings, Ungerer also drew a wide variety of advertisements for publications including The New York Times and the Village Voice, as well as satirical cartoons chronicling the inner workings of the business world and bold images protesting fascism, racism, animal cruelty and the Vietnam war. A hefty selection of Ungerer's contributions to all fields is on view at the Drawing Center, with the NSFW imagery in the Drawing Room and animations in the lower-level Lab gallery.

Although Ungerer's subject matter and style has a spectacular, if not unthinkable range, for Drawing Center curator Claire Gilman one fact remains consistent. "For him, it’s always about showing what is considered abnormal. The protagonists are outsiders, they’re people who are not accepted by society."

Tomi Ungerer's work will be on view at the Drawing Center in New York until March 22, 2015.

This Is What Saturday Morning Used To Look Like (Before Life Got In The Way)

January 23, 2015, 8:13 pm

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It's become cliche (not to mention incorrect) to say that things were easier "back in the day," but we think that weekend schedules are the exception. Saturdays really used to be a lot simpler. Time seemed to pass more slowly. People didn't seem as over-scheduled.

Here's a peek into the not-so-distant past, which now seems like a completely different world.

Rejected Cover Designs For Mo Yan's 'Frog'

January 27, 2015, 6:06 am

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Rejected Covers is an ongoing series for which artists reveal their inspirations and unused design ideas for popular titles. Below, Nayon Cho, Senior Designer at Penguin, discusses the process of designing the cover for the latest novel by Mo Yan, a Chinese Nobel Prize winner. Yan's latest book explores the country's family planning policy through the eyes of a zealous midwife.

Frog is a beautifully written, harrowing novel about life in one Chinese village, that starts before Mao's Cultural Revolution and ends in the present day. Nobel Prize-winning novelist Mo Yan does an incredible job tracing the wrenching impact each major historical shift has on individual lives. I had never read any of Mo Yan's books, nor was I familiar with fiction set during the Cultural Revolution, so this was a great opportunity to read such a novel written by a master.

The book is narrated by a man nicknamed Tadpole, who tells us the story of his aunt Gugu, a midwife in their village. Gugu begins the novel as a young, intelligent, progressive woman trained in the most advanced medical techniques. She brings her new skills back to her village, determined to practice as a modern midwife. However, circumstances turn her into a strict Party follower, who is in a unique position to enforce the new One Child policy, and she does so with single-minded zeal. Tadpole narrates her life with compassion, but does not spare us the heartbreaking consequences of her campaign to keep the villagers in line.

I was asked to design a jacket that shows Gugu in a sympathetic light. It was very challenging for me to do so, as I found her actions largely inexcusable. I explored many different options, using many different photographs of women in China in the 1960s, but none of them presented Gugu as a sympathetic enough figure. Here are two examples.





Inspired by the text, I also tried a different direction. With a wonderful four-letter title like Frog, I wanted to take the oportunity to have it play a (literally) large role in the design. I set it in a monumental scale and thought about how it could function as a design element. I took the narrator's name, Tadpole, and found an illustration I thought worked well both as a representation of him, and of a sperm about to fertilize an egg (the "O"), to highlight Gugu's role as a midwife.



The design that was ultimately approved uses the same title treatment, but with different art. One of the central horrors of the book is the danger many unborn babies are placed in by Gugu. I found a great photograph of a peaceful porcelain baby sleeping in a nest. The baby is so fragile, but it also could be a figurine crafted by one of the characters in the book, who creates meticulously realistic porcelain dolls. To show the danger surrounding the village's babies, I perched the nest precariously on top of this tall tall title, thinking of the nursery rhyme lines, "When the bough breaks / the cradle will fall / and down will come baby / cradle and all." I'm happy with this design, and think it succeeds in every important way: the baby represents a key aspect of the plot, the monumental scale of the title signals the importance of the novel, and it is overall a warmer, less abstract design. The author was very happy with the jacket as well, which is always a rewarding end to an important project.

Intimate Portraits Pay Tribute To Auschwitz Survivors

January 27, 2015, 6:26 am

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On Jan. 27, 1945, soldiers of the Soviet army entered the gates of Auschwitz in southern Poland, liberating the largest and most notorious network of Nazi concentration camps.

Just 7,000 prisoners were left in the camp when the Soviets entered in January 1945 and many of them were on the brink of death. In the days before the liberation, members of the SS had killed thousands of prisoners inside the camps and forced 60,000 others on "death marches" west. An estimated 1.1 million of the 1.3 million people deported to Auschwitz lost their lives in the camp.

To mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Getty photographer Christopher Furlong created a series of intimate portraits of some of the camp's survivors who are now living in the U.K. The photos tell a story of both suffering and survival.

Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Susan Kluger, aged 89, poses in her home in London, United Kingdom on Dec. 1, 2014. As the Russians approached Poland, the Nazis saw the end of the war coming and Eva was sent from Auschwitz to Bergen Belsen where she was eventually liberated by the British in 1945. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Susan Pollock, aged 84, poses in her home in London, United Kingdom on Dec. 1, 2014. Susan was transported from her home in Hungary to Auschwitz where her mother was immediately taken from her and sent to the gas chambers. Susan was subject to hard slave labour until she was eventually forced to walk to Belsen in the bitterly cold winter and later liberated by British forces. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Rene Salt, aged 85, poses in her home in London, United Kingdom on Dec. 3, 2014. Rene Salt was imprisoned in Auschwitz concentration camp at the age of 14. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Edith Baneth, aged 88, poses in her home on in London, United Kingdom Dec. 1, 2014. Edith Baneth was a prisoner in Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Alexander Riseman, aged 88, poses in his home in London, United Kingdom on Dec. 1, 2014. Alexander and his family were sent to Auschwitz from his home in Poland, and eventually liberated by the Russian forces. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camp survivor Eva Behar poses in her home in London, United Kingdom on Dec. 1, 2014. As the Russians approached Poland the Nazis saw the end of the war coming and Eva was sent from Auschwitz to Bergen on Jan. 1, 1945 where she was eventually liberated by the British. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Sam Pivnik, aged 88, poses in his home in London, United Kingdom on Dec. 1, 2014. At the age of 14, Sam Pivnik was forced marched to Auschwitz by the Nazis, along with his father and mother, sisters Chana and Handel and younger brothers Meir, Wolf and Josef, who were all murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz Birkenau. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Auschwitz concentration camp survivor Josef Perl, aged 84, poses in his home in London, United Kingdom on Dec. 3, 2014. Josef Perl was imprisoned in Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Gross-Rosen, Balkenhain, Hirschberg and Buchenwald concentration camps. He has spent twenty years of his life educating people of the horrors and the lessons to be learnt from the Holocaust. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

'Fantastic Four' Trailer Finally Arrives

January 27, 2015, 6:30 am

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"Fantastic Four" fans have been ready for what's coming for months, but the film has remained cloaked in mystery and speculation. Not anymore. Twentieth Century Fox released the first trailer for "Fantastic Four" on Tuesday, highlighting director Josh Trank's darker take on the material. (Trank told Collider he was inspired by David Cronenberg.) The somber narration recalls "Interstellar" in its ideas about humanity's desire to find new things. Hey, why not? Miles Teller (with glasses!), Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell and Kate Mara star as the core heroes. "Fantastic Four" is out Aug. 7. Watch the trailer below.

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8 Things You Didn't Know About Color That Almost Seem Too Ridiculous To Be True

January 27, 2015, 6:37 am

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You likely take the various colors around you for granted, assuming there's nothing special about the blue of your jeans or anything potentially disgusting about the browns of that painting you bought at an antique store. But many colors are derived from odd sources.

For instance, rulers of France and much of Europe had to be wary, for not knowing about certain colors was potentially deadly. Green wallpaper can be much more dangerous than you thought.

Much of the research behind these eight bizarre facts is extensively based on journalist Victoria Finlay's amazing 2014 book The Brilliant History of Color in Art.


1. Until 1925, a common shade of brown was made from the flesh of Egyptian mummies.



Smithsonian dates the end of "mummy brown" as late as 1964, when the "manufacturer" ran out of mummies to grind into paint. Painters had been using mummy brown for centuries, collecting the bizarre substance, likely at first from an apothecary, that would sell for medicinal purposes.

Victoria Finlay explains in The Brilliant History of Color in Art how this came about:

Actually, mummy was first used as a medicinal substance as early as 1300, which is even more bizarre. Virtually all the pigments that were known to painters from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance were also medicines, including lead white, minium, vermilion, chalk, orpiment, sepia, ultramarine ... and mummy. These medicines were supplied by apothecaries, who were the main sources of supplies for painters. No doubt an artist somewhere saw mummy in his local apothecary shop and thought, "I wonder if this would make a good bit of paint?"

Eventually in 1712, an artist supply shop was opened in Paris called À la Momie or "To the Mummy." The color really took off and later in the century and according to Finlay it was said that the finest brown used by the current president of the Royal Academy of Arts was "the flesh of mummy, the most fleshy are the best parts."

If you're curious what ground up mummies looks like as art, the above painting, "Interior of a Kitchen," owned by The Louvre and painted by Martin Drölling in 1815 apparently uses "mummy brown" extensively.

As mentioned before, you probably couldn't find mummy brown to paint with these days. An article in Time from 1964 quoted Geoffrey Roberson-Park, the managing director of a respected London color maker, as saying, "We might have a few odd limbs lying around somewhere, but not enough to make any more paint."

Image Left: WikiCommons. Image Right: Getty.



2. The royal purple made famous by the Romans and Cleopatra was created by soaking thousands of rotten shellfish in urine.



Finlay writes in The Brilliant History of Color in Art that Queen Cleopatra was obsessed with this color and had everything from sails to sofas dyed in the pigment. When Julius Caesar visited in 48 B.C., he became hooked as well and made it a color of royalty for Rome.

Although the color came to mean extreme wealth, the process of making this purple was beyond disgusting, as Finlay explains, "More than 250,000 murex brandaris and murex trunculus shellfish were needed to extract half an ounce of dye, just enough for a single toga."

And according to Finlay's book, the process of making the purple smelled so bad that it had to be done outside city walls. This disgustingness then stuck with the color:

These purple vats had to be outside the city walls because no one could live next to the horrible smell made by rotten shellfish soaking in stale urine mixed with wood ash and water. Even the clothes that had been dyed with them had a distinctive odor of fish and sea. The historian Pliny called it "offensive," but for other Romans it was the smell of money.

According to Smithsonian, this gross process more or less continued as late as 1856, when a new purple was created as the first synthetic dye by an 18-year-old chemist named William Perkin.



3. The iconic yellow paint Van Gogh used in many of his paintings may have actually been partially to blame for his mental state.



What caused Vincent Van Gogh's mental state has not been conclusively determined, but that his own painting might have been a big factor is certainly an interesting theory. In a paper called "Vincent van Gogh and the Toxic Colors of Saturn," by F. Javier González Luque and A. Luis Montejo González, it's argued that the lead paints, particularly Van Gogh's "chrome yellow," may have been the cause stating:

Because of his impasto technique, based on thick layers of paint, Van Gogh resorted to colors with a high content of lead, such as white lead (lead carbonate) or chrome yellow (lead chromate), in the mixtures he prepared. These pigments are highly toxic in oil painting, and their use entails the risk of saturnism.

If the "chrome yellow" was to blame, it would have been particularly harmful to Van Gogh when he squeezed a tube of the paint into his mouth as Finlay writes in The Brilliant History of Color in Art.



4. Red light might cause people to become stronger.



A few notable tests support this claim, with one by University of Durham in 2005 even stating that sports uniforms should be rethought due to the advantage. The study concluded "red enhances human performance in contests," but also said:

Across a range of sports, we find that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning. These results indicate not only that sexual selection may have influenced the evolution of human response to colors, but also that the color of sportswear needs to be taken into account to ensure a level playing field in sport.

Maybe the red Chicago Bulls uniforms are partly why Michael Jordan won so many championships?

Another study by Samford University in 2008 that focused on the "effect of light color on muscular strength and power," stated that a "repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance indicated that average muscular power was significantly higher when performing the test in the room with red light compared to rooms lit with blue light or white light." So Roxanne probably should have put on that red light.

This red-effect even seems to affect video games as a 2004 study discovered that red players tend to win more often.



5. There was spray painting in prehistoric times.



Although this spray painting didn't come from cans, the Lascaux Caves paintings from about 17,000 years ago were most likely done with a technique that involved spraying paint on to the cave walls. In The Brilliant History of Color in Art, Finlay explains, "The paint on the Great Bull was applied by mixing ground minerals with something liquid and then spraying it from the mouth, either straight or with a blowpipe."

These tubes would be made from wood, bone or plant materials.

The famous Lascaux cave drawings weren't the only early artwork to use spray painting, according to Finlay's book, "You can see similar techniques in other caves, not just in Europe but also in Australia from 40,000 years ago, as well as in the kalahari Desert in Africa, in the Patagonian Mountains in Argentina, and in Baja California."



6. The person who invented the color for Levi's blue jeans was only 21 years old.



Eliza Lucas is something of a South Carolinian hero as she developed the cash crop of indigo during the colony's early days. In the mid-eighteenth century, she began attempting to grow indigo, but it didn't go so well at first. As Finlay explains in The Brilliant History of Color in Art:

Her first crop was destroyed by frost, and the second season in 1741 was even more disastrous ... The third crop was eaten by caterpillars but -- and persistence is often a thread in the history of colors -- the fourth crop was just right, and in 1744 Eliza Lucas produced South Carolina's first-ever indigo crop.

Despite all the setbacks, including internal sabotage in that second season, Lucas, at the young age of 21, successfully created an indigo crop for the North American continent.

A century later, two San Francisco businessmen, Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss, would use Lucas' dye for their now iconic blue jeans.

Image Left: WikiCommons



7. Napoleon might have died because his room was green.



In 1775, Carl Wilhelm Scheele developed what would become known as "Scheele's green." The color, which used arsenic, unfortunately became popular for children's bedrooms as well as dresses, and fatally poisoned many people.

Skip ahead to 1821, when Napoleon Bonaparte died on St. Helena Island in exile. At the time, it was considered mysterious that he had arsenic traces in his hair, but as Finlay writes in The Brilliant History of Color in Art, in 1980 a stolen swatch of Napoleon's bedroom wallpaper surfaced that had a Scheele's green fleur-de-lys. Due to the humidity of St. Helena Island, the arsenic could have very well poisoned Napoleon while he rested in bed, contributing to his death.

It has also been discovered that Napoleon's bathroom also originally had the green wallpaper. In there, Napoleon would use steaming water to relax, further causing the arsenic to poison the former French leader.



8. A red used in royal tapestries was created with ox blood and cow manure.



This filthy red was called "madder red." Robert Chenciner writes in his book Madder Red: A History of Luxury and Trade that one recipe for making the color had 13 steps, a few of which are particularly gross. A brief description of the general process:

The fabric was boiled and then mordanted with cow-dung and oil, followed by three oil-baths. Next there was a succession of four sodium-carbonate baths, followed by washing, galling and sumaching, aluming and a final clean. After lengthy preparation, the fabric, which varied in color from white to gray, was dyed with madder which contained a variety of extra ingredients. The strangest was ox blood.

Chenciner continues on to explain that ox blood was seen to have magical powers by the superstitious "Oriental dyers." In the book it's also pointed out that Nathaniel Hawthorne alluded to this process in The Scarlet Letter, writing that the letter on Hester Prynne's chest had the smell of blood.

Finlay explains in The Brilliant History of Color in Art that the process started as a Turkish recipe for turning the color into dye and eventually in Europe the Dutch figured out a process in 1730.

The Royal Tapestry Manufactory of Les Gobelins in Paris particularly used the color in the 17th century for the wall coverings of King Louis XIV. Ox blood and cow or sheep dung steeped in rancid castor oil hung from royal walls.



BONUS: The white design of Washington, D.C., was modeled after a complete misconception of how Rome used to look.



Pierre Charles L'Enfant was appointed by George Washington in 1791 to plan what would become Washington, D.C. As Finlay explains, the early Americans wanted something based on what they believed ancient Rome and Greece looked like since many aspects of their new government were influenced by these cultures. Unfortunately they had the look all wrong:

Most of the important buildings and sculptures of ancient Greece and Rome were not white. We now know that just about all of them were once covered in bright designs; some were even decorated in pure gold leaf. But that didn't fit with what people in later centuries wanted to see. They thought colors were frivolous and showy, and they preferred to imagine an idealized, pristine white classical world.

All images Getty unless otherwise noted.

Classic Folklore Meets Personal Mythology In The Work Of Outsider Artist Andrew Frieder

January 27, 2015, 6:44 am

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The Outsider Art Fair is coming to New York on January 29, bringing 50 international galleries of folk, self-taught, and outsider art to Center 548 for four glorious days. The fair offers the rare opportunity for artists operating far outside the regulations of the art world -- whether marginalized, isolated, incarcerated, institutionalized or psychologically compromised -- a space to show the vibrant and singular artworks that don't just reflect their worlds, but constitute them. In anticipation of one of our favorite art events of the year, we're spotlighting a different outsider artist every day.


Untitled (Dancing Man with Mustard Pants) 2007 mixed media on paper 22.25X15”


"It is strange to think one is a candidate for immaculate conception. But I sit and wait for some spirit to combine with me and lead to product." Although this impassioned statement sounds like the words of an artist working perhaps centuries ago, they're actually from outsider artist Andrew Frieder, born and raised in Lancaster, California, on the western edge of the Mojave Desert, who passed away only last year.

The artist often weaved details of his own life with material from the most classic and universal narratives of them all, from the tales of Greek Mythology to the Old Testament. Beasts, serpents, skeletons and hybrid creatures populate his mixed media canvases, many of which were made by whitewashing acrylic gesso on charcoal drawings and machine-stitching the paper together. The images combine soft pastels and muted tones with sharp-edged textural intrusions like piercings and perforations, driving the works into what Good Luck Gallery calls "aesthetic submission."


Untitled (Fishman) 2007 mixed media on paper 20X16”

Frieder grew up fluent in French and proficient at fencing; he was a ranked tournament player. After suffering a fencing injury, however, he turned his attention to art. During his education at art school, Frieder experienced a mental breakdown, and continued to live with symptoms of schizophrenia for much of his adult life. Frieder was open about his experiences, channeling many of his observations regarding his condition into his work, splicing together his own story with those of Greek, Roman and Biblical lore to craft visual hybrids at once personal and universal.

"It's naive, there's a lot of figure in it," Andi Campognone, Museum Manager and Curator at Lancaster's Museum of Art and History explained to The Huffington Post. "There was a lot of printmaking involved. And then he would go in and rework pieces with paint and stitching. He was really drawn to the texture that stitches made. For him it was a security thing because his grandparents were in the garment district, so it was something familiar to him."


Untitled (Nude with Donkey) 2007 mixed media on paper 22.25X14.75”

Not only were Frieder's final products artworks worthy of attention, his various tools, mostly handmade, were just as astounding. "He hand-made about every tool he used," said Campognone. "His house was an installation in itself. There wasn't a bedroom and dining room and a living room, but a sewing room and a tool room and a printmaking room. He would go to thrift stores and garage sales and turn these found objects into tools he would use. He built his own presses from scratch, all made from things discarded from other people. He felt every tool could be used a second time."

Aside from being a fine artist, Frieder fancied himself a barber and cobbler too. He was a tireless thinker and proponent of self-taught art. Although private and reclusive when making art, Frieder was a regular at his local art museum, Lancaster's Museum of Art and History, and often shared his opinions on art history and theory to museum goers and staff. Although his schizophrenia caused him great pain for years -- he destroyed his entire body of work three times over as a result -- for the final two decades of his life Frieder experienced peace of mind, a healing transformation he attributed largely to art-making.

"He was very generous with his time and his materials," Campognone summarized. "He donated a lot of his work that he hand-framed to our museum store and modestly priced them so people could afford them. We value the work because it is so raw and it was so sincere. He really dealt with the human situations that others in his situation wouldn't have dealt with."

Frieder's work will be on view courtesy The Good Luck Gallery at the Outsider Art Fair, from January 29 until February 1, at Center 548 in New York.

An Unfinished Work By 'The Kiss' Artist Gustav Klimt Heads To America

January 27, 2015, 6:45 am

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Some of the world's most famous artworks are nomadic. They travel from one institution to another, borrowed and lent across museums so that art admirers in continents too far to touch can view them. They are gently packaged and shipped overseas, ushered into temporary homes by art handlers who take their jobs very seriously. (And sometimes not so seriously.) It's an arduous ordeal, one not without its hiccups, but essential nonetheless.

For example, without these kinds of arrangements, the fine people of Boston wouldn't be able to feast their eyes on the unfinished work of "The Kiss" painter, Gustav Klimt. And that would be a shame.


Adam and Eve, Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862–1918), 1917-1918, Oil on canvas *Belvedere, Vienna * © Belvedere, Vienna *Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The aforementioned unfinished work is an early 20th century painting depicting the biblical figures Adam and Eve. It has traveled from the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna, Austria all the way to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston as a part of the latter's "Visiting Masterpieces" series this month. Klimt was unable to finish the work before his death in 1918, hence the handless Eve standing in front of an unruffled Adam. Curators speculate that the empty space was meant to reveal an apple, the signature fruit of religious history's first woman rabble-rouser.

Klimt, the Austrian artist known for his ability to eroticize the female body with a flick of his gilded brush, is of course heralded for his work on the famous painting, "The Kiss (Lovers)." Klimt's rendering of Adam and Eve reveals a shadow of the artist's mosaic-like technique, this time profiling a completely nude female body, her eyes staring forth from the frame as she obscures the likely equally nude body of her counterpart. At the MFA, the piece will be shown next to Oskar Kokoschka's 1913 masterpiece, "Two Nudes (Lovers)," yet another portrait of the Abrahamic sinners.


Two Nudes (Lovers), Oskar Kokoschka (Austrian, 1886–1980), 1913, Oil on canvas *Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of Sarah Reed Platt *Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Klimt's mass appeal is undeniable. The 150th anniversary of the artist, celebrated in 2012, reminded the world just how much fans enjoy ogling the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. "Paintings by Klimt are among the most expensive in the world but they have also come to adorn the cheapest tat," the BBC reported, "everything from mugs and fridge magnets to key-rings and tea towels."

For those still nursing a solid case of Klimt mania, the MFA's short affair with Adam and Eve is not to be missed.


The Kiss, 1907-1908. Found in the collection of the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Gustav Klimt’s "Adam and Eve" is the latest presentation of the MFA’s Visiting Masterpieces series, which highlights important loans, often complemented by works from the MFA's collection. It will be on view from January 17 to April 27, 2015 in the Charlotte F. and Irving W. Rabb Gallery. The exhibition also includes a selection of works on paper by Klimt and his contemporaries from the MFA’s holdings.

Snow-Filled Illustrations From One Of America's First Humor Magazines Are Just Perfect

January 27, 2015, 6:47 am

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It's officially winter in the Northeast. A snow storm is upon us and -- in typical 21st century style -- city dwellers are clearing out liquor stores, refreshing their Netflix queues and adding #Juno to the end of their tweets, all in preparation for this year's snowpocalypse.

Of course, it wasn't always so. Back in yesteryear, the falling of snowflakes ushered in a time of ice skating in elaborate mufflers, sledding with sweethearts and the making of affectionately creepy snowmen. Proof: these vintage illustrations from Puck magazine, one of America's earliest humor magazines.


January 4, 1911(Artist Grant Gordon, 1875-1962)

Thanks to the good ol' Library of Congress, we're privy to a massive collection of retro drawings and cartoons that harken back to seasons of yore. These glorious Puck illustrations are just one piece of the kitsch puzzle that is the LoC archives.

The magazine, which was founded by Joseph Keppler and ran from 1876 to 1918, was known for its humor, often taking the form of political cartoons that lampooned say, anyone running against Grover Cleveland in the 1884 presidential election. While the photos below are not all funny, we'd like to humbly point out the undeniably disturbing winter creature below.

Happy snow day!

Was 'The Lion King' Copied From A Japanese Cartoon? Here's The Real Story

January 27, 2015, 6:47 am

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Ever since "The Lion King" debuted a little more than 20 years ago, everything the light touches has been its kingdom. The movie is one of the most cherished Disney films of all time, it was turned into the most successful musical ever and its soundtrack was Disney's most decorated until "Frozen" came along. (Just let it go, "Lion King" fans.)

But despite its massive success, a huge controversy has always dogged the film: "Kimba, the White Lion."

"I can say there is absolutely no inspiration from 'Kimba,'" animator Tom Sito told HuffPost Entertainment. Sito's resume includes classic Disney films such as "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin" and, of course, "The Lion King," to name a few. "I mean the artists working on the film, if they grew up in the '60s, they probably saw 'Kimba.' I mean, I watched 'Kimba' when I was a kid in the '60s, and I think in the recesses of my memory we’re aware of it, but I don’t think anybody consciously thought, 'Let’s rip off 'Kimba.'"


The "Kimba" Controversy


Following animated classics like "The Little Mermaid" (1989), "Beauty and the Beast," (1991) and "Aladdin" (1992), "The Lion King" was billed as Disney's first big animated feature that wasn't a retelling of a fairytale or previous story. And while the film took a lot of inspiration from Shakespeare's "Hamlet," its originality was still praised by critics and audiences.

Not everyone was impressed, though.


Image: YouTube/Tezuka


After the movie's release, many were shocked by its similarities to a Japanese-created American television cartoon series called "Kimba, the White Lion." That cartoon, about African wildlife, began airing in the 1960s and was based off of a Manga comic called "Jungle Emperor Leo" by animator Osamu Tezuka.

Disney and the filmmakers quickly denied any influence.

The company's stance was that those involved with the film had no knowledge of "Kimba" or Tezuka. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, "The Lion King" co-director Rob Minkoff said, "Frankly, I'm not familiar with [the TV series]," in reference to the controversy. He also added that he and co-director Roger Allers first learned about the debate on a trip to Japan to promote the movie.

But as author Madhavi Sunder pointed out, Allers actually worked as an animator in Japan in the 1980s, a place where "Jungle Emperor" was widely seen, and its creator, Tezuka, is known as Japan's Walt Disney.


Image: Imgur


In a recent interview with Fumettologica, Allers said, "I could certainly understand Kimba’s creators feeling angry if they felt we had stolen ideas from them. If I had been inspired by 'Kimba' I would certainly acknowledge my inspiration."

Minkoff and Allers did not respond to requests for further comment from HuffPost Entertainment.

Disney's denial of any influence inspired petitions and protests from animators and fans alike who believed "Kimba" should have been acknowledged. Well-known Japanese cartoonist Machiko Satonaka, who says she was told by the company that "Disney has never heard of 'Jungle Emperor' or 'Kimba, the White Lion,'" wrote an open letter to the studio that was signed by hundreds of animation professionals. "The Simpsons" even parodied the controversy in a 1995 episode by having a lion appear in the clouds to say, "You must avenge my death, Kimba … I mean, Simba.”



But did these protesters really have a case? The past can hurt, but you can either run from it or learn from it.


The Similarities



Image: PixGood/Disney/OsamuTezuka


Though Disney seems to hold one firm opinion on the Simba vs. Kimba debate, actor Matthew Broderick -- who voiced Simba -- admitted he was initially confused about his role. "I thought he meant Kimba, who was a white lion in a cartoon when I was a little kid," Broderick had said in a 1994 interview about his casting.

And while the projects differ in their storylines -- with the Japanese cartoon exploring the relationship between humans and animals -- there are some visual similarities between the two.


Image: Imgur


From the epic vision of a lion standing atop Pride Rock to the unforgettable appearance of Mufasa in the clouds, "The Lion King" does appear to mirror "Kimba" at certain points.


Image: YouTube


Many also reference similarities in the characters as proof of a connection. In addition to the main characters having extremely similar names -- Kimba and Simba, respectively (Kimba is known as Leo in "Jungle Emperor") -- there is also a sage baboon, bumbling hyenas, a young lioness love-interest, a Zazu-like bird and an evil lion with an eye ailment. His name is Claw.


Image: Ehnamelox/DisneyWiki



The Real Story


In an interview with HuffPost Entertainment, Sito said "Kimba" did not serve as source material for the film. But his comments confirm that at least some people working on the project had seen the cartoons and comics before, which is contrary to the initial reported corporate stance that the filmmakers were unaware of "Kimba" or Tezuka. (In a 1994 interview, Minkoff did not rule out the possibility that Tezuka was discussed in the years prior to his arrival on the project.)


Image: Giphy

Sito says when filmmakers first learned about similarities between the projects, it was already late in the production process, with more than half the film having been completed.

"One of the animators found a Manga comic book of Kimba’s with a setup that kind of looked like Pride Rock, and I remember he was like showing it to us, and I was like, 'Wow, that is really close to ours, yeah.' But I think it was never more than an amusing coincidence," said Sito.

Other filmmakers on the project confirm Sito's comments. In a 1997, Mark Kausler, who has a story credit on the film, told author Fred Patten that he had watched "Kimba" as a kid, but during the production process the animators were focused on creating a story that was more like "Bambi" set in Africa without the "animals versus man" theme:

Nobody ever mentioned "Kimba," and if any of us who knew of it thought about it, I guess we figured that since "Kimba" was always about the animals trying to get the humans to accept them as equals, the absence of humans in "The Lion King" made it obviously a different plot.

In regard to "Bambi" serving as a template for "Lion King," Sito said, "I think we were trying to achieve the same naturalism in the acting as 'Bambi.' The animals don't walk around on two legs, and wear gloves with three lines on them. The art directors were also inspired by the color palate [as the] 'Bambi' art director Tyrus Wong. Taking into account the vastly different setting of course, 'Lion King' is in African savannah while 'Bambi' is set in a North American indigenous forrest."

Though "The Lion King" wasn't developed with "Kimba" in mind, the similarities are evident. In his book Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews, Patten cites an interview with "Lion King" animator Sadao Miyamoto, in which he told Bridge U.S.A. that he was "taken aback" when he first saw storyboards because of their likeness to Tezuka's work and that there must've been at least some influence.


Image: Imgur


Sito explained that wasn't necessarily the case. "Honestly, I think it’s seriously coincidence," the animator said. "You know I’m not a spokesman for Disney, but I was there during all the story development and nobody consciously thought [about] that. I think when you do the kind of things that lions do, the grasslands and the kind of environment they’re in, and the type of props they would work with, trees and rocks and the other animals, I think some similarities are inevitable." (For those wondering, Simba is reportedly the Swahili word for lion, which would explain the name similarities.)


Disney did not respond to requests for comment.

Back in 1994, Takayuki Matsutani, the president of Osamu Tezuka's production company, Tezuka Productions, agreed with what Sito said today:

Quite a few staff of our company saw a preview of "The Lion King," discussed this subject and came to the conclusion that you cannot avoid having these similarities as long as you use animals as characters and try to draw images out of them.

Matsutani continued saying that if Tezuka had thought Disney "got a hint" of "Lion King" from his work, he would have been pleased.


Fan art by WeisseEdelweiss



In the end, it all comes full circle.


Even with its similarities to "The Lion King," Tezuka's work has clear differences. "Kimba is much more exotic. You know, Kimba gets up on two feet and punches other animals in the mouth, gives them a knuckle sandwich, you know, and our lions don’t really do that," Sito noted.

In addition to "Kimba" having more fantastical plots and anthropomorphic traits in the characters, the biggest contrast between the two projects is without a doubt the relationship between animals and humans, which stems from the original inspiration for "Kimba": Walt Disney's "Bambi."


Image: Giphy


Tezuka died in 1989, but during his life he didn't bother hiding his affection for Disney, especially his love for "Bambi," claiming to have seen the film more than 100 times. The animator actually met Walt Disney during a World's Fair before he ended up licensing "Bambi" for a Japanese adaptation and credits Disney in his autobiography for some creative influence. In his book, From Goods to a Good Life: Intellectual Property and Global Justice, Sunder points out that Tezuka said his own work on "Jungle Emperor," aka "Kimba," was an homage and a critique of the film.

Despite all the controversy surrounding "The Lion King" with regard to "Kimba," both works have stood the test of time and hold an important place in the hearts of fans. With the news that each simply focuses on similar subject matter and drew varying inspiration Disney's "Bambi," it's easy to see how some similarities, as Sito says, are "almost inevitable."

In the end, it appears this case may just come down to a little thing called the circle of life.


Image: Tumblr


See more "Kimba" characters in the slideshow:



Main image created by WhiteLionWarrior.

Photographer Crisscrosses America To Bring Small-Town Reporting Back To Life

January 27, 2015, 6:58 am

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The small town reporter is practically a mythological figure these days. Communities gather in town halls and cafeterias across America, but unless someone in the crowd loves to tweet, it's unlikely the scene will be recorded.


Bil. Sandusky, Ohio. 2012. Archival pigment print. © Alec Soth.

Alec Soth (pronounced like "both") saw an entry point in this absence. Known for his large-scale portraits of Americans, the Minnesota-based photographer recently set his sights on a timeworn subject: community life. From 2012 to 2014, Soth crisscrossed the country with his friend, writer Brad Zeller. Stepping into the role of local newspapermen, the two dropped into hundreds of meetings, dances and festivals, hoping to capture human interaction in an age of virtual connectivity.


Crazy Legs Saloon. Watertown, New York. Archival pigment. © Alec Soth.


Near Kaaterskill Falls, New York. Archival pigment print. © Alec Soth.

The resulting collection, "Songbook," feels like the lovechild of a Dorothea Lange series and a Woody Guthrie song. Rendered in black and white, the scenes look old enough to have been pulled, fittingly, from a newspaper's archives: from a line of policemen in cowboy hats at an impending execution in Huntsville, Tx., to a lipsticked cheerleader mid-jump. Aging the new is a trick known to anyone who uses Instagram (Inkwell filter, anyone?), but Soth's images don't feel disingenuous. Maybe it's that the unposed moment seems to have gone extinct. These scenes -- raw and naturalistic, alternately haunting and goofy -- compel for the very reason they might turn a naturalist off: they don't look real.


Bree. Liberty Cheer All-Stars. Corsicana, Texas. Fine art pigment print. © Alec Soth

Starting Jan. 30, Songbook will be exhibited at the Sean Kelly Gallery, in New York, where tableaus of life inside the country are true exotica. Let's hope someone's there to Instagram them out to the world.

Everything You Need To Know About The Oscar-Nominated Short Films

January 27, 2015, 7:09 am

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A lot of people haven't seen the Best Picture nominees this year, so we can assume that possibly no one -- maybe not even Academy members themselves -- has seen the short films. But there's still time!

Starting Jan. 30, the recognized titles will play in over 350 venues across the U.S. and Canada. Check out the full list and head to the theater, or just wait for them to be on VOD in February (because, let's be real, you're not getting off your couch):

Live Action

"Aya"
"Aya" tells the story of two strangers who meet at an airport when a man mistakes a woman for his chauffeur, and she is so intrigued she goes along with it. Basically, Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun's short is the closest thing to a rom-com we could expect to be nominated for an Oscar this year: a serendipitous meet-cute, except understated and with subtitles.

AYA - Short Film - Official trailer from Oded Binnun עודד בן נון on Vimeo.

"Boogaloo and Graham"
In 1978 Belfast, a father gives his sons, Jamesy and Malachy, two chicks, Boogaloo and Graham. They become vegetarians, make plans to start a chicken farm and just generally grow obsessed to their pets (in part, through a montage set to "Why Do Fools Fall In Love?"), before having to grapple with the way their family is about to change.

Boogaloo and Graham Trailer from Out of Orbit on Vimeo.

"Butter Lamp" ("La lampe au beurre de yak")
A photographer and his assistant photograph Tiebetan nomads against an unexpected mix of backgrounds (from The Great Wall to Disney World) for a mesmerizing look at cultural dissonance.

The Butter Lamp (Trailer) from Mostra Ecofalante on Vimeo.

"Parvaneh"
"Parvanah" follows an Afghan immigrant as she travels to Zurich and explores an unlikely friendship.

PARVANEH - Trailer from hiddenframe on Vimeo.

"The Phone Call"
In this 21-minute short, a shy telephone operator works a help line and receives a call that changes the way she sees the world. The foreboding tone combined with English accents of Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent may leave you wishing it was a "Black Mirror" episode. Although, "The Phone Call" is much more sentimental than anything going on in Charlie Brooker's head.

The Phone Call Trailer from Lizzy Graham on Vimeo.

Animated

"A Single Life"
A two-minute look at the phases of life that could easily work as the opener for the next Pixar film.

A SINGLE LIFE - TRAILER from Job, Joris & Marieke on Vimeo.

"Feast"
With "Feast," "Paperman" head of animation Patrick Osborne takes on a simple yet touching premise: a man's life as told through the meals he shares with his dog.



"Me and My Moulton"
Remember "Arthur"? There are no anthropomorphic aardvarks in "Me and My Moulton." The similarities ring true in the deadpan educational vibes with which director Torill Kove walks through a Norwegian girl's life, as she grows up and learns to appreciate her family despite their shortcomings.

Me and My Moulton - Official Trailer - English version from Mikrofilm AS on Vimeo.

"The Bigger Picture"
In "The Bigger Picture" an eerie mix of stop motion and life-sized painting is used to depict the dark comedy that is caring for an elderly mother.

The Bigger Picture Trailer from daisy jacobs on Vimeo.

"The Dam Keeper"
Somehow, the beautiful animation in Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi's short makes the unfamiliar story of "The Dam Keeper" -- a precocious pig tasked with keeping "the darkness" away -- feel like your most beloved childhood storybook come to life.



Documentary

"Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1"
"Crisis Hotline" takes on the trauma of veterans through the lens of the crisis hotline's trained responders. Sort of like if "The Waiting Room" went with a different American inadequacy, and took on the veteran care in place of the health-care crisis.



"Joanna"
This 40-minute film is a gorgeous look at a mother's final moments with her son as she faces an untreatable illness. There is no in-depth explanation of what Joanna is dealing with. No heavy confessional interviews. Just glimpses at a parent-child bond, cherished as it ought to be (but often isn't) sans extenuating circumstances. "Joanna" is as heartwarming as it is poetic. And director Aneta Kopacz refuses to wallow, reflecting the beauty in Joanna's story with as much intensity as its inherent sadness.

JOANNA TRAILER ENG from Wajda Studio on Vimeo.

"Our Curse"
"Our Curse" functions as a personal statement from director Tomasz Sliwinski and his wife. Over 40 minutes, the two grapple with the reality of the fact that their son was born with Ondine’s Curse (congenital central hypoventilation syndrome or CCHS), a disease which will likely leave him dependent on a ventilator for the remainder of his life. "I forget I have a child," she says one night, looking hollowed-out over a glass of wine, during one of the many confessionals throughout the film. Here we have a raw form of parental anguish, disturbing if only because of how rarely it is seen outside of closed doors.

NASZA KLĄTWA / OUR CURSE (trailer) from Tomasz Śliwiński on Vimeo.

"The Reaper"
In "The Reaper," a longtime slaughterhouse worker (hence the subtle title) faces his own relationship with death in light of his gruesome surroundings. "The animals just came in and stared at me," he says, recounting a dream against a montage of bloodied cow bodies and steel. "They said, 'It's your turn.'"

La Parka / The Reaper trailer from CCCMexico on Vimeo.

"White Earth"
"White Earth" could have easily folded out into a feature-length film, though it benefitted from zooming in where it did. This documentary depicts the families of the (mostly) men who uproot their lives to work on the oil rigs in North Dakota. Director J. Christian Jensen spends almost no time with the men themselves, opting for an unflinching look at what life looks like for the people closest to them instead.

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These NYC Snow Photos Show Us What New York Looks Like Without All The People

January 27, 2015, 7:42 am

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Winter Storm Juno hit New York City Monday night, but the "potentially historic" snowfall Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke of kinda forgot to make a showing.

Not that we're complaining about missing out on three to five feet of snow, but some people are giving NYC a hard time for overreacting and shutting down the roads and subways.

But with those shut down roads and few inches of snow came some really, really beautiful photos of something we rarely get to see -- New York City streets and roads almost totally empty. Check out the pictures below to see the quiet stillness Juno brought to the city that never sleeps until it snows:

10th Avenue


Grand Central


Times Square




Williamsburg Bridge


Penn Station

Got into pen station at 8pm. Things pretty quiet. Train station and subway felt half full #winterstormjuno #nyc #6d #photoproject #andrevsjuno

A photo posted by @andrapolis on Jan 26, 2015 at 9:49pm PST

22nd & Broadway


Financial District


Central West Park


3rd Avenue


5th Avenue


Upper West Side

23 Easy Valentine's Day Crafts That Require No Special Skills Whatsoever

January 27, 2015, 7:53 am

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From classroom cards to home decorations, Valentine's Day brings all kinds of crafting opportunities. Luckily, you don't have to be a DIY genius to get creative with your kids this February. We've scoured Pinterest and found 23 easy Valentine's Day craft ideas that kids can make for their classmates, teachers, grandparents, siblings, and any other special people in their lives.





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These Are The Star-Shaped Snowflakes That Fell All Over The East Coast This Week

January 27, 2015, 8:44 am

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The blizzard that was Winter Storm Juno descended upon the East Coast this week, bringing with it a melange of wind gusts, icy temperatures and admirably geometric snowflake masterpieces.

Residents of cities like Manhattan reported seeing a mix of star-shaped flakes falling upon them, posting impressive shots of the unique configurations across the Internet. We scoured the web for some examples of these stunning dendrites, and the results are appropriately beautiful.



The complex ice crystals are part of a natural art-making process that you might have learned about in your grade school science class. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a snowflake begins to form when exceedingly cold water droplets freeze onto certain particles in the sky, like pollen or dust. The meeting of water and particle creates an ice crystal, and as that crystal falls to the ground, water vapor freezes onto it to produce new crystals –- essentially, the six points of the snowflake that make that stunning star shape.

“There are many different types of crystal patterns and these star-shaped snowflakes are just one example," weather.com meteorologist Chris Dolce explained. "The dendrite, a star-shape with varying patterns, is the most common shape of a snowflake.”

See the collection of photos below for more of Juno's star-shaped wonders. Let us know about the flakes that fell before you in the comments. For a closer look at the actual crystal lurking below the snow, check out the work of macrophotographer Alexey Kljatov.

interview with artist david shrigley

January 27, 2015, 8:50 am

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david shrigley is a british artist who lives and works in glasgow. while best known for his dark and humorous drawings, shrigley’s work also includes sculpture, painting, music and animation. his work has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions and in 2013 he was nominated for the turner prize. his latest book ‘weak messages create bad situations’ is now available from canongate.

Disney Princesses With Realistic Hair Make Us Love Them Even More

January 27, 2015, 10:10 am

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Portrayals of Disney princesses have long been criticized for perpetuating completely unattainable body standards. When realistic waistlines, busts and hips disappear from the big screen, it spells trouble for girls everywhere who want to look like their favorite characters.

That's why we couldn't help but chuckle when we saw these altered images of Disney princesses with hair far more realistic than the lucious locks animators originally drew.

Just look at Mulan's hair with the inevitable frizz brought on by humidity:


And Ariel's sopping wet hair (she is a mermaid after all):


The realistic Disney princess characters are the brainchild of Buzzfeed's Loryn Brantz, who first brought us "Disney Princesses With Realistic Waistlines." She previously spoke to The Huffington Post about why she created the illustrations.

"As a woman who loves Disney and has dealt with body image issues, it has been something I've always wanted to comment on, particularly after seeing 'Frozen,'" Brantz said. "While I loved the film, I was horrified that the main female character designs haven't changed since the '60s."

Though we couldn't be happier to see Brantz make some much-needed physical changes on our favorite Disney characters, we do have one suggestion for her -- add Princess Tiana!

Head over to Buzzfeed to view the rest of the princesses here.