Joan Didion wrote in "The White Album," her book on the era, that "many people I know in Los Angeles believed the '60s ended abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969." Sketchy details began emerging that day from a gruesome murder scene in exclusive Benedict Canyon. The fenced estate had been the home at various times of Henry Fonda, Candice Bergen and, more recently, Roman Polanski, the hot young director of the previous year's film sensation, Rosemary's Baby
Hogarth's Modern Moral Series: The Rake's Progress When Hogarth embarked on his second Progress in 1733, ‘the rake’ was a long established symbol of masculine waywardness and depravity. An inveterate consumer and ‘man of leisure’, the rake of convention fritters his fortune, usually inherited, on sex, drink and gambling. Along the way he amasses huge debts and seduces, impregnates and abandons at least one young woman. As with the prostitute, a literary convention had developed in which the rake starts life as an impressionable young man from the country who comes to the city after inheriting money and swiftly embarks on a dissolute life. His fate typically involved venereal disease, debtor’s prison and death.
Peter Greenaway's film (writing and direction) Nightwatching is about the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. Initiated by The Netherlands' Kasander Film Company, Nightwatching is based around the paiting of Rembrandt's most famous picture "Nightwatch". The film's premiere (Venice, September 2007) was accompanied earlier by a special installation Greenaway designed for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It was shown next to the actual "Nightwatch" painting and casted some light on the characters portrayed in the famous work.
expatriate Englishman Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904), a brilliant and eccentric photographer, gained worldwide fame photographing animal and human movement imperceptible to the human eye
Marey, Étienne Jules. 1863. Physiologie médicale de la circulation du sang: Basée sur l'étude graphique des mouvements du coeur et du pouls artériel avec application aux maladies de l'appareil circulatoire. Paris: Delahaye
Etienne Jules Marey hat Bilder hinterlassen, eine Fülle von Bildern; einige sind uns kostbar, gehören sie doch zu den ersten Kinobildern überhaupt... Diesen Aufnahmen verdankt Marey seinen Platz in der Geschichte. Menschen und Tiere, die sich vor dem Objektiv eines Wissenschaftlers entwickeln, der meinte: "Wir müssen uns auf die Suche nach den Gesetzen des Lebens machen." Hinter diesen Bildern steht der Scharfblick eines Mannes, der sich folgendermaßen beschrieb: "Ich habe keine Erinnerung, ich besitze nur das Gedächtnis des Auges." Und hinter diesem Blick ein anderer, der eines träumerischen Kindes, unabhängig, sich für Mechanik begeisternd, ein junger Mediziner und Physiologe
A few days ago I posted 100 Illustrated Horror Film Posters: Part 1 to get myself, and hopefully others, in the Halloween spirit. Much to my delight the post was a smashing success! Big thanks to everyone who helped spread the word on that article. As promised here is the second half of the horror and sci-fi illustrated posters collection. Though a lot of these movies are not exactly masterful cinematic achievements, at least they sport some pretty kick ass poster art - so it’s not a complete loss.
Étienne-Jules Marey (b. 5 March 1830; d. 15 May 1904) started his career as an assistant surgeon in 1855, and specialised in human and animal physiology. In 1867 he became Professor of Natural History. He was the inventor of the "chronophotograph" (1888) from which modern cinematography was developed. Some in fact see Marey, rather than the Lumière brothers, as the true father of cine photography, though Marey's equipment had no transparent film, no perforation of film stock, and no claw to move the film along. Whereas Muybridge had used a number of cameras to study movement, Marey used only one, and the movements being recorded on one photographic plate. Characteristic of his pictures were his studies of the human in motion, where the subjects wore black suits with metal strips or white lines, as they passed in front of the black backdrops.