Misc

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carl_D%C3%B8rnberger_-_By_the_Easel_-_Ved_staffeliet_-_Nasjonalmuseet_-_NG.M.04348.jpg

  • Émile Zola described a work of art as “a corner of nature seen through a temperament.”
  • Early printings of Webster’s New International Dictionary defined RAFTMAN as “a raftman.”
  • Horace’s motto was Nihil admirari, “Be surprised at nothing.”
  • In the 1960s the Bureau of Land Management renamed Whorehouse Meadow, Oregon, to Naughty Girl Meadow on its maps. In 1981, after a public outcry, it changed it back.
  • “Never read a pop-up book about giraffes.” — Sean Lock

Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, cooperated as Humphrey Carpenter prepared his biography, believing that the book wouldn’t be published until after his passing. Eventually he was forced to write,

My dear Humphrey

I have done my best to die before this book is published. It now seems possible that I may not succeed. Since you know that I am not enthusiastic about it you are generous to give me space for a postscript.

| Art · Language · Literature · Quotations · Trivia

100 Voices

https://archive.org/details/5b-5e-8cf-6a-4bcf-3648efb-65dbc-11daa-3987f-3a-95c-118b-5150c-6623256d-8ce-491b
Image: Internet Archive

Designer Cam Wilde assembled this “periodic table of typefaces” by tabulating each face’s representation among a selected honor roll of great typefaces.

The “elements” are sorted numerically, and each is categorized as to family and class: sans-serif, serif, script, blackletter, glyphic, display, grotesque, realist, didone, garalde, geometric, humanist, slab-serif, and mixed. (Click to enlarge.)

| Art

Roundabout

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stuber-Musique.jpg

Alsatian pastor J.G. Stuber composed this puzzle canon in the late 18th century.

“It was always a great delight to me, in riding my horse from one village to another, to hear in the fields and among the heights the melodies which I had taught,” he wrote. “I could often distinguish very beautiful and harmonious voices.”

| Art

Trompe-l’œil

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CHEVALETDUPEINTRE_ANTONIO_FORBERA-987.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

At the far end of the room was an easel on which lay a painting, not quite finished, depicting the Empire of Flora, the original of which was by Poussin. The painter’s palette and brushes were left beside the painting. Above it, on a piece of paper, was a red chalk drawing of the painting. … I examined all of this, both from afar and up close, without finding anything worth dwelling on; but my surprise was unparalleled when, upon trying to take the drawing, I discovered that it was all a fabrication, and that the whole thing was a single painting entirely in oil. … If I were in a position to possess this painting, I would gladly give ten thousand francs for it.

From Charles de Brosses, L’Italie il y a cent ans., 1836. The painting was Antoine Fort-Bras’ 1686 Le Chevalet du peintre, now at the Calvet Museum in Avignon. Flemish painter Cornelius Gijsbrechts had pulled the same trick a decade earlier.

| Art

Velato

The esoteric programming language Velato uses music as its source code. The first note of a composition establishes a “command root” note, and the intervals that follow specify instructions. The command root can be changed between statements, and the notes that make up a chord can be interpreted in a specified order, so there’s some latitude to help a composition sound “musical.” This program produces the output “Hello, World”:

https://esolangs.org/wiki/File:Velato_HelloWorld.gif

Here’s what that sounds like:

A few other musical languages: Fugue, VenetianScript, Yet Another Musical Esolang.

| Art · Technology

Constraint

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Animaux_sauvages_-_ll._de_Jean_Matet_-_btv1b10573583s_(11_of_12).jpg

Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.

— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908

| Art · Literature · Quotations

Navel Warfare

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrea_schiavone_(o_ambito_di),_cacciata_dal_paradiso_terrestre,_1540-60_ca.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Another mistake there may be in the Picture of our first Parents, who after the manner of their posterity are both delineated with a Navel. … Which notwithstanding cannot be allowed, … that in the first and most accomplished piece, the Creator affected superfluities, or ordained parts without use or office.

… Now the Navel being a part, not precedent, but subsequent unto generation, nativity or parturition, it cannot be well imagined at the creation or extraordinary formation of Adam, who immediately issued from the Artifice of God; nor also that of Eve, who was not solemnly begotten, but suddenly framed, and anomalously proceeded from Adam.

— Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 1646

| Art · Religion