More reminders of the incredible loveliness of summer

Classical things

More beauty

Beauty

There are some seriously gorgeous things at but does it float right now.

Good habits, bad habits

Bathes daily! Timely reminders from the Indian book depot.

Woods

from a beautiful revolution.

Dreaming of summery things

Beautiful photos by Abby Robinson here.

Ping pong

Ultra stylish. Photos here and here.

Taxonomy of artworks

Art is everywhere is a website with some wonderful material run by SerraGlia (some really nice projects on his page), and with this helpful summary of the site's categories.

sloes

- Arándano, arándano azul o mora azul (crowberry, blueberry, bilberry)
- Arándano rojo (cranberry)
- Arañón, endrina, ciruela silvestre o pacharán (amargo, con el que se hace el licor)

The indigenous artefact

Thomas Whiffen, group of Amazonian Indians, 1908-9. From the Assembling Bodies exhibition at the MAA.

Nineteenth century photography at the British Library

(Babboon walking, Eadweard Muybridge 1872-85; Frog x-rays, Josef Maria Eder and Eduard Valentia c.1896; Regent's Park Hippo, Don Juan Carlos, Count of Montizón 1852). The exhibition was really wonderful. One of my favourite discoveries is that long exposure times meant it was really difficult to capture animals--and so many photos were staged with stuffed animals. There was a beautiful picture in the exhibition of some natives hunting a boar (I think), and they are poised with their spears over an animal that is very obviously stuffed. I will go back the next time I'm down and I'll report more - it's a really beautiful exhibition. Some pictures are online here.

Guns

Alexander Lobanov (above) is the clear favourite for gun fascination. And I think especially nice alongside Carla Verea's photos of Guatemalan bodyguards (here). Also nice on the gun theme are these by Andre Robillard who, apparently, makes his 'favourite' guns out of old bits of stuff. And a beautiful roundup on the AK-47 at the always extraordinary Englishrussia.

"No more explaining where the photos were taken!"

I had meant to do a followup on the studiophoto posts (here and here), by doing something on this website here. But I never got around to it. Partly because the site is too strange. Is it real? Is it an art project? Are the people meant to look so badly pasted into their chosen background? Is it a comment on the dislocation of prisoners? Are the background images supposed to look so incredibly argos-catalogue depressing? Is it a comment on the crushing disappointment built into capitalist dreams? That not even knowing the correct things to fantasise about is the inevitable level to which we're all reduced? That we need to be educated as to what things we should regret we don't have? Are cars and gazebos really the things you wish you were around more when you're in prison? I also never got around to posting on it because the pictures were just too ugly. So here, instead is a random image. I wish I could remember where I found it, but I can't.

Pieces of things

The fifth man

Back when spies were stylish... The man with two pairs of glasses is John Cairncross, known as the 'fifith man' of the Cambridge spy ring in the 1950s, because no one knew who he was until 1990. And he wears his sunglasses over his normal glasses.

Taxidermy

Sometimes things done really badly give a much better insight into what they're about than things done really well. The aims and ideas are clumsily and charmingly on show where subtlety and skill efface them to produce something that looks 'natural'. Bad taxidermy is a particularly charming example. Partly because all taxidermy is so doomed to failure, it's just a matter of degree. There are some wonderful essays on taxidermy at ravishing beasts.

Things to do with dead physicists

Yes, yes, you can make a statue of them and then put their remains inside the statue. Alternatively, you can make a giant asymetrical space shuttle and let them drift around in space (Lebbeus woods' design for Einstein's tomb) - or you can make a gigantic cenotaph with holes in the domed roof in the pattern of the constellations (Etienne-Louis Boullée's Cenotaph for Newton). When Newton died, he was the first scientist in England ever to get a tomb as good as a poet. You wait a few years, and now no one's interested in dead poets drifting in space. (More here and here, and a beautiful collection of giant spheres at cabinet here).

Pilates Motivation

This is Joseph Pilates showing how it's done. This is exactly what it will be like. And if it's not, they're not doing it right.

Dust cover for dog

Continuing the dog obsession. Via futility closet.

Cabin

The unabomber's cabin - beautiful photos by Richard Barnes.

Part of the fascination with this cabin is the fact that the entire 10 by 12 foot structure and contents was transported across the country to be used as evidence in the trial. Later it sat in storage for a while before finally being installed as an exhibit in the classily named 'newseum' in Washington D.C. There is something a bit magic about the place of the cabin in the wilderness in the imagination. On the one hand it signifies bucolic peacefulness, simple living, communion with nature, and a haven from the corruption of society. On the other hand, the very same qualities that make it so much about purity, nature, tranquility - it's isolated, has no running water or electricity - are also summoned as unarguable evidence of the dangerous, seditious, 'life of a mad hermit'...

Interesting observations on this here and here.

Textile tree

A slide displaying a fragment of ancient textile which belongs in the things like trees collection. From the archaeological museum with this mysterious instruction on the door:

Strange and beautiful things

It's been too long, hasn't it? Here are this afternoon's beautiful things - from the archaeological museum, which is made almost entirely out of relflective surfaces and is accidentally beautiful.