Seed Newsvine
Wednesday
Sep082010
Veronica Saint and a Little Photoshop Magic
Wednesday, September 8, 2010 
Veronica Saint
Veronica Saint
Veronica Saint
Veronica Saint
Entries in Art (36)
Wednesday, September 8, 2010 Tuesday
Jul272010
What Did I Tell You About Rummage Sales?
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 
Ansel AdamsThis has turned a pauper into a prince:
Rick Norsigian's hobby of picking through piles of unwanted items at garage sales in search of antiques has paid off for the Fresno, California, painter.
Two small boxes he bought 10 years ago for $45 -- negotiated down from $70 -- is now estimated to be worth at least $200 million dollars, according to a Beverly Hills art appraiser.
Those boxes contained 65 glass negatives created by famed nature photographer Ansel Adams in the early period of his career. Experts believed the negatives were destroyed in a 1937 darkroom fire that destroyed 5,000 plates.
"It truly is a missing link of Ansel Adams and history and his career," said David W. Streets, the appraiser and art dealer who is hosting an unveiling of the photographs at his Beverly Hills, California, gallery Tuesday.
Amazing. That kind of money can buy you a wonderful home in Southern California nowadays. Remember that the next time you sneer about the treasures being found at rummage sales.
Norman Rogers | tagged Art, Commentary, Current Affairs, History, Money, News, Photography, Photos | in A Man of Business, Assorted Musings, Complete Mastery of All Things, Finding Brilliance on My Own, I Do Say Nice Things Sometimes, Monetary Issues, My Brilliant Observation, Norman Rogers, The Things That I Do Email Article Sunday
Jul252010
Too Busy Celebrating My Many Successes
Sunday, July 25, 2010 
The redesign of Celebrity Disaster enters its third calendar yearToday was a day to celebrate.
My other blog--my red-headed stepchild, if you will--has been going like gangbusters. I can't keep up with it. When you have two blogs that are exploding and creating new avenues of expression and new ways to curate the particular brand of sexy evil that I love so much, it's easy to get wrapped around the axle and pass out from the bliss that comes with success.
My other other blog has always been a profound disappointment and a bone of contention. I scream at people at throw things, but nothing works. Is it really even a blog? I thought about turning it into a porn site; the problem is, we already have four or five of those. I will never give up on Gentleman Bounty Hunter; I know that I should but I can't so I won't.
As you can see above, I undertook the redesign of Celebrity Disaster in close consultation with the web designer and my interface with Squarespace. I am happy to sit back and manage, even though I do have to do all of the writing around here since everyone else is too stupid to understand how to write the way this needs to be written.
I just never seem to be satisfied or happy with how things look. I have moved Celebrity Disaster from a three column to a two column affair. I made it a content column to the left, widget column to the right sort of deal with a much wider widget column. I am cleaning up some of the iconic images that appear in the gulleys and in the margins and across the whatsits and wheresits that I don't know the proper names of at this point.
A redesign is a slow affair. I have to wait for changes to appear in my inbox. I have to say yes or no. Mostly, I have to express what I want to someone halfway around the world, seven time zones away. No big deal for a professional blogger like myself.
Please enjoy the handiwork. If I could take credit for it, I would.
Sunday
Jul182010
The Combat Art of the United States Marine Corps
Sunday, July 18, 2010 
The last Marine Combat Artist in action, Sgt. Kristopher J. Battles,I have nothing of note to add; go look at this.
ON a glorious summer morning a few weeks ago two United States Marines— one an active-duty reservist, one recently retired — paced around a light-filled warehouse on the Marine Corps base here, talking shop.
“Somebody who just knocks our socks off is Gerhard Richter,” said Michael D. Fay, a chief warrant officer before he left the corps last year. “We also love Basquiat.”
“When you talk about Basquiat, you run the risk of sounding like a paternalistic white guy,” pointed out his colleague Kristopher J. Battles, a sergeant who looks like he stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. But he couldn’t help enthusing, “There’s something intense and neo-expressionistic about him.”
Mr. Fay averred, “We know when something’s visually authentic.”
Not your everyday exchange at Quantico perhaps. But one in keeping with the mission these men have dedicated themselves to for the last several years: the Marine Corps combat art program, for which both have worked as artists, recording the experiences of their fellow Marines.
Stunning, eh?
Saturday
May292010
Thursday
May202010
Did They Steal the Infamous Painting of Jessica Alba With Her Rear End in the Air?
Thursday, May 20, 2010 
Pastoral by Henri MatisseShocking:
Five paintings by Picasso, Matisse and other great artists have been stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, police sources say.
The paintings are estimated to be worth some 500m euros (£431m; $618m).
They were taken overnight on Wednesday and reported missing early on Thursday, officials say.
The museum, across the River Seine from the Eiffel Tower, has been cordoned off by investigators.
Security camera footage reportedly shows someone entering the museum through a window during the night.
Museum officials discovered the theft early on Thursday, when they found a smashed window and a broken padlock which had been cut to gain access to the five paintings.
One glass window and a padlock between a thief and Six hundred and eighteen million damned dollars worth of art? Unbelievable.
Were they after the Alba?
The Great Masterwork of Western Art, also known as "the Alba," which is the image of Jessica Alba with her butt innocently stuck into the air
Aside from the Mona Lisa, it is the great masterwork of Western Art, you know. It is my reason for living.
Tuesday
May112010
Not the Way to Get Your Point Across
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 
A Swedish artist who angered Muslims by depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a dog was assaulted Tuesday as furious protesters interrupted his university lecture about the limits of artistic freedom.
Lars Vilks told The Associated Press a man leaped from the front row and head-butted him as he was delivering his speech, breaking Vilks' glasses but leaving him uninjured. Two people were arrested but it wasn't immediately clear whether the attacker was among them.
A video clip of the incident by a Swedish newspaper showed police using pepper spray and batons to hold off an angry crowd shouting "God is great" in Arabic after Vilks was escorted out of the lecture hall.
Vilks has faced numerous threats over his controversial drawing of Muhammad with a dog's body, but Tuesday's incident was the first time he has been physically assaulted.
Earlier this year U.S. investigators said Vilks was the target of an alleged murder plot involving Colleen LaRose, an American woman who dubbed herself "Jihad Jane," and who now faces life in prison. She has pleaded not guilty.
If you have no ideas, except a fundamentalist belief that what you cling to justifies acts of violence, then what more is there to say? The man drew something offensive, and this is what people do in response. What a world.
And it doesn't help matters when people are cowed by this idea that you cannot depict Muhammad in any way, shape or form. Of course you can mock and deride Muhammad; you can mock and deride any religious figure, whether it is Christ, Rabbi Shmuley, Buddha, L. Ron Hubbard, or the Pope. It doesn't matter. It's a world of ideas, after all, and fundamentalism should be the thing we are rooting out and eliminating, no matter what form it takes or religion it represents.
Saturday
May082010
You Cannot Have Control of My Television
Saturday, May 8, 2010 
Peej says that the back of our television might look something like thisI don't know if this is just hysterics or what:
Hollywood will soon have the power to remotely disable the analog outputs on your set-top box, under a decision by federal regulators on Friday intended to prevent home recording of new movie releases.
The move by the Federal Communications Commission grants cable and satellite providers the power to block consumers from viewing just-released movies in an analog format through a process known as Selectable Output Control. Hollywood requested SOC powers as a condition of allowing providers for the first time to release movies to their in-home customers while the film is in theaters.
The Motion Picture Association of America said its member studios would not authorize the early movie releases unless it won the ability to deploy Selectable Output Control. The reason: Analog video signals can easily be recorded, while digital video standards include a copy protection scheme that lets providers set a no-copy flag on the signal.
Digital rights group, Public Knowledge, said millions of older televisions, including 11 million HD sets, would be affected, a number the MPAA disputes. Owners of those devices would not have the luxury of being able to view the latest theater blockbuster at home through video on-demand services.
Cue the tech geeks who will scream about this, but it's really more than just the greed of a big company and the outrage over disabling a component on a piece of hardware that a person owns in the privacy of their own home.
It's a slippery slope; once they have control of something, they're never going to give it up. It may be innocent and reasonable to deploy a piece of technology that prevents someone from pirating a recently released film; it's entirely another issue when they go ahead and force us to watch commercials and watch television when they want us to watch it. Consumer freedom is precious; giving it up piece by piece is their only hope of maintaining ridiculous profit margins.
Right now, they're making money hand over fist, and they know it. What they're afraid of is losing just a small slice of the pie that they control. There's no reason why a movie shouldn't cost five dollars to see or to own. If it did, everyone would make enough money so that the film business would never go broke. More people would see more films; pirating would almost disappear. Who wants to pay four dollars for a pirated film when you can just buy the real thing for five?
The phony specter of piracy keeps what I, for lack of a better term, call the exclusivity of films in place. Exclusivity, at least as I want to explain it here, means that a film is marketed in such a way as to appear more valuable than it really is; but it's a mirage because none of the films being made are worth much. This one is better, you see, and you can have it if you pay x amount of money for it. They want you to think that such-and-such film, which is probably a mess and plays back like eating a butt sandwich, is worth $25 or more; if anyone ever figured out that it wasn't, and that it could cost a great deal less, without costing the studios or the distributors any real money, the revolt would be too much to bear.
Hollywood would have to start making quality films again. Egad.
Norman Rogers | tagged Advertising, Art, Cinema, Commerce, Culture, Film, Innovation, Marketing, Technology | in A Professional Blogger Like Me, Complete Mastery of All Things, Don't Serve Me That Weak Tea, Gadgets and Doodads, Here's My Take, My Brilliant Observation, Norman Rogers, That's a Kick in the Nuts Email Article Saturday
Apr032010
Everyone is Entitled to Their Monuments
Saturday, April 3, 2010 
The Statue in Question, Unfinished
This looks like one of the neatest things ever:
Senegal is set to inaugurate a massive $27m (£18m) monument - higher than the Statue of Liberty - that has drawn huge criticism over its cost and symbolism.
The 49m (160ft) Monument of African Renaissance will be unveiled in Dakar as the highlight of the nation’s 50th anniversary of independence.
Some scholars have called its scantily-clad figures un-Islamic while others have condemned the huge cost.
Supporters say it represents Africa’s rise from “intolerance and racism”.
The bronze statue, the brainchild of President Abdoulaye Wade, depicts three figures - a man holding a woman behind him and a child aloft, pointing out to sea.
There are controversies over the statue, namely, the comely woman who is helplessly following her man. That’s a bit politically incorrect, to say the least, but this is Senegal we’re talking about. Something that wouldn’t play in Peoria is going to have to be dealt with in due time by Senegalese society. It’s large and exhibits the kind of boldness that gives people pride and a sense of importance. Every nation on Earth should get to feel somewhat proud and capable once in a while.
Tuesday
Mar092010
Careful With that Axe, Lars
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 
Lars Vilks and a depiction of “Mohammad” with the body of a dog
A Swedish cartoonist tells the BBC that he has an axe in his home, should someone try to attack him for a cartoon that he drew several years ago:
Seven people have been arrested in the Irish Republic over an alleged plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist for depicting the Prophet Muhammad, police say.
The four men and three women are all Muslim immigrants, according to media reports, though a police statement did not confirm this.
Cartoonist Lars Vilks had depicted the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog in the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper.
Islamic militants put a $100,000 (£67,000) bounty on his head.
Mr Vilks was quoted as saying he was unfazed by the arrests, which he said he thought could be linked to two death threats he had received by telephone in January.
What a bunch of nonsense. If the basis of your religion can be shaken by what some Swede with pen and ink comes up with, your religion isn’t really based on anything except your own fundamentalist rage, now is it? The great religions cannot be threatened by cartoonists. Islam is a great religion; no cartoonist can make a “dent” in it with a half-clever scrawl.
If you take a look at what is depicted above, how can anyone be offended? I could understand annoyed—what a waste of time. But, offended? Please.
