NEW MEDIA

Study Rebuts Hypothesis That Comet Attacks Ended 9,000-Year-Old Clovis Culture

2013-01-31T10:13:00.001-08:00

Arrow head

Rebutting a speculative hypothesis that comet explosions changed Earth's climate sufficiently to end the Clovis culture in North America about 13,000 years ago, Sandia lead author Mark Boslough and researchers from 14 academic institutions assert that other explanations must be found for the apparent disappearance.

"There's no plausible mechanism to get airbursts over an entire continent," said Boslough, a physicist. "For this and other reasons, we conclude that the impact hypothesis is, unfortunately, bogus."

In a December 2012 American Geophysical Union monograph, first available in January, the researchers point out that no appropriately sized impact craters from that time period have been discovered, nor have any unambiguously "shocked" materials been found.

In addition, proposed fragmentation and explosion mechanisms "do not conserve energy or momentum," a basic law of physics that must be satisfied for impact-caused climate change to have validity, the authors write.

Also absent are physics-based models that support the impact hypothesis. Models that do exist, write the authors, contradict the asteroid-impact hypothesizers.

The authors also charge that "several independent researchers have been unable to reproduce reported results" and that samples presented in support of the asteroid impact hypothesis were later discovered by carbon dating to be contaminated with modern material.

The Boslough trail
Boslough has a decades-long history of successfully interpreting the effects of comet and asteroid collisions.
His credibility was on the line on in July 1994 when Eos, the widely read newsletter of the American Geophysical Union, ran a front-page prediction by a Sandia National Laboratories team, led by Boslough, that under certain conditions plumes from the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with the planet Jupiter would be visible from Earth.

The Sandia team -- Boslough, Dave Crawford, Allen Robinson and Tim Trucano -- were alone among the world's scientists in offering that possibility.

"It was a gamble and could have been embarrassing if we were wrong," said Boslough. "But I had been watching while Shoemaker-Levy 9 made its way across the heavens and realized it would be close enough to the horizon of Jupiter that the plumes would show." His reasoning was backed by simulations from the world's first massively parallel processing supercomputer, Sandia's Intel Paragon.

On the one hand, it was a chance to check the new Paragon's logic against real events, a shakedown run for the defense-oriented machine. On the other, it was a hold-your-breath prediction, a kind of Babe Ruth moment when the Babe is reputed to have pointed to the spot in the center field bleachers he intended to hit the next ball. No other scientists were willing to point the same way, partly due to previous failures in predicting the behavior of comets Kohoutek and Halley, and partly because most astronomers believed the plumes would be hidden behind Jupiter's bulk.

That the plumes indeed proved visible started Boslough on his own trajectory as a media touchstone for things asteroidal and meteoritic.

It didn't hurt that, when he stands before television cameras to discuss celestial impacts, his earnest manner, expressive gestures and extraterrestrial subject matter make him seem a combination of Carl Sagan and Luke Skywalker, or perhaps Tom Sawyer and Indiana Jones.

Standing in jeans, work shirt and hiking boots for the Discovery Channel at the site in Siberia where a mysterious explosion occurred 105 years ago, or discussing it at Sandia with his supercomputer simulations in bold colors on a big screen behind him, the rangy, 6-foot-3 Sandia researcher vividly and accurately explained why the mysterious explosion at Tunguska that decimated hundreds of square miles of trees and whose ejected debris was seen as far away as London most probably was caused neither by flying saucers drunkenly ramming a hillside (a proposed hypothesis) nor by an asteroid striking the Earth's surface, but rather by the fireball of an asteroid airburst -- an asteroid exploding high above ground, like a nuclear bomb, compressed to implosion as it plunged deeper into Earth's thickening, increasingly resistive atmosphere. The governing physics, he said, was precisely the same as for the airburst on Jupiter.

Among later triumphs, Boslough was the Sandia component of a National Geographic team flown to the Libyan Desert to make sense of strange yellow-green glass worn as jewelry by pharaohs in days past. Boslough's take: It was the result of heat on desert sands from a hypervelocity impact caused by an even bigger asteroid burst.

In the present case
In the Clovis case, Boslough felt that his ideas were taken further than he could accept when other researchers claimed that the purported demise of Clovis civilization in North America was the result of climate change produced by a cluster of comet fragments striking Earth.

In a widely reported press conference announcing the Clovis comet hypothesis in 2007, proponents showed a National Geographic animation based on one of Boslough's simulations as inspiration for their idea.
Indiana Jones-style, Boslough responded. Confronted by apparently hard asteroid evidence, as well as a Nova documentary and an article in the journal Science, all purportedly showing his error in rebutting the comet hypothesis, Boslough ordered carbon dating of the major evidence provided by the opposition: nanodiamond-bearing carbon spherules associated with the shock of an asteroid's impact. The tests found the alleged 13,000-year-old carbon to be of very recent formation.

While this raised red flags to those already critical of the impact hypothesis, "I never said the samples were salted," Boslough said carefully. "I said they were contaminated."

That find, along with irregularities reported in the background of one member of the opposing team, was enough for Nova to remove the entire episode from its list of science shows available for streaming, Boslough said.

"Just because a culture changed from Clovis to Folsom spear points didn't mean their civilization collapsed," he said. "They probably just used another technology. It's like saying the phonograph culture collapsed and was replaced by the iPod culture."

One for Instagram?

2013-01-31T09:35:00.003-08:00

Alessandra Ambrosio masters the art of taking a self portrait as she enjoys down time from swimwear shoot.

As a member of one of the world's most beautiful cliques she's used to having her picture taken.
And selected to take part in Victoria's Secret latest swimwear campaign Alessandra Ambrosio is currently lapping up the sunshine in St. Barts.
Taking a break from the ongoing shoot, Ambrosio, 31, turned photographer on Wednesday as she attempted to take a few self portraits.
Model turned photographer: Alessandra Ambrosio posed up for a self portrait on Wednesday in St. Barts Say cheese! Ambrosio beamed she held her mobile phone towards her to take a picture Getting a shot of her surroundings: The avid Instagram user, 31, captured an image of her picturesque view
Standing shin-deep in the water, Alessandra held her phone up with both hands as she tried to find a perfect angle.
Once in the ideal position, Ambrosio flashed her pearly whites and captured her image.
Done taking selfies, the avid Instagram user then turned the focus of the lens to her picturesque surroundings. Now to upload: Alessandra took a seat on her sun lounger as she played with her phone Staying connected: Alessandra made sure she kept up to date with activity on various social media sites
Taking it easy: The mother-of-two is currently in the Caribbean as a part of Victoria's Secrets latest campaign
Absolutely gorgeous: Alessandra showcased her perfectly sun-kissed skin
Sitting back and relaxing on her day off, the model was seen checking her mobile for updates.
The mother-of-two shielded her eyes from the Caribbean sunshine with a pair of large light grey rimmed sunglasses.
Up to date on the happenings in the world of social media, Alessandra laid back on her lounger as she topped up her tan. Beautiful: Alessandra slipped her svelte frame into a multicoloured striped two-piece Beach babe: The Brazilian beauty accessorised with a pair of grey rimmed shades and several bracelets
Stunning: Alessandra allowed her straight brunette hair to fall at her shoulders
Day off: Ambrosio features in the new swimwear campaign alongside Candice Swanepoel and Gracie Cavalho
Thoroughly enjoying her time on the island, the brown-eyed beauty has been keeping her Twitter followers up to date with regular posts.
Happy to be back on the volcanic island, which is fully encircled by shallow reefs, she tweeted: 'Uhmmmm back to island life!!! (at Saint Barthelemy)'
And in another message, complete with several hashtags, Alessandra wrote: 'Sunny #stbarts #summertime love this island'.
Life is good: Alessandra has been keeping her Twitter followers up to date with her movements
Loving the sunshine: From the looks of Ambrosio's Twitter timeline she has no complaints about the weather
Cooling off: The 31-year-old splashed some water on her washboard abs
Still on duty: Depsite being away from the set Alessandra cut a picture perfect figure
Flaunting her svelte frame, Ambrosio sported a multicoloured striped bikini which was made up of a bandeau top and matching briefs.
Allowing her brunette hair to fall at her shoulders, the Brazilian stunner accessorised with various handmade bracelets and a gold necklace.
Taking to the water, Alessandra was joined by an adorable cinnamon fur coloured pooch.
Testing the waters: The beauty has been engaged to businessman Jamie Mazur since 2008
Having the time of her life: The model regularly spends weeks away in hot climates for work
Lovely: Ambrosio appeared to be in deep thought as she enjoyed a stroll on the quiet beach
Toned and taut: In 2008, Alessandra made headlines when she returned to the catwalk just three months after giving birth to her first child, Anja Louise Ambrosio Mazur

Heading indoors, as Alessandra wrapped her day on the beach she clutched onto a copy of E. L. James' Fifty Shades Darker.
Covering up her bikini body, Ambrosio threw a white and neon yellow jersey dress over her two-piece as she returned to her accommodation.
Other models taking part in this year's campaign include Candice Swanepoel and São Paulo beauty Gracie Cavalho.
Who is your friend: As Alessandra sat in the water she was joined by a heavily furred pooch
New companion: Alessandra stroked the dog as it came to say hello to her
Home time: Alessandra left the beach with a copy of E. L. James' Fifty Shades Darker

Art into life

2013-01-31T08:28:00.003-08:00

As painter Amrita Sher-Gil steps into her centenary, it’s time to revisit her legacy

Photo: KNMA—‘Picture courtesy: Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Saket’

In a remarkable coincidence, Amrita Sher-Gil’s brief life began the year Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1913, and ended the year he died, in 1941. Wedged between these two historic moments—these three decades also saw the flourishing of a high modernist style in what is now known as the Bengal School of Art—Sher-Gil remains one of the most discussed painters in modern India. In her lifetime, she sold next to nothing, but posthumously she became one of the most expensive Indian artists.

Although never quite mentioned in the same breath with the masters of the Bengal School, her work, which drew inspiration from Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin among others, had strong resonances with the paintings of the two Tagores, Rabindranath and Abanindranath, the pioneers of the Bengal School.

Sher-Gil’s brooding portraits of women bear uncanny resemblances to those by Rabindranath, and her exquisite use of the chiaroscuro, together with the boldness with which she appropriated colours, brings to mind the nuanced style of the other Tagore. But her art, now on display in the Capital, has an ever-present quality of “yet-ness” to it, of a world teeming with possibilities which were interrupted before they could mature into something rich and strange.

Her life, on the other hand, in spite of its brevity, had an incredible richness to it. Born to a Punjabi Sikh aristocrat father and Hungarian Jewish opera-singer mother, Sher-Gil was fated to draw attention to her origins. Her exotic beauty, noble lineage, intense relationship with her father and series of affairs became the subject of much gossip, and eventually impossible to separate from her artistic persona. The art of Amrita Sher-Gil is still experienced through this prism of biography and anecdotage, without enough attention being paid to the art-historical milieu that nourished her imagination. Like Frida Kahlo, with whom she is often compared, Sher-Gil perhaps attracts more curiosity because of her troubled life and painful death than as the harbinger of a distinctive approach in painting.

It is perhaps more proper to think of Sher-Gil as a phenomenon than a genius. With the characteristic restiveness of the young, she wanted to push the limits of her circumscribed world. Having lived a full and anarchic life in Europe, she took the bold and uncompromising step of moving back to India, arguing long and hard with her reluctant father to support her and her younger sister Indira (mother of artist Vivan Sundaram) in this adventure. “I wish to return primarily in the interest of my artistic development. I now need new sources of inspiration,” she wrote in a letter to her father, insisting that their long stay in Europe had helped her “discover” India. In the same letter, she writes movingly about the effect the art of Ajanta had had on her. These unforgettable cave paintings seeped into her sensibility in a way modern European art never did. But interwoven with her practical reasoning in the letter—she must go to India for the sake of her growth as an artist—is her devil-may-care attitude, roundly dismissive of her father’s apprehension of losing face because of the projected move back to India.

Strangely, this fieriness does not come across as a defining character of her art. On the contrary, Sher-Gil’s work is marked by an aura of coolness, even when it most wants to lose itself in “a medley of hot colours”, to use her words. The relationship between her life and art was far more complicated than what a simple biographical reading of her career would allow.

The Self in Making: Amrita Sher-Gil is on till 30 November, 10.30am-6.30pm (Mondays closed), at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, 145, DLF The South Court mall, Saket.

Anything can be used to make art

2013-01-31T08:26:00.003-08:00

IN 1919 Kurt Schwitters, a German artist, snipped the letterhead of a local bank as part of his first collage. "Merz", sliced out of "Kommerz- und Privatbank", became his trademark, shorthand for the idea that anything—including rubbish—could be used to make a work of art. This radical concept has come to be seen as the foundation of much pop and conceptual art, evident in the work of artists such as Richard Hamilton and Damien Hirst.
“En Morn” 1947 Source: Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne “Untitled (Quality Street)” 1943 Source: Sprengel Museum, Hannover/ DACS 2012
“Untitled (Opening Blossom)” 1942-45 Source: Sprengel Museum, Hannover/ DACS 2012 Conceived in Schwitters's hometown of Hanover, "Merz" became more central to his work in 1937, when he was forced to flee the Nazi regime via Norway into exile in England. Wherever he was, whether on an icebreaker in the North Sea, an internment camp on the Isle of Man, in London or the Lake District, he made art with whatever materials were at hand. "Everything an artist spits out is art," he declared in 1933.
His British work in exile, spanning his last eight years, demonstrates his creative vitality until the end. It also underpins what Penelope Curtis, Tate Britain's director, calls his "living influence" on British artists. This communion between artists over time is at the heart of "Schwitters in Britain", a show of the artist's late works now on at Tate Britain in London. The exhibition juxtaposes 180 of Schwitters's pieces with those of his contemporaries from the 1940s, and includes newly commissioned works by Adam Chodzko and Laure Prouvost.

Schwitters's versatility is impressive. The works on display include hand-held sculptures, collages, paintings (some startlingly good portraits and landscapes), drawings and fragments of the "Merz Barn", a stone building in the English countryside that he was turning into a sculptural installation at the time of his death in 1948. An audio clip features Schwitters performing his poem "Ursonate". Most of these pieces have not been seen in Britain since the Tate hosted the Museum of Modern Art's first big retrospective of the artist in 1985.
Loosely identified with the European Dada movement, Schwitters shared ideas and friendship with the modernist avant-garde that included Max Ernst, Hans Arp and Marcel Duchamp. Branded a "degenerate" artist by the Nazis, he was forced to abandon his "Merzbau", a painstakingly assembled architectural interior in Hanover, later destroyed by a bomb. Although Schwitters resisted interpretations of his collages, it is hard not to perceive a certain wistfulness in a piece that combines steamship schedules and the label "Made in Britain".

In exile his work exploded in many directions. A vibrant example is "Glass Flower" of 1940, an abstract collage of curves with a central bloom made of glass and wood. The curators hang it beside the 1937 "Mz Oslo Fjord", whose echoing contours make it a painted doppelgänger of the sea-swept glass assemblage. Nature was a source of both material and inspiration for Schwitters, says Emma Chambers, one of the exhibit's curators. In the 1946 collage "15 pine trees" he layers corrugated cardboard in vertical stripes that form a slice of forest. A series incorporating snippets of Old Master paintings is endlessly fascinating; there is humour, too, as in a modified portrait with the title "This was before H.R.H. The Late Duke of Clarence and Avondale. Now it is a Merz picture. Sorry!"

Most striking for many will be the portraits Schwitters painted while incarcerated for 16 months as an "enemy alien" at the Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man. These loose, confident paintings brim with intimacy and life, like others he made in Cumbria in his final years. Long derided as bread-and-butter work, unworthy of any self-respecting modernist, these affecting landscapes, still lifes and portraits are an important part of Schwitters's oeuvre, says Ms Curtis. The show aims to give equal weight to the abstract and figural work of this great artist, she says. "Both were ways he looked."

Kelvin Okafor's drawings may look like photographs but are they art?

2013-01-31T08:16:00.003-08:00

The 27-year-old's meticulous depictions of celebrities stand out in a culture that values video, performance, anything but drawing Kelvin Okafor's portrait of Tinie Tempah.

Kelvin Okafor is a miraculous artist. If Leonardo da Vinci was alive today and he saw what Okafor has achieved with pencil, paper and a bit of charcoal, he would recognise a talent well worthy of his respect – a brother in art. So would the Dutch painter Jan Vermeer, or the Baroque genius Caravaggio.

All these great artists thought their job was to recreate, with a steady hand and a keen eye, the wonder of life. Okafor brings that craftsmanlike aspiration into the modern world. His drawings are based on photographs of celebrities – the same kinds of photograph we all see everyday. But instead of turning the page or clicking to another site after a second or two, this artist looks. He looks hard. It is an act of love and imagination to look as hard as that. The drawing skills with which he renders what he sees are truly sublime – it is amazing such skills even exist in a culture that places so little value on them. Art schools today encourage their students to think about video, performance, concept, anything but pure meticulous drawing. The fact that Okafor has got through that anti-graphic net shows that, in some people, a profound talent for visual depiction is innate, and will always burst out.

Okafor is 27 and lives in Tottenham, north London where he grew up. He went to Middlesex University. But his drawings are self-evidently a personal fascination: something he has to do. The soft, subtle accuracy of his style can mimic the contours of a photograph. But is that art? Personally I think pictures as skilful as these have an absolute claim to be art whereas most of the art that gets shortlisted for the Turner prize (and I say this as a former judge) has only a relative claim to be art, which future generations may or may not agree with.
Kelvin Okafor's portrait of Amy Winehouse.

Perfect drawing has counted as art for at least 40,000 years. In the exhibition Ice Age Art, which opens soon at the British Musuem, there are hypnotically accurate images of bison, lions and horses drawn on to pieces of ivory long before human beings could read or write. Ice-age artists drew the most visible and imposing things in their world, the great herds of mammals that roamed a frozen Europe. Today, what hits our eyes and haunts our minds is not nature but culture, the images of celebrity that fill our screens. It is natural for an artist to draw those.

Kelvin Okafor's portrait of Princess Diana.

Okafor is not alone among modern artists who have fixed their gaze on celebrity photographs. In the 19th century the Iimpressionist Edgar Degas made a painting that meticulously recreated a photograph of Princess Pauline de Metternich. In the 1960s Andy Warhol made haunting silkscreen portraits derived from magazine photographs.
The art world lauds these figures, so it should embrace Okafor. He's still very young. If you can draw like this when you are 27 what can't you do when you are 40? Here is the talent that Damien Hirst can't buy with all his millions.
Should Kelvin Okafor's drawings, so close to photographs, be considered art? Tell us what you think.

Kelvin Okafor's drawings are on display at the Watercolours + Works on Paper Fair 2013 at the Science Museum, London SW7 until 3 February.

Eid Milad-un Nabi

2013-01-25T11:29:00.005-08:00

Eid Milad-un-Nabi, also known as the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, is a public holiday in Pakistan. Sunni Muslims observe Milad-un-Nabi on 12 Rabi-ul-Awwal (third month of the Islamic calendar) while Shia Muslims observe it on 17 Rabi-ul-Awwal, coinciding with the birthdate of their sixth Imam Jafar-al-Sadiq. Pictured above is a group of Muslims in Karachi, Pakistan, in procession for the Prophet Muhammad's birthday.

What Do People Do?
Milad-un-Nabi observances differ among people following different schools of Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh). Some scholars forbid celebrations and even challenge the holiday’s legality in light of Sharia (Islamic law). Many Muslims do not believe in celebrating birthdays or anniversaries as there is no evidence from Prophet Mohammad’s life of such observances. On the other hand, many Islamic scholars believe that this day should be celebrated festively. There is a considerable number of Muslims that observe this day with utmost religious fervor.

The day starts off with an official 31-gun salute at the federal capital and a 21-gun salute in provincial headquarters. The national flag is hoisted on all major public buildings, governmental, non-governmental facilities, mosques and even households are tastefully decorated and colorfully illuminated at night.

Seerat conferences are organized at both federal and provincial levels where religious scholars and intellectuals come and shed light on the Prophet Muhammed’s life, sayings, teachings and philosophies. Naat (poetry written in praise of the Prophet) and Koran recitation competitions are also held where prizes are distributed among people who perform outstandingly in the above stated disciplines.

Many people also donate to charity. Food and sweets are distributed among the poor and the needy. Moreover, contributions are made to support orphanages, asylums for the physically and mentally challenged, and widows.

Special prayers are offered at mosques. Religious leaders and scholars preach the Prophet Muhammed’s teachings. Stories and incidents from his life of morals, such as forgiveness, kindheartedness, bravery, wisdom, honesty, and peace lovingness, are quoted.

Eid Milad-un-Nabi congregations, rallies and processions also take place in major cities across Pakistan. These processions usually start from a central location (central mosques or locations of public prominence), pass through designated routes, and end at the starting point.

Public Life
Eid Milad-un-Nabi is a public holiday in Pakistan. All government and semi government offices, and most private offices, businesses, shopping malls, post offices and educational institutions are closed on this day.

Those wishing to travel via public transport on the day will need to contact the local transport authorities on the public transport availability. Traffic may be disrupted because of Milad-un-Nabi processions on major routes.

Background
The first public celebrations of Milad-un-Nabi occurred in Egypt towards the end of the 11th century. It was primarily a festival of the Shia ruling class. The celebrations featured Koran recitations, animal sacrifices, public sermons and feasts.

The first public observance of Milad-un-Nabi by Sunnis took place in 12th century in Syria under the rule of Noor-un-Din Zangi. In 1910 it was given the official status as a national festival throughout the Ottoman Empire. Milad-un-Nabi is now an official holiday in many Muslim countries throughout the world.

Symbols
Green colored pennants are often seen during Milad-un-Nabi processions, on shrines and mosques. Green is a color associated with the Prophet as being one of his favored colors. It is said that the Prophet chose a green colored flag to represent the Islamic republic during his life. Candles and oil lamps (Chiragan) are lit on the eve of 12 Rabi-ul-Awwal to welcome the Prophet’s arrival and to celebrate his birth.

Colours and culture

2013-01-18T08:47:00.001-08:00

Kutch embroidery
KUTCH: A museum brimming with history, villages resplendent with handicraft and the Rann with last rays of the setting sun… Ashish Dutta is smitten

I alighted from the train at Bhuj, the principal town of Kutch, on a wintry morning. Unlike most small towns, the railway station is just off the edge of the town and not engulfed by dusty bazaars, cheap hotels or snoopy touts. Bhuj was still lazing out of slumber when my auto rickshaw purred through clean, wide, double roads, past the large Hamirsar Lake bang in the middle of the town where, under the slanted young sun, hundreds of birds — cranes, pelicans, herons, stilts and others — had swooped in for their annual winter sojourn. Kutch is a favourite ‘vacation villa’ for winged visitors from as far as Siberia.

Bhuj is the ideal place to foray into the interior regions of Kutch. But before penetrating the hinterland, I decided to take a peek at the 4,000-odd years of history of the region at the Kutch Museum in Bhuj.

The collection started from potteries and artefacts from the late Harappan period of about 1,900 BC. There were Buddhist seals, Kshatrap inscriptions from the 1st Century, 6th and 7th Century statues too. The museum reminds Kutch as a member of that rarefied club of Indus Valley civilisation. Standing amid priceless relics, I felt the tug of uninterrupted tide of history in my veins.

Next morning, I drove out of Bhuj, through arid stretches. Trees got fewer and stunted. Small hills and rocky mounds appeared once in a while at a distance. Each hill, whatever its magnitude, was crowned with a temple whose white sikhara and fluttering flag could be spotted. At ground level, our car patiently negotiated sauntering camel carts that occupied a good part of the road.

After about three hours of drive, our vehicle veered off the road and took a short dirt track that ended abruptly — I was at a tiny Kutchi village. At that hour, most of the men folk had gone out to graze animals or to trade wares in the ‘town’. The women, in resplendent costumes and jewellery, their chore of cooking and washing over, were mostly squatted in the porch of their hut or just at the door inside the room, busy at embroidery. Kutch is inhabited by diverse communities such as Jat, Rabari, Sindhi, Muslim, Sodha and others. A village belongs to a particular community, and each community specialises in a particular art form.
Jat embroidery has closely stitched patterns, where the “stitches outlive the cloth on which they are sewn”, and the colour and motif reflect the age and marital status of the wearer. Mutwa embroidery by a Muslim community of Banni region has sparkling intricate floral and abstract designs with tiny mirrors. From the heap at the corner of the porch, I picked up a mid-sized shopping bag with bright and thickly arranged embroidery. How many days of artistic labour must have gone into its making? For once, I did not bargain.

Dhordo — my next destination is a tiny outpost of a village, 82 km from Bhuj, but centuries away. Standing isolated at the edge of the Great Rann of Kutch. Like a sentinel surveying the expansive nothingness that lay beyond, I stood on a machan and from that vantage point stared at the Rann. Later, I walked down the Rann, on wet slushy sand covered here and there with crusty white salt, as far as the eyes could see. And witnessed the sun setting, slowly, in the distant horizon. And nothing, just nothing, stood between me and the setting sun. Not a shrub punctuated the panorama. Not a slight modulation of a dune. Not even a blade of grass. Just windswept, flat-out salty sand-bed. I realised that to come here to ‘see something’ is to miss the point. For, in the last rays of a setting sun, the Rann was the physical expression of the metaphorical Zero. Nothingness. Or all-pervading?

Picture Perfect opens at Art Chowk

2013-01-18T08:30:00.001-08:00

KARACHI: Group shows generally do not have a thread that links or strings together art pieces made in varied styles, propagating different ideas. It does not happen often that a non-solo exhibition compels art buffs to witness works by nearly a half a dozen artists and at the same time easily enables them to connect the dots, as it were.

The artworks by five Lahore-based artists on display at an exhibition titled ‘Picture Perfect’, which commenced at the Art Chowk Gallery on Thursday, are done in more than one medium and carry assorted messages, yet tend to cross each other’s path either by virtue of latent concepts or obvious statements. What is that point where they cross paths? Memory.

Remembrance. Filial bonding.

Irfan Gul gives away his ideas by titling his artworks ‘Arid Dreams’ (drawing pen, digital print on paper). The barrenness points to a time gone by and laments that the time to come might not be drastically different. His pieces are inherently melancholic in which images merge quite indecipherably.

Saamia Vine keeps it simple and herein lies the charm of her art. She begins by putting questions at herself (oil on board) and in the process queries time’s cruelties. She does not stay there and moves on to create a haunting scene in ‘Swinging Her Way’ (oil on board) with a blurry view of a tree, a young girl and a window of sorts.

Mizna Zulfiqar expands the scope for miniature works by making the viewer look at complete stories in smaller frames. ‘A Day in the Park’ (photo transfer and watercolor on wasli) is a cogent example of that. With ‘Wallflower’ (gouache on wasli), the artist turns the symbol into a literal form of expression without losing out on its symbolic value.

Mohsin Shafi turns textual profundity into visual insightfulness. In that regard ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’ (mixed media collage) merit a special mention.

Saadia Hussain intelligently uses family photographs and enhances her content with a tongue ‘n cheek play of pictures aided by interesting titles. ‘I am Going to Another Photo’ (mixed media on digital print on canson paper) initially brings a smile to the viewer’s face but then makes him mull over the picture.
The exhibition will be open till Jan 31.

Boxed lunch is arts in Japan: Artistic culture found in Character Bento (Video)

2013-01-17T07:52:00.002-08:00

By reading above explanation about bento, I hope you now have a clear picture about bento which is quite common and popular in the daily life of Japanese people.

Recently the menu of bento has become very colorful and it currently uses a variety of ingredients. Judging from the variety of food used for bento and compared with old fashioned bento which used to prevail until 30 to 40 years ago, it is obvious that not only children but also general people in Japan are now living a very luxurious life when it comes to food.

When we were children, our parents often talked about the shortage of food which took place during and after the World War II. According to my parents, children often went to school with bento which has only a couple of ingredient such as steamed rice (white color) and a single piece of pickled plum (usually red color in Japan) that is put in the center of rice so that it looks like the national flag of Japan. It is a very humble lunch compared with the current bento in the 21st century. When Japan was seriously running out of food just after the war, even eating rice was impossible. During such severe period of time, they could not bring even a humble bento to school.

At the moment, we have plenty of food available. And they are spending their valuable time and energy for making luxurious bento. Especially bento for children who go to kindergarten and elementary school, parents always pay special attention not only to the number of ingredients but also the color coordination as well as its design so that bento will look pretty nice and attractive. Kids usually have no idea what kind of food is in the bento box until they open it at lunch time.
Recently we can find what is called “Kyaraben” or character bento . This is a new word made from the term of “character” and “bento”. Kyaraben is decorated to look like Japanese popular animation characters, characters from comic books (manga) or video game characters. One of typical Kyaraben is Hello Kitty Bento which features well known Hello Kitty loved by many kids all over the world. People who want to make this type of bento can use a kit which is designed to make this bento easily. They are sold in Japan and in the United States as well.

California Flower Art Academy is pleased to introduce a variety of articles and news relating to flower designs, floral events, arts and crafts as well as artistic cultures from all over the world.

If you are interested in floral designs and want to earn practical skills of flower arranging, we can help. California Flower Art Academy offers a variety of programs from beginner to professional levels, European floral arrangements to Japanese Ikebana, wedding to funeral floral decorations.

People who live in the San Francisco Bay Area or Silicon Valley (San Jose) can easily commute to and from our school. From a WIDE RANGE OF PROGRAMS we offer, you can make a choice of your most favorite course which fits your requirements. California Flower Art Academy is a floral school certified by Flower Decorators Association (Tokyo Japan). You can start from Introductory Trial Budget Program for only $69. For more information, contact info@california-academy.com

Japanese Food: How to Put Together a Bento Box for Kids

Art, Propaganda and Death in Ancient Rome

2013-01-11T09:09:00.001-08:00

A relief panel from a second-century funerary monument adorned with a scene from a butcher shop.

ROME — “If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus,” Edward Gibbon wrote in “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

In so declaring, the English historian was following the lead of a number of Roman and Renaissance authors, who took an equally rosy view of the state of the empire and humanity during the second century.

At first glance, by its very title “The Age of Equilibrium, 98-180 A.D.: Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius,” the third in a series of exhibitions on art and society in ancient Rome at the Capitoline Museums, seems to be endorsing this traditional historical assessment that stretches from Pliny the Younger through Machiavelli and Gibbon into modern times.

But a strength of this latest show, curated by Eugenio La Rocca and Claudio Parisi Presicce with Annalisa Monaco, and especially of its catalog, is that, while achievements are recognized, darker aspects are not whitewashed and the dominant role played by propaganda in public art of the era is highlighted.

The reputation the second century won as a golden age was substantially based on the unusual stability of the political establishment during this period and on the economic prosperity that helped to nurture.

That stability was largely the result of the abandonment of the direct hereditary principle in the imperial succession in favor of the practice of adopting suitably talented candidates. Thus Nerva adopted Trajan in 97 A.D.; Trajan’s second cousin Hadrian succeeded him in 117; Hadrian adopted Antoninus Pius in 138, who adopted his son-in-law Marcus Aurelius as his own successor.

In a return to the old system, Marcus Aurelius was succeeded in 180 by his son Commodus, whose behavior became increasingly deranged. As everyone who has seen “Gladiator” now knows, Commodus developed a penchant for taking a personal part in gladiatorial displays (yet in reality met his end not in the arena but when he was strangled in his bath).

The first room of the show, “The Leading Actors,” introduces us to the stars of the epoch in the form of more than 40 portrait statues and busts of the emperors, their wives, daughters and favorites.

What is immediately striking in the representation of the male players is that they are so often depicted in some form of military dress.

This introduces one of the central paradoxes of this notional age of peace and harmony. For while the Emperor Augustus, a victorious general and founder of the imperial system, was seldom represented as a warrior, the emperors of the second century relentlessly emphasized this role.

The empire reached its greatest extent — an area of 3.5 million square kilometers, or 1.35 million square miles, with an estimated population of 55 million — during the reign of Trajan. Much of what he did to transform Rome is still visible from the Capitoline Museums or within a few minutes’ walk. The Trajan Forum was the largest and grandest of all the forums and the so-called Trajan Markets on the hillside above are well preserved. Nearby are the remains of the huge Trajan Baths on the Oppian Hill — the first to include a library, park and cultural complex — which was to serve as the model for all subsequent monumental baths. Vast infrastructure projects included a new port at Ostia, canals, quays, aqueducts and sewers.

But these improvements were mainly financed by war booty, especially what was gained from 101 to 106 during the conquest of Dacia — a kingdom centered on present-day Romania and Moldova.

These wars were celebrated in the spiraling friezes of Trajan’s Column on the edge of the Trajan Forum, the first column of its kind and the first depictions of an emperor on campaign. The Trajan Forum itself was adorned with multiple images of the Dacian Wars in the form of statues, reliefs and decorative elements of the victorious emperor and of defeated Dacians.

Hadrian, who had fought in the Dacian Wars, abandoned his predecessor’s policy of expansion and concentrated on consolidating the empire’s existing borders. But despite his image as a peacemaker, he put down the Jewish revolt led by the self-declared messiah Bar Kokhba (132-135) with resolute savagery, refounding Jerusalem as a pagan military colony. Hadrian, too, left his monumental mark on Rome, most prominently in the Pantheon and his mausoleum, now Castel Sant’Angelo.

Of all these emperors, Marcus Aurelius, thanks to his “Meditations,” has gone down in history as the ideal Roman philosopher-emperor. Yet his contemporary public image in art remained that of the warrior, as can be seen in the busts and reliefs in a subsequent section of the exhibition of “Historical Reliefs,” which continues the theme of this art as propaganda.

The reliefs lead on to the circular hall that is now the home of the magnificent gilded bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, as the armor-clad victor over the German tribes. The victory is also celebrated on the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Piazza Colonna, which shows him leading his troops and includes scenes of the massacre of prisoners and of violence being inflicted on women and children.

This bellicose imagery, so ubiquitous in the Trajan Forum as to turn it into a kind of Dacian War theme park, was not confined to the official depiction of emperors and their deeds, as is illustrated in a parallel section in the first room of the exhibition on “The Language of Art.”

Tumultuous battle scenes became popular on sarcophagi during this period. There are three examples here, all revolving around the crushing of mythical and actual barbarian tribes.

The second century saw a progressive shift away from cremation in favor of burial (and interment in sarcophagi for those who could afford it), perhaps in imitation of Hellenistic practices. As the last section of the exhibition, entitled “Tombs,” demonstrates, this is a trend that encouraged more elaborate sepulchers and also had the fortuitous effect of enriching posterity’s knowledge of various aspects of Roman everyday life.

This section opens with the famous sarcophagus, remains and grave goods of the teenage girl Crepereia Tryphaena, unearthed close to the Tiber in 1889. She was not only buried with her own jewelry, including a precious brooch with an engraved amethyst cameo, a gold necklace with beryl pendants, pearl earrings and a gold engagement or wedding ring, but also an exquisitely fashioned ivory doll with articulated limbs.

Crepereia’s body was placed on her side, with her head inclined toward the doll. Along with this lovely plaything were buried the doll’s miniature clothes, necklace, earrings and other jewelry as well as tiny combs, mirrors and a little jewel case, faced in ivory and bone. The doll’s minutely carved hairstyle is a meticulously realized version of one made fashionable by the Emperor Antoninus Pius’s wife Faustina Major and their daughter Faustina Minor.

Crepereia’s family name indicates that they were freed slaves, perhaps originally from Syria or Egypt, but they had clearly risen in the ranks and were likely attached in some way to the emperor since the tomb was within the estate of an imperial villa. The luxury doll (probably made in Alexandria) and expensive jewelry also indicate the family’s prosperity.

But as some of the subsequent sarcophagi and funerary panels show, monuments also preserved information about more humble classes. One panel here has a vivid relief of a Roman butcher shop. Another pair of reliefs gives two scenes of a deceased artisan’s life: one of him at his anvil and another in an apron behind the counter of his shop, proudly displaying for sale an array of the metal tools he had manufactured.

The Age of Equilibrium, 98-180 A.D. Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius. Capitoline Museums, Rome. Through May 5.

Modern art sale set to raise £100million

2013-01-11T09:07:00.000-08:00

Works by Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Henri Matisse set to fetch £100m at Christie's auction.

Amedeo Modigliani's Jeanne Hebuterne (au chapeau), his 1919 portrait of his lover that is estimated to sell for between £16 million and £22 million at the London auction house .

A sale of paintings by some of the masters of 20th century art is expected to raise around £100 million.

Work by Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Henri Matisse will all go on sale at Christie's auction house in London on February 6.

The highlight of the impressionist and modern art sale is Modigliani's Jeanne Hebuterne (au chapeau) - a 1919 portrait of his lover that is estimated to sell for between £16 million and £22 million.

Two works by Picasso, a 1960 female nude called Nu accroupi and Minotaure aveugle conduit par une petite fille are estimated to fetch £5 million and £3.5 million respectively.

Christie's International director and head of the impressionist and modern art evening sale Jay Vincze said: "Buyers continue to be hungry for the best and rarest works of impressionist and modern art. We have ensured that this sale focuses on significant works by the most important artists and are proud to present a rich and focused offering which spans figuration to abstraction, presenting international collectors and institutions with rare and exciting opportunities."

Art competition: Students interpret Japan’s martial arts history

2013-01-11T08:59:00.000-08:00

Many students said they had come to know about the history of Japan by participating in the competition.

ISLAMABAD:To create awareness among students about martial arts, a painting competition was held at Rawalpindi Arts Council (RAC) on Thursday, which was organised by the Japanese embassy.

Over 109 school and college students from the twin cities participated in the exhibition, “Still Life Art Competition” by painting the Spirit of Budo, history of Japanese martial arts. Thirteen students were declared best painters in the competition.

>Many students said they had come to know about the history of Japan by participating in the competition. “It’s a great opportunity and I believe the best way to learn about Japanese culture and history is through these paintings,” said Sundas Sana from Islamabad College for Girls F-6/2, who won first prize.

“I’m very excited to receive first prize. This is a great way to learn about Japan’s martial history,’’ said Mustafa Hasan, a student of International Grammar School & College.

“The basic objective of the competition is to create awareness among the youth about the history of Japan’s martial arts and give them the opportunity to express their talent,” said Japanese embassy’s Public Affairs Counsellor Toshikazu Isomura.

Isomura said the embassy had organised an exhibition “The Spirit of Budo” last November at the National Art Gallery in which the history of martial arts was portrayed.

“We then decided to organise a competition to promote Japanese martial arts and the spirit of budo, he added.

RAC Resident Waqar Ahmed said students were categorised in four sections according to their ages.

Queen attends Sandringham church Christmas service

2012-12-25T10:37:00.000-08:00

The Queen and members of the Royal family at church in Sandringham

The Queen has attended a Christmas Day church service, after recovering from a cold which had prevented her from attending a service on Sunday.

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, who are staying at the royal estate in Sandringham, Norfolk, attended St Mary Magdalene Church.

The Queen was handed flowers by children after the service.

Her Christmas speech, to be broadcast at 15:00 GMT, will pay tribute to the UK's Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

The address will be broadcast in 3D for the first time.

Following tradition, the Queen made the short journey to the church from Sandringham House in a Bentley with princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.

The Duke of Edinburgh, 91, who was forced to miss the service last year because of a heart problem, walked the few hundred yards from the house to the church, accompanied by the Duke of York and the Earl and the Countess of Wessex.

Wearing a turquoise coat and matching hat, the Queen was greeted by about 1,000 well-wishers.

At the scene
After the church service, the Queen dressed in a turquoise overcoat and matching hat, immediately started to meet the 70 or so children who were waiting in a queue to meet her. Many were holding flowers and dressed in their best.

Helped by her granddaughter Eugenie, the Queen received the flowers and spoke to each of the children in turn.

Katie Barnes said it had been her "one dream" to meet the Queen. After curtseying, Katie told the Queen her middle name is Elizabeth - to which the Queen is said to have told her "it's a very lovely name".

Royal fans
Sheila Clark said she had arrived at the estate at about 06:30 GMT to ensure that she could get a good view of the royals.

"It means such a lot to me... to come here, share Christmas Day with other people that I know, enjoy the service here and see the Royal Family," said Ms Clark, who travelled from her Glasgow home and makes the journey every year.

Karim Gorham, who is at Sandringham with her daughter Madison, said she wanted to see the Queen and give her flowers because she had not seen the monarch during the Jubilee celebrations she attended earlier in the year.

The Queen traditionally spends the festive period with her family at Sandringham, but this year has not been joined by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who are with the duchess's family in Bucklebury, Berkshire.

Earlier this month, it was announced that Prince William and Catherine are expecting their first child, after the duchess was admitted to hospital with an acute bout of morning sickness.

Prince Harry is absent from the celebrations, as he is currently serving as an Apache helicopter pilot with the Army Air Corps in Afghanistan.

In her Christmas message, the Queen praises the ''training and teamwork'' of Olympic and Paralympic athletes

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said the Queen's self-penned Christmas speech, broadcast to the UK and Commonwealth, will focus on "service, achievement and the spirit of togetherness".

She will hail the "splendid summer of sport" in the pre-recorded address and will highlight how the sportsmen and women allowed spectators to feel part of the "excitement and drama".

The Queen will say: "As London hosted a splendid summer of sport, all those who saw the achievement and courage at the Olympic and Paralympic Games were further inspired by the skill, dedication, training and teamwork of our athletes."

The Queen had her own starring role in the London Olympics, declaring them officially open after appearing to parachute into the stadium with James Bond - played by current 007 Daniel Craig.

3D technology
Behind-the-scenes footage of the Christmas message, made on 7 December, has been released showing the Queen meeting senior staff from Sky News, which produced the broadcast this year.

In other footage she wears 3D glasses as she watches part of the broadcast, which will be transmitted on TV and radio.

Her use of 3D technology comes 80 years after George V first broadcast a Christmas speech on the radio and started the 25 December tradition.

It has been an eventful year for the royal family, with the Queen celebrating her Diamond Jubilee in June, marked with celebrations in the UK and Commonwealth.

She also became the first British monarch to reach a 65th wedding anniversary.

Christmas Screensavers

2012-12-24T09:46:00.002-08:00

SCREENSAVERS

Santa's Home 3D Screensaver

Have you ever dreamt of visiting the real Santa's home? It is Christmas time and your dreams come true. Find yourself in a winter wonderland deep in the woods surrounded by enchanting snowy landscapes and enjoy a truly festive atmosphere.

Christmas Time 3D Screensaver

This terrific 3D screensaver will help you feel the magic of the Holiday Season. You will find yourself in a quiet winter forest with a few cottages scattered around. Everything is covered with snow and the nature is waiting for a miracle to happen.

Christmas Eve 3D Screensaver

Let this fabulous animated 3D screensaver take you away to a magic winter park on Christmas Eve. Feel the festive atmosphere in the air, listen to the cheerful music and enjoy a magnificent Christmas tree gorgeously decorated with shimmering lights.

Winter Night 3D Screensaver

Enjoy a quiet winter night in a small cozy town nestled in the sleepy mountains. Let this 3D screensaver take you for a relaxing walk along the streets and feel the peace and serenity of this charming place.

3D Merry Christmas Screensaver

This magnificent animated 3D screensaver will help you create the right atmosphere for the joyous holiday of Christmas. Get this new hit from the developers of Christmas Time 3D Screensaver that was downloaded 100,000 times in one day!

The History of CHRISTMAS

2012-12-24T09:23:00.002-08:00

Christmas is both a sacred religious holiday and a worldwide cultural and commercial phenomenon. For two millennia, people around the world have been observing it with traditions and practices that are both religious and secular in nature. Christians celebrate Christmas Day as the anniversary of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, a spiritual leader whose teachings form the basis of their religion. Popular customs include exchanging gifts, decorating Christmas trees, attending church, sharing meals with family and friends and, of course, waiting for Santa Claus to arrive. December 25–Christmas Day–has been a federal holiday in the United States since 1870.

An Ancient Holiday
The middle of winter has long been a time of celebration around the world. Centuries before the arrival of the man called Jesus, early Europeans celebrated light and birth in the darkest days of winter. Many peoples rejoiced during the winter solstice, when the worst of the winter was behind them and they could look forward to longer days and extended hours of sunlight.

In Scandinavia, the Norse celebrated Yule from December 21, the winter solstice, through January. In recognition of the return of the sun, fathers and sons would bring home large logs, which they would set on fire. The people would feast until the log burned out, which could take as many as 12 days. The Norse believed that each spark from the fire represented a new pig or calf that would be born during the coming year.

The end of December was a perfect time for celebration in most areas of Europe. At that time of year, most cattle were slaughtered so they would not have to be fed during the winter. For many, it was the only time of year when they had a supply of fresh meat. In addition, most wine and beer made during the year was finally fermented and ready for drinking.

In Germany, people honored the pagan god Oden during the mid-winter holiday. Germans were terrified of Oden, as they believed he made nocturnal flights through the sky to observe his people, and then decide who would prosper or perish. Because of his presence, many people chose to stay inside.

Saturnalia
In Rome, where winters were not as harsh as those in the far north, Saturnalia—a holiday in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture—was celebrated. Beginning in the week leading up to the winter solstice and continuing for a full month, Saturnalia was a hedonistic time, when food and drink were plentiful and the normal Roman social order was turned upside down. For a month, slaves would become masters. Peasants were in command of the city. Business and schools were closed so that everyone could join in the fun.

Also around the time of the winter solstice, Romans observed Juvenalia, a feast honoring the children of Rome. In addition, members of the upper classes often celebrated the birthday of Mithra, the god of the unconquerable sun, on December 25. It was believed that Mithra, an infant god, was born of a rock. For some Romans, Mithra's birthday was the most sacred day of the year.

In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated. In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention date for his birth (a fact Puritans later pointed out in order to deny the legitimacy of the celebration). Although some evidence suggests that his birth may have occurred in the spring (why would shepherds be herding in the middle of winter?), Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. First called the Feast of the Nativity, the custom spread to Egypt by 432 and to England by the end of the sixth century. By the end of the eighth century, the celebration of Christmas had spread all the way to Scandinavia. Today, in the Greek and Russian orthodox churches, Christmas is celebrated 13 days after the 25th, which is also referred to as the Epiphany or Three Kings Day. This is the day it is believed that the three wise men finally found Jesus in the manger.

By holding Christmas at the same time as traditional winter solstice festivals, church leaders increased the chances that Christmas would be popularly embraced, but gave up the ability to dictate how it was celebrated. By the Middle Ages, Christianity had, for the most part, replaced pagan religion. On Christmas, believers attended church, then celebrated raucously in a drunken, carnival-like atmosphere similar to today's Mardi Gras. Each year, a beggar or student would be crowned the "lord of misrule" and eager celebrants played the part of his subjects. The poor would go to the houses of the rich and demand their best food and drink. If owners failed to comply, their visitors would most likely terrorize them with mischief. Christmas became the time of year when the upper classes could repay their real or imagined "debt" to society by entertaining less fortunate citizens.

An Outlaw Christmas
In the early 17th century, a wave of religious reform changed the way Christmas was celebrated in Europe. When Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan forces took over England in 1645, they vowed to rid England of decadence and, as part of their effort, cancelled Christmas. By popular demand, Charles II was restored to the throne and, with him, came the return of the popular holiday.

The pilgrims, English separatists that came to America in 1620, were even more orthodox in their Puritan beliefs than Cromwell. As a result, Christmas was not a holiday in early America. From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston. Anyone exhibiting the Christmas spirit was fined five shillings. By contrast, in the Jamestown settlement, Captain John Smith reported that Christmas was enjoyed by all and passed without incident.

After the American Revolution, English customs fell out of favor, including Christmas. In fact, Christmas wasn't declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870.

Irving Reinvents Christmas
It wasn't until the 19th century that Americans began to embrace Christmas. Americans re-invented Christmas, and changed it from a raucous carnival holiday into a family-centered day of peace and nostalgia. But what about the 1800s peaked American interest in the holiday?

The early 19th century was a period of class conflict and turmoil. During this time, unemployment was high and gang rioting by the disenchanted classes often occurred during the Christmas season. In 1828, the New York city council instituted the city's first police force in response to a Christmas riot. This catalyzed certain members of the upper classes to begin to change the way Christmas was celebrated in America.

In 1819, best-selling author Washington Irving wrote The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, gent., a series of stories about the celebration of Christmas in an English manor house. The sketches feature a squire who invited the peasants into his home for the holiday. In contrast to the problems faced in American society, the two groups mingled effortlessly. In Irving's mind, Christmas should be a peaceful, warm-hearted holiday bringing groups together across lines of wealth or social status. Irving's fictitious celebrants enjoyed "ancient customs," including the crowning of a Lord of Misrule. Irving's book, however, was not based on any holiday celebration he had attended – in fact, many historians say that Irving's account actually "invented" tradition by implying that it described the true customs of the season.

A Christmas Carol
COPY Also around this time, English author Charles Dickens created the classic holiday tale, A Christmas Carol. The story's message-the importance of charity and good will towards all humankind-struck a powerful chord in the United States and England and showed members of Victorian society the benefits of celebrating the holiday.

The family was also becoming less disciplined and more sensitive to the emotional needs of children during the early 1800s. Christmas provided families with a day when they could lavish attention-and gifts-on their children without appearing to "spoil" them.

As Americans began to embrace Christmas as a perfect family holiday, old customs were unearthed. People looked toward recent immigrants and Catholic and Episcopalian churches to see how the day should be celebrated. In the next 100 years, Americans built a Christmas tradition all their own that included pieces of many other customs, including decorating trees, sending holiday cards, and gift-giving.

Although most families quickly bought into the idea that they were celebrating Christmas how it had been done for centuries, Americans had really re-invented a holiday to fill the cultural needs of a growing nation.

Christmas Facts
Each year, 30-35 million real Christmas trees are sold in the United States alone. There are 21,000 Christmas tree growers in the United States, and trees usually grow for about 15 years before they are sold.

Today, in the Greek and Russian orthodox churches, Christmas is celebrated 13 days after the 25th, which is also referred to as the Epiphany or Three Kings Day. This is the day it is believed that the three wise men finally found Jesus in the manger.

In the Middle Ages, Christmas celebrations were rowdy and raucous—a lot like today's Mardi Gras parties.

From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was outlawed in Boston, and law-breakers were fined five shillings.

Christmas was declared a federal holiday in the United States on June 26, 1870.
The first eggnog made in the United States was consumed in Captain John Smith's 1607 Jamestown settlement.

Poinsettia plants are named after Joel R. Poinsett, an American minister to Mexico, who brought the red-and-green plant from Mexico to America in 1828.

The Salvation Army has been sending Santa Claus-clad donation collectors into the streets since the 1890s.

Rudolph, "the most famous reindeer of all," was the product of Robert L. May's imagination in 1939. The copywriter wrote a poem about the reindeer to help lure customers into the Montgomery Ward department store.

Construction workers started the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree tradition in 1931. ( Copy from http://www.history.com/topics/christmas )

The Queen’s Christmas Message in 3D

2012-12-24T08:37:00.002-08:00

Queen Elizabeth’s annual royal Christmas message has become as traditional as Christmas itself, with families huddling around their TV sets after tucking into a hearty roast lunch anxiously awaiting to hear what her majesty has to say as she reflects on the year.

But this year is a first for the 86-year-old monarch as her Christmas day message has been filmed in 3D. The queen watched a sneak peak preview of her broadcast wearing dark glasses complete with a Q made out of glittering Swarovski glasses worthy of a rock star.

This year the message contains the impact of the London 2012 Olympic Games saying “all those who saw the achievement and courage at the Olympic and Paralympic Games were further inspired by the skill, dedication, training and teamwork of our athletes.”

Just like every other Christmas, her majesty is at her Sandringham Estate with husband Prince Philip and other members of the royal family where they usually spend Christmas, but breaking with tradition this year the second in line to the throne, Prince William and wife Catherine, will not be spending the festive day with them. Instead they’ll be at home with the prince’s in-laws, the Middleton’s, at their home in the quaint and bucolic village of Bucklebury.

In a statement, the palace said the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge plan to attend Sandringham at some point in the Christmas period.

Meanwhile, the queen is said to be recovering from a cold and was forced to miss the Sunday church service disappointing dozens of well wishers who had gathered outside the church to catch a glimpse of her.

Prince Philip did attend the service along with some members of the royal family including Prince Andrew, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.

12 Days of Printex Ghana African Fashion Print Giveaway

2012-12-24T08:24:00.002-08:00

Ghana fashion gets a big boost this holiday season with the 12DaysOf Printex Giveaway. Printex is giving gifts of African fashion prints of its Arete and Xclusive ranges when you like Printex Ghana on Facebook starting December 24th.

Printex has partnered with FashionistaGH, Ghana’s go to for all things fashion and style to bring you 12 dresses in 12 of this season’s most colorful prints.

Like Printex on Facebook during the 12Daysof Printex and you win 6 yards of your favorite African prints.

12Dayof Printex ends on January 5th and 12 winners will be announced via Facebook on January 7th. Must be a resident of Ghana to win.

At Printex we believe that the key to staying innovative in the ever-changing African fashion industry is by building partnerships with local textile and leading fashion creatives. Our collections are designed for the upwardly mobile, and aspirational African woman and man looking to add flare to their personal style.

Printex is a modern textile mill producing quality African prints in Ghana. With over 4,000,000 meters a month, we are West Africa’s turnkey textile solution.

AFCA promotes alternative education through arts and culture

2012-12-24T08:00:00.002-08:00

A performance during last year’s Hakawy festival.

Although Egypt has registered significant progress in its educational system, it is still lagging behind more developed countries. That is why parents have started to turn toward alternative ways of preparing their children for what lies ahead. AFCA (Académie Francophone Cairote des Arts) for Arts and Culture is an independent organisation, which strives to place arts and culture at the centre of every Egyptian child’s education.

Through cultural and artistic workshops AFCA seeks to inspire children, enrich their imagination, while encouraging them to explore their talents and natural artistry.

AFCA offers six artistic clubs throughout the year during school vacations (Halloween, Christmas, mid-year, winter, Easter and summer). Each club revolves around a different theme and hosts several workshops. This year’s Christmas club started 23 December and will run until 10 January. The club targets French and English speaking four to 12 year-olds from international schools around Egypt.

“The Christmas club activities will be in French but there will be volunteers to translate for the English-speaking children,” said Racha Ali, executive director of AFCA.

Apart from encouraging the children to improve their language skills, the AFCA Christmas club seeks to revive the spirit of Christmas through “the workshops of Santa Claus.”

“We have various workshops, like the cooking workshop, during which children will be cooking Christmas dishes, the drama workshop, where the children will be impersonating Christmas characters and singing Christmas songs. There is also a storytelling workshop and many other activities,” Ali said.

“Children attending the Christmas club are also encouraged to work on their writing skills by writing letters to Santa,” Ali added. “Team work is at the centre of most activities that we do with the children and this will help them improve their communication skills,” she continued.

Creativity is also encouraged during Santa’s workshops, which will end with a show prepared by the children. “Children can come up with their own ideas for the final show, which will be attended by their parents; otherwise no parents are allowed, it is all about the children,” said Ali.

However, what happens if ones child does not speak a second or a third language, or one simply cannot afford the EGP 400 entrance fee for the AFCA Christmas club? Fortunately AFCA has made it a part of its mission to give back to the community; therefore, it has teamed up with various NGOs and public schools throughout Egypt to organise different cultural projects for underprivileged children. These projects are free and will make arts and culture accessible to all.

In spirit of promoting and popularising free access to alternative education, AFCA for Arts and Culture will be organising the third edition of the Hakawy International Arts Festival for Children in March 2013. The festival will host a diverse selection of artists in Cairo who are skilled in different fields (theatre, dance, puppetry, storytelling, etc) from Egypt and around the world. The theme of the 2013 festival is centered on music and rhythm and it is tailored for both a young audience and parents.

Celebs, billionaires and banjos in fracking culture war

2012-12-24T06:18:00.003-08:00

SAVING THE PLANET: Gaswalk, a protest march against fracking, in Cape Town in August 2011

NEW YORK — Not so long ago, fracking was a technical term little known beyond the energy industry. Now it’s coming to Hollywood, as the fierce battle between environmentalists and oil companies is played out in several forthcoming films.

Hydraulic fracturing, the controversial drilling technique also known as fracking, has lifted US energy output dramatically, despite warnings from critics who fear it pollutes water deep underground.

It entails pumping water laced with chemicals and sand at high pressure into shale rock formations to break them up and unleash hydrocarbons. The minerals are trapped thousands of metres below water tables, but critics worry that fracking fluids or hydrocarbons can still leak into water tables from wells, or above ground.

Among their other concerns are fracking-related earthquakes and growing dependence on fossil fuels.

It is a hot topic in South Africa, too, where plans for fracking in the ecologically sensitive Karoo have faced staunch opposition from the public and from environmental groups.

Global energy company Shell is one of five companies seeking exploration licences in the Karoo, which is thought to hold the fifth-largest shale gas reserves in the world.

In the US, any shift in public opinion could affect policy — and huge sums in energy spending — since drilling regulations are under review by the Obama administration and local officials around the country. The high stakes involve a range of issues from US energy independence, to protection of drinking water.

Both sides are using movies to try to win the debate, though actor Matt Damon says viewers should not assume the movie he stars in, Promised Land, is "a rabid anti-fracking polemic".

In the film, he plays a gas-company landman — an agent who buys or leases land — intent on drilling beneath a town where some residents are concerned about the perils of fracking.

As the landman gets to know the townspeople, he suffers a crisis of conscience.

In an interview in Los Angeles, the actor said he worried that viewers would wrongly assume the film was one-sided and not see it. He declined to offer his personal view on fracking. "That’s not the point. The point is that (the film) should start a conversation."

The Northern Irish director Phelim McAleer’s documentary FrackNation is an unabashedly pro-drilling mantra set to air next month on AXS TV, the cable network controlled by Dallas Mavericks owner and media mogul Mark Cuban.

Mr McAleer views fracking as "the best thing ever", a potential saviour for the US economy, unless the forces he likes to call "Big Enviro" succeed in derailing it.

On the other side of the argument, HBO, the cable pay channel, could air a sequel to Gasland, a scathing 2010 documentary from director Josh Fox, as early as next year.

The original film featured scenes of tap water erupting into flames and mobilised environmental groups against fracking, drawing full-throated rebuttals from an oil industry that says the process has never caused water problems.

Mr Fox declined comment for this article.

Amid the showdown, both industry and anti-fracking camps have mounted major campaigns to sway hearts and minds.

"It could become the biggest environmental debate of our time," says Robert McNally, an energy policy expert and former White House adviser under George W Bush. "Hollywood is taking notice, and the industry will have its work cut out for it to defend fracking."

Nearly four out of 10 Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center early this year said they knew nothing about fracking. Other polls show most Americans familiar with the practice believe fracking offers economic benefits but requires tougher regulation.

This year, for the first time, US online searches for the term "fracking" became more popular than "climate change", Google data showed. Fracking has doubled on Google’s popularity index since last year, and while "global warming" still draws more hits, the gap is narrowing.

Drinking water contamination is the leading environmental concern among Americans, according to Gallup polling data. A Bloomberg National Poll this month showed that 66% of Americans want more fracking regulation, up from 56% in September.

‘Pounding the zone’
Whether Promised Land will shift public opinion is uncertain. But films with environmental themes often can, according to Joseph Cappella, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania.

Past examples include Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth on climate change, and Erin Brockovich, a dramatisation of real events in which actress Julia Roberts played a legal clerk who uncovers water contamination by a California power company.

Ahead of the release of Promised Land, some within the oil industry are already reading the film’s script online.

"Look, I don’t want to whistle past the graveyard. This film is going to be a challenge, and we’ll just have to see how it does on opening weekend," says Chris Tucker, of pro-drilling group Energy in Depth (EID), which is funded by industry. "In terms of popularisation of the issue, it will have an effect."

The oil industry wants to avoid another blow like the one it took from Mr Fox’s 2010 Gasland film. Google search data show online interest in fracking surged immediately afterwards.

For three years, Mr Tucker has been working with other communications experts, "pounding the zone with facts" to counter what he calls false claims in Gasland and to promote drilling.

Films like Promised Land will get people curious and send them searching online, says Mr Tucker, where he worries the term "fracking" gets a bad rap. "People will go home and Google it, and the other side does really well on Google," he says.

EID released its own pro-drilling film, Truthland, this year, dubbing it "the factual alternative to Gasland".

Losing PR battle?
In some ways, the film blitz may be behind the times.

Fracking has already come to dominate US drilling over the past half-decade: onshore rigs doing so-called unconventional drilling account for nearly two-thirds of the total.

Mr Tucker and industry officials are regulars at conferences, in newspaper op-ed articles and on TV to defend drilling.

On the environmentalist side, Mr Fox travels widely to lead anti-fracking rallies, sometimes rousing crowds by playing a banjo, which is also featured on the Gasland soundtrack. He has enlisted help from artists including Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon.

"The lesson of Gasland is that public perception is a very big part of the equation," says Jonathan Wood, a political risk analyst at London-based Control Risks, whose clients include oil companies.

In a report this month, Mr Wood wrote that the industry "has largely failed to appreciate social and political risks, and has repeatedly been caught off guard by the sophistication, speed and influence of anti-fracking activists".

The US now rivals Russia as the world’s top gas producer, in large part due to fracking, and has stemmed a long decline in oil output, which stands at an 18-year high near 7-million barrels a day.

So far, the Obama administration has cautiously endorsed the new drilling, but the US Department of Interior is working on new fracking rules on public lands starting next year.

Some drillers have faced fracking-related fines for water contamination due to spilled fracking fluid. Last year, after sampling water in rural Pavillion, Wyoming, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) presented the first US government finding of a potential link between fracking and water contamination.

More broadly, however, the EPA condones fracking on safety grounds. But unlike the growing consensus among climate scientists linking global warming and industrial activity, there is no consensus that fracking poses a danger. Unconventional drilling has surged only over the past half-decade.

The EPA will release an in-depth study on fracking’s potential effects on water supplies in 2014.

Tough economic times can widen support for drilling. A national Gallup poll this year showed that more Americans favoured prioritising economic growth over the protection of the environment (49% versus 41%). That is a reversal from 2007, when 55% favoured environmental protection.

Mr Cuban is betting the hot potato issue will draw viewers to FrackNation on his cable channel.

"Op-ed-umentaries like this are supposed to make people think about the topic, which is always a good thing," he says.

Grimm brothers' celebration awakens saga of fairy tale link to German culture

2012-12-19T09:59:00.004-08:00

Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and roots of Nazism on agenda at Kassel congress for 200th anniversary of brothers' classic tales

Fitcher's Bird is among dozens of Brothers Grimm fairy tales, here illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

Once upon a time two German brothers began collecting the best fairy tales of their age. They gathered an array of stories involving princes and princesses, forests, castles and magic, but also darker sagas of cannibalism, dismemberment, murder and evil stepmothers.

The 200th anniversary on Thursday of the first publication of the Grimm brothers' Die Kinder und Hausmärchen (children's and household tales), a collection of 86 stories which became worldwide classics, is triggering a year of feverish celebrations in Germany to mark the birth of one of the most frequently read books in the world.

Academics from around the globe, meeting this week in the central German city of Kassel, close to the brothers' birthplace, are kicking off the Grimm 2013 celebrations with a Grimm brothers' congress. Its participants, ranging from lexicographers to psychoanalysts, will focus on everything from the book's enduring legacy, to the brothers' impact on German grammar and how they shaped the nation's erotic imagination.

"Even during their lifetime the Grimms' book became a huge bestseller among every section of society," said Claudia Brinker-von der Heyde, the congress president. "And so they became an indispensable part of our every day culture and our national identity."

Other Grimm events will include forest trails in the western city of Marburg where the brothers studied, light shows, art installations, cabarets, theatre productions, readings and operas.

But amid all the fanfare for the siblings who gave the world those unforgettable, childhood-defining tales of Red Riding Hood, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Rapunzel, cultural observers say the anniversary is above all a chance to examine once again a literary legacy that has often been associated with the gloomier side of German history.

In a recent essay in Der Spiegel, Matthias Matussek, one of Germany's leading cultural commentators, argued that the "most successful book in the German language" offered an unparalleled exploration into German people's "dark souls", but said that most ordinary Germans had long ago fallen out of love with the story-telling masters. They were more revered everywhere else, from Asia and India, to the US and elsewhere in Europe, than in their native Germany.

"The Grimms are more popular in China than they are here," he said. "What do the others see in us that we don't see in ourselves anymore? Have we become blind because we have had an overdose of dark fairy tales?"

While there are plenty of foreign tourists going to Bremen to soak up the atmosphere of the Town Musicians of Bremen tale, or to Sababurg's 14th century Sleeping Beauty Castle, German interest in the tales and the paraphernalia surrounding them is remarkably limited.

Matussek, who describes the Brothers Grimm as mind doctors who "eavesdropped" on Germans' primordial joys, fears and hopes, writing as they had when memories of the 17th century thirty years war were still strong and at a time when Napoleon was seen as the new threat to peace, says it was the Nazi era that quashed the Germans' interest in their favourite fairy tales.

"Since then, the Germans have been without dreams and they'd like to ensure it stays that way," he suggested. Having a dream or a vision – if the consequence was a murderous dictatorship it was viewed with suspicion, he said.

The theory that the Grimms' tales, particularly the more brutal ones, such as How Children Played Butcher With Each Other, in which a whole family massacres itself, had had an adverse affect on the German character, was expressed frequently after the second world war.

In his 1978 book Roots of German Nationalism, Louis Snyder argued that the brothers helped shape certain deleterious traits, such as discipline, obedience, authoritarianism, glorification of violence and nationalism, which became part of the national character. That was the reason allied commanders banned the book in schools after the war, arguing that they had found the roots of Nazism in the Grimms' world.

A British major, T J Leonard, even said the fairy tales had helped Germans teach their children "all the varieties of barbarousness", making it easy for them to fit into the "role of the hangman".

The German author Günther Birkenfeld saw in the fairy tales the answer to "how the German people were able to perpetrate the atrocities of Belsen and Auschwitz".

The book was therefore largely banned from the German nursery – which was simultaneously undergoing its own anti-authoritarian, pro-modernisation reaction to Nazism – for decades. At the same time though it was becoming increasingly hijacked outside Germany by Disney and Hollywood.

Matussek and others are calling for a re-think about the place the Grimm tales have in Germany's cultural identity.

But the theatre director Jan Zimmermann, who is staging a fairy tale version of the Brothers Grimm biography at Berlin's Hexenkessel Hoftheater, argued that the pair's endurance lay in the fact that they were international.

"The brothers might have written the stories up but [the tales] had existed for 1,000 years or more beforehand as Greek, Jewish and Egyptian myths and sagas. What they did was to conserve them forever like flies in amber, It's up to us to keep them alive," he said.

Bollywood, Muslims, culture and exile

2012-12-19T09:43:00.001-08:00

Two great personalities, Abdus Salam’s death anniversary and Dilip Kumars’ birthday were commemorated recently in Pakistan. This was followed by the remembrance of the fall of Dhaka for us and Independence Day for Bangladesh. Abdus Salam’s anniversary went by unceremoniously, while Dilip Kumar’s birthday was enthusiastically celebrated. Dilip Kumar’s 90th birthday was seen as a noteworthy event and the date was monumental enough to take up formidable space in the newspapers. The total number of likes for these two columns was a colossal 4 likes and 3 tweets. Of the two different personalities, one chose self-exile and the other opted to remain in India. We take pride in producing artists, only when they have made a name for their artistic expression or scientific achievements outside the country.
-Illustration by Sabir Nazar.
Muslim actors, painters, poets, scientists, musicians, writers are successful in India. The examples of Dilip Kumar, Bollywood Khan actors, M.F. Hussain, Raza, Ghulam Rasool, Kaifi Azmi, Sahir Ludhianvi, A.R. Rehman, Rafi, Mehdi Hassan, Shakir Hussain, Mehboob Khan and ex-president Abdul Kalam are testimony to the prominence of Muslims across the border. Muslims excel in cultural, artistic and scientific fields in a country where they are in a minority. Talented Muslims tend to flourish outside the countries where they are a majority.

Before Partition, Lahore was the cultural capital of India. The successful artists, directors, poets, actors and musicians flocked to Lahore. Artists like Pran, Manto, Noorjehan started their careers from Lahore. Lahore was a hub of these activities because it was not a Muslim majority city. It was a city that had Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, besides Anglo Indians, Ahmadis and many more. This myriad of different faiths and races produced an environment of tolerance, and reciprocal learning. We might criticise Lord Macaulay’s education system and the Indian penal code but the British education system was secular and was not prepared to produced ideological minds and impose a singular identity.
The mystique of Lahore in India is still present because of pre partition image of Lahore. It was here where the first modern Indian artist, Amrita Sher Gill and Abdur Rehman Chughtai lived and were family friends. As Safdir Mir noted, Amrita Sher Gill looked for her artistic inspiration in modern Indian rural peasants, while Chughtai traced his artistic roots to the central Asian tradition of miniatures. Two modern Urdu poets, Iqbal and Faiz were products of the British era and were under attack from the Muslim clergy. One died before partition and the other was either incarcerated in Pakistan or lived in exile. Even a religious scholar like Abul Ala Maudoodi was a product of the British Raj. If he had written, ‘Khilafat aur Malokiat’ today, he would have lived in exile like his follower Javed Ahmad Ghamdi.

In Pakistan, sharia and not culture defines the identity of the country. Culture is looked at suspiciously as a vehicle of separate identity against the common identity of Muslims. By eliminating different cultural identities, sharia is considered as binding us into a single Muslim identity. The sharia enforced black veil is preferred over the culturally diverse head gears like shawls, chadders, dupattas and scarves.

After partition we deliberately tried to forge a singular identity based on religion and suppressed the different identities of Bengalis, Pashtuns, Balochis, Sindhis and Punjabis. We tried to impose a single identity on the culturally rich Bengal, the land of Tagore and artists of the caliber of Zainulabidin. This only resulted in losing the eastern wing of Pakistan. Here, we tried to kill culture by banning films, music and dance during Zia’s era. Later basant, classical dance, singing and dhol performances at sufi shrines (Shah Jamal) were obliterated, instead we had attacks on the Christian population, bomb blasts at Data Sahib’s and Baba Farid shrines to further decimate Pakistani culture. In India, BJP came to power for their appeal to a single identity of Hindutwa, we saw attacks on Indian Picasso, M.F. Husain, who later died in self-exile.

Similarly, the first Pakistani Nobel Prize Laureate Abdus Salam had to live in self-exile. Even religious scholars like Fazl-ur-Rehman and Daood Rahbar were forced to flee the country. Recently, Javed Ahmad Ghamdi fled the country and is now living in self-exile in Indonesia. The two greatest novelists of modern Urdu literature, Abdullah Hussain (udas naslain) are living in England, Quratulain Hyder (Aag ka darya) Ustad Bare Ghulamali Khan, Sahir Ludhianvi decided to move back to India. Writer and political activist Sajjad Zaheer was extradited to India and film Director Zia Sarhadi settled permanently in England. Saadat Hassan Manto and Saghar Siddique opted to stay in Pakistan and thus, face court trials and die in their early 40s. Zia Moyauddin and Naheed Siddiqui stayed outside Pakistan for most of their creative life. Recently, Adnan Sami decided to settle permanently in India. The first Pakistani pop singer, Nazia Hassan lived in England and shot to fame when she joined forces with Bollywood. Recently, we see new successful writers who are writing in English for international readers like Mohsin Hamid, Mohammad Hanif and Ali Farooq Qureshi. They are the brave souls who have moved to Pakistan, like Saghir and Manto. Lets see how Pakistan treats them.

Taiwanese skateboarder breaks Guinness world record

2012-12-19T08:45:00.001-08:00

Taipei, Dec. 19 (CNA) Taiwanese skateboarder Wu Meng-lung broke the Guinness world record Wednesday for the farthest distance traveled on a skateboard in 24 hours after riding for more than 300 kilometers.

Wu, 36, set off a day earlier at Dapeng Bay National Scenic Area in Pingtung County, southern Taiwan, and rode a new world record of 301.028 km in the allotted time.

The previous record was held by James Peters of the United States, who rode 296.12 km in Seattle in May 2007, according to the Guinness World Records website.

Chris Hsia, a renowned surfer and one of the witnesses of Wu's attempt, said Wu fell behind his own schedule after completing the front two-thirds of his journey and therefore in his final six hours, did not stop for a break or water.

Wu said that temperature fluctuations increased the level of challenge and that he suffered muscle stiffness everytime he continued his journey after a break.

Wu previously challenged Peters' record July 2 in scorching 40 degrees Celsius heat but failed when he was some 16 km short of the record. He was admitted to hospital suffering from dehydration.

Wu said his next challenge will be to tour Australia on a skateboard and continue to promote skateboard marathons around the world. In 2004, he completed a 14-day, 1,100-km round-the-island trip on a skateboard and on foot.

Modern Art, Defined

2012-12-17T08:49:00.002-08:00

An exhibition looks at abstraction—the movement that defines  modern art. By Blake Gopnik

A century ago, in October 1912, a silent newsreel flew out from Paris bearing one of history’s hottest cultural updates. The footage is lost, but we can imagine its title cards: “Artist makes pictures without any subject—New ‘abstraction’ shakes up French avant-garde—Art of the future, or dead-end experiment?”—Even Picasso objects: ‘There is no abstract art, you always have to begin with something.’ ” Not since the Italians invented fully realist painting, 500 years earlier, had visual art made such a huge leap. Up until that landmark fall of 1912, fine artists had always assumed their work would link up to the world, one way or another. And then, almost overnight, a bunch of them saw that severing that link would open up new options in art.

The Birth of Abstract
Morgan Russell. Synchromy in Orange: To Form. 1913-1914. (Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr. (c) 2012 Peyton Wright Gallery. Photo courtesy of Albright-Knox Art Gallery / Art Resource, NY.)

“It was the biggest rewriting of the codes of cultural production since the Renaissance ... It’s the moment when the modern becomes modern,” says Leah Dickerman, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one of the 20th century’s great bastions of abstraction. We’re eating lunch in MoMA’s fifth-floor café, not far from a vast suite of galleries being readied for Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925, the first full survey of how representation got dumped. It opens Dec. 23. Dickerman’s show will feature the most famous pioneers in nonfiguration: Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian. But it will also point to figures who have been neglected, from countries often sidelined. Czech painter František Kupka was the subject of that newsreel, as the first artist to publicly display pictures without subject matter. Léopold Survage, a little-known Russian, made a stab at abstract films. And various dancers and poets and musicians, from Hungary and Italy and Austria, will be shown following the path to abstraction in their own media.

Abstraction was such a terrifying leap in the dark, Dickerman argues, that taking it became almost a group exercise, one artist giving cover and courage to another as they abandoned all ties to subject matter. (Interestingly, Renaissance realism also started out as a communal endeavor, with a number of artists present at its birth.) Dickerman says that she remains amazed at “how impossible abstraction was in 1910”—when some theorists broached and then abandoned the option—“and two years later, it’s everywhere.” The period texts, Dickerman says, make clear just how much collective valor it took to disregard most of what fine art had always been. The exhibition’s works should make clear that once abstraction stopped being simply impossible, it became hugely fertile instead: Kandinsky painted swirls meant to link vision to sound; Malevich used the simplest geometrical forms to reach out to the immanent and ineffable; Mondrian went for the pared-down essences of visual fact—horizontals and verticals and fields of primary color. For decades thereafter abstract art seemed an endless resource for artists to mine, out on the most obvious cutting edge.

It’s not that there hasn’t been any  abstraction since the mid-’70s. At this moment we are officially in the middle of yet another abstract-art revival, according to dealers and certain writers. But the urgency that once came with abstraction has clearly disappeared. The nonfiguration that’s attempted today inevitably seems like a rehashing of the abstraction of old, or a footnote to it and ironic poke at it, or some kind of retro revisitation, akin to the Mad Men suits on today’s businessmen. It’s almost impossible to see today’s abstraction as mattering much for tomorrow’s art. Which means that the second-greatest discovery in Western art bore fruit for about 60 years—or slightly more than one 10th the time that Renaissance perspective kept paying dividends. (And realism, far more than abstraction, still feels like it belongs in an artmaker’s toolbox.)

But it could be that to note the passing of abstraction as a form of current art is to misunderstand what mattered most about the abstract revolution in the first place: it may have been less about the “abstract” than about “revolution.” Its impact didn’t depend so much on the gorgeous works of art it led to as on the fact of leaving so much behind. Abstraction was the model, the test case, for art as innovation, so that almost all the radical art that came later had its roots in that moment in 1912. Readymades and monochromes, text-based art and performance, happenings and purely conceptual gestures, all depend on abstraction’s pioneering rejections of business-as-usual art. “Abstraction unsettles more than just the fact of depiction,” says Dickerman—it establishes the act of unsettling as the sign of modern thought.

Dickerman explains to me that her work on abstraction came out of her great 2005 show about the radical Dada movement, which flourished around the time of World War I in the hands of figures such as Jean Arp, Francis Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp. “When I was working on Dada, I thought of it as being responsible for everything that was important in modern art,” Dickerman says—until the moment she realized that Dada’s absurdist innovations had their start in an embrace of the apparent absurdity of abstract art, where many Dada artists began their careers.

The Birth of Abstract
Vasily Kandinsky. Impression III (Konzert) [Impression III (Concert)]. 1911. (Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich. Photo (c) Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Manchen. (c) 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.)

So we shouldn’t value abstraction only for its successes—for the great pictures it produced, fascinating as those may be. We should value it for the failure that it courted, at least in those first years—for even broaching the idea that something that so clearly was not art could turn out to be so. Abstract art’s brief lifespan may prove that its failure was on the books from the very beginning. That makes its invention more daring and important than facile success would have done.

Abstraction doesn’t only ask how a picture can be made without subject matter. According to Dickerman, abstract art’s crucial question is, “How can you think something that’s new?”

Delectable art - Engaging all the senses

2012-12-17T08:23:00.002-08:00

Chefs Melissa Dukharan (left) and Ike Francis.

'Tis the season for food so take some vegetables, meat, put them on the cutting board, sharpen the knives, and drop the ingredients in a Dutch pot and plate them … luscious fare, yes? Did someone say a work of art? Yes, you heard it right. Before the cuisine satisfies your appetite, it whips up the visual senses.

"I believe that we eat with our eyes first," says Melissa Dukharan, culinary artist and chef as she ran a potato over a mandoline (an instrument used for slicing and cutting juliennes), sliced it paper thin and rolled them to make a rose, as a part of a salad presentation.

The road to creation of culinary art involves traits that an artist would put in a painting or a sculpture. But the challenge is to complement the looks with the taste.

Over the years, the tastes and trends are paying more attention to detail, into which the new age chefs are foraying. "A culinary artist is someone who adds a creative and/or innovative touch to the epicurean craft," Dukharan explained.

"A culinary artist is a chef," she added. "You must be able to understand the science behind food. However, as an artist, you go way beyond just the flavours."

The culinary artist would put the creativity - from choosing the ingredients, to the plate on which the final product is presented and the creativity in the use of colour, shape, and texture.

INSPIRATION FROM ST BESS

"I am inspired by my upbringing in Bull Savannah, St Elizabeth," declares Chef Ike Francis. "It starts from the idea and an ability to put together taste and textures in my head and how well they harmonise and interact with the pallet, before putting the dish together."

While nature, the colours, the shapes, the sounds, the smells and the textures stimulate Dukharan's creative juices.

To get their creative acumen from inception to the plate, the young chefs explained, there are several key steps to the process.

Trips to the market or butcher shop to pick the best quality ingredients is where the journey begins. Since nature has an abundance of colours, the ingredients fill the palette.

"Before I start cooking, I like to deconstruct the dish in my head first," Francis says. "I love to BBQ or grill so it's always my preferred method of cooking."

"The cooking technique of the food - baking, frying, and steaming - ignites the art of cooking," Dukharan says. "The smells of the different flavours marrying each other, the sounds of the sizzle of the seasonings sautéeing, watching the colours get more or less intense and the variety of new textures that emerge and, of course, the new taste created."

The tools, the chefs say, vary on the nature of the creation.

"You must have a vision of what you want to see," Dukharan informed. "The tools are simple things around you, such as a paring knife or a pair of scissors or even a toothpick, to more technical tools such as a mandoline or a hand-held blowtorch."

Finally, the presentation, which is putting together the right colours to enhance the appeal of the dish. "It starts with the food itself," states Dukharan, who holds a Bachelor of Science degree in food service management, with a major in culinary arts, from the University of Technology.

"Once the 'cooking' is done, comes the artistic presentation," she continued. "This is the fun-but-technical process of how the 'paint' (food) will reach the 'canvas' (plate)."

Francis, who studied mechanical engineering, was aroused by the creativity and aroma of the food when he started working at Christophers.

"While working, I was inspired to pursue the culinary field and did my training in food preparation at HEART Trust Boys Town," he said.

Both Dukharan and Francis, attribute their gastronomic creative process to thinking out of the box.
"I am a chef and I love to cook," he says. "Culinary artistry is my epicurean expression."

Though this art form has a short lifespan, the chefs say it is gratifying to see their masterpieces pleasing the eyes and palette as well as touching hearts.

"The food is delicately placed on the plate, while the colours and shapes take form, other colours and textures are added (as) the vision comes to life.

"The masterpiece should now be utilised by your five senses," Dukharan says.

Best art shows of 2012, No 7 – Everything Was Moving at the Barbican

2012-12-16T03:53:00.002-08:00

The most ambitious photography exhibition of the year is as exhausting as it is edifying in its representation of the social and political upheavals of the 60s and 70s

David Goldblatt's Saturday morning at the Hypermarket: semi-final of the Miss Lovely Legs competition, 1979-1980. Photograph: Courtesy of the photographer and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.

Everything Was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s at the Barbican in London was the most ambitious and rewarding photography exhibition this year. It showed how documentary photographers captured the social and political upheavals of the 60s – the Vietnam war and global street protest, the American civil rights struggle, the invisibility of indigenous people and traditions. But it also explored how others, such as Boris Mikhailov and Sigmar Polke, reacted to the playfulness of 60s artists such as Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol by embracing conceptual art themselves.
Boris Mikhailov's Superimpositions, late 1960s, from the series, Yesterday's Sandwich. Photograph: Courtesy of Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin

It began with Bruce Davidson and William Eggleston, both of whom photographed tensions in the American south. In black and white, Davidson chronicled the civil rights movement in the deep south and the inner-city ghettoes of New York and Chicago, while Eggleston turned his outsider's eye on the riven world around him, most notably in Memphis, Tennessee and Greenwood, Mississippi. His use of colour saturation that borrowed from advertising, and the odd angles he chose, transformed the everyday into something threatening and unfamiliar.
Black South African schoolgirls re-smearing the floor of the shack they have lessons in with cow-dung so it is not too dusty on Sunday, when it is used for church services. [New Age, 25 January 1962]. Courtesy of the Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg, Sweden © The Ernest Cole Family Trust

The stark contrasts continued with images of apartheid-era South Africa by David Goldblatt and the lesser-known black photographer Ernest Cole. Cole defied apartheid laws – becoming reclassified as "coloured" rather than "black", which meant he could travel without a work permit – and made provocative series across the country, about crime (pickpockets at work on the streets) or the endemic injustice of a system in which young girls were schooled in subservience. Works by this pioneer of South African reportage, who died unsung and in poverty in New York just a week after Nelson Mandela was released from prison, were the highlight of the show.

Upstairs at the Barbican, things took a turn towards the conceptual with Polke's smeared, stained black-and-white images of a staged fight in an Afghan village between a bear and two dogs, a metaphor for Russian imperialism. Stranger still was Mikhailov's project, Yesterday's Sandwich (1968-1975) – a dark satire on Soviet censorship.

If, like me, you had only seen Larry Burrow's Vietnam war photography in books and magazines, the giant colour prints were by turns moving and shocking. This was up-close and visceral reportage from the white heat of battle.

It was almost a relief to come upon Li Zhensheng's vast panoramic collages of demos and mass rallies in Mao's China, but their scale only served to unsettle even more. Against all this turmoil, Malike Sidibe's playful studio portraits of young Africans in thrall to the music and style of black American pop culture provided some much-needed breathing space. It was that sort of show: almost as exhausting as it was edifying, and maybe even too ambitious – but there was something for everyone.