Shota Katsube makes his diminutive army of action figures at home, from the twist-ties that are conventionally used to fasten garbage bags.
Currently on view at The Wellcome Collection. Check out the pretty amazing website for their current exhibition Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan.
A Trove of Portraiture Once Hidden Away in Oxford’s Library Goes Online
Gerrit van Honthorst, Portrait of Princess Palatine Elizabeth, oil on canvas; Richard Rothwell,…
Gideon Barnett, Landscape with Fallen Child (after Bruegel), Bayside Marketplace, Miami, FL, 5:34:32 PM to 5:39:56 PM, 2012
Barnett’s photographs, large scale and perfectly focused, are a brutal (if not beautiful) focus on Miami’s lack of infastructure and identity.
See more here.
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“Iris and Janet”
Author: Etheldreda Laing (British, 1872–1960)
Date: ca. 1914
Medium: Autochrome
A portrait of Laing’s daughters, Janet (born 1898) and Iris (born 1903), taken in the garden at Bury Knowle, Headington, Oxford. — source
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Wrongfully Admitted to Sunbury Asylum
In 1945, Maraquita Sargeant, a mother of five young children, was admitted against her will to Sunbury Mental Asylum in Australia. Her youngest child, Tony, has spent the last 50 years of his life searching for answers.
Walking the grounds of the now vacant and dilapidated Sunbury, Tony claims his mother was the victim of an era where there were no contraceptives and divorce was not allowed. Having five children already, Maraquita was not willing to give birth again and soon after was admitted. In 1946, she wrote a letter to the governor of Victoria stating she had been “unjustly detained.” The governor responded with a letter to the mental hygiene director and stated the letter “appears to be from a sane person.” The hygiene director’s response can only be described as chilling:
“She is definitely insane and if released would be a threat to certain prominent people’s reputations.”
With the director alerted to Maraquita’s attempt to write the governor, he shipped her to the Royal Melbourne Hospital where she received a lobotomy—a new and experimental procedure at the time that involved separating the front of her brain from the back. The operation was considered a failure. Maraquita spent her time at Sunbury in the sewing room repairing linen and ironing. Despite the injustice, Maraquita remained optimistic and in 1967 she was released. - Continue reading and watch the video at Smithsonian.com.
Ed note: This video was submitted to our In Motion video contest. The deadline to submit your video is May 31. Head over to the contest page for more details.
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Richard Woodward on Gary Winogrand. Via The Paris Review
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Dear LEGO - Take the Street Harassment Out of Your Stickers
My son is just getting into Legos, so I thought he’d love these stickers. Then I took a closer look and saw that one of the construction workers (the only one wearing “cool” sunglasses) was labeled “Hey Babe!”
I was stunned. Maybe it’s the fact that I just saw the team at Hollabackspeak this month, or maybe it is that this is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, or maybe it is just that street harassment sucks. But chances are it was all three of these things that made me so mad to see a brand I love pushing this sort of thing.
The Hollaback website notes that street harassment is the most prevalent form of sexual violence for both men and women in the United States. Internationally, they point out, “studies show that between 70-99% of women experience street harassment at some point during their lives.”
Lego hasn’t really been on a roll recently when it comes to gender and its toys. See for example this post over at Ms. Magazine that picks apart the images of beauty in Lego’s new line of toys for girls (and check out the great ad from 1981 to see how far they have fallen).
Needless to say, I didn’t buy the stickers.
Hey Lego, thanks for teaching boys all about the art of street harassment.
In true Seinfeldian fashion, Arthur Martine, the Victorian writer behind Martine’s Handbook of Etiquette, drew up a detailed taxonomy of the various species of bore. These include the Loud Talker, who “silences a whole party by his sole power of lungs;” the Malaprop, who masters the art of inappropriate conversation; and the Life-Sharer, who may be familiar to the Facebook addicts of today.
(via curiouser)
Yes!
On the other hand, Levi-Strauss, the inventor of denim jeans is an example of structuralist opposition. He made the denim jeans fashionable and popular.
