Albert Einstein

 

Albert Einstein never looked so cool. I love the colors and shapes in this masterpiece.

The Owl and the Crow

 

Ann P. Smith
This awesome owl and bird sculpture was made from reclaimed electronic trash. It reminds me of the mechanical owl in The Clash of the Titans.

Art with Spoons

 

 

Sayaka Kajita

Sayaka uses reclaimed plastic material to build her wonderful sculptures. Look closely at these two and you can see plastic spoons.

Smartschools Song Writing Competition

The Dream (Pablo Picasso)

Le Rêve (The Dream in French) is a 1932 oil painting (130 × 97 cm) by Pablo Picasso, then 50 years old, portraying his 24-year-old mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter. It is said to have been painted in one afternoon, on January 24, 1932. It belongs to Picasso’s period of distorted depictions, with its oversimplified outlines and contrasted colors resembling early Fauvism.

The erotic content of the painting has been noted repeatedly, with critics pointing out that Picasso painted an erect penis, presumably symbolizing his own, in the upturned face of his model.

Le Rêve was purchased for $7,000 in 1941 by Victor and Sally Ganz of New York City. This purchase began their 50-year collection of works by just five artists: Picasso, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Eva Hesse. After the Ganzes died (Victor in 1987 and Sally in 1997), their collection, including Le Rêve, was sold at Christie’s auction house on November 11, 1997. Le Rêve sold for an unexpectedly high $48.4 million, at the time the sixth most expensive painting sold (tenth when taking inflation into account). The entire collection set a record for the sale of a private collection, bringing $206.5 million. The total amount paid by the Ganzes over their lifetime of collecting these pieces was around $2 million.

The buyer who purchased Le Rêve at Christie’s in 1997 appears to have been the Austrian-born investment fund manager Wolfgang Flöttl, who also briefly held Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet in possession in the late 1990s. In 2001, under financial pressure, he sold Le Rêve to casino magnate Steve Wynn for an undisclosed sum, estimated to be about $60 million.

The Persistence of Memory (Salvador Dali)

One of the questions those who had shown interest in Dali’s work ask is “What is the meaning of these paintings?”. Whether there is certain meaning in Dali’s work is not questionable. Any serious artist understands the meaning of his own work. Dali himself almost never explained his works to the public with seriousness, although one can be curious about Dali’s influences.

What is the meaning of The Persistence of Memory? The painting itself is named adequately, as it is hard to forget the feelings provoked by observing the contents of the painting. The landscapes in many of Dali’s paintings, including The Persistence of Memory, resemble Port Lligat, the home of Salvador Dali. More than often Dali uses sandy beaches, corrupted by age sail boats, and other imagery he had been exposed to as a child in his home town.

While the contents of this painting are enigmatic and open to interpretation, let’s not forget that Dali was also a philosopher, beside being an artist, as most people know him. We also know that Dali had significant interests in science and psychology (He studied the works of Freud and Nietzsche, for example). The painting is nothing more than a collection of ideas, that are to do with the interpretation of dreams, perception of reality, time, birth, death and sexual desire. The ants, seemingly attacking the orange clock positioned on the rectangular table-like object perhaps indicate the anxiety associated with time. And what are the origins of our anxieties associated with time? Is it being too late for work? or is it not having completed or accomplished something before we die? Whether we are aware of it or not, it is reasonable to believe that we all understand, even if only on subconscious level that some day we are going to die. This psychology and understanding of the reality of death may configure our behavior.

The Persistence of Memory may have many interpretations. Some are more meaningful, others remain elusive. Perhaps the images of the melting clocks are nothing more than ideas influenced by the Camembert cheese left for too long of a period of time on the table on a warm sunny day (as Dali had previously described his inspiration for this painting, this is noted by Dali himself in his book, conveniently titled Diary of a Genius. According to Dali, he was a self-proclaimed genius). But remember that Dali would often make up ridiculous explanations for his paintings to purposely mislead people. The Camembert is an example of just that. By doing this Dali not only opened the doors for discussion of multiple interpretations of his art, but also made criticizing his work nearly impossible for people he thought who possessed lesser intellect than that of himself. In a similar way, for example, and with the same intentions, Leonardo DaVinci wrote backwards and upside down in his journals, so that the meaning of his work could only be interpreted when looked at in a mirror’s reflection by those who were clever enough to understand it.

Terracotta Army (Qin Dynasty’s Control)

The exquisite terracotta army of the first Qin Dynasty ruler Shihuangdi represents the emperor’s ability to control the resources of the newly unified China, and his attempt to recreate and maintain that empire in the afterlife. The soldiers are part of Shihuangdi’s tomb, located near the modern town of Xi’an, Shaanxi province in China.

The first emperor of all China was a fellow named Ying Zheng, born in 260 BC during the “Warring States Period”, a chaotic, fierce, and dangerous time in Chinese history. He was a member of the Qin dynasty, and ascended to the throne in 247 BC at the age of twelve and a half. In 221 BC King Zheng united all of what is now China and renamed himself Qin Shihuangdi (“First Emperor of Qin”), although ‘united’ is rather a tranquil word to be using for the bloody conquest of the region’s small polities. According to the Shiji records of the Han dynasty court historian Sima Qian, Qin Shihuangdi was a phenomenal leader, who began connecting existing walls to create the first version of the Great Wall of China, constructed an extensive network of roads and canals throughout his empire, standardized written language and money, and abolished feudalism, establishing in its place provinces run by civilian governors. Qin Shihuangdi died in 210 BC, and the Qin dynasty was quickly extinguished within a few years by the early members of the Han dynasty. But, during the brief period of Shihuangdi’s rule, a remarkable testament to his control of the countryside and its resources was constructed: a semi-subterranean mausoleum complex and an army of 7,000 life-size sculpted clay terracotta soldiers, chariots, and horses.

Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa (La Gioconda or La Joconde, or Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo) is a half-length portrait of a woman by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, which has been acclaimed as “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world.

The painting, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, is in oil on a poplar panel, and is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506.It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.The ambiguity of the subject’s expression, frequently described as enigmatic, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modeling of forms and the atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work.

Géricault – La zattera della Medusa(The Raft of Medusa)

The Raft of the Medusa ( The Radeau de la Medusa ) is a painting in oil on canvas (491×716 cm) by Théodore Géricault , built in 1818-19 and preserved in the Louvre Museum in Paris .

Completed when the artist was only twenty-seven years, the painting represents a moment of the events following the sinking of the frigateFrench Jellyfish , which occurred on 5 July 1816 on the coasts of Mauritania , due to negligence and rash decisions by commanders and rulers . Over 250 people were saved thanks to the lifeboats, the remaining 147 had to be taken on board a makeshift raft, long 20 feet wide and 7, and of these only 13 returned home. The event generated a scandal International, attributed in part to the incompetence of the captain of the boat. The public also protested against the French monarchy, especially with King Louis XVIII , guilty of having appointed to that position the captain.

Monstrous Art of Granite

In architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque, usually made of granite, with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between. Architects often used multiple gargoyles on buildings to divide the flow of rainwater off the roof to minimize the potential damage from a rainstorm. A trough is cut in the back of the gargoyle and rainwater typically exits through the open mouth. Gargoyles are usually an elongated fantastic animal because the length of the gargoyle determines how far water is thrown from the wall. When Gothic flying buttresses were used, aqueducts were sometimes cut into the buttress to divert water over the aisle walls.