Tribute to Cliff Burton

Stencil by Gemma Trickey

Alfons Mucha

By the time of his death, Mucha's style was considered outdated. However, his son, author Jiří Mucha, devoted much of his life to writing about him and bringing attention to his art. Interest in Mucha's distinctive style experienced a strong revival in the 1960s (with a general interest in Art Nouveau)[4] and is particularly evident in the psychedelic posters of Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, the collective name for two British artists, Michael English and Nigel Waymouth, who designed posters for groups such as Pink Floyd and The Incredible String Band.

In his own country, the new authorities were not interested in Mucha. His Slav Epic was rolled and stored for twenty-five years before being shown in Moravsky Krumlov and only recently has a Mucha museum appeared in Prague, run by his grandson[2].

It has continued to experience periodic revivals of interest for illustrators and artists. It is a strong acknowledged influence for Stuckist painter Paul Harvey whose subjects have included Madonna and whose work was used to promote The Stuckists Punk Victorian show at the Walker Art Gallery during the 2004 Liverpool Biennial.[5] Sailor Moon released a series of official posters depicting five of the main characters mimicking Mucha's style. Comic book artist and current Marvel Comics Editor in Chief Joe Quesada also borrowed heavily from Mucha's techniques for a series of covers, posters, and prints. Deathgrind band Soilent Green used a picture by Mucha for the cover of their album Sewn Mouth Secrets.[6]

One of Mucha's paintings, Quo Vadis or alternately Petronius and Eunice, was the subject of a legal dispute in 1986. The judgment handed down by Richard Posner describes parts of Mucha's life and work biographically.[7]

Among his many other accomplishments, Mucha was also the founder of Czech Freemasonry.







Alfons Maria Mucha was born in the town of Ivančice, Moravia (today's region of Czech Republic). His singing abilities allowed him to continue his education through high school in the Moravian capital of Brno, even though drawing had been his first love since childhood. He worked at decorative painting jobs in Moravia, mostly painting theatrical scenery, then in 1879 moved to Vienna to work for a leading Viennese theatrical design company, while informally furthering his artistic education. When a fire destroyed his employer's business in 1881 he returned to Moravia, doing freelance decorative and portrait painting. Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov hired Mucha to decorate Hrušovany Emmahof Castle with murals, and was impressed enough that he agreed to sponsor Mucha's formal training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.
Poster of Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, 1909
Poster of Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, 1909

Mucha moved to Paris in 1887, and continued his studies at Académie Julian and Académie Colarossi while also producing magazine and advertising illustrations. Around Christmas 1894, Mucha happened to drop into a print shop where there was a sudden and unexpected demand for a new poster to advertise a play starring Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in Paris, at the Theatre de la Renaissance. Mucha volunteered to produce a lithographed poster within two weeks, and on 1 January 1895, the advertisement for Gismonda appeared on the streets of the city. It was an overnight sensation and announced the new artistic style and its creator to the citizens of Paris.[2]. Bernhardt was so satisfied with the success of that first poster that she entered into a 6 years contract with Mucha.

Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewellery, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what was initially called the Mucha Style but became know as Art Nouveau. Mucha's works frequently featured beautiful healthy young women in flowing vaguely Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed haloes behind the women's heads. In contrast with contemporary poster makers he used paler pastel colors[3]. The 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris diffused the "Mucha style" internationally. He decorated the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion and collaborated in the Austrian one. His Art Nouveau style was often imitated. However, this was a style that Mucha attempted to distance himself from throughout his life; he insisted always that, rather than adhering to any fashionable stylistic form, his paintings came purely from within and Czech art[2]. He declared that art existed only to communicate a spiritual message, and nothing more; hence his frustration at the fame he gained through commercial art, when he wanted always to concentrate on more lofty projects that would ennoble art and his birthplace.

Câmeras Pinhole

See also: Book of Optics and List of Chinese inventions

As far back as the 4th century BC, Greeks such as Aristotle and Euclid wrote on naturally-occurring rudimentary pinhole cameras. For example, light may travel through the slits of wicker baskets or the crossing of tree leaves. [1] The ancient Greeks, however, believed that vision is enabled by rays emitted from the eye. The discovery that vision results from rays entering the eye rather than being emitted by it enabled a much better understanding of the pinhole camera effect. It was the 10th-century Muslim physicist, astronomer and mathematician, Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), who published this idea in the Book of Optics in 1021 AD. He also invented the first pinhole camera after noticing the way light was streaming through a hole in a window shutter. He improved on the camera after realizing that the smaller the pinhole, the sharper the image (though the less light). He designed the first camera obscura (Lat. dark chamber). As a side benefit of his invention, he was credited with being first man to shift physics from a philosophical to an experimental basis.[2]

In the 5th century BC, the Mohist philosopher Mo Jing (墨經) in ancient China mentioned the effect of an inverted image forming through a pinhole.[3] The image of an inverted Chinese pagoda is mentioned in Duan Chengshi's (d. 863) book Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang written during the Tang Dynasty (618–907).[4] Along with experimenting with the pinhole camera and the burning mirror of the ancient Mohists, the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD) Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031-1095) experimented with camera obscura and was the first to establish geometrical and quantitative attributes for it.[4] In the 13th century , Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon commented on the pinhole camera. Between 1000 and 1600, men such as Ibn al-Haytham, Gemma Frisius, and Giambattista della Porta wrote on the pinhole camera, explaining why the images are upside down. Pinhole devices provide safety for the eyes when viewing solar eclipses because the event is observed indirectly, the diminished intensity of the pinhole image being harmless compared with the full glare of the sun itself.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera

As crónicas do Nuno

O Nuno é um jovem de 20 anos que conheci quando estava no Hosital Psiquiátrico, já o tinha vislumbrado durante um anterior internamento dele mas só o tinha conhecido na fase final do seu internamento quando ele já se encontrava estável, nunca o tinha conhecido na seu melhor, ou pior, dependendo do ponto de vista.
Quando ele foi internado encontrava-me à pouco mais de uma semana no hospital e tive a hipotese de conhecer melhor a sua história que, mesmo assim, ninguém conseguiu compreender bem o que se passou com ele, que se arastava nos corredores com um olho semi-fechado e uma voz rouca já tanto falar e nem os psicólogos nem os psiquiatras nem ninguém! Esta história veridica é ao mesmo tempo cómica e trágica; segundo ele, e tentanto seguir cronologicamente a sua narrativa dos acontecimentos, tudo começou quando estava de férias com os pais no parque de campismo de Quarteira, ele não contou o que fez mas acabou por ser expulso do parque de campismo pelos seguranças do mesmo para grande vexame dos seus pais, estava completamente descontrolado e acabou por ir directamente à polícia para conseguir entrar no parque de campismo que, como é de se imaginar, não lhe deram importância nenhuma e acabou a dormir com a namorada num terraço de uma pensão qualquer. Durante essa mesma noite foi procurar um vestido para a namorada mas antes encontrou uns feirantes vendendo artesanato como rãs, sapos, etc, a quem comprou um rato de brincar, um sapo e um assobio e iniciou conversa com esses indivíduos que acabou em drogas e armas e até foram tomar um copo juntos, durante a conversa descobriu que um deles tinha estado encarcerado, entretanto Nuno ia pedido cigarros aos desgraçados que passavam apesar de não fumar até que encontrou uns jovens a quem pediu mais cigarros, ele sentou-se num banco com a namorada a quem os jovens fizeram remoques e ele ameaçou-os com o seu arco e a sua flecha, que tinha comprado anteriormente a uns indios o Nuno afirma que queria cannabis para ter mais potência sexual. Com esse mesmo arco e flecha andou a massacrar caranguejos e, segundo ele, mergulhava nas àguas à procura de marisco, sempre armado do seu arco e flecha. Acabou no Hospital de Faro onde posteriormente foi enviado para Aveiro e depois para Lisboa, onde se encontra neste momento.
Por entre tentativas de fuga, destruição de material do hospital e devaneios semi-inventados por ele, Nuno tornou-se numa praga insopurtável para todos os outros doentes, intrometendo-se nas conversas, interrompendo as sessões terapêuticas e acabando por degradas a saúde mental dos doentes, enfermeiros e médicos que tiveram o azar de se cruzar com ele, o Nuno via televisão e dizia que as notícias eram por sua causa, que ele é que tinha causado a onda de violência que está a varrer o país.
Isto foi tudo narrado por ele e exemplificado através de gestos como atirar-se para o chão e simular lutas. Da minha parte assisti a tentativas de fuga da ala psiquiátrica, ao desmantelar de uma cadeira e de uma cama e teve de ser várias vezes amarrado a uma cadeira de rodas e à cama.
A propósito deste texto ele afirma: "O homem que domina tudo, vou para Hollywood fazer um filme!"

To be continued...

O velhote do síndrome de diógenes...

Havia um velhote que morava na mesma rua que eu cerca de 1km de distância da minha casa. Coleccionava lixo. Tinha uma compulsão enorme para acomular pilhas de objectos inúteis com a intenção de os desmontar e aproveitar cada pedacinho deles.
Tinha apenas um defeito, puxava e exibia sempre um grande maço de notas para pagar um simples café.
Achavamos-lhe piada e então atiravamos-lhe com zarabantas improvisadas carregadas de bolotas secas nele e nos seis seis cães, estes que durante a tarde se esfregavam e masturbavam no chão em frente do quintal dele.
O seu lixo era tanto que, além do seu próprio quintal, também já tinha alastrado para fora da casa dele, até que um dia a câmara municipal veio e levou-lhe o lixo todo. Desde que eu o conheci foram 10 anos de lixo e da vida do homem que lhe levaram, ele olhava, imóvel, do outro lado da rua à remoção de tudo o que lhe era mais valioso, o seu lixo. Chamávamos-lhe o Parasita, que sofria do síndrome de Diógenes. Foi brutalmente assasinado a tiro para lhe roubarem o rolo de dinheiro que ele exíbia. Morreu.

The mardy tendencie...

Hi all, this past week has turned my life upside down, nothing out of regular for some people but something very rare and special for me. Tha special thing happens to be something even deeper and obscurer than it appears and fascinates me until how long it could go if faith itself could have helped a little more...

i will try on something impossible that may happen in disaster but that could make us 'look on the bright side of life' and always hope for the worse so that you have no surprises.

btw, the lyrics of this song is a life lesson!



and this one tells you how things can always have a 'bright side'..



and this one calls for friday, uma canção a suspirar pela sexta feira...