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Posts Tagged ‘art’

Abelardo Morell’s camera obscura

In Commentary on 6 July 2011 tagged art, photography with 1 comment

Last month’s National Geographic has a feature on Boston-based photographer Abelardo Morell, who sets up a room-size camera obscura and then photographs the results, which are astounding.

The National Geographic article has a few examples of his work, and his official site has many more.

Links from May 25th

In Commentary on 26 May 2009 tagged Add new tag, art, business, economics, history, links, policy, poverty, war with no comments

• The Big Picture: Memorial Day, 2009. Moving collection of photos.
• James Fallows: On Memorial Day. On the Map of the Fallen project, an overlay for Google Maps with information on the American soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Michael Lewis: The Master of Money. A review of Alice Schroeder’s biography of Warren Buffett.
• Wall Street Journal: Obama Is Changing the Art on the White House Walls. An interesting look at the impact of Presidential taste in art.
• Financial Times: Argentina: The superpower that never was. Speculation as to why the fortunes of America and Argentina diverged so greatly over the course of the twentieth century.
• PSD Blog: The verdict is in on microfinance. The headline is provocative and I think overstates the case. However, it appears that material gains from microfinance are not leading directly to gains in other aspects of human development.
• National Journal Online: Chopra Wants To ‘Productize’ Innovations. What the federal CTO is working on.

The Kinkade aesthetic

In Commentary on 18 November 2008 tagged art, schlock with no comments

Anyone who loathes Thomas Kinkade as much as I do will appreciate this leaked Kinkade-authored memo offering 16 guidelines for achieving the Kinkade aesthetic in a film. (via Kottke)

You can get an idea of how the guidelines were applied in the trailer for Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage.

This is the best piece of Kinkade snark since Janelle Brown wrote Ticky-tacky houses from “The Painter of Light™ back in 2002, about a Kinkade-inspired golf course community in California. The prices of those houses have not fared well in the current climate — here’s the 5 year pricing chart for one of the houses in the neighborhood from Zillow.

Flags as infographics

In Commentary on 15 February 2008 tagged art, design with 1 comment

FP Passport links to an project by Brazilian artist Icaro Doria in which he uses flags as infographics simply by applying a legend to the colors. The United States flag made me chuckle, but some of the African flags hit me right in the gut, the way few other infographics have. If you’re a designer of any kind, don’t skip this link.