This might be inaccurate, we got a Female head of state currently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalia_Grybauskait%C4%97
Head of government generally means the prime minister or equivalent, it seems.
yooo what about cleopatra
Fairly certain she wasnt queen regnant
Tannu what?
Tahu Nuva, the legendary Toa of Fire
Oh I was expecting you to understand the joke Maybe you haven't played Hearts of Iron IV
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/199780/675ae64f-aa47-4320-a77d-ff144b1f0f16/image.png
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/207370/6cda504c-35c9-46a6-a7de-3cb6ea6b27c6/image.png
My grandfather, in the middle, on May 11th 1945. No idea where it is, he was, iirc, a radio operator in a Chaffee (presumably the one pictured) in the 2nd US Cavalry.
As a bit of an aside, can anyone point me in the direction of any non-US militaries that received the 1941 US uniform? @IlluminatiRex is this an area you have knowledge of?
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/110097/81dea83b-b183-427f-b138-e93e1385fa3d/image.png
Composer Dmitri Shostakovitch posing in his gear; he served as a firefighter in Leningrad after being turned away from the military for poor eyesight. So shook was Shostakovitch by the going-ons, he would go on to dedicate his Seventh Symphony with the title "Leningrad", which would ultimately be the city that he found himself trapped in for much of the siege.
It's a powerful work in it's own right, but it becomes all the more moving when one learns of its themes, and the circumstances it was played in.
First, a radio address from the performance's conductor, Karl Eliasberg:
"Comrades – a great occurrence in the cultural history of our city is about to take place. In a few minutes, you will hear for the first time the Seventh Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich, our outstanding fellow citizen. He wrote this great composition in the city during the days when the enemy was, insanely, trying to enter Leningrad. When the fascist swine were bombing and shelling all Europe, and Europe believed the days of Leningrad were over. But this performance is witness to our spirit, courage and readiness to fight. Listen, Comrades!"
Next, a thunderous storm of some three-thousand shells were lobbed at German artillery and observation positions, so as to keep them silent during the performance.
Then, the initial premiere within the besieged city:
https://youtu.be/vRHZu5xoIe0?t=464
The first performance was rough from an artistic standpoint, as many of the malnourished musicians found themselves faltering throughout the ordeal, but they ultimately made it through. Meanwhile, outside of the concert hall, the music blared over a setup of loudspeakers and over the radio. Civilians, and Soldiers of both sides heard the symphony, and legend would have it that to many of the listening Germans, Leningrad earned a reputation as "unconquerable."
Shostakovich himself rode a thin line with Stalin, and at various times found himself denounced. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this work is that it is also, almost certainly anti-Stalinist, and it was played right under the nose of the big man himself.
Friend and fellow composer Lev Lebedinsky, confirmed after the Glasnost years that Shostakovich had drummed up the idea of the symphony before Hitler invaded the Soviet Union:
"The famous theme in the first movement Shostakovich had first as the Stalin theme (which close friends of the composer knew). Right after the war started, the composer called it the anti-Hitler theme. Later Shostakovich referred to that "German" theme as the "theme of evil," which was absolutely true, since the theme was just as much anti-Hitler as it was anti-Stalin, even though the world music community fixed on only the first of the two definitions."
Shostakovich himself, while unwilling to ever directly point the finger at Stalin openly, later had this to say:
"Even before the war, there probably wasn't a single family who hadn't lost someone, a father, a brother, or if not a relative, then a close friend. Everyone had someone to cry over, but you had to cry silently, under the blanket, so no one would see. Everyone feared everyone else, and the sorrow oppressed and suffocated us. It suffocated me, too. I had to write about it, I felt it was my responsibility, my duty. I had to write a requiem for all those who died, who had suffered. I had to describe the horrible extermination machine and express protest against it."
There's more to be said about all of this, but I've already got a wall of text here. Just had to throw it out there, it's thought-provoking stuff, or I find it to be anyways.
I wanted to share these pictures of a place I visited a few years ago in Romania, it's called the Turda Salt Mine.
It's basically a giant underground mine with various cavern systems which was used back in the day to gather salt. These days it serves as a touristic attraction but also as a spot to relax and do various activities. Apparently, the high salt percentage in the air has a healing affect on your health. I would post my pictures but are rather awful. There is also a underground lake of sorts. It looks very unusual.
It goes down to 112m but there are multiple mines and cone shaped excavations that are not accessible anymore for the public.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/237363/e167d16b-ba9a-49b9-acf8-d4f6e267d245/3.jpg
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/237363/ee97a758-9453-4e07-80f4-00bddb1864b3/2.png
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/237363/80a0d8f0-d992-454c-9fe7-5b145b612cd6/1.jpg
Looks like the Combine if the Combine were a race of interdimensional health-spa managers
Yo I went there as a little kid on a field trip! You could like the walls it was awesome.
I licked the walls as well, worth it.
Now that is fucking art. Fuck you Duchamp.
is this one of those 'saying something stupid ironically' jokes i've heard so much about
Sure ain't. Fuck Duchamp and fuck the Dadaist movement.
digging how, when pressed, you come up with precisely zero arguments supporting what you said
double digging how you actually support Manzoni's art, which is very much influenced by Duchamp, because you think he agrees with you.
so uhh i agree with you, you're wrong lol
No Manzoni's art is specifically a mockery of arbitrary value. He made a bunch of tins, put in an ounce of what's allegedly shit and sold them, at the cost of the the then current price for an ounce of gold.
The idea being, so long as nobody opens the tin and reveals what's actually in there, the value self declared by the artist is upheld. But if someone were to look inside, and reveal what it was, that value would evaporate, as there's nothing left to speculate over. It's a mockery of the postmodernist/dadaist idea of subjective and arbitrary value, the notion that meaning or merit/value is what is claimed or perceieved, independant from and in practical (and intended) effect, in diametric opposition to the modernist notion of transcendent or objective value. Technical mastery and high realism was predated on objective perfection. A higher order goal to work towards, that can be practically observed and judged. And so too, can meaning in art.
However, under the Dadaist/Postmodernist model of value, it need only be subjectively claimed, or ascribed, to be 'true'. And what is 'true' to a postmodernist is merely what is subjectively perceived, with no other criteria, as to them, the nature of objectivity, or a reality to which you are subject, and not it to you, is a fallacy. Which is how Warhol could make 'art' from putting a soup can on a pedestal, and ascribe meaning to it, or for the right people to merely agree that it may have the hypothetical potential for someone to perceive meaning in it. Or if that wasn't absurd enough for you, under that set of assumptions, it's merely enough for Duchamp to simply buy a shovel to produce art. (that's currently hanging in the new york museum of modern art, because of course it fucking is).
The consequence of this is that if anyone can create art out out literally anything, so long as it is claimed to be art, or claimed to have meaning, both the meaning and the product itself is worthless. Because that in and of itself precludes the very concept of a value judgement, a concept which the postmodernists actively refute. Not anyone can be a doctor, not anyone can be an engineer, and not everything is meaningful. If everything was equally meaningful, we simply couldn't have the very concept of meaning. Therefore, if we have the concept of things that are meaningful, there must also be a catagory of what is not. If anyone can lift thor's hammer, what's the significance of doing so?
And it's this active resentment of value judgements and merit that is so evident in postmodernist/dadaist art, and which is what made Fountain it's seminal flagship. Because despite the value structure he labored under, he still actively made a statement, in merely writing a word on a mass produced toilet and calling it art. It was a deceleration of succession, that old Modernist notions of objective or transcendent value, of technical mastery and 'true' meaning is something you piss on. That the lowest of mundane, mass produced and dirty objects can be art if I say it is. It's a statement of destructive resentment, and profound arrogance on behalf of himself and all similar alleged artists. An active refutation of art's very purpose, and indeed, it's fundimental nature. None of that matters, because its only art if i say it is.
Fuck Duchamp, and fuck the Dadaists. And fuck his stupid shovel too.
Who's ready for ... *air horn noise* the hottest hits of the 13th century?
https://youtu.be/GK9LAnA-_P4?list=PLoZrYAZBgH6aLQeHavYFtWONYhmxOmt-8
https://youtu.be/sMZ3mSVcSKg?list=PLoZrYAZBgH6aLQeHavYFtWONYhmxOmt-8
https://youtu.be/7UvesKl8_W8?list=PLoZrYAZBgH6aLQeHavYFtWONYhmxOmt-8
https://youtu.be/sMCA9nYnLWo
https://youtu.be/NPDCsi1mbhE?list=PLoZrYAZBgH6aLQeHavYFtWONYhmxOmt-8
conversations are not held in essay format. i'll respond to your thesis.
If this is your opinion of what art is, you would never use merda d'artista as an example of art you enjoy, it fills precisely none of your qualifications from a visual perspective. You used it as en example because it conveyed a thought you agreed with.
This shows you actually do have the ability to understand and appreciate contemporary art, but you choose not to. You've clearly done so for merda d'artista, but only because you went in with the assumption that it proved you right. Yet, the inherent contradiction of the piece's message (which is intentional) reflects the inherent contradiction in your argument. Merda d'artista is art that proves that merda d'artista isn't art? If you think tin cans are 'objectively perfect' i'd love to hear about your appreciation of Warhol.
You should consider your perspective on the matter. What, precisely, is art to you? Why should art have to strive for 'objective perfection'? What makes something art, is it the physicality of the object, oil on canvas, light on a screen? Or is the art in the intention behind the observable item, ephemeral, and exclusively mental? These are all some questions that merda d'artista raises via it's internal contradiction and context in relation to Duchamp directly, and the rest of Manzoni's contemporaries indirectly.
I think you might get a lot out of a book called Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. It's by Marshall Mcluhan, should be easy to find.
Another good book is But Is It Art?: An Introduction to Art Theory by Cynthia Freeland.
and heil hitler
Have some Bierstadt.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/233240/bfe267f0-ad58-4b15-93ce-3e8e5acf0d2d/biersradt - among the sierra nevada.jpg
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/233240/2d49eae3-50c7-4dd3-aa43-832af51437a2/bierstadt.jpg
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/233240/7dec978f-6ff7-4f96-9023-8993e5762af8/bierstadt2.jpg
You have my sincere thanks for reminding me of this guy's work again, they're some of the most magnificent pieces of scenery pornography artwork ever created
Also, I'd wish he would elaborate on the assumption that value and meaning are somehow external?? Everything is arbitrary until proven otherwise, the reason being that subjective values are self-evident while objective ones require evidence
http://i.imgur.com/xVa7AZs.jpg
love me some max ernst
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132451/a687e7c6-849b-4548-9cf6-43947d70969e/image.png
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132451/6d1fa5ec-3b36-41b1-a6ae-bded88b7143c/image.png
"IS suicide bombers unsuccessfully rush an Iraqi PMU after their transport is engaged and disabled"
Somewhat NSFL
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/225943/4b32d89f-0f86-415d-8677-22e0d4a36adc/IS suicide bombers unsuccessfully rush an Iraqi PMU after t.webm
It's satisfying watching a suicide bomber uselessly explode only taking themselves and no one else.