View allAll Photos Tagged Introspection
• Parts: 36,800+ (~1,130 unique)
• 📐 Scale: 1:650
• 📏 Dimensions: 32in x 51in (80cm x 130cm)
• 📚 Research, Design + Build Time: 4 months
• Photography: James Vitullo 📷
• ©️ MMXXIV - Rocco Buttliere, LLC
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During a brief stint in Washington D.C. in 2023, I spent the better part of a summer evening exploring the grounds of Capitol Hill. Few landscapes invite as much inquiry along winding paths paired with plenty of moments for quiet introspection on marble benches; all in picturesque view of the Capitol dome. These on-site experiences are exactly the form of anecdotal justification I seek when considering whether to recreate such monumental places in the first place.
In tackling any work of such storied precedence as the US Capitol, I always seek to expand the conversation beyond existing works in the medium of plastic bricks. While the consistent 1:650 scale among my works has always ensured some level of originality, it is no guarantee of further insight that cannot already be gleaned from existing works by other artists. With this in mind, I set out to capture the full 100-acre site currently maintained by The Architect of the Capitol. What's more, the diorama depicts a particular time of year - specifically late March to early April - as illustrated by the iconic presence of hundreds of cherry blossoms rendered in two shades of light pink.
The diorama starts downhill at the trapezoidal Capitol Reflecting Pool, with the Grant Memorial taking pride of place along its eastern edge and the US Botanic Garden across the street to the south. The diorama expands from there, capturing the radiating pathways meandering uphill, as designed by Frederick Law Olmsted within the parcels laid out in the city plan by Pierre Charles L'Enfant. The piece culminates with the widely imitated US Capitol Building, perched atop a plinth projecting from the Capitol Visitor Center on the opposite side.
Topping everything off is a custom-made representation of the Statue of Freedom (as designed by Thomas Crawford), steadfastly overlooking the National Mall from atop the dome. The statue was designed in collaboration with BigKidBrix and was sized comparably to the minifigure statuette / trophy element.
The piece was designed over the course of about two months: first in December 2023 through January 2024, paused during the build-out of SPQR - Phase II, then resumed between March and April. The build-out lasted from July through August and was completed by September. The piece will soon be added to my personal gallery of works, now available for touring exhibitions.
#Artist #SupportArtists #FineArt #SmallBusiness #SmallBusinessOwner #ChicagoArtist #LEGO #LEGOArchitecture #LEGOArt #LEGOArtist #InstaLEGO #GoBricks #USCapitol #USCapitolBuilding #CapitolHill #WashingtonDC #ArchitectOfTheCapitol #America #USA #Diorama #AmericanHistory
We continue with our presentation of the Nature Beyond Humanity collection.
What do you think about being isolated? Do you experience it or do you desire it? For us, it brings us back to introspection. Do we need it? Do we seek it? Do we endure it?
Let's think...
^*Rambling introspection and poor writing to follow.
The headline? We'll get to that.
A little over a year ago my wife and I moved to New York City with our two children. We left a house and life in suburban Chicago, as evidenced in all these Flickr photos that serve as a reminder of our past.
We sold the house, packed up tight and left town in a stretch limo with six suitcases and a hermit crab in my wife's front pocket.
We arrived with no apartment to rent, jobs or money. The money was tied up in the sale of our house that was occurring in a couple days, I had interviews lined up but nothing solid and for lodging a friend named Tom hooked up a tiny studio for the four of us.
I'm going to take the liberty of speeding up this story. I'll share more of it another time.
Needless to say, things didn't work out quite like we hoped or planned.
I didn't get the jobs that I had interviewed for. The money from the sale of our house didn't clear our bank for 3 weeks. Once it cleared we got on with the experience.
Which brings me to the short version of it:
New York has been many things to our family. I fell it love with every part of it and convinced my family to come with. They've stood by me as opportunities have come and gone. They've believed in me in during what my own personal history will recount as one of the most challenging years of my life. And I am sure likewise for them.
Right now things are on the up and I feel a little more comfortable taking the time to look at this last year as a series of challenges.
My children may never forgive me. That is simply the truth. It's my hope, later in life, they'll appreciate that mom and dad took risks in order to provide them a more interesting, better life.
Who else gets to watch a midget hooker try to work their father at a subway stop with a sweet line like, "Wanna party, Giant?". Nothing in suburbia packs that much excitement except a play-date at the local children's museum.
Profiter du silence, boire le soleil, réfléchir à rien...
Le Veillon, Talmont-Saint-Hilaire (France)
Model ¤ my beautiful Bérénice
Italian postcard by A. Terzeli, Roma, no. 59. Photo: Foto Luxardo.
Renzo Ricci (1899-1978) was an Italian stage and screen actor and also stage director.
Renzo Ricci was born in Florence on 27 September 1899. The modern theater, faced so strongly to the introspection of the characters, found in Renzo Ricci one of its most careful forerunners. Trained at the Accademia dei Fidenti, he started working as a professional in 1915 at the famous Gramatica-Carini-Piperno company. He married the actress Margherita Bagni, daughter of Ambrogio Bagni and Ines Cristina. Their daughter, Nora Ricci, would also become an important prose actress and first wife of Vittorio Gassman. Ricci later remarried with Eva Magni, with whom he formed a stage company after World War II. Always attentive to modern problems of directing, he was directed by Guido Salvini (in La Nave by Gabriele d'Annunzio, which in 1928 opened the season of the Italian director's renewal) and by Renato Simoni (in his Adelchi by Alessandro Manzoni, 1940), as well as by Luchino Visconti (in his famous Troilus and Cressida staged in the Boboli Gardens in Florence in 1949). In 1946 he proposed to the young Giorgio Strehler to re-stage Caligula by Albert Camus (for which he presented the world premiere in Geneva, at the Théâtre de la Comédie). With Strehler Ricci would also be Richard III, at the Piccolo Teatro in 1950, Firs in The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (1972) and the Plenipotentiary in Jean Genet's Balcony, in May 1976, which would also be his last performance. Always looking for new and current experiences, he created a vast and committed repertory, which included the major authors: Shakespeare, Pirandello, Shaw, Ibsen, Bernstein, Coward, Guitry, Boudet, Anouilh, Albert Camus, Odets, Fabbri, Eliot, O'Neill. From the latter he proposed the Italian premiere of Long Day's Journey Into Night, for which he also did the direction, in collaboration with Virginio Puecher in 1957. Even if intermittently, Ricci also was active as voice actor since the mid-1930s to 1960's. He also did performances of stages plays on RAI radio in the 1950s, including The Fourposter by Jan de Hartog, directed by Ricci himself.
When sound cinema set in in Italy, Ricci started his career as film actor. His first part was in the court case drama Corte d’Assise (Guido Brignone 1930), the second Italian sound feature after La canzone dell’amore, and starring Elio Steiner, Lya Franca, Marcella Albani and Carlo Ninchi. Ricic reunited with Ninchi in the mountain drama La Wally (Guido Brignone 1932), starring Germana Paolieri, and with Ricci as her jealous suitor. After two more films in the early 1930s, the comedy Ninì Falpalà (Amleto Palermi, 1933) with Dina Galli and Ricci in the lead, and Aurora sul mare (Giorgio SImonelli, 1934), Ricci stopped acting in film until 1940, when he played ‘the great modern actor’ next to Ermete Zacconi, Irma Grammatica, Memo Benassi and other ‘monstres sacrés’ of the Italian stage in L’Orizzonte dipinto (Guido Salvini, 1940). Valentina Cortese had her debut in this film. After another film, Turbamento (Guido Brignone1941), Ricci stayed off the film set until 1953, when he acted as Petronius in Primo Zeglio’s Nerone e Messalina, with Gino Cervi and Yvonne Sanson in the title roles. In the biopic Casta Diva (Carmine Gallone, 1954) on the life of composer Vincenzo Bellini (played by Maurice Ronet), Ricci was the judge Fumaroli, with whose daughter Maddalena (Antonella Lualdi) Bellini falls in love. Perhaps most famous Ricci is for his supporting parts in films of the early 1960s. In L’Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960) he was the father of Anna (Lea Massari), the girl who mysteriously disappears at the start of the film. In Viva l’Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1961) Ricci played the legendary Giuseppe Garibaldi, leading his military campaign of volunteers, the Thousand (I Mille), who embarked for Sicily to free Southern Italy from the Bourbon rule. This was the film Rossellini stated he was proudest of. After the peplum Io, Semiramide (Primo Zeglio, 1962), starring Yvonne Furneaux, Ricci played in Luchino Visconti’s Vaghe stelle dell’Orsa (Sandra, 1965) the family lawyer Gilardini, stepfather of the protagonists Sandra (Claudia Cardinale) and Gianni (Jean Sorel). Particularly Sandra hates Gilardini, as she suspects that her mother (Marie Bell) and he are responsible for the death of her father, the Jewish scientist Wald-Luzzati, killed in a concentration camp. Instead Gilardini accuses Sandra and Gianni of incest. After this, Ricci quitted the film set but for one last performance, in Patrice Chéreau’s La chair de l’orchidée (1975), starring Charlotte Rampling. Renzo Ricci died in Milan on 20 October 1978.
Sources: Italian Wikipedia, IMDb.
Mark Rothko, original name Marcus Rothkovitch, American painter whose works introduced contemplative introspection into the melodramatic post-World War II Abstract Expressionist school; his use of colour as the sole means of expression led to the development of Colour Field Painting.
In 1913 Rothko’s family emigrated from Russia to the U.S., where they settled in Portland, Ore. During his youth he was preoccupied with politics and social issues. He entered Yale University in 1921, intending to become a labour leader, but dropped out after two years and wandered about the U.S. In 1925 he settled in New York City and took up painting. Although he studied briefly under the painter Max Weber, he was essentially self-taught.
Rothko first worked in a realistic style that culminated in his Subway series of the late 1930s, showing the loneliness of persons in drab urban environments. This gave way in the early 1940s to the semi-abstract biomorphic forms of the ritualistic Baptismal Scene (1945). By 1948, however, he had arrived at a highly personal form of Abstract Expressionism. Unlike many of his fellow Abstract Expressionists, Rothko never relied on such dramatic techniques as violent brushstrokes or the dripping and splattering of paint. Instead, his virtually gestureless paintings achieved their effects by juxtaposing large areas of melting colours that seemingly float parallel to the picture plane in an indeterminate, atmospheric space.
Rothko spent the rest of his life refining this basic style through continuous simplification. He restricted his designs to two or three “soft-edged” rectangles that nearly filled the wall-sized vertical formats like monumental abstract icons. Despite their large size, however, his paintings derived a remarkable sense of intimacy from the play of nuances within local colour.
From 1958 to 1966 Rothko worked intermittently on a series of 14 immense canvases (the largest was about 11 × 15 feet [3 × 5 metres]) eventually placed in a nondenominational chapel in Houston, Texas, called, after his death, the Rothko Chapel. These paintings were virtual monochromes of darkly glowing browns, maroons, reds, and blacks. Their sombre intensity reveals the deep mysticism of Rothko’s later years. Plagued by ill health and the conviction that he had been forgotten by those artists who had learned most from his painting, he committed suicide.
After his death, the execution of Rothko’s will provoked one of the most spectacular and complex court cases in the history of modern art, lasting for 11 years (1972–82). The misanthropic Rothko had hoarded his works, numbering 798 paintings, as well as many sketches and drawings. His daughter, Kate Rothko, accused the executors of the estate (Bernard J. Reis, Theodoros Stamos, and Morton Levine) and Frank Lloyd, owner of Marlborough Galleries in New York City, of conspiracy and conflict of interest in selling the works—in effect, of enriching themselves. The courts decided against the executors and Lloyd, who were heavily fined. Lloyd was tried separately and convicted on criminal charges of tampering with evidence. In 1979 a new board of the Mark Rothko Foundation was established, and all the works in the estate were divided between the artist’s two children and the Foundation. In 1984 the Foundation’s share of works was distributed to 19 museums in the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Israel; the best and the largest proportion went to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Place: Lido di Volano (FE) - Italy
Date: May 24, 2013
Camera: Canon PowerShot A810
All images are exclusive property of Fogli Luca and are protected under International Copyright laws. The images may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted or manipulated without the written permission. If you wish to use or buy any of the images, please contact me by e-mail address lux76[at]libero.it or by flickr mail
See also: Lux @ Blogspot
I've always found sculpted fabric and body parts interesting.
This one 'The Statue of Meditation' is no exception.
A massive statue of a draped form, representing one woman in meditative introspection. In 1933, The Age reported that "Madame Gaston-Saint, of Orrong road, St Kilda, has offered the City Council a real art in the form of a large marble statue depicting Meditation. This piece is the work of the French sculptor Robert Delandere, and it was exhibited in the Grande Palais, Paris, where it excited favourable comment." Madame Gaston-Saint, an Australian who married a wealthy Frenchman, intended that the statue should be erected in memory of her father in Rheole, a small Victorian fruit growing town. Plans were damaged however, and the statue was presented to the Melbourne City Council in 1933. The Lord Mayor, Councillor Gengoult Smith, and the Chairman of the Parks and Gardens Committee, Alderman Stapley, together with other members of the Council accepted the statue from Madame Gaston-Saint in its current position on 24 April, 1933. They thanked her on behalf of the council and the City. Madame Gaston-Saint asked that the statue be offered "to honour the sorrow of those mothers whose sons fell in the Great War 1914-1918". Not everyone was happy with the work. Paul Montford, sculptor of the Peter Pan and Adam Lindsay Gordon statues, wrote to the Lord Mayor on 19 April 1933. "Apparently this marble was carved for a cemetery, “sorrow” was the subject meant, and it was rightly refused by those who gave the commission to the sculptor," he wrote. "In my opinion its artistic value is far below any other statuary in the Fitzroy Gardens, and it is probably the worst figure in any public place in Melbourne."
One of several projects, that explore photography as evidence amongst other ideas.
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Experience a moment of deep introspection with this photograph of a dog lying seriously on a moss-covered fallen branch, gazing upwards into the light. The serene atmosphere and natural beauty captured in this scene make it an ideal choice for those who appreciate the quiet grace of animals in their natural habitat.
Giulia -
Photography © Marco Equizi 2012 - All Rights Reserved.
Do not use without permission.
Press "L" to view large on black (better seen with black background)
Under the bridge I found some refuge of this everlasting rain as well as some time to be alone with my thoughts - I guess it was the right weather for that. It may sound perfectly crazy, but after half an hour under this improvised shelter - watching shells on low tide and the type of life which settled on the pilars as well as making some awkward photography experiences - I felt compelled to stroll along the beach, facing the pouring raint I previously got away from. Indeed, it might feel uncomfortable to have your clothes all wet...but otherwise, its just an intense sensation of being alive when walking on the rain, directly drinking the sweetness of clouds, the essence of life...I guess crazy people will know what I mean :)
Ria Formosa - Algarve
In the midst of the rocky Hampi hills, are a series of caves. These caves are maintained by a group of people in the area as meditation cells, for solitary retreats.
Anyone coming on a retreat has a cave to sleep and meditate in. They are brought food twice a day by the volunteers. At the end of the retreat, they just leave a voluntary donation. Roshnii and I had met some of the group in Auroville and decided to spend a few nights there.
The area was beautiful, the cave homely and the silence invigorating. We were the only ones there at the time. You can see Rosnii's cave here.
--
Hampi, Karnataka, south India.
Imprescindible verla en grande. Por favor, pulsando la tecla L
Essential view enlarge. Please press the L key
Mark Rothko, original name Marcus Rothkovitch, American painter whose works introduced contemplative introspection into the melodramatic post-World War II Abstract Expressionist school; his use of colour as the sole means of expression led to the development of Colour Field Painting.
In 1913 Rothko’s family emigrated from Russia to the U.S., where they settled in Portland, Ore. During his youth he was preoccupied with politics and social issues. He entered Yale University in 1921, intending to become a labour leader, but dropped out after two years and wandered about the U.S. In 1925 he settled in New York City and took up painting. Although he studied briefly under the painter Max Weber, he was essentially self-taught.
Rothko first worked in a realistic style that culminated in his Subway series of the late 1930s, showing the loneliness of persons in drab urban environments. This gave way in the early 1940s to the semi-abstract biomorphic forms of the ritualistic Baptismal Scene (1945). By 1948, however, he had arrived at a highly personal form of Abstract Expressionism. Unlike many of his fellow Abstract Expressionists, Rothko never relied on such dramatic techniques as violent brushstrokes or the dripping and splattering of paint. Instead, his virtually gestureless paintings achieved their effects by juxtaposing large areas of melting colours that seemingly float parallel to the picture plane in an indeterminate, atmospheric space.
Rothko spent the rest of his life refining this basic style through continuous simplification. He restricted his designs to two or three “soft-edged” rectangles that nearly filled the wall-sized vertical formats like monumental abstract icons. Despite their large size, however, his paintings derived a remarkable sense of intimacy from the play of nuances within local colour.
From 1958 to 1966 Rothko worked intermittently on a series of 14 immense canvases (the largest was about 11 × 15 feet [3 × 5 metres]) eventually placed in a nondenominational chapel in Houston, Texas, called, after his death, the Rothko Chapel. These paintings were virtual monochromes of darkly glowing browns, maroons, reds, and blacks. Their sombre intensity reveals the deep mysticism of Rothko’s later years. Plagued by ill health and the conviction that he had been forgotten by those artists who had learned most from his painting, he committed suicide.
After his death, the execution of Rothko’s will provoked one of the most spectacular and complex court cases in the history of modern art, lasting for 11 years (1972–82). The misanthropic Rothko had hoarded his works, numbering 798 paintings, as well as many sketches and drawings. His daughter, Kate Rothko, accused the executors of the estate (Bernard J. Reis, Theodoros Stamos, and Morton Levine) and Frank Lloyd, owner of Marlborough Galleries in New York City, of conspiracy and conflict of interest in selling the works—in effect, of enriching themselves. The courts decided against the executors and Lloyd, who were heavily fined. Lloyd was tried separately and convicted on criminal charges of tampering with evidence. In 1979 a new board of the Mark Rothko Foundation was established, and all the works in the estate were divided between the artist’s two children and the Foundation. In 1984 the Foundation’s share of works was distributed to 19 museums in the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Israel; the best and the largest proportion went to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Why are we suffering? These are questions asked by persons who are seriously interested in spiritual life.