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Visual for my new Burlesque Performance "Get away from Jack Frost"
Photo © Natalie Herlinghaus
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Denis-Papin staircase is an iconic attraction in Blois, the monumental Denis-Papin staircase overlooks the town, provides an unforgettable panoramic view, and regularly enlivens urban space with its original, grandiose decorations.
2019 : Mona Lisa, for the 500th anniversary of the Renaissance.
Blois has been actively participating in the “500 years Renaissance's” program initiated in 2019 by the Centre-Val de Loire region. The year 2019 represents the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci at the Clos Lucé in Amboise, the 500th anniversary of the birth of Catherine de’ Medici and the 500th anniversary of the commencement of construction of the château of Chambord.
As a complement to the events organized in Blois to celebrate the first of these anniversaries and to pay tribute to Leonardo da Vinci, the risers of the Denis-Papin staircase are comprehensively covered over, from April to October 2019, by a modern-day reconstitution of the celebrated painting by Leonardo, the Mona Lisa.
The Statue at the top of the stairs is of Denis Papin.
Denis Papin 1647 - 1712, was a French-born British physicist who invented the pressure cooker and suggested the first cylinder and piston steam engine. Though his design was not practical, it was improved by others and led to the development of the steam engine, a major contribution to the Industrial Revolution.
The Origins and Purpose of Street Art and Graffiti — A Historical Essay.
Prehistoric and Ancient Beginnings (40,000 BCE – 500 CE)
Graffiti’s origins stretch back to humanity’s earliest visual culture. Prehistoric cave paintings — including hand stencils created by blowing pigment through tubes — functioned as some of the earliest “tags,” marking presence and identity. These date from 40,000–10,000 years ago.
By the classical era, graffiti was widespread across Ancient Greece and Rome, where people scratched messages, jokes, political commentary, and personal boasts into walls. The oldest known written graffito dates to around 500 BCE.
In Pompeii, graffiti served as advertising, satire, political slogans, and everyday communication, revealing the lives of ordinary people rather than elites.
Purpose in this era:
1. Marking presence (“I was here”)
2. Social commentary
3. Recording daily life
4. Religious or political expression
5. Communication by non‑elites otherwise absent from written history
Medieval to Early Modern Graffiti (500–1800 CE)
Graffiti continued through the medieval period, especially in religious and rural landscapes. In the Middle East, the Safaitic inscriptions — scratched onto rocks across Syria, Jordan, and Arabia — are the only surviving record of an ancient Arabic dialect.
In Europe, travellers, workers, and even antiquarians carved names and messages into castles, churches, and monuments. At Stonehenge, 18th‑century visitors left carved signatures, showing graffiti as a record of presence and identity.
Purpose in this era:
1. Recording travel or pilgrimage
2. Personal memorialisation
3. Folk expression by ordinary people
4. Documentation of labourers and craftsmen
The Birth of Modern Graffiti (1950s–1970s)
Modern graffiti culture emerged in Philadelphia in the 1950s, led by figures like Cornbread, who pioneered tagging as a form of self‑promotion and identity.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, graffiti exploded in New York City, especially on subway trains. Writers such as TAKI 183 and others transformed tagging into a competitive, stylised art form.
This era marks the shift from simple inscriptions to complex lettering, murals, and large-scale public visibility.
Purpose in this era:
1. Personal identity and fame (“getting up”)
2. Reclaiming public space
3. Youth expression in marginalised communities
4. Resistance to social and economic exclusion
The Rise of Street Art (1980s–2000s)
Street art evolved from graffiti but expanded into stencils, wheat‑paste posters, stickers, installations, and murals. Artists like Keith Haring, Jean‑Michel Basquiat, and later Banksy brought street art into global consciousness.
Street art differed from graffiti by focusing less on lettering and more on imagery, political messages, and public commentary.
According to The Art Story, street art grew from the belief that art should be:
1. Accessible to everyone
2. Outside traditional institutions
3. Democratic and empowering
4. A counter‑attack against advertising and corporate messaging
5. Purpose in this era:
6. Political protest
7. Social commentary
8. Challenging authority and capitalism
9. Beautification and community identity
Artistic experimentation outside galleries
Contemporary Street Art and Graffiti (2000s–Present)
Today, graffiti and street art occupy a complex space between vandalism, public art, activism, and cultural heritage.
Graffiti remains illegal in many contexts, yet it is also recognised as a vital form of urban storytelling, especially for marginalised voices.
Street art, meanwhile, is often commissioned by cities, festivals, and cultural institutions, blurring the line between rebellion and acceptance.
Current purposes:
1. Urban regeneration
2. Tourism and cultural branding
3. Community identity
4. Political resistance
5. Artistic innovation
Street art and graffiti are not modern inventions — they are part of a 40,000‑year human tradition of marking presence, expressing identity, and challenging power. From Roman jokes to New York subway tags to global street murals, they remain one of the most democratic and immediate forms of public expression.
acuso mi austeridad a la innovación y amordazo el nihilismo de todo tiempo pasado. descuartizaré este presente, que nunca avanza, en hedonismo sensorial.
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Pants⇒.:villena:. - Chinos in Gray
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_5ZwxIb2WU Ris style↓↓ https://www.flickr.com/photos/neko-panchu/13948201146/
Each of these, in its own way is like a visual haiku to me.
"Winter is that time of year, when so much has been taken away, that what is left is even more beautiful."
Garrison Keillor - Prairie Home Companion
A series of assemblages and mixed media paintings by Chiew Sien Kuan (Singapore) displayed along the Esplanade Tunnel during A Little Love Story in Singapore.
I was sitting on the sidewalk in front of my usual perch trying to get some dramatic shots. It was uncomfortable and I stayed just a few minutes.
Love Park
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
A new visual journal -- courtesy the talented Norma Lydon -- that I just began, having completed the other.
With the weather turned grey and the spring flowers just starting to poke through, it is nice to view again some fall blooming flowers from a lovely front porch garden in Neskowin, Oregon.
Communicating through images today is fast & easy — with your smart phone you can tell the world where you are, what you’re doing & what you’re eating with just a few button presses. But has that cost us something?
Does the sheer amount of mundane images we see make good photos matter less?
Read more on my blog.
Visual notes from JSB's keynote at the 2010 NMC Summer Conference, captured using Autodesk SketchBook Pro on my iPad.
Taken June 12, 2010.
from the visual journal that I've been working on, started on '09 and now continued. Most of the images in the 2022 section come from a French children's book on zoology, "Pour les tout Petits,Lectures sur les Animaux."
By doing the Visual Study from the beginning I felt that it was not going the way I wanted, not having control of the charcoal, It was hard for me to take on the shape and the spaces that I needed. I was struggling but managed to continue on the basic shape of the art work in front of me and little by little I have managed to give few details also creating waves of patterns by using the charcoals as well as using shadowing in my work which made the visual project stand out more.
I'm entering this in a call for visual journals by the Brooklyn Sketchbook Library to be put in a time capsule for 50 years (!). I've decided the theme will be birds, with the Emily Dickinson quote in mind, "I hope you love birds too. It's economical. It saves going to heaven."
Street art is visual art created in public locations, usually unsanctioned artwork executed outside of the context of traditional art venues. The term gained popularity during the graffiti art boom of the early 1980s and continues to be applied to subsequent incarnations. Stencil graffiti, wheatpasted poster art or sticker art, and street installation or sculpture are common forms of modern street art. Video projection, yarn bombing and Lock On sculpture became popularized at the turn of the 21st century.
The terms "urban art", "guerrilla art", "post-graffiti" and "neo-graffiti" are also sometimes used when referring to artwork created in these contexts.[1] Traditional spray-painted graffiti artwork itself is often included in this category, excluding territorial graffiti or pure vandalism.
Street art is often motivated by a preference on the part of the artist to communicate directly with the public at large, free from perceived confines of the formal art world.[2] Street artists sometimes present socially relevant content infused with esthetic value, to attract attention to a cause or as a form of "art provocation".[3]
Street artists often travel between countries to spread their designs. Some artists have gained cult-followings, media and art world attention, and have gone on to work commercially in the styles which made their work known on the streets.