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Posts Tagged ‘Liu Bolin

Shifty…

Readers know that street art comes in a variety of guises, from the direct-albeit-ironic (c.f. Banksy, here and here) to the ethereal (c.f., the work of Chinese artist Liu Bolin here).  Now, on Berlin’s Bergmannstraße, one can find a tagger’s homage to tacky postcards and cheap religious artifacts past:  Lenticular Graffiti

See larger (and more) photos at Spreeblick.  (TotH to Wooster Collective)

As we look both ways before crossing, we might recall that it was on this date in 1184 BCE, according to the calculations of Eratosthenes, that Troy was sacked and burned.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene was a Third Century Greek mathematician, elegiac poet, athlete, geographer, astronomer, and music theorist. He was the first person to use the word “geography” and invented the discipline of geography as we understand it, and invented a system of latitude and longitude, calculated (with remarkable accuracy) the circumference and tilt of the earth, and created a map of the world; he reputedly also accurately calculated the distance from the earth to the sun and invented the leap day.  And to the point of the anniversary celebrated today, Eratosthenes was the founder of scientific chronology; he worked especially hard to fix the dates of the chief literary and political events of the conquest of Troy.

Eratosthenes

…Now you don’t…

Liu Bolin is a young Shandong-based artist who exhibited primarily in China until last year’s solo shows at Paris’ Galerie Bertin Toublanc and the Eli Klein Gallery in New York.  His series “Camouflage” is “an exploration of human nature and animal instincts” which features Chinese citizens painted to blend into their surroundings. The subjects are covered head to toe in paint, camouflaging themselves in front of the Chinese flag, a billboard or other features of downtown Beijing…

source: Designboom

It is perhaps not altogether surprising to learn that Liu Bolin has had some trouble with Chinese authorities…  For more of the series, visit the gallery links above, or Designboom.

As we try to blend in, we might tip our flattened fedoras to Joseph Francis “Buster” Keaton IV, born on this date in 1895…  Keaton was surely right when he observed that “tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.”  But he was equally surely wrong when he protested that “no man can be a genius in slapshoes and a flat hat.”

Buster Keaton

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Written by (Roughly) Daily

October 4, 2009 at 12:01 am