ART!

[Daniel Ether]

There used to be a shop in London which sold mostly Russian books and records and some from other Eastern bloc countries. I suspect it was subsidised in some way because it closed soon after the demise of the Soviet Union.
I bought some rather slim fairy tale stories there. Each has a cover similar to this one and there is an illustration by Bilibin opposite each page of text. All of the pictures Nightrider posted appear in them.

*_* awesome! it looks beautiful

can some of you give me advice how to get good english versions of russian fairy tale stories? i found some german versions but i don't know if they are any good

PS.:
oh... sorry EEA
I hope no nightmares arose

[Nightrider]

Thanks for liking my piece.

can some of you give me advice how to get good english versions of russian fairy tale stories? i found some german versions but i don't know if they are any good

Very simple. Try this: http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Fairy-Pan ... airy+tales

It has the most comprehensive list of stories that I have ever seen. Plus, it appears to be decently priced.
Vitaly

[Daniel Ether]

Very simple. Try this: http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Fairy-Pan ... airy+tales

It has the most comprehensive list of stories that I have ever seen. Plus, it appears to be decently priced.
Vitaly

Thank you This will it be! Cool! its even available on amazon.de

[a_contemplative_life]

John Duncan - The Masque of Love (1921)

[John] Duncan was born in Dundee in 1866, the son of a cattleman. John, however, had no interest in the family business and preferred the visual arts. By the age of 11 he was a student at the Dundee School of Art, then based at the High School of Dundee. He also studied at Antwerp School of Art under Charles Verlat.

Called a madman by some and a mystic by others, Duncan admitted to hearing 'faerie music' whilst he painted. Although his work remains strongly rooted in the Pre-Raphaelite movement, there is a certain graphical quality which sets it apart from his contemporaries and likens it to Art Nouveau, while the subject matter is thoroughly Celtic Revival; he is generally referred to as a "symbolist" by art critics. His interest in Celtic Revival was also shared by the Scottish singer Marjory Kennedy-Fraser; they eventually became close friends and Duncan painted her while on a trip to Eriskay in 1905.

His dreamy, mystical nature led him to fall in love with a woman whom he believed to have discovered the Holy Grail in a well in Glastonbury and who later divorced him. He was also a member of the Edinburgh Theosophical Society. He never remarried and died in 1945.

- Courtesy of Wikipedia

An explanation of the figures in the painting can be found here.

[a_contemplative_life]

Another John Duncan painting, "Hymn to the Rose." This one is very beautiful; I wish I knew more about it...

[Klesk]

Ivan Bilibin(1876 – 1942) Russian artist known for his beautiful illustrations of fairy tales and legends.

I can remember that I had a book with russian fairytales illustrated by him as a child, espacially this picture. Huhh, spooky.

Not to mention this one. Creepy!

[Sam]

What is that??

And do I really want to know?

[Swaefheard]

It's one of Bilibin's illustrations for Vasilisa the Fair / Василиса Прекрасная and shows the witch Baba Yaga.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga
http://www.oldrussia.net/vas.html

[dongregg]

It's one of Bilibin's illustrations for Vasilisa the Fair / Василиса Прекрасная and shows the witch Baba Yaga.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga
http://www.oldrussia.net/vas.html

Enjoyed the Vasilisa tale. Thanks.

[Sam]

Okay, a piece of art from me. It's the Andromeda Galaxy. I will not post it, because it's a bit too large. The Original consists of 400+ pictures and is appearently over 4GB big. Don't worry, this is a smaller version.
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files ... es_jpg.jpg

Andromeda is our closest neighbour with a whopping 800 billion suns. So this is roughly 100 Billion. In a couple of billion years it will crash into our cute, little milky way and we will melt together.

This has two meanings for me. On the one hand I see something incredibly beautiful, created by simple meachnisms of nature, like for example a snowflake. This would make it a piece of art already, but it's better than just that. On the other hand I see the pure fact, that mere animals reached a point, when they were able to create something like this. In this sense this picture is not different from any other piece of art, but this time it's not about the people who did this, it's about us as a species. We have come that far. This is OUR piece of art. Or maybe WE are and the picture proves it.

I don't want to take that from the Nasa-Folk of course. They are worth every cent of all the taxes I did not pay in the US.