According to an official statement from China’s Mineral Ministry, Chinese geologists have discovered 10,000-ton level leaching sandstone-type uranium deposit at Yili basin, which is in the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region + the deposit would produce more than $40 billion worth of uranium, coal and associated minerals, with coal resources totaling more than 4 billion tons.
Useful links:
www.mlr.gov.cn
www.chinamining.org
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Heard On The Street
No religion + no emotion + no ego + no rules + accept with open heart and mind that the only constant is change + the urge to learn is a journey, not a destination + do something you love.
Banksy Collections
I am a Banksy fan + his new collections will be shown at The Andipa Gallery @ www.andipamodern.com from Feb 29 - Mar 29, 2008
Zeng Fanzhi
I think Zeng Fanzhi is one of the major artists shaping Chinese culture of today + I liked his recent works which are more calligraphic and landscape-focussed with Chinese cultural color and character.
Useful links:
www.shanghartgallery.com
www.nhb.gov.sg
Useful links:
www.shanghartgallery.com
www.nhb.gov.sg
Walter Kistler + His Ideas
I found the Foundation for the Future + their works interesting because Walter Kistler’s idea of utilizing scientists and scholars from various fields of expertise + synthesizing their ideas for common good are delightfully stimulating and rewarding in the long term + I really liked it.
Useful link:
www.futurefoundation.org
Useful link:
www.futurefoundation.org
Jewelers Of The Seventeenth Century
(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:
4. Precious Stones And Spices
Trading in diamonds was one of the most popular forms of investment. In his inimitable Diary, Samuel Pepys entered, under the date November 16, 1664, the following:
To Eriffe; where Madame Williams did give me information of Wm. How’s having brought eight bags of precious stones, taken from about the Dutch Vice Admiral’s neck; of which there were eight diamonds which cost him four thousand pounds sterling, in India; and hoped to have made twelve thousand pounds here for them. So, I on board; where Sir Edmund Pooly carried me down into the hold of the India ship, and there did show me the greatest wealth lie in confusion that a man can see in the world—pepper scattered through every chink, you trod upon it; and in cloves and nutmegs I walked above the knees; whole rooms full.
And so it was in Pepy’s time, even as in ancient times, precious stones and spices traveled side by side.
The last years of Louis’ reign brough misfortune to many, including the highly skilled craftsmen who were driven from France by religious persecution. Among the chief jewelers to leave Paris and settle in England was the celebrated Sir John Chardin. Like Tavernier, he had traveled extensively in the Orient, where he had collected many valuable gems.
The Court of Charles II welcomed Chardin and appointed him jeweler to the King. Charles could now be well supplied with jewelry in the ‘Grand Monarque style.’
Jewelers Of The Seventeenth Century (continued)
4. Precious Stones And Spices
Trading in diamonds was one of the most popular forms of investment. In his inimitable Diary, Samuel Pepys entered, under the date November 16, 1664, the following:
To Eriffe; where Madame Williams did give me information of Wm. How’s having brought eight bags of precious stones, taken from about the Dutch Vice Admiral’s neck; of which there were eight diamonds which cost him four thousand pounds sterling, in India; and hoped to have made twelve thousand pounds here for them. So, I on board; where Sir Edmund Pooly carried me down into the hold of the India ship, and there did show me the greatest wealth lie in confusion that a man can see in the world—pepper scattered through every chink, you trod upon it; and in cloves and nutmegs I walked above the knees; whole rooms full.
And so it was in Pepy’s time, even as in ancient times, precious stones and spices traveled side by side.
The last years of Louis’ reign brough misfortune to many, including the highly skilled craftsmen who were driven from France by religious persecution. Among the chief jewelers to leave Paris and settle in England was the celebrated Sir John Chardin. Like Tavernier, he had traveled extensively in the Orient, where he had collected many valuable gems.
The Court of Charles II welcomed Chardin and appointed him jeweler to the King. Charles could now be well supplied with jewelry in the ‘Grand Monarque style.’
Jewelers Of The Seventeenth Century (continued)
Natural Landscape
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
But few except other artists applied, and as he grew older his house became fuller and fuller of unsold pictures. After his sixtieth birthday, in 1836, his health became uncertain, and on March 30, 1837, he died suddenly in his house at Hampstead. Almost immediately after his death the world awoke to his genius, and in the same year a number of gentlemen who admired his work clubbed together and bought from the executors his picture ‘The Cornfield,’ which they presented to the nation. Strangely enough this artist, who was so little known during his own lifetime, has since his death become a familiar personality, thanks to the pious solicitude of his friend, the genre-painter C R Leslie (1794-1859, whose Memoirs of John Constable, R.A is one of the best biographies of a painter ever written. It is a classic which, for the intimate insight it gives us into the character of the man, may be compared wtih Boswell’s Johnson. All who met Constable were attracted by his simple, kindly, affectionate nature, and perhaps the most touching tribute to his memory was paid by a London cab-driver who, when he heard that he would never drive Constable again, told Leslie he was ‘as sorry as if he had been my own father—he was a nice man as that, sir.’
Leslie had always been a firm believer in the genius of Constable, and wrote of his works: ‘I cannot but think that they will attain for him, when his merits are fully acknowledged, the praise of having been the most genuine painter of English landscape that has yet lived.’ Subsequent generations have corroborated Leslie’s opinion, and another genre-painter, Sir J.D.Linton, who was born three years after Constable’s death, has testified to the genius of Constable and to the effect of his painting. ‘His art,’ wrote Linton, ‘ has had the widest and most lasting influence both at home and abroad....Although Turner is accepted as the greater master of landscape painting, and his work has not been without very great influence, Constable’s robust and massive manner has affected the modern schools more universally.’
While we admire Turner we love Constable the more dearly, perhaps because his art is so essentially English. Never did a landscape painter travel less than Constable in search of a subject. While Turner toured all over Europe, Constable opened his door and found beauty waiting to be painted. With exceptions so few that they do not bulk largely in his work, all Constable’s landscapes are drawn, either from his birthplace, that is to say the borders of Essex and Suffolk about the Stour, now known as ‘the Constable country,’ or at Hampstead, where his house yet stands. The hill with a clump of firs on it, close to the Spaniard’s, is to this day spoken of as ‘Constable’s Knoll.’ His only other sketching ground of real importance was Salisbury, whither he was doubtless drawn by his friendship with the Rev John Fisher. Of his many paintings of Salisbury Cathedral, one of the most beautiful is the painting in the South Kensington Museum, from which we see that had his bent been that way Constable could have painted architectural subjects as truly and beautifully as he did landscapes.
It was the supreme distinction of Constable to destroy Beaumont’s fallacy that a ‘brown’ landscape was a ‘good’ landscape, and to paint all the greenness in Nature. He loved to paint the glitter of light on trees after rain, and the little touches of white paint with which he achieved the effect of their sparkle were jocularly alluded to as ‘Constable’s Snow.’ No painter before him had painted with so much truth the actual color of Nature’s lighting, and since Constable the true color of Nature in light and shadow has increasingly become the preoccupation of the ‘natural’ landscape painter.
Natural Landscape (continued)
But few except other artists applied, and as he grew older his house became fuller and fuller of unsold pictures. After his sixtieth birthday, in 1836, his health became uncertain, and on March 30, 1837, he died suddenly in his house at Hampstead. Almost immediately after his death the world awoke to his genius, and in the same year a number of gentlemen who admired his work clubbed together and bought from the executors his picture ‘The Cornfield,’ which they presented to the nation. Strangely enough this artist, who was so little known during his own lifetime, has since his death become a familiar personality, thanks to the pious solicitude of his friend, the genre-painter C R Leslie (1794-1859, whose Memoirs of John Constable, R.A is one of the best biographies of a painter ever written. It is a classic which, for the intimate insight it gives us into the character of the man, may be compared wtih Boswell’s Johnson. All who met Constable were attracted by his simple, kindly, affectionate nature, and perhaps the most touching tribute to his memory was paid by a London cab-driver who, when he heard that he would never drive Constable again, told Leslie he was ‘as sorry as if he had been my own father—he was a nice man as that, sir.’
Leslie had always been a firm believer in the genius of Constable, and wrote of his works: ‘I cannot but think that they will attain for him, when his merits are fully acknowledged, the praise of having been the most genuine painter of English landscape that has yet lived.’ Subsequent generations have corroborated Leslie’s opinion, and another genre-painter, Sir J.D.Linton, who was born three years after Constable’s death, has testified to the genius of Constable and to the effect of his painting. ‘His art,’ wrote Linton, ‘ has had the widest and most lasting influence both at home and abroad....Although Turner is accepted as the greater master of landscape painting, and his work has not been without very great influence, Constable’s robust and massive manner has affected the modern schools more universally.’
While we admire Turner we love Constable the more dearly, perhaps because his art is so essentially English. Never did a landscape painter travel less than Constable in search of a subject. While Turner toured all over Europe, Constable opened his door and found beauty waiting to be painted. With exceptions so few that they do not bulk largely in his work, all Constable’s landscapes are drawn, either from his birthplace, that is to say the borders of Essex and Suffolk about the Stour, now known as ‘the Constable country,’ or at Hampstead, where his house yet stands. The hill with a clump of firs on it, close to the Spaniard’s, is to this day spoken of as ‘Constable’s Knoll.’ His only other sketching ground of real importance was Salisbury, whither he was doubtless drawn by his friendship with the Rev John Fisher. Of his many paintings of Salisbury Cathedral, one of the most beautiful is the painting in the South Kensington Museum, from which we see that had his bent been that way Constable could have painted architectural subjects as truly and beautifully as he did landscapes.
It was the supreme distinction of Constable to destroy Beaumont’s fallacy that a ‘brown’ landscape was a ‘good’ landscape, and to paint all the greenness in Nature. He loved to paint the glitter of light on trees after rain, and the little touches of white paint with which he achieved the effect of their sparkle were jocularly alluded to as ‘Constable’s Snow.’ No painter before him had painted with so much truth the actual color of Nature’s lighting, and since Constable the true color of Nature in light and shadow has increasingly become the preoccupation of the ‘natural’ landscape painter.
Natural Landscape (continued)
Portugal’s Model Town
Sun + Water + Waves + Wind = Energy
Moura, in southern Portugal is the model town + it represents the coming of age of solar power + it will be the biggest photovoltaic power station in the world + experts believe it’s a viable technology + Portugal's plan to switch electricity generation from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources represents coming of age, and other countries will have to try to follow Portugal's lead.
Useful links:
www.min-economia.pt
http://aesol.es
Moura, in southern Portugal is the model town + it represents the coming of age of solar power + it will be the biggest photovoltaic power station in the world + experts believe it’s a viable technology + Portugal's plan to switch electricity generation from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources represents coming of age, and other countries will have to try to follow Portugal's lead.
Useful links:
www.min-economia.pt
http://aesol.es
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)