Roundup: Pop Culture & the Arts ...
Movies, Documentaries and Museum Exhibits
This page features links to reviews of movies, documentaries and exhibits with a historical theme. Listings are in reverse chronological order. Descriptions are taken directly from the linked publication. If you have articles you think should be listed on the Pop Culture page, please send them to the editor editor@historynewsnetwork.org.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (1-18-09)
The life of Ilse Koch, a concentration camp guard nicknamed "The Bitch of Buchenwald", was strikingly similar to that of Hanna Schmitz, the role played by Winslet in the Oscar-tipped film, according to Professor Bill Niven, an expert on modern German history and culture.
Bernhard Schlink, the author of the 1995 novel adapted for the film, has refused to disclose whether there was any real-life basis to Schmitz. Yet Prof Niven, of Nottingham Trent University, said that "no other known female camp guard comes close to matching up with Schmitz".
Like Schmitz, Koch came from a poor background. She married Karl Koch, a close friend of Adolf Hitler, in 1936, and accompanied him when he was made commandant of Buchenwald camp the following year.
As a supervisor of the camp's female guards, she whipped and beat prisoners. Witnesses said she forced prisoners to rape one another and was eventually disciplined by Nazi chiefs for her...
Bernhard Schlink, the author of the 1995 novel adapted for the film, has refused to disclose whether there was any real-life basis to Schmitz. Yet Prof Niven, of Nottingham Trent University, said that "no other known female camp guard comes close to matching up with Schmitz".
Like Schmitz, Koch came from a poor background. She married Karl Koch, a close friend of Adolf Hitler, in 1936, and accompanied him when he was made commandant of Buchenwald camp the following year.
As a supervisor of the camp's female guards, she whipped and beat prisoners. Witnesses said she forced prisoners to rape one another and was eventually disciplined by Nazi chiefs for her...
Monday, January 19, 2009 - 09:58
Comments
SOURCE: Tehran Times (1-19-09)
The priceless treasure was discovered by Iranian scholar Ali Ferdowsi and will be unveiled during a ceremony at Niavaran Cultural Center on January 26.
The collection is published by Dibayeh Publications and contains 49 ghazals and a single couplet along with a comparative study by scholar Ferdowsi.
The original manuscript was inscribed by a contemporary named Ala Marandi during the years 1388 and 1389. All the ghazals (probably except five) were penned during the time Hafez was alive.
The oldest manuscripts discovered prior to this date back to the years 1400 and 1402, but with this finding, the wishes of Hafez experts to find copies that were inscribed during the lifetime of Hafez has finally came true...
The collection is published by Dibayeh Publications and contains 49 ghazals and a single couplet along with a comparative study by scholar Ferdowsi.
The original manuscript was inscribed by a contemporary named Ala Marandi during the years 1388 and 1389. All the ghazals (probably except five) were penned during the time Hafez was alive.
The oldest manuscripts discovered prior to this date back to the years 1400 and 1402, but with this finding, the wishes of Hafez experts to find copies that were inscribed during the lifetime of Hafez has finally came true...
Monday, January 19, 2009 - 09:26
SOURCE: BBC (1-19-09)
Across a conference table in an Iranian vice president's office, tea and sweet pastries are offered before cultural diplomacy.
An ancient clay cylinder, regarded by scholars as the world's first declaration of human rights, helps to seal a deal that could open a new diplomatic channel between Britain and Iran.
On the table is a symbol rarely seen in Tehran, unless it's being burned by protesters outside the British embassy. A mini Union Jack stands alongside an Iranian flag.
I'd been warned that, as a BBC journalist, I might not be welcomed into this Iranian government building in traffic-jammed downtown Tehran.
The launch of the BBC's Persia TV service has prompted a furious denouncement of British 'spies' in the country.
But as I've arrived in esteemed company, I'm waved through and - most surprisingly - offered a seat at the conference table.
To my left Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum,...
An ancient clay cylinder, regarded by scholars as the world's first declaration of human rights, helps to seal a deal that could open a new diplomatic channel between Britain and Iran.
On the table is a symbol rarely seen in Tehran, unless it's being burned by protesters outside the British embassy. A mini Union Jack stands alongside an Iranian flag.
I'd been warned that, as a BBC journalist, I might not be welcomed into this Iranian government building in traffic-jammed downtown Tehran.
The launch of the BBC's Persia TV service has prompted a furious denouncement of British 'spies' in the country.
But as I've arrived in esteemed company, I'm waved through and - most surprisingly - offered a seat at the conference table.
To my left Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum,...
Monday, January 19, 2009 - 09:08
SOURCE: Salt Lake Tribune (1-16-09)
"Lawrence of Arabia" twisted the facts behind Europe's carving up the Middle East after WWII. Cate Blanchett was way too young to play 52-year-old Queen Elizabeth at the height of her power. "300" went over the top in making Persian king Xerxes 8-foot-tall.
The list of films that take liberty with historical fact is so long, in fact, most historians no longer bother pointing out their inaccuracies to a public more interested in entertainment.
Long-time history professor, political activist and playwright Howard Zinn knows all about that, but brushes it aside. Here's a historian, after all, who will take even Ken Burn's account of the U.S. Civil War to task for concentrating too much on the heroism of military generals instead of the common people who lived through the war.
"The greatest danger in films based on history isn't necessarily that you will be told something false, but that the emphasis will be on trivia," Zinn said from a hotel room in Santa Monica...
Saturday, January 17, 2009 - 23:29
SOURCE: WaPo (1-17-09)
Andrew Wyeth, best-loved painter of wistfulness, rural bleakness, menace, Puritanical solitude and an America lost to 20th-century dry rot, died yesterday morning in his sleep at the Wyeth family estate in Chadds Ford, Pa., between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del. He was 91. He died in just the sort of weather he loved, the empty cold and the sharp sunlight of the dead of winter.
"America's best-known and best-loved artist," said a catalogue for a 1996 show at the Baltimore Museum of Art, before it elevated him still higher: "America's artist."
At a White House dinner in 1970, Richard Nixon toasted Wyeth as an artist who "caught the heart of America." Critic Jay Jacobs once called him "the spiritual leader of Middle America."
"America's best-known and best-loved artist," said a catalogue for a 1996 show at the Baltimore Museum of Art, before it elevated him still higher: "America's artist."
At a White House dinner in 1970, Richard Nixon toasted Wyeth as an artist who "caught the heart of America." Critic Jay Jacobs once called him "the spiritual leader of Middle America."
Saturday, January 17, 2009 - 23:00
SOURCE: NYT (1-15-09)
In 1957 Washington officially became the country’s first city where blacks were the majority. But by then, artists, writers and performers of African descent had been flourishing there for a century and a half or more. Seeking out their traces makes for a lively city tour, and one very much of the moment as an African-American first family makes Washington its home.
But before the tour, a shout-out of names you’ll be looking for: Alma Thomas, Frederick Douglass, Duke Ellington, Elizabeth Catlett, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Sweet Daddy Grace, Lois Mailou Jones and Marian Anderson, not to mention Marvin Gaye and the godfather of Go-go — the D.C. version of funk — Chuck Brown. All long-term or short-term Washingtonians; all in spirit or person still here.
Historically speaking, the place to start is outside the city center in the hilly, wooded Anacostia neighborhood. Established in the early 19th century as a working-class suburb, it was initially...
But before the tour, a shout-out of names you’ll be looking for: Alma Thomas, Frederick Douglass, Duke Ellington, Elizabeth Catlett, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Sweet Daddy Grace, Lois Mailou Jones and Marian Anderson, not to mention Marvin Gaye and the godfather of Go-go — the D.C. version of funk — Chuck Brown. All long-term or short-term Washingtonians; all in spirit or person still here.
Historically speaking, the place to start is outside the city center in the hilly, wooded Anacostia neighborhood. Established in the early 19th century as a working-class suburb, it was initially...
Saturday, January 17, 2009 - 22:43
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (1-15-09)
A diamond ring could prove that the author Charles Dickens had a secret lovechild with his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth, according to auctioneers who are offering the item for sale.
The ring's anonymous owners, who claim they are descendants of Hogarth, are said to be convinced the pair were having an affair and that they had a son, Hector, who the novelist did not recognise as his own.
At the time, Dickens' close relationship with Hogarth, who lived in the family home as the housekeeper, led to rumours they were having an affair.
But he made her take a virginity test and denied "monstrous representations" concerning their relationship.
Now, nearly 150 years after Dickens' death, auctioneers Nigel Ward of Pontrilas, Herefordshire, is selling the ring inscribed "Alfred Tennyson to Charles Dickens 1854", which the owners say was passed down from the illegitimate child.
Mr Ward said analysis of documentation led...
The ring's anonymous owners, who claim they are descendants of Hogarth, are said to be convinced the pair were having an affair and that they had a son, Hector, who the novelist did not recognise as his own.
At the time, Dickens' close relationship with Hogarth, who lived in the family home as the housekeeper, led to rumours they were having an affair.
But he made her take a virginity test and denied "monstrous representations" concerning their relationship.
Now, nearly 150 years after Dickens' death, auctioneers Nigel Ward of Pontrilas, Herefordshire, is selling the ring inscribed "Alfred Tennyson to Charles Dickens 1854", which the owners say was passed down from the illegitimate child.
Mr Ward said analysis of documentation led...
Saturday, January 17, 2009 - 22:39
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (1-15-09)
The 1806 pencil sketch will be part of an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery dedicated to Constable's portraiture.
The early 19th century painter remains far better known for works such as The Hay Wain and Dedham Vale.
But he also excelled at painting people and earned his living, at least in his early years, doing commissions for the landed gentry and merchants.
Constable was an artistic radical who once remarked that "painting is but another word for feeling".
He rebelled against the teaching that artists should use imagination to embellish pictures, and instead tried to capture the essence of his subject matter, be that a landscape or a person.
Tate curator Anne Lyles said the 1806 self-portrait, done with the help of mirrors, was one of only two he did of himself that are known to have survived...
The early 19th century painter remains far better known for works such as The Hay Wain and Dedham Vale.
But he also excelled at painting people and earned his living, at least in his early years, doing commissions for the landed gentry and merchants.
Constable was an artistic radical who once remarked that "painting is but another word for feeling".
He rebelled against the teaching that artists should use imagination to embellish pictures, and instead tried to capture the essence of his subject matter, be that a landscape or a person.
Tate curator Anne Lyles said the 1806 self-portrait, done with the help of mirrors, was one of only two he did of himself that are known to have survived...
Friday, January 16, 2009 - 09:02
SOURCE: http://www.lasvegassun.com (1-6-09)
Las Vegas’ proposed mob museum is a subject ripe for ridicule, and the Republicans here have held it up as just that.
Now that work is under way on the economic recovery package of tax breaks and public works projects being developed by President-elect Barack Obama and congressional leaders, lawmakers in both parties are insisting that no money go for earmarks — pet projects in lawmakers’ home districts.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, raised the mob museum as Exhibit A in frivolous spending on a Sunday morning political talk show on ABC.
“We would like, on the spending side, obviously, to avoid funding things like a mob museums or water slides,” McConnell reiterated during a news conference on Monday.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in his own appearance Sunday on “Meet the Press,” insisted there will be no earmarks in the stimulus package.
Now that work is under way on the economic recovery package of tax breaks and public works projects being developed by President-elect Barack Obama and congressional leaders, lawmakers in both parties are insisting that no money go for earmarks — pet projects in lawmakers’ home districts.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, raised the mob museum as Exhibit A in frivolous spending on a Sunday morning political talk show on ABC.
“We would like, on the spending side, obviously, to avoid funding things like a mob museums or water slides,” McConnell reiterated during a news conference on Monday.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in his own appearance Sunday on “Meet the Press,” insisted there will be no earmarks in the stimulus package.
Friday, January 16, 2009 - 02:06
SOURCE: Deutsche Welle (1-14-09)
Some 200 works from an art collection in Aachen, Germany, disappeared into the former Soviet Union at the end of World War Two. Parts of these works have now surfaced in Ukraine, prompting a rare exchange initiative.
The exhibition"Phantom Gallery" in Aachen's Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum is unusual and for many visitors, irritating. In part, empty frames hang on the darkly painted walls or black-and-white photographs -- reproductions of artwork whose whereabouts are unknown.
"We are showing pictures, which are no longer here," said museum director Peter van den Brink.
Shortly after the exhibition opened in September, van den Brink received surprising news from Ukraine. German tourists had discovered a number of works of German origin in the Simferopol Art Museum in Crimea. The couple photographed and filmed the works, and handed the complete material over to the Aachen art expert.
Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 22:09
SOURCE: Times (UK) (1-15-09)
Typical: you wait half a century for a Hollywood film to tackle the myths and taboos of the Second World War, and then three come along at once.
The Reader (with Kate Winslet), Defiance (with Daniel Craig) and Valkyrie (with Tom Cruise) have each, in different ways, sought to break from the one-dimensional interpretations of the past. Hollywood has traditionally depicted the horrors of the war as a Manichean struggle between good and evil: SS camp guards as inhuman monsters, Jews as defenceless victims herded to their deaths.
Winslet plays an SS camp guard with humanity; Craig plays Tuvia Bielski, the Jewish partisan who waged guerrilla war against the Germans in Poland; and Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the failed plot to assassinate Hitler in July 1944.
The Reader is fiction, but the other two films claim to be depictions of real events, and will be judged as simple truth by the 12 to 15-year-olds who make up the...
The Reader (with Kate Winslet), Defiance (with Daniel Craig) and Valkyrie (with Tom Cruise) have each, in different ways, sought to break from the one-dimensional interpretations of the past. Hollywood has traditionally depicted the horrors of the war as a Manichean struggle between good and evil: SS camp guards as inhuman monsters, Jews as defenceless victims herded to their deaths.
Winslet plays an SS camp guard with humanity; Craig plays Tuvia Bielski, the Jewish partisan who waged guerrilla war against the Germans in Poland; and Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the failed plot to assassinate Hitler in July 1944.
The Reader is fiction, but the other two films claim to be depictions of real events, and will be judged as simple truth by the 12 to 15-year-olds who make up the...
Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 21:52
SOURCE: Independent (UK) (1-14-09)
No image can match the real thing, but Madrid's Prado museum has edged closer to that ideal by teaming up with Google Earth in a pioneering project that allows art lovers to zoom in on some of the gallery's best loved masterpieces.
Fourteen of the museum's finest works, including Velazquez's Las Meninas, Goya's Third of May and Rubens' The Three Graces have been photographed to such a high resolution that details barely discernible to the naked eye become visible online.
Google's first collaboration of its kind with an art museum, presented yesterday in Madrid, allows viewers anywhere in the world to home in on tiny sections of the chosen works, and skim the canvas in a way that is unimaginable in real life. The images are 1,400 times clearer than anything the average tourist's 10-megapixel camera could render, said Javier Rodriguez Zapatero, Google Spain's director.
"It's a unique vision. In the museum we cannot get this close to a painting;...
Fourteen of the museum's finest works, including Velazquez's Las Meninas, Goya's Third of May and Rubens' The Three Graces have been photographed to such a high resolution that details barely discernible to the naked eye become visible online.
Google's first collaboration of its kind with an art museum, presented yesterday in Madrid, allows viewers anywhere in the world to home in on tiny sections of the chosen works, and skim the canvas in a way that is unimaginable in real life. The images are 1,400 times clearer than anything the average tourist's 10-megapixel camera could render, said Javier Rodriguez Zapatero, Google Spain's director.
"It's a unique vision. In the museum we cannot get this close to a painting;...
Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 21:51
SOURCE: Times (UK) (1-15-09)
Typical: you wait half a century for a Hollywood film to tackle the myths and taboos of the Second World War, and then three come along at once.
The Reader (with Kate Winslet), Defiance (with Daniel Craig) and Valkyrie (with Tom Cruise) have each, in different ways, sought to break from the one-dimensional interpretations of the past. Hollywood has traditionally depicted the horrors of the war as a Manichean struggle between good and evil: SS camp guards as inhuman monsters, Jews as defenceless victims herded to their deaths.
Winslet plays an SS camp guard with humanity; Craig plays Tuvia Bielski, the Jewish partisan who waged guerrilla war against the Germans in Poland; and Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the failed plot to assassinate Hitler in July 1944.
The Reader is fiction, but the other two films claim to be depictions of real events, and will be judged as simple truth by the 12 to 15-year-olds who make up the...
The Reader (with Kate Winslet), Defiance (with Daniel Craig) and Valkyrie (with Tom Cruise) have each, in different ways, sought to break from the one-dimensional interpretations of the past. Hollywood has traditionally depicted the horrors of the war as a Manichean struggle between good and evil: SS camp guards as inhuman monsters, Jews as defenceless victims herded to their deaths.
Winslet plays an SS camp guard with humanity; Craig plays Tuvia Bielski, the Jewish partisan who waged guerrilla war against the Germans in Poland; and Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the failed plot to assassinate Hitler in July 1944.
The Reader is fiction, but the other two films claim to be depictions of real events, and will be judged as simple truth by the 12 to 15-year-olds who make up the...
Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 11:16
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (1-15-09)
French presidents have rushed to build a great cultural monument by which to be remembered, from Georges Pompidou's art centre and François Mitterrand's Louvre glass pyramid to Jacques Chirac's museum of indigenous art. Now Nicolas Sarkozy wants his own project: a museum of the history of France.
The president, whose emphasis on French pride and "national identity" has already caused controversy, declared this week that an all-encompassing history museum would reinforce "French identity". His museum would not seek to create "an official history", but a pluralistic approach, he told leading arts figures. "There are several ideas, there must be a debate, an argument," he said.
The museum would be built in a "symbolic place" yet to be decided, but Sarkozy's declared passion for bold architecture and praise for Mitterrand suggests that he plans to leave a mark on the landscape.
He is also keen to move...
The president, whose emphasis on French pride and "national identity" has already caused controversy, declared this week that an all-encompassing history museum would reinforce "French identity". His museum would not seek to create "an official history", but a pluralistic approach, he told leading arts figures. "There are several ideas, there must be a debate, an argument," he said.
The museum would be built in a "symbolic place" yet to be decided, but Sarkozy's declared passion for bold architecture and praise for Mitterrand suggests that he plans to leave a mark on the landscape.
He is also keen to move...
Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 11:02
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (1-15-09)
A hostile power, attempting to extinguish the Jews completely, wipes their nation off the map of the Middle East and renames the region Syria-Palestina. An army destroys Jerusalem and its temple, and deports its people.
These are not the present day nightmares of the Israeli people, but the facts of historical record - as documented in artefacts in the British Museum.
And tonight the museum's director, Neil MacGregor, will urge us to look again at history, to fulfill "our obligation to try to understand ... to ponder the current situation with some of the distance that the long historical view provides".
To mark 250 years to the day since the museum was first opened to the public, MacGregor will give a lecture setting out the urgent role of the museum in today's world. Its job, he says, "is to slow down conclusions, to complicate the questions, to make the hasty judgment harder".
In particular, he alludes to...
These are not the present day nightmares of the Israeli people, but the facts of historical record - as documented in artefacts in the British Museum.
And tonight the museum's director, Neil MacGregor, will urge us to look again at history, to fulfill "our obligation to try to understand ... to ponder the current situation with some of the distance that the long historical view provides".
To mark 250 years to the day since the museum was first opened to the public, MacGregor will give a lecture setting out the urgent role of the museum in today's world. Its job, he says, "is to slow down conclusions, to complicate the questions, to make the hasty judgment harder".
In particular, he alludes to...
Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 10:40
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (1-15-09)
His daring exploits were typical of fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain: he shot down Messerschmitts, was forced down twice and lost a lung flying at altitude. But how many other RAF squadron leaders used to keep a spare turban in their cockpits?
Mohinder Singh Pujji was one of 18 qualified Indian pilots to join the RAF in 1940. Now 90 he is the only one left to tell the tale and is still disgusted at the lack of recognition given to the role of black and Asian airmen and women during the war.
Pujji was treated as a hero in wartime Britain. He was ushered to the front of cinema queues and often treated to free meals in restaurants. But after the war films such as The Dam Busters presented a white-only view of the RAF - a fact that appalled him.
"The British people are foolish. They don't even know we Indians were there," he said.
In an attempt to put the record straight a new permanent exhibition was opened yesterday at...
Mohinder Singh Pujji was one of 18 qualified Indian pilots to join the RAF in 1940. Now 90 he is the only one left to tell the tale and is still disgusted at the lack of recognition given to the role of black and Asian airmen and women during the war.
Pujji was treated as a hero in wartime Britain. He was ushered to the front of cinema queues and often treated to free meals in restaurants. But after the war films such as The Dam Busters presented a white-only view of the RAF - a fact that appalled him.
"The British people are foolish. They don't even know we Indians were there," he said.
In an attempt to put the record straight a new permanent exhibition was opened yesterday at...
Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 10:37
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Ed (1-16-09)
When James Brown died two years ago on Christmas Day, the Nashville record producer Steve Buckingham dove into his collection of videos of the artist to console a distraught friend.
The footage shocked Mr. Buckingham's friend, a 23-year-old singer-songwriter who counted the Godfather of Soul as one of her biggest influences.
"She had no idea," says Mr. Buckingham, that Brown was also an important political figure who played in Boston the night after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, a concert that some say helped prevent race riots in the city.
Such was the inspiration for a class that Mr. Buckingham is teaching this spring at his alma mater, the University of Richmond, titled "Music and Society: Jazz, Rhythm & Blues and Soul Music — Their Impact on Segregation." Mr. Buckingham, a four-time Grammy Award winner who has produced 27 No. 1 singles, hopes to show his students the role that figures like Elvis Presley and Ray...
The footage shocked Mr. Buckingham's friend, a 23-year-old singer-songwriter who counted the Godfather of Soul as one of her biggest influences.
"She had no idea," says Mr. Buckingham, that Brown was also an important political figure who played in Boston the night after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, a concert that some say helped prevent race riots in the city.
Such was the inspiration for a class that Mr. Buckingham is teaching this spring at his alma mater, the University of Richmond, titled "Music and Society: Jazz, Rhythm & Blues and Soul Music — Their Impact on Segregation." Mr. Buckingham, a four-time Grammy Award winner who has produced 27 No. 1 singles, hopes to show his students the role that figures like Elvis Presley and Ray...
Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 01:26
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (1-14-09)
The Byzantium exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts - an ambitious survey of the thousand-year-long Byzantine Empire - is brimming with gleaming objects from Belgrade and Baltimore; from Moscow and Milan; from Sofia and St Petersburg. But, oddly, there are no artefacts from, well, the city of Byzantium itself - modern-day Istanbul. A recent piece in an English language newspaper in Istanbul has lamented this state of affairs, attributing it to the fact that the Turkish authorities required a museum official not only to accompany objects on their journey to London (which is normal practice), but also that that person should be put up in London, at the expense of the RA, for the five-month duration of the show (which is not).
Robin Cormack, co-curator of the exhibition, confirms this. "There are three countries who request that you have a commissar accommodated throughout an exhibition: China, Turkey and Egypt. We had to choose between Egypt and Turkey, and it...
Robin Cormack, co-curator of the exhibition, confirms this. "There are three countries who request that you have a commissar accommodated throughout an exhibition: China, Turkey and Egypt. We had to choose between Egypt and Turkey, and it...
Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - 10:29
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (1-13-09)
Viewers will be able to scroll around a three-dimensional representation of the gallery with a computer mouse, to look at high resolution images of works such as Las Meninas by Velázquez; The Annunciation by Fra Angelico or The Third of May by Goya.
A Google spokesman said: "The paintings have been photographed in very high resolution and contain as many as 14,000 million pixels (14 gigapixels).
"With this high level resolution you are able to see fine details such as the tiny bee on a flower in The Three Graces (by Rubens), delicate tears on the faces of the figures in The Descent from the Cross (by Roger van der Weyden) and complex figures in The Garden of Earthly Delights (by El Bosco)."..
A Google spokesman said: "The paintings have been photographed in very high resolution and contain as many as 14,000 million pixels (14 gigapixels).
"With this high level resolution you are able to see fine details such as the tiny bee on a flower in The Three Graces (by Rubens), delicate tears on the faces of the figures in The Descent from the Cross (by Roger van der Weyden) and complex figures in The Garden of Earthly Delights (by El Bosco)."..
Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - 10:03
SOURCE: Sky News (1-13-09)
The pictures were among some 2,500 pictures taken of the film star by famous photographer Bert Stern at the Bel Air Hotel in Los Angeles in 1962 for Vogue magazine just before her drug overdose death that year.
The photos show Monroe, star of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and other movies, in various gently erotic poses behind a piece of transparent, white gauzy fabric.
Stern later recreated the shots in February 2008 with actress Lindsay Lohan.
The 78-year-old sued three photographers for around £1.5m last year after they told him they had found seven film transparencies of the shoot.
He said he believed the film had been stolen after he loaned it to now-defunct Eros magazine in the summer of 1962.
But photographers Donald Penny and Michael Weiss denied the photos had been stolen, saying a colleague, Robert Bryan, had found the film in rubbish left by the kerb in Manhattan in the 1970s and kept it in a shoe box as...
The photos show Monroe, star of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and other movies, in various gently erotic poses behind a piece of transparent, white gauzy fabric.
Stern later recreated the shots in February 2008 with actress Lindsay Lohan.
The 78-year-old sued three photographers for around £1.5m last year after they told him they had found seven film transparencies of the shoot.
He said he believed the film had been stolen after he loaned it to now-defunct Eros magazine in the summer of 1962.
But photographers Donald Penny and Michael Weiss denied the photos had been stolen, saying a colleague, Robert Bryan, had found the film in rubbish left by the kerb in Manhattan in the 1970s and kept it in a shoe box as...
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 09:25
