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He walked into my mind today and doesn’t want to leave. No distraction is working, so I guess I have to think.
These are historical pirate flags. Though a few pirate captains did use the Jolly Roger, most used a specific flag of their own. For example, the top one is Blackbeard’s, and is supposed to be a skeleton (death) holding an hourglass (running out of time) and stabbing a bleeding heart (he’s about to kill you?). An hourglass, signaling that the time to surrender was short, and a skeleton or bones, for death, were common elements in pirate flags. The backgrounds were usually red or black. And many pirate ships did not fly under “pirate” flags at all, but would sail under various national flags to get close to merchant vessels without suspicion.
Lucky Guess
In 1699, weary and discouraged at the poor sales of his new almanac, Francis Moore set to work on creating the next issue.
“What shall I put in for June 4?” his assistant asked.
“Oh, cold and snow!” Moore said irritably.
Remarkably, snow actually fell on June 4. Sales of Old Moore’s Almanack bounded into the thousands, and it’s still being published three centuries later.
(Source: futilitycloset.com)
Unexpected Proposal - Norman Rockwell, 1932
It is so amusing to me to remember that all famous icons fucked, pooped, burped and sneezed. I like to think that Washington is about to go on a late night rendezvous in the gardens!
Homage to the Square: Soft Spoken - Josef Albers, 1969
From the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History:
In his series titled Homage to the Square, Albers produced an extensive body of variations on a highly focused theme. Homage to the Square is a collective exploration of color and spatial relationships, in which Albers limited himself to square formats, solid colors, and precise geometry, yet was able to achieve a seemingly endless range of visual effects.
Working in a laboratory-like studio, Albers employed a highly systematic method appropriate to the rigidly defined elements of his work. For the paintings in the series, he applied his pigments directly from the tube onto squares of Masonite, a wood fiberboard, spread them evenly with a palette knife, and blended them on the board when necessary. Each painting was marked on the reverse with careful notations on the types and shades of color that he had used, in a record of the work’s specific formal experiment.
