Edward Gorey@100

Great artist Edward Gorey turns 100 today. 

 

From “The Gashlycrumb Tinies.”

Courtesy: The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust

अत्यंत आवडत्या जयश्री गडकर...Jayshree Gadkar@83

 आज फेब्रुवारी २१, जयश्री गडकर यांचा ८३वा वाढदिवस... 

लहानपणी त्यांचे अनेक सिनेमा (मराठी आणि हिंदी) आईबरोबर लेडीज मध्ये बसून पाहिले, उदा:  'थांब लक्ष्मी कुंकू लावते', बरेच पौराणिक सिनेमा, नागपंचमी.... मोठेपणी त्यांचा 'सांगते ऐका' वगैरे अनेक सिनेमा पाहिले...

त्या मला खूप कायम आवडत असत आणि त्यांना अरुण सरनाईक यांच्या बरोबर अनेकवेळा पडद्यावर पाहून मला खात्री झाली होती की त्या दोघांचे लग्न झाले आहे!

शिवरायाचे कैसे बोलणे....D G Godse on Von Valentyn's Portrait of Shivaji Maharaj

 आज ३९५वी शिवजयंती 

दत्तात्रय गणेश गोडसे त्यांच्या 'समंदे तलाश', १९८१ पुस्तकातील "शिवरायाचे कैसे बोलणे...." ह्या लेखात महाराजांच्या डच चित्रकाराने सुरतेत काढलेल्या चित्राचे वर्णन करतात:

एक गंमत म्हणजे गोडसे यांना व्हॉन व्हॅलेन्टिन यांचे नाव पुस्तक लिहताना नक्की माहित होते मग त्यांनी त्यांच्या सारख्या एका कलावंताला त्याचे नाव लिहून का श्रेय दिले नाही? गोडसेंच्या पुस्तकात सुद्धा हे चित्र नाही... 

गोडसे अशा अनाकलनीय अनेक गोष्टी करत असत..

Painting of Shivaji Maharaj by Von Valentyn 1656-1668 released by V S Bendrey

 (The true likeness of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj released to the public at large in Pune on Shivjayanti in Shivāji Mandir 1933, The document was released by Historian VS Bendrey under the auspices of Shaityacharya Na Chi Kelkar)

Einstein's Brain...His Brain was just like Anybody Else’s

 I never liked it even for a second when I first heard that the great man's brain has been preserved. 

I thought it was creepy.

In March 2024, I read this:

"...And then we heard his screams of agony. I’ve never heard anything like that. I’ve seen soldiers bleed to death from combat wounds, I’ve heard men in sick bay grasping their intestines and speaking in tongues, flyboys cooked in jet fuel, disfigured from head to toe. But this was different. It was the Professor’s voice, but it didn’t sound like a human screaming. Nobody slept that night. Whatever they tried, didn’t take. They wheeled out his body in the morning. As they passed me, his hand dropped down from the gurney and I saw that his skin had turned black, with dime-sized white spots all over it, as if they had covered his body in electrodes and burned him to a crisp. I have often wondered if they let him rest, or if they even fiddled with him after death. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. After all, it happened to Einstein. When he died, a pathologist removed his brain without the family’s permission, and kept it for himself. It was missing for decades. When someone finally tracked it down, they saw that it had been cut down the middle and was floating inside two large mason jars. A team of scientists took those pale pounds of flesh and sliced them into wafer-thin layers to put under a microscope. They wanted to see if they could find something special, or perhaps abnormal, some pathological structure or deformation that would explain his unique genius. But they found nothing. Compared to an average human being, he had an unusual number of glia, but they’re not nerve cells at all, they don’t produce electrical impulses. As far as I know, his brain was just like anybody else’s..."

('The MANIAC' by Benjamin Labatut, 2023)

Einstein's brain was preserved after his death in 1955, but this fact was not revealed until 1978.

Mukul Chandra Dey's 'MY PILGRIMAGES TO AJANTA AND BAGH' @100...Sahib, you are the sun of the hills

 १०० वर्षांपूर्वी प्रसिद्ध कलावंत मुकुल चंद्र डे यांचे अजिंठ्या आणि बाघ वर लिहलेले पुस्तक प्रसिद्द झाले ... 

ते नुसते कला वर्णन नसून उत्तम प्रवास वर्णन सुद्धा आहे ... 

हे पुस्तक ह्या ब्लॉग वर पुन्हा एकदा किंवा अनेकदा येणार आहे पण आज मी त्याची फक्त जन्मशताब्दी साजरी करत आहे ... 

ते त्यांच्या अजिंठा च्या भागाचा समारोप असा करतात ... 

"... I had made over twelve large copies from the wall paintings, and I wished I could stay there much longer, but things were becoming less favourable every day, and I felt, even if I could stay fifty years in the caves of Ajanta, I would not be able to accomplish all that I wished to do.

It was becoming impossible to stay at Ajanta, as provisions and money had run short. Buddhu Miya was still with me. faithful unto the end, and I had found him a good companion. Singing morning praises to Allah, he would suddenly break off to shout:  “ Khana, khana, breakfast is rcatly,” and then, while we ate he would listen with an appearance of interest while I talked of my work, although he did not understand its importance. And then he used to say: “ Sahib, you are the sun of the hills.”"

माझ्या डोळ्यात पाणी आले ...  

Portrait of Well-endowed Young Man by the First Truly international Artist Albrecht Dürer

 आम्ही मे ११ २०२४ रोजी दमून नॅशनल गॅलरी ऑफ आर्ट, वॉशिंग्टन डीसी मध्ये संध्याकाळी पोचलो पण माझी दमणूक बऱ्याच प्रमाणात रेम्ब्रांड यांनी स्वागत करून कमी केली!

पुढे Albrecht Dürer यांच्या या चित्राने तर ओठावर हसूच आणले... 

 Portrait of a Clergyman (Johann Dorsch?), 1516

Philip Hoare त्यांच्या Dürer’s Lost Masterpiece: Art and Society at the Dawn of a Global World by  Ulinka Rublack पुस्तकाच्या परिक्षणात स्पेक्टेटर , युके ऑगस्ट ५ २०२३ मध्ये म्हणतात :

"...Rublack’s great academic take, her USP on Dürer’s story, is to show that trade and technology – Vorsprung durch Technik: the artist’s home town of Nuremberg boasted 100 printing presses – enabled him to become the man whom the critic Laura Cumming has hailed as ‘the first truly international artist’. It helped to have friends in high places. Dürer’s official patron was the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian and his best friend, Willibald Pirckheimer, was an influential intellectual and serial womaniser. In Rublack’s telling, the two men are always comparing their sexual conquests, although she only mentions in passing that these ‘might have included homosexual relationships’ – a somewhat prudish note, given that Dürer’s greatest biographer, Erwin Panofsky, noted back in the 1930s Albrecht’s evident predilection (in countless drawings and engravings) for well-endowed young men..."

नानासाहेब परुळेकर, मार्क झुकरबर्ग ...A Squirrel Dying in Front of Your House: Superbloom

माझे वडील आम्हाला 'सकाळ' वर्तमानपत्राच्या संस्थापक-संपादक नानासाहेब परुळेकर (१८९७-१९७३) यांच्या बाबत एक  गोष्ट संगत असत , ती कदाचित खरी नसेल सुद्धा , पण मला आवडली. 

परुळेकर म्हणत : पुण्यातील लक्ष्मी रस्त्यावर मरून पडलेला बैल आपल्या वाचकांसाठी जगातील अनेक घटनांपेक्षा जास्त महत्वाचा असू शकतो... 

आम्ही सकाळ क्वचितच विकात  घेत असू  , पण किमान विसाव्या शतकात तरी पुण्यातील लहान सहान बातम्या सकाळ उत्तम कव्हर करत असे ह्यात वाद नाही ...

हे का आठवले ?

Philip Ball has reviewed Nicholas Carr's latest book “Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart” on Jan 28 2025. 

Ball says: "...The central problem, however, is that an onslaught of information—of everything, all at once—flattens all sense of proportion. When Zuckerberg said to his staff that “a squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa,” it’s not that his tone-deaf observation was untrue but that, as Carr says, he was making a category error, equating two things that cannot be compared. Yet “social media renders category errors obsolete because it renders categories obsolete. All information belongs to a single category—it’s all ‘content.’” And very often, the content that matters is decided in the currency of commerce: content is “bad” when it harms profits...."