Distracted Madonna

Heather Havrilesky:

“...Let's see, so the digital revolution led us all to this: a gigantic, commercial, high school reunion/mall filthy with insipid tabloid trivia, populated by perpetually distracted, texting, tweeting demi-humans. Yes, the information age truly is every bit as glorious and special as everyone predicted it would be!..

… And don't believe the hype about a whole new generation of effective multitaskers, either. "Most multitaskers think that they're brilliant at multitasking," says Stanford professor Clifford Nass. But "it turns out that multitaskers are terrible at nearly every aspect of multitasking."

Even Sherry Turkle, director of MIT's Initiative on Technology and Self, confesses that a plugged-in state doesn't necessarily make her life more satisfying or more productive. "I've been busy all day, and I haven't thought about anything hard," Turkle says. "I mean, the point of it is to be our most creative selves, not to distract ourselves to death."...”

For over a thousand years, through the Byzantine, Medieval and Early Renaissance periods the Madonna and Child was the most often produced pictorial artwork. 

'Madonna Litta',c 1490  by Leonardo da Vinci

courtesy: Wikipedia

                                           

Artist: Tigran Tsitoghdzyan (1976-)

courtesy: the artist and the Daily Mail, UK

Makes You Kind of Proud to be a Goan!...Mario Miranda @90

Today May 2 2016 is 90th birth anniversary of Mario Miranda

Mr. Miranda has appeared on this blog twice earlier, on December 12 2011 and December 24 2011. He had died on December 11 2011.

As said earlier, Wikipedia claims Mr. MM considered Ronald Searle (1920-2011) to be his mentor (The mentor died on December 30 same year).

Now, I feel MM was also inspired by 'naughty' great Peter Arno (1904-1968).

Artist: Peter Arno

"Untitled 189", Artist: Mario Miranda, 1996 (reproduced from Business Standard website)

When you look at the picture above, sure you notice "Daily Noise" headline "New Ministry Formed" and you get the joke how the businessman is disappointed that he now has no 'his man' inside and that's all he cares about the latest political development.

But above all you notice Miss. Fonseca, her big eyes, round face, small waist and ample bosom. At least I surely did whenever I looked at MM's pictures.

Now see a picture drawn by a fellow Goan, the late Dinanath Dalal (दीनानाथ दलाल)- who also drew cartoons once.

Artist: Dinanath Dalal, Diwali 1970

Now consider some of the beauties drawn by another Goan: the late Raghuvir Mulgaonkar ( रघुवीर मुळगावकर). For instance this one, drawn for the cover of Marathi magazine 'Vangmay-shobha' (वाङ्मय शोभा) dated April 1951.

So if you are from Goa, these artists should kind of make you proud to be a Goan...as illustrated by Peter Arno....

Artist: Peter Arno, The New Yorker, September 10 1960

Does God Prefer Atheists?

I first read the following in April 2016:

Shankaracharya Swaroopanand Saraswati: Leader Says Women in Shani Temple Will Increase Rapes...

...The Shankaracharya also said worshipping of Shirdi Sai Baba by his followers caused the Maharashtra drought, news outlets reported. 

And then  I saw the following cartoon. 

Although the cartoonist has targeted it at US citizens and the campaigning there for the presidential election, it's interesting to see how a good cartoon travels well.

Artist: Robert Leighton, The New Yorker, April 2016

विल्या गेला 400 वर्षापूर्वी भाषेचा विस्तृत रंगपट उलगडून.....Shakespeare

Today April 23 2016 is 400th Death Anniversary of William Shakespeare

 विंदा करंदीकर: 
"...तुका म्हणे "विल्या,| तुझे कर्म थोर |
अवघाची संसार| उभा केला" ||..."..."

Jerry Brotton, FT, December 30 2015:

"...This year marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and, inevitably, it will reveal more about ourselves than the Bard. Just consider the tercentenary in 1916. Then, as war raged in northern Europe, the English actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree was dispatched to New York to mark the occasion in suitable style at a safe distance. Back home, alongside muted performances and festivals, the scholar Israel Gollancz edited A Book of Homage to Shakespeare, described in its preface as “a worthy Record of the widespread reverence for Shakespeare as shared with the English-speaking world by our Allies and Neutral States”. Thomas Hardy, John Galsworthy and Rudyard Kipling all contributed, extolling the playwright’s peculiarly English qualities. More than 20 languages were represented among the 160-odd essays, including the Bengali of the poet Rabindranath Tagore..."

दिलीप  पुरुषोत्तम  चित्रे :

"...शेक्सपीयरला वगळून आपल्याला इंग्रजी भाषेच्या वाङमयीन संस्कृतीचा किंवा प्रतिभेचा विचारच करता येत नाही. कारण इंग्रजीच्या मुख्य प्रवाहाचा एक भागच मुळी शेक्सपीयरच्या वाङमयीन कृती आहेत. त्यांचा प्रभाव वाङमयापलीकडे, भाषेच्या सर्वकष जडणघडणीच्या प्रक्रियेवर पडेल इतका मोठा आणि जिवंत आहे. रांगड्या, गावरान आणि घरगुती भाषेपासून थेट उत्कट, चमत्कृतिपूर्ण, व्यक्तिविशिष्ट शैलीपर्यंत भाषेचा विस्तृत रंगपटच असा लेखक उलगडून दाखवतो..."

('पुन्हा तुकाराम', 1990/1995)

ह ना आपटे, c1883:
"… त्याची (शेक्सपिअरची) नाटके म्हणजे, विकारविलसितकारांच्या (म्हणजे गोपाळ गणेश आगरकर) मताप्रमाणे केवळ मनोरंजनार्थ नाहीत, तर ती त्यांच्या योग्यतेप्रमाणे वाचून त्यांचा अभ्यास केला असता आपणास जीर्णारण्याप्रमाणे भासणार्या जगात उपयोगी पडणारी वर्तणूक शिकवणारी आहेत…"

Stephen Greenblatt, NYRB, April 21 2016:

“Shakespeare’s death on April 23, 1616, went largely unremarked by all but a few of his immediate contemporaries. There was no global shudder when his mortal remains were laid to rest in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. No one proposed that he be interred in Westminster Abbey near Chaucer or Spenser (where his fellow playwright Francis Beaumont was buried in the same year and where Ben Jonson would be buried some years later). No notice of Shakespeare’s passing was taken in the diplomatic correspondence of the time or in the newsletters that circulated on the Continent; no rush of Latin obsequies lamented the “vanishing of his breath,” as classical elegies would have it; no tributes were paid to his genius by his distinguished European contemporaries. Shakespeare’s passing was an entirely local English event, and even locally it seems scarcely to have been noted....”

 

 

The Shakespeare edition that Nelson Mandela read on Robben Island

courtesy/ Artist: Dave Coverly