Let's keep it wild.: January 2014

25 January 2014

Hôtel Tassel

photo © bananiel

Victor Horta

Hôtel Tassel is a town house built by Victor Horta in Brussels for the Belgian scientist and professor Emile Tassel in 1893-1894.

Summer (1896) by great Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist Alphonse Mucha

It is generally considered as the first true Art Nouveau building, because of its highly innovative plan and its ground breaking use of materials and decoration.

Hôtel Tassel is located at 6 rue Paul-Emile Jansonstraat in Brussels.

The influence that Hôtel Tassel has had on the architecture of Belgium and of Europe as a whole has been enormous. Immediately on its completion it filled the architectural and artistic periodicals and was heralded as the only true architecture of the time.

Such a revolutionary synthesis of art, technology and nature.

All photos below © ffbetancourthe

Sweet Art Nouveau voyage: the HORTA group @ flickr.

Tassel Twirling
Since English is not my first language; since I didn't know the existence of the noun tassel; since twirling made sense to me associated with Art Nouveau because of its curvy and twisted look – I though this youtube clip was about Hôtel Tassel. But no, it's not. Be aware: sensitive media with nipples!

Tassel Twirling

18 January 2014

Modern space art

Chesley Bonestell (1888 – 1986) was an American painter, designer and illustrator. His paintings were a major influence on science fiction art and illustration. He helped inspire the American space program. Author of photo-realistic images of distant worlds and spacecraft, Chesley Bonestell was dubbed the "Father of Modern Space Art".

Assembling the Mars Ships

Colony on Mars under Plastic Domes

Crashing the Unknown (1950)

From The Conquest of Space (1953)

Fueling Rocket for Blast-off (1956)

On Mars (1954)

[Rockets]

Satellite Orbiting Earth (1956)

Ships Orbiting Mars (1956)

When Worlds Collide (circa 1964)

In 1932 Chesley Bonestell went to work for Joseph Strauss, chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge. He made perspective drawings of the inner-workings of the bridge and made number of contributions to the final appearance of the structure.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Tapestry, a young Captain Picard is involved in a fight with aliens at the Bonestell Recreation Facility, a spaceport named after the artist.

Beverages

The Bonestell Recreation Facility is a gaming and food establishment located near Federation Starbase Earhart in the 24th century. The facility features various beverages and other services, including games such as dom-jot. It attracts a wide range of clientele.

Dom-jot

I often watched Star Trek but not The Next Generation and the Bonestell Recreation Facility was unknown to me. On the web, all the pictures I saw were full of vapor. Did the Bonestell Recreation Facility's consumers smoke cigarettes?

10 January 2014

Snowy airports

Boston, USA –photo by JEm / DoWnUnDeR iN BoStOn

Cleveland, USA –photo by OmarActiv

Dusseldorf, Germany –photo by Petro Custodio

Korea –photo by SingaporeConcierge

Paris, France –photo by Judie Stanford

Philadelphia, USA –photo by Boyd Jones

Pulkovo, Russia –photo by Mike Kareev

Regina, Canada –photo by Crow Drunken

Vancouver, Canada –photo by salbarnett

Vienna, Austria –photo by ChefThomas

Warsaw, Poland –photo by Eoin Looney

07 January 2014

Snowy Montreal

William Tully (flickr)

Pretty cold these days in Montreal and I virtually go south – to visually catch some virtual summer breezes. First stop: a natural region of tropical wetlands in the southern portion of the US state of Florida, the Everglades, where the beautiful and elegant snowy egret can be seen.