The stuff of art conservators’ nightmares
Jackson Pollock's paintings are considered amongst the most challenging for museum conservators because they often contain not just paint, but motor oil, cigarette butts, nails, and other foreign materials.
The state of the paintings of iconic artist Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847-1917) is similarly problematic.
Ryder was known for his unconventional painting techniques, using layers of paint, resin, varnish, and unconventional materials like candle wax and bitumen. His methods created a luminous effect admired by his contemporaries but resulted in unstable works that darkened, cracked, and sometimes disintegrated over time. Many of his paintings deteriorated during his lifetime, and his attempts at restoration, along with alterations by others after his death, have left many of his works significantly different from their original form.
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Ultraviolet astronomy
Astronomers have discovered distant stars, galaxies, and other celestial bodies, and can identify their chemical makeup, by observing the emitted ultraviolet light, which is invisible to the naked human eye. As shortwave UV is absorbed by the earth's atmosphere, the observations and photography have to be done in the upper atmosphere or in space, such as from the Hubble Space Station.
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Diary of a Madman
Above is Ilya Repin's 1882 painting of Poprischin, the schizophrenic narrator of Nikolai Gogol's famous 1835 short story Diary of a Madman.
After increasingly erratic behavior and thoughts, including believing he has found the love letters between two dogs, the lowly St. Petersburg civil servant, Ilya Repin, wakes up one morning with the epiphany that he is the heir to the Spanish throne. He believes the subsequent being taken to and treated in an asylum-- including the period's pre-electroshock therapy of having ice water poured over his shaved head-- is some strange part of the coronation.
Years later, Gogol himself went mad, burning his unpublished manuscripts because he believed they were a trick played on him by the Devil.
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Stooge and dog lover
Curly Howard of the Three Stooges was a dog lover and welfare advocate. He uniquely had in his studio contract that his dogs were allowed to be on the set with him. He also fostered stray dogs and found homes for them. Whenever he traveled, his goal was to save at least one stray dog.
Bela Lugosi was another famous lover of dogs, and was the first to breed white German Shepards in the United States.
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The Atomic Man
A technician at Washington State's Hanford plutonium plant, Harold McCluskey gained the name 'The Atomic Man' after he accidentally was exposed to the largest dose of plutonium byproduct americium-241 radiation ever recorded. Considered 'too hot to handle,' he was removed from the facility by remote control and kept in isolation for five months.
His radiation eventually returned to safe levels and he lived until 72. However, he had to have his church's reverend tell the wary residents it was okay to stand near him.
Over 40 years later, the room where the accident happened was still considered so dangerous that workers only enter it while wearing special radiation suits.
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Quote of the week
"If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company."-- Jean-Paul Sartre
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Henry & Baruch cartoon of the week
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