Mr. Fruit Face

The New York Times today has a lovely slideshow of Giuseppe Arcimboldo's work, which is on exhibit at the Luxembourg Museum in Paris.





From the article:

"Mr. Fruit Face, as a friend of mine disdainfully calls him, has always been a guaranteed hit with the Transformer-age crowd. But his art is more serious and self-important than that. You can imagine him to have been the sort of initially jocular, learned dinner party companion whose arrogance makes itself known by the salad course. That he inspired thousands of appalling 20th-century Surrealists, apparently shocked at the genius of conceiving a gherkin to replace a nose, or a rose a cheek, isn’t his fault."

Maira Kalman

This week the New York Times made its special "Times Select" features available to everyone for free. So now people can see Maira Kalman's monthly illustrated columns on the web. Check them out!

All work and no play makes Monkey Fur a dull blog?

Oh, Finland. This weekend the Finns hosted the finals of the International Air Guitar contest. My favorite was last year's defending champion. But he came in second.



The french guy, "Moshe Pitt" (pronounced "Moe-she Peet") won. Maybe because his routine featured a really spectacular ending. Which you can see here.

Our little human lives

“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

Dang. Madeline L'Engle died. She was one of my favorites when I was growing up. The quote is from a New York Times Article about her.