The Heraldry of General Idea

General Idea was a Canadian artist collective formed by Felix Partz, Jorge Zontai, and AA Bronson. They loved to subvert pop culture and media. Above are some of their pieces currently on display at the AGO. I've always loved their cheeky sense of humour. Worth checking out.

Lord Protector Cromwell I presume?

Took this in a London gallery. It's a surprisingly pleasant, bloodless post-battle scene during the English Civil War. Even with bodies lying about, the soft baby blues and pinks make it seem warm and cuddly.

A remarkable feat.

Even stranger: the Dutch got involved in the conflict, took a small island, stomped about, and went home.

Everyone involved forgot all about it.

A historian inquired about this Dutch army day trip, and much to their surprise, discovered that England and the Netherlands were still formally at war, and had been for over three centuries.

The two embarrassed governments 'quickly' signed a formal peace treaty in April, 1986, after 335 years of non-conflict.

What a wonderfully boring war. The very best kind.

The Full Hellscape: The Last Judgement Triptych

Painting by Lucas Cranach, 1624. Copy of The Last Judgement Triptych, originally by Bosch.

Managed to fiddle with the warped photo I took and eliminate the distortion. Photoshop has good tools for this.

The whole enchilada

Middle Earth from low orbit

I have a fondness for imaginary places. I even have the book. So I naturally have a weakness for maps of them. They add to the realism of the place. Now a company has created shots of Middle Earth from low orbit. Believe it. One of those entirely pointless pursuits I enjoy so much.

It took time to recognize land formations from the books.

Check them out. More at WIRED.

Looking towards the Misty Mountains (centre, top). Isengard then is at the bottom of the mountain range. I think Fangorn forest is to the right of it. Looks convincing.

This is looking down, from the north, at Mordor (left) and Gondor (right). Sam and Frodo would have entered Mordor through the circle area in the mountain range at bottom centre.

The texture map

Upper West Mordor is the triangle (centre right), apparently covered in snow. Hard to tell from spaaaace.

In pursuit of Bruegel

I never realized this, but the demons in Bruegel's Fall of the Rebel Angels are farting.

Great post with lots more information on Bruegel and his work over at That's How the Light Gets In. Check it out.

So Joseph Stalin, Molotov, and Voroshilov go into a bar...

Get Well, in Toronto, is a bar with personality. It has religious icons, video games, and most surprising of all, a large painting of Soviet glitterati. In addition to a grinning General Secretary, there's Molotov (between the young lady and Stalin), and Voroshilov (hidden mostly by The Green Blob of Reflected Light).

Kalinin, the ostensible head of state, is seated in front of Stalin. He just stamped papers all day and received the mail.

Not something you see every day in a Toronto bar. Freaky.

Found the painting online: An Unforgettable Meeting by Vasily Efanov. It depicts the All-Union Conference of Women Home-makers and Engineering and Technical Workers in Heavy Industry in the Kremlin.

He won a prize for the painting. A better quality image (of the original) from The Internets below:

The Cuckold by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

From Proverbs (1559) by P. Bruegel the Elder.