Tribal Power Figures Convene at New York’s Tambaran Gallery

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Perseus with the Head of Medusa

Antonio Canova (Italian, 1757–1822). Perseus with the Head of Medusa, 1804–6. Marble. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Portrait of Mlle. Lange as Danae - Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson - 1799

Miss Lange was a talented actress known for her beauty and wealthy lovers. Girodet had painted an earlier portrait of her that she found unflattering. When she refused to pay the agreed-upon price and insisted that the painting be removed from public view at the Paris Salon, the enraged Girodet sought revenge with this second, satirical portrait. Eighteenth-century artists sometimes portrayed people as mythological characters to highlight their virtues. Girodet inverted this convention to defame Miss Lange. Danae was one of the mortals loved by the Greek god Zeus, who transformed himself into a shower of gold and fell upon her. Girodet shows Miss Lange greedily catching the gold coins. All of the painting's details are scathingly symbolic. For example, the turkey wearing a wedding ring represents a man the actress married for his fortune. The cracked mirror denotes her inability to see herself as Girodet saw her—a vain, adulterous, and avaricious woman.
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Happy Birthday Marie Antoinette

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5 fascinating examples of George Pal's stop-action puppetry

In the 1950s, Pal produced a commercial for Peter Paul Candy called "Sweet Pacific." Using a tropical setting and evoking an exotic island setting and title reminiscent of Rodgers and Hammerstein's colossally successful 1949 stage musical South Pacific, Pal designed it as a product advertisement in largely the same manner as he had done in the 1930s for Phillips. This time, the puppets were singing and dancing Mounds candy bars made of sepia-colored rubber, proclaiming that they represented "the finest candy bar of all." Each of the bars is equipped with a progression of cherry-shaped heads, each with a different expression. The rubber candy bars are mounted in a wooden shadow box, with a cardboard pink façade resembling a curtain valance. The interchangeable heads are arranged like footlights in front of the candy bars.

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