IN THE NAME OF ART

IN THE NAME OF ART

By William Sutton

Source: www.speakup.com.br

Language level: B1 Lower Intermediate

Speaker: Rachel Roberts

Artists sometimes adopt names for simplicity, sometimes to add mystique. Often, they are given nicknames by accident.

PLAYING WITH NAMES

Diminutives: Antonio Canal, famous for paintings of Venice and London, was known as Canaletto (you can read entertaining stories about his activities in England in Janet Laurence’s novels, such as Canaletto and the Case of Westminster Bridge). His nephew, Bernardo Bellotto, found success by borrowing his uncle’s pseudonym.

Donato di Nicollo di Betto Bardi is known for sculptures such as the David in the Bargello Museum, Florence, under the name Donatello.

English graffiti artist Banksy keeps his real identity secret, partly to avoid arrest for his guerrilla artistic activities. The pseudonym may be based on his real name possibly Robert Banks or Edwards Banks. This uncertainty mirrors public reaction to his work. Some criticize it was vandalism. But his distinctive paintings, appearing on walls around the world as if by magic, use dark humour to generate debate. One example is an image of two policemen kissing; another is a Guantanamo Bay prisoner on a Disneyland ride.

A SENSE OF PLACE

El Greco found fame in Spain, working for the Church. The Spanish found his name hard to pronounce, but his paintings are signed Domenikos Theotokopoulos.

Controversial artist Michelangelo Merisi is known by the name of his hometown. Caravaggio. He developed chiaroscuro, the melodramatic contrast of light and dark, and shocked society by using a prostitute as his model for the Virgin Mary.

THAT ARTY FEELING

Sometimes a name sounds more artistic. Emmanuel Radnitzky began using the abbreviated name Man Ray to avoid anti-Semitism, but this strange pseudonym suited his modernist ethic. Polish-French modernist Balthasar Klossowski de Rola chose the memorable name Balthus.

Arhitect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret Gris believed that artists, and cities, could reinvent themselves. He chose to be called Le Corbusier, perhaps connected to the word for crow, but similar to his grandfather’s name, Lecorbésier.

Hilaire-Germanin-Edgar De Gas chose a less pretentious spelling of his name Degas. And Andrew Warhola, the son of Czech immigrants, removed a letter to become Andy Warhot.

MEANING AND SIMPLICITY

Because Jacopo Comin’s father was a dyer or “tintore,” he became known as Tintoretto. (His real surname, which translated as the spice “cumin,” was discovered only recently by the curator of the Prado).

Nicknames have also been attached to modern artists. Picasso was the Bull and Salvador Dali The Magician, while Jackson Pollock was known in London as Jack the Dripper.

POLITICS AND MANIFESTOES

The Futurists used pseudonyms to reflect their modern ideas: Volt (Vincenzo Ciotti), Fillia (Luigi Colombo) and Luciano Folgore (Omero Vecchi).

Radical feminism produced the Guerrilla Girls, a New York collective who promote egalitarian ideas. The members use disguises during interviews, naming themselves after dead female artists, such as Frida Kahlo and Sonia Delaunay.

For Bloggers and Facebook Friends

Today I'm going to talk about my Facebook's friends and bloggers, I'd like to thank you so much for your kind deserve promoting my blog for friends. Also I recommend for my readers visit my bloggers' friends just go to the blogroll bar you'll see my readers' partners as well as visit my favorite links and useful sites and blogs. One of my recent partner is Aristofanes from Greece have a look at there. See you later. 

Piadas em Inglês: PROFICIENCY

Source: 

http://www.teclasap.com.br/blog/tag/piadas-em-ingles/page/2/

Piadas em Inglês: PROFICIENCY

What were you thinking?

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There was this Asian lady married to an English gentleman and they lived in London. The poor lady was not very proficient in English, but managed to communicate with her husband. The real problem arose whenever she had to shop for groceries [fazer compras; ir ao supermercado]. One day, she went to the butcher [açougue; (lit.) açougueiro] and wanted to buy chicken legs. She didn’t know how to put forward her request, and in desperation, lifted up [levantou] her skirt [saia] to show her thighs[coxas]. The butcher got the message and the lady went home with chicken legs. The next day, she needed to get chicken breast [peito de frango]. Again, she didn’t know how say it, and so she unbuttoned [desabotoou] her blouse to show the butcher her breast. The lady got what she wanted. The 3rd day, the poor lady needed to buy sausages [salsicha; linguiça]. Unable to find a way to communicate this, she brought her husband to the store… (Please scroll the page down)

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Hellooooooo, her husband speaks a very fluent English!!!

Cf. Vocabulário: Calabresa e Pochete

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Cf. Como se diz “picanha” em inglês?
Cf. Falsos Cognatos: BEEF

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CREATIVITY WORK

 Creativity at Work

Source: www.speakup.com.br I also recommend you keep in touch and take out a subscription, excellent magazine.

BY LORENZA CERBINI

Language level: B2 UPPER INTERMEDIATE

It is said that New York has been the center of the art world since the end of the Second World War, when it effectively replaced Paris. Over the last seven decades it has continuously given us exciting new forms of art and that is still the case today.

Let’s take the examples of these contemporary artists, all of whom moved to “the Big Apple, all of whom moved so “the Big Apple” in order to further their careers. The first thing that strikes an observer is their unusual choice of materials, which include leather, one dollar bills and the components of old typewriters.

CONCEPTUAL ART

Mark Evans ( www.markevansart.com ), a young Welsh artist, and Mark Wagner ( www.pavelzoubok.com ), who is from Wisconsin, are two artists whose work requires the patience, attention to detail and skill of a craftsman. Evans engraves in leather and has a collection of knives that would be the envy of any butcher. Yet he makes sure that his incisions are only a tenth of a millimeter deep. Wagner, on the other hand, uses razors, scissors and penknives to transform dollar bills into highly complicated collages. If Evans and Wagner are both conceptual artists, then Californian Sono Osato ( www.sonoosato.com ) belongs to a different category. She has been creating art for some 20 years and her work has been exhibited in such institutions as il DeYounf Fine Art Museum DeYoung in San Francisco (http://www.famsf.org/deyoung/), the Laguna Art Museum

 ( http://www.lagunaartmuseum.org/ ), The Oakland Museum ( http://www.museumca.org/ ) and Di Rosa Preserve ( http://www.dirosaart.org/oldindex.html ).

Osato’s enormous sculpture paintings, which can weigh as much as 220 pounds (100 kilos), are made up of colors snake bones, teeth and typewriter parts. In her collages, Osato takes a look at human history and her work could be described as a tribute to anthropology and the development of language.

MARK EVANS

Mark Evans is 34 years old. He grew up on  farm in the Welsh mountains, prior to heading to London, where he studied Fine Art ant Middlesex University. He doesn’t draw or paint; instead he creates portraits by scratching and engraving large pieces of leather. He has been interested in creating art with knives ever since the age of seven, when his grandfather gave him a small pocket knife. This he would use for carving images on trees around the farm.

And another present, which he received in his early 20s, would also change his life. One Christmas he was given a new leather jacket, but disaster struck! As he helped prepare Christmas dinner in the kitchen a spot of blood accidentally ended up on the jacket. He tried to scratch it off with a knife, but he scratched too hard. Instead of get angry, he decided to use the surface of the jacket to draw a to-tone rendering of Jimi-Hendrix.

MY EUREKA MOMENT

“It was,” He says, “my own private Archimedes ‘Eureka’ moment. It was as if an explosion went off in my mind. I then spent the next few years focused on developing this technique at my studio. I was living as part artist and part mad scientist, trying to perfect the process which I’d accidentally discovered.”

Today Mark works with animal hides from around the world. His subjects often include cultural icons, like reggae star Bob Marley and boxing legend Muhammad Ali, Evans also likes bulls: one piece featuring these animals recently sold for £70.000. His work is collected connoisseurs, it can be found in British stately homes, Los Angeles penthouses and Saud Royal Palaces. 

Brazilians readers, Teachers and Students, visit and pass my blog for friends

At least 400 visitors have been visited this blog everyday. They come from different countries, for about 171 since it was on air on February 07th, but I invite you, dear students, teachers from Brazil, please get to know English tips, you can find useful articles from Speak Up Magazine and Maganews, in addition you're going to get in touch with the best links of blogs from Brazil, Teclasap, Ingles na Ponta da Lingua, English Experts, ING VIP, among others, as well as VOA NEWS site, and a lot of podcasts. Of course I'm thankful for everyone who comes here and sharing my blog for friends. All continents have been done that everyday. It's up to you. I have no sponsors on my blog, and as you know I use Adsenses here, please do not use fraud clicks on it, you can help just promoting my blog for friends as much as people visit here, I'll earn money, but use illegally and fraud clicks. May you have a wonderful night all, and remember how much I take care and love you, dear readers, teachers, bloggers' partners and students from Brazil and worldwide. See you the next entry, thank you for promoting my blog for friends. 

Kennedy Center Honors of 2007: Brian Wilson, Steve Martin, Leon Fleisher, Martin Scorsese, and Diana Ross Part III

Source: www.manythings.org www.voanews.com

Kennedy Center Honors of 2007: Brian Wilson, Steve Martin, Leon Fleisher, Martin Scorsese, and Diana Ross

Download MP3 (Right-click or option-click the link.)

Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember. And I'm Barbara Klein. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. is one of the official cultural centers of America. For the past thirty years, the center has presented awards honoring five artists for their lifetime of work.

These artists were chosen this year for the Kennedy Center Honors: The singers Diana Ross and Brian Wilson. The actor and writer Steve Martin. The pianist Leon Fleisher. And the film director Martin Scorsese. They will be honored this Sunday, December second.

"Good Vibrations" and the other songs Brian Wilson wrote for The Beach Boys remain as fresh and energizing today as they were forty years ago. Wilson started the band with his two brothers, a cousin and a friend in the early nineteen sixties. The Beach Boys made a new kind of American rock music popular. Their songs express the fun of being young, enjoying girls, driving cars and surfing the ocean in California.

Brian Wilson not only wrote The Beach Boys' songs. He also sang, played the bass guitar and keyboard, and produced the band's records. Some experts believe that their album "Pet Sounds" was one of the most inventive and important records in rock music history.

The Beach Boys were also one of the most popular bands in America during a time when the British band The Beatles were capturing the attention of the world.

(MUSIC)

Steve Martin is a popular writer, actor and comedian. He is also a skilled banjo player. Martin first started his career writing for funny television shows like "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour." In the nineteen seventies he began performing his funny jokes and acts on the weekly television program "Saturday Night Live."

(SOUND)

Steve Martin: "You know, a lot of people ask me if Steve Martin is my real name. Have I changed it for show business or anything like that. And, now I am not ashamed to admit it. Because I did have a funny name when I was a kid, and I decided to change it for show business. But I think enough time has gone by and audiences are more sophisticated now that they won't laugh at my real name. My real name is bybybuhbuh … So my parents had a sense of humor. My sister's name is hurhurhurhr . And my mother would go out to call us for dinner and she'd go bybybuhbuh! Hrrhrhr bbrbrb! So, we had to move around a lot. But other than that I had a very normal childhood."

He also won Grammy awards for the records of his live comedy performances, one of which you just heard.

Steve Martin has also made over thirty-five movies, many of which he helped write. These include "The Jerk", "All of Me", "Parenthood", and, more recently, "Shopgirl."

Martin has written articles, books and successful plays such as "Picasso at the Lapin Agile." He wrote a book about his years of performing as a comedian, "Born Standing Up," that was released last week. His next movie will be "Pink Panther Deux."

(MUSIC)

That was a recording of the pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher playing part of Schubert's Sonata in B Flat Major. Fleisher began studying the piano at the age of four. By the time he was sixteen, he was playing with the New York Philharmonic. Leon Fleisher traveled far and wide playing in the finest concert halls in the world and also recording music. In nineteen sixty-five, a neurological disorder called dystonia forced Fleisher to rethink his career. He lost the use of his right hand, but he did not let this stop him.

Leon Fleisher poured his energy into teaching and also conducting groups of musicians. He also began to specialize in performing piano music written for the left hand. In the nineteen nineties, doctors began to treat Fleisher's damaged hand with Botox injections.

Over time, Leon Fleisher recovered and started playing piano works for both hands once again. He has said that if he could relive his life, he would not change what happened to his hand. He says his experience helped him become a much better musician and teacher.

(SOUND)

That was a scene from the movie "Goodfellas", directed by Martin Scorsese. Many people consider him one of the greatest living American film directors. Scorsese is best known for his movies about characters linked to crime and violence. Many of his movies are about Italian-American characters. Still, over the years, he has made movies about many subjects. "Kundun" tells the story of the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. "The Aviator" is about the American businessman Howard Hughes. Scorsese also brought to life periods from the American past in movies like "Gangs of New York" and "The Age of Innocence."

His latest movie, "The Departed," is about opposing groups of criminals and police officers. It won four Academy Awards last year, including best director and best movie. Martin Scorsese has also made documentary movies about musicians, including Bob Dylan. He will soon release a movie about the Rolling Stones.

(MUSIC)

That was the clear, sweet voice of Diana Ross singing "You Can't Hurry Love" with her back-up singers. The Supremes were from Detroit, Michigan. They became one of the most popular female singing groups of the nineteen sixties. The Supremes mixed the sounds of popular music with the soulful music born in Detroit called Motown. By nineteen seventy, Diana Ross had left the band to sing on her own. She made many best-selling records including "Diana Ross", "Surrender" and "diana."

Diana Ross also acted in television shows and movies. Her performance as Billie Holiday in the movie "Lady Sings the Blues" earned her an Academy Award nomination.

Over the years, Ross has won many American Music Awards. Billboard magazine named her the "Entertainer of the Century." The Guinness Book of World Records called Diana Ross the Most Successful Recording Artist of All Time. Her most recent album "I Love You" came out earlier this year.

Brian Wilson, Steve Martin, Leon Fleisher, Martin Scorsese and Diana Ross are remarkable performers. On Sunday, the Kennedy Center will honor them for sharing their artistic gifts with people all over the world.

Our program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I'm Steve Ember. And I'm Barbara Klein.

The origin of Valentine's Day

Source: www.maganews.com.br

Love

The origin of Valentine's Day

Brazil celebrates the date in June, but in other countries the date is celebrated in February. Learn why

     Brazil celebrates Dia dos Namorados on 12th June, but in Europe and

North America this date is celebrated on 14th February. The probable origin of Dia dos Namorados is Ancient Rome. In the 3rd Century Emperor Claudius II believed that single soldiers were more efficient than the married ones, and so he decided to prohibit weddings during a time set aside for wars. But there was a priest called Valentim who had the courage to celebrate various weddings. One day the emperor discovered this fact and had Valentim killed. The priest died on 14th February and became a saint. In the 17th Century the French and English decided to celebrate, on the same day (14th February) Saint Valentine’s Day and Dia dos Namorados. In the following century the USA adopted “Valentine’s Day”.

Traders profit from the date

  In Brazil the origin of this date is less noble and romantic. In 1949 the advertising executive João Dória returned to Brazil after spending time in Europe. He returned with the idea of introducing Dia dos Namorados to the country. But instead of the date being celebrated in February, the month chosen was June. The reason: the traders always complained about not selling much in June and Dia dos Namorados would make a great excuse to improve sales. The 12th was chosen because it is the eve of Saint Anthony’s day, the “wedding saint.”

Vocabulary

1 Ancient Rome – Roma Antiga

2 emperor – imperador

3 single soldier – soldado solteiro

4 set aside for – destinado às

5 to have something done - mandar fazer algo

6 trader – comerciante

7 to profit – lucrar

8 advertising executive – publicitário

9 to complain – reclamar

10 to sell – vender

11 excuse – no texto = estímulo

12 eve – véspera

13 wedding saint – santo casamenteiro

Matéria publicada na edição de número 25 da Revista Maganews

Foto (casal André Dias e Daise Rodrigues): André Dias