"View of Mount Fuji" is one of thirty-six color woodblock prints Hokusai made of this magnificent landscape subject. Hokusai was an important transitional artist whose experiments in the Japanese style of Ukiyo-e, or 'pictures of the floating world,' became enormously attractive to the French Impressionists. Its brilliant solid colors, bold flat-pattern designs, sharp angles, and simple contours strongly influenced such historically important painters as Edouard Manet, who discovered the prints after Commodore Perry reopened Japanese ports in 1853. A rare item, "View of Mount Fuji" is one of the few Hokusai woodcuts not held by the Yoshida Gallery in its comprehensive collection of the artist's work.
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"Birth of Venus" was one of the earliest treatments of the female nude to appear in the Italian Renaissance. Following the Dark Ages in Western Europe, the Renaissance was truly a period of philosophical, intellectual, and aesthetic rebirth. Botticelli's sublime painting clearly articulates the period's renewed interest in humanistic allegory and classical naturalism. The central figure is a refined example of 'Venus Pudica,' the classical pose of a woman attempting to cover her sexual attributes with her hands. Artists and advertisers of the 20th century extensively appropriated this graceful Venus as an archetypal beauty, often as a means of questioning its definition of the feminine ideal. 'Birth of Venus' was originally commissioned by the Medici family, a clan of Florentine bankers famed for their patronage of many important Italian artists. Their name is inextricably tied to that brilliant period of history when Florence was the intellectual center of Europe.
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One of the most renowned horses in the history of thoroughbred racing, Greased Lightning began his 'second career' as a stud less than three years ago, and the newcomers he has sired will doubtless find their own way to the winner's circle soon. Lucky Lightning, the first of these, is set to race in the upcoming Toyota Stakes, in which the champion once took top honors three years in a row. Greased Lightning also won the Triple Crown in 2004, setting a track record at Churchill Downs that remains undefeated today. The stallion is in perfect health, and should have many profitable years at stud ahead of him.
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This original black-and-white print dates to the artist's 'middle period,' the early 1980s, when the unbridled materialism of the Reagan years reinforced Breton West's dedication to an art centered on the verities of nature. West photographed his "Seaweed Series" in 1984, while traveling along the California coast north of San Diego. The series is a prize example of the artist's eye for evocative line and shadow in commonplace natural forms. "Seaweed #4" also gives ample evidence of West's prodigious technical talents as a printmaker.
Rumor has it that the artist, who is fanatically possessive of his negatives, is attempting to finance an elaborate project to secure them: the creation of an acid rain-proof 'safe-box' to preserve the negatives after his death. As West has said, "They'll be perfect, or they won't be at all!"
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"Fluctuations of Order and Chaos" is the seminal work of Isamu Yamaguchi, the Japanese artist who employs high-density atmospheric disturbance in his holographic 'morphing sculptures.' Yamaguchi is notorious for his post-conceptual performance series, 'Art Defies Nature,' which received the highest Nielsen ratings ever recorded for the Planetary Educational Cable Station. Some of these performances have come close to pure daredeviltry. These include the artist's hang-glider bungee jumping over the active caldera of Mount Fuji, and surfing on a giant tsunami that inundated large sections of the Japanese coastline. 'I am inspired when death is very near,' Yamaguchi has said. 'Otherwise, why live at all?' Such remarks have earned him the nickname he has borne since his days at the HoloDeck Labs Project: The Death Wish Kid. Hardly a kid anymore, Yamaguchi is represented in virtually every leading museum around the world as well as in select private collections. Because his sculptural works require extensive time to develop, there are not many available, and avid collectors await each new work with great anticipation.
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"Albers/Hoffman Repairs Rothko" is one of the tour-de-force paintings Morris completed shortly before his mysterious and untimely demise. As the self-proclaimed master of Postmodern Erasurism, he exhilarated the millennial art world by pushing 'appropriation' to its logical conclusion. Every time his celebrated art dealer, Francis Atwater, acquired a few 20th-century masterworks, Morris would paint over them-- in his own words, 'To improve them.' Atwater would then sell them for double the already exorbitant price of the originals. Morris appropriated so many Modernist theories and styles that his other, more personal pieces became indistinguishable from his 'paint-overs.' All of the Morris works have soared in value since his disappearance at sea. Neither his body nor his boat was ever found, leading some of his more devoted followers to insist that he 'ascended to a higher plane of semiotics,' where he sits, presumably, at the right hand of Marcel Duchamp.
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In 'The Tree of Crows,' windswept oak branches and swarming crows are dramatically silhouetted against a delicately colored sky. Given to meditations on mortality, the artist here displays--with typically effective symbolism--the themes of religion, isolation, and death that so obsessed him. As one of the most outstanding landscape painters of the German Romantics, who were inspired by the spiritual qualities of nature, Friedrich wrote, 'The Divine is everywhere, even in a grain of sand.'
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"Ascending Cubes XXII" is a prime example of Cybernetic Constructivist Brickley Hunt's early work, which established him as the true aesthetic heir of the great David Smith. Hunt developed the RT 'Johnny,' an alpha-prototype cyborg studio assistant, which enabled the manufacture of his highly complex computer-designed sculptures. Later versions of his invention were modified for the public market, resulting in the domestic help cyborgs that are so prevalent today.
Hunt's tremendous commercial success triggered a dramatic change in lifestyle for the once indigent artist. Much to the dismay of his early fellow-travelers, he abandoned his bohemian existence for the glitter of society's elite, becoming a fixture on New York's exclusive Taste scene. His glamorous condo on Manhattan's Upper East Side, a triplex featuring a penthouse studio and one of the world's finest art and furniture collections, has long been considered a Taste sensation.
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The Easter Islands, located about 2000 miles off the west coast of Chile and inhabited mostly by Polynesian farmers, have long been famous for such formidable stone fetish heads as this. Standing up to 40 feet high, the astounding glyphs were first discovered by a Dutch seaman on Easter Day in 1722, and have made the Islands popular with tourists, scientists, and art historians ever since. Though they resemble totems made by other ancient cultures, their sheer size and haunting character make them unique in the world.
The winning bidder will possess full rights to the Monumental Head; however, in accordance with clause 12b of the Treasures of Humanity Declaration ("Monuments and Embedded Works"), the statue may not be moved from its island location.
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Noted contemporary artist Buff Goons modeled this painted plaster cast after an informal snapshot of Amy Fisher. The picture was taken by an unknown photographer in 1992, during her term in prison. The work itself shows this master of appropriation at his most craven: little more than a three-dimensional realization of the photograph, Goons stresses its value as a commodity rather than a purely aesthetic image. Goons' famous bon mot, 'Commodity, commode, and accommodation are the three sisters of modern art,' is particularly apt with regard to this work.
Long in the collection of a former Supreme Court Justice (who prefers to remain anonymous), the work is once again available for private sale, and is rumored to be coveted by members of the legal profession.
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"Dipped World Body Flag" literally describes this controversial sculpture by Anthony Legano, cult celebrity of the Art/Anarchy movement. Under Legano's leadership, Art/Anarchy has staged hundreds of performances protesting the centralization of all government powers under the World Body. The artist created this particular work during a surprise appearance before the World Body General Assembly, where he publicly urinated into a fishbowl stuffed with a World Body flag. Legano was arrested and placed under psychiatric observation, but was released after attending doctors claimed he made too much sense. These same doctors later became his most ardent patrons, enthralled by such Leganoisms as, 'If you can't be famous, be infamous!'
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This work is an exquisite example of Cassatt's popular, unsentimentally realized mother-and-child motif. She was an American expatriate who settled in Paris and joined the Impressionist salon in 1879, championed by her close friend, Edgar Degas. At the time, women were not easily accepted as professional artists, and rumor had Cassatt and Degas romantically linked, though it is doubtful they were ever lovers.
Cassatt and the Impressionists focused on everyday domestic scenes, which they composed in individual styles strongly influenced by the flat, colorful design of Oriental prints.
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Numerous marble figurines ranging in scale from miniature to life-size were produced by early Bronze Age artisans on the Cyclades, a group of small islands in the Aegean Sea. Typically these figures are cross-armed goddesses, carved into stylized shapes at once organic and geometric in form. This work is one of many honoring musicians. Archeological clues indicate that originally the figures were brightly painted.
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The extraordinarily luminescent "Hall of the Bulls" was discovered by accident in 1940, when a group of young boys went exploring in the caves of Lascaux, Dordogne, France. Numerous bison, horses, and deer cavort in a lively, floating procession across the cave walls and ceilings. They were made with mineral-based pigments applied by rudimentary brushes of moss or hair, or blown through tubes of bone like a spray-gun. Experts speculate that these primitive but beautiful paintings functioned in Paleolithic religious ceremonies, staged by Cro-Magnon people, to assure success in hunting the animals that supplied them with food, tools, and clothing.
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This excellent cobalt-cut vase is typical of the elaborately decorated objects crafted during the Ming, or 'brilliant' dynasty, which ruled China from 1368-1644. It is thought to have been among the jewels and other artifacts exhumed some years ago from the tomb of Wan-li, an emperor who took great pleasure in his generous patronage of the arts. Founded by a Buddhist peasant who, with his band of rebels, overthrew the Mongols, the Ming built the magnificent Imperial Palace in Beijing before falling to the Manchus.
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"WFC Performance" is the enigmatic proposal for a World Financial Center presentation by the Post-Art anarchist, Sheila Masterson. Secrecy concerning the nature of this performance has been so tight that several security organizations have offered the artist top-level clearance for information exchanges. Ms. Masterson's previous performances have involved complex object manipulations in conjunction with explicit theatrics that portray a variety of female bodily functions. The shock value attending her work has made her a highly paid media darling while Fifth-Wave feminists, calling themselves 'Sheilas,' have developed a cult of global proportions. The 'Sheilas' emulate Masterson's constantly changing fashions and reenact many of her best performances, which have, in the past, often resulted in mass arrests.
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Archaeologists working at Thebes discovered Tutankhamen's Tomb in 1922. It contained the largest cache of ostentatious wealth to be unearthed from any ancient Egyptian site to date and included funerary items made of gold, silver, and precious stones. Most have been plundered by grave robbers throughout history. 'King Tut,' a mere youth when he ascended the throne, became a household word in the late 20th century, after the world tour of 'Treasures of Tutankhamen,' a blockbuster exhibition that clinched the largest attendance records of any previous museum show. This miniature coffin, also known as a canopic jar, is one of four that contained the young pharaoh's viscera. It replicates the design of the main mummy case.
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One of the formative influences of 20th-century art, Vincent van Gogh painted "Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear" at Arles, France, one month after he mutilated his ear in a bout of insanity. Van Gogh's short but prolific career has become the stuff of legend, perpetuating the myth of the undiscovered, poverty-stricken, and disturbingly obsessed artist/genius. Although he sold only two paintings during his lifetime, the Dutch-born artist's paintings fetched record-breaking prices at auction in the late 20th century, earning up to 80 million dollars apiece. With his forceful, thick brushwork and daring applications of color, he pushed the Impressionist influence past the strictly scientific into a highly charged exploration of psychic pain.
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"The Scream" is a nightmarish vision of alienation and despair bordering on insanity. With its radiating lines, distorted forms, and lurid colors, Munch was able to expose the deeper realms of human existence. Stylistically he was influenced early in his career by the Impressionists and by the individualistic power he found in the paintings of van Gogh and Gauguin. As his work matured, he charted new and individual territory in the expression of interior emotional states. Munch's bold imagination and daring themes inspired younger artists to form, first, the Berlin Secession and later, the school of German Expressionism. Currently in the collection of Tempo Gallery owner Hilaire St. Germain, "The Scream" represents an early peak in the modernist idea of personal expression.
Stolen and recovered in 1994, and then re-stolen under mysterious circumstances before the recovered painting had even been rehung, "The Scream" was finally found in 1999, following the liberation of Tibet in the Dharmic Uprising. Secreted in a hollow wall in the Drepung Monastery in Lhasa, it was discovered by monks engaged in the restoration of the Main Hall. How it came to be buried in the ancient monastery is still unknown, although there was some speculation that Munch was actually depicting one of the many bardos of the Tibetan cosmology.
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"Video Duel" is a collaboration conceived by aging conceptualists, Burt Crisden and Gino Foccacci. After the years of fading recognition that followed their Body Art stunts during the 1970's, the duo is seeking to make a comeback by staging a duel to the death, to be fought with loaded pistols. The one-time-only performance will be documented in the retro-technology of videotape; the buyer will gain rights to the sole copy. The controversy surrounding the proposed performance has resulted in frenzied negotiations for the video rights by various media giants. Proceeds are to be split between the estate of the loser and a defense fund for the winner of the duel.
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Like other artists of the early Renaissance, Mantegna found his finest subjects in religious passion, and seems to have made a specialty of painting figures martyred by corporeal puncture. A master of perspectival illusionism, he gave his darkly beautiful paintings a witty blend of fantasy and gravity. This bigger-than-life St. Sebastian, a Roman martyr of the third century, is one of the most provocative figures in Mantegna's oeuvre. Painted near the end of his life, the work was still in the artist's studio when he died in 1506. Sebastian was the patron of archers and soldiers and was said to have immunized devotees against the plague. Here he takes a distinctly feminine form, suffering the Emperor Diocletian's arrows with divinely arousing courage.
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"Syndics of the Cloth Guild" is the definitive masterpiece of group portraiture. Here Rembrandt devised a scenario infused with spontaneity, as if we have interrupted this group of Dutch businessmen in mid-meeting. Rembrandt was the uncontested master of Flemish portraiture's golden age; few artists in history have equaled his facility with oil painting and printmaking. He is most often remembered for the profoundly incisive self-portraits he made throughout his career, during which he produced nearly 600 oils, 1500 drawings, and 350 etchings. Still, after the death of his wife in 1642, he was unable to stay out of debt. Though he remained famous to the end, he died a pauper. His work is still highly prized by major collectors, who recognize his penetrating achievements as unsurpassed.
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This rare sporting artifact was last used on April 7, 1999, the day of major league baseball's final game. As many fans will remember, that was the year the American owners' lockout proved fatal to the game. In the absence of a Commissioner (the office had been abolished in 1996), the owners and players were unable to come to terms. The game's finances were also in disarray. Fan disgust had left most ballparks half-empty, and there were no network bidders for the 1997 television rights. When NBA basketball stepped into the void and extended its season to 12 months, major league baseball was finished. This particular ball was hit out of the park by the New Jersey Yankee designated hitter, Dwight Gooden.
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The "Venus of Willendorf" is the most famous of small female figurines which date from the Upper Paleolithic period, the oldest known objects of art. Her exaggerated bulbous female forms and faceless head are typical of these figurines. This is indicative of a fertility fetish, a magical talisman to ensure prolific reproduction of healthy offspring, a primary survival concern of prehistoric humans.
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Heated debate has swirled around these pivotal U.S. government documents ever since the Kennedy assassination in 1963. While some of the evidence examined by the Warren Commission was made public at the time, many of the most crucial papers remained sealed. Additional documents were released in 1993, following a political furor sparked by Oliver Stone's film "JFK," but the complete papers have never before been available for public viewing. These are the original documents, not holographic copies; a condition of sale is that the papers never be destroyed. The buyer must also allow access to accredited researchers.
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Traditional icon painting is a form of religious practice, requiring the developing spiritual realization of the artist. Byzantine icons such as this one introduced to Christian themes a naturalism and humanism that affected Western painting into the Renaissance.
The Emperor Constantine officially established Christianity in 313 A.D., eventually spreading its dominance throughout Europe. Art production declined during the Dark Ages when early Christians forbade the worship of objects. In time, icons became transportable symbols of divinity for meditative purposes.
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This richly appointed carpet, produced in Teheran and hand-woven from silk and wool, is said to have served the holy ground on which the great Sufi singers of Persian folklore sat to entertain their spiritual leaders. A devotional love of Allah lies at the heart of Sufism and its music is believed by adherents to be the path to the heart of God, where enlightenment, or inner knowledge, resides. The form of devotion known as Qawwali, meaning 'utterance,' originated in the 10th century. Traditionally Qawwali concerts took place at religious shrines. They were regarded with such respect that whole communities took part in making the special carpets that cushioned the musicians, whose trance-inducing songs kept them playing throughout the day and night. This particular carpet has remained within one family of Qawwali singers for centuries. Political unrest forced its sale when, after a world concert tour, it was unaccountably left behind.
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This amphora filled with olive oil was once the prize vase given to winners of Panathenic athletic events. The painting is attributed to the black-figure painter, Euphiletos. Black-figure painting flourished from the late 7th to the late 6th century and was transformed to red figures by the Andokides painter about 500 B.C. The intense orange-red and deep black colors are a result of firing iron-rich clay. Greek vases are renowned for their elegant and varied shapes. The athletes pictured on this vase reflect the Greek attitude toward the male form as 'the greatest marvel of all.'
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"Hermes and Dionysos" may be the only surviving original work of the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles, one of the most supreme sculptors of ancient Greece. Made of the finest quality marble, it was unearthed at Olympia in 1877. The sinuous S-curve in the compositional form of Hermes is especially associated with this sculptor, and is characteristically called a 'Praxitelean curve.' In this magnificent example of 4th-century Classical sculpture, Praxiteles innovated the move towards humanistic naturalism, portraying these mythical figures in the nude. Here Hermes pauses on his journey to deliver the infant Dionysos, god of wine, to the nurturing nymphs on Mount Nysa, India.
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The last unopened carton of Suicide brand cigarettes--the first to be banned by World Body food-and-drug regulators. Manufactured by the now-defunct Mortal Coil Tobacco Company, these cigarettes were unique: not only did they contain the usual natural carcinogens, but they were also injected with anti-osteoclastic spore agents, which resulted in measurable bone degeneration in the smoker. 'Once we discovered that the death wish was a major ù and to some degree conscious ùcomponent of a smoker's motivation, we decided to up the ante,' said Mortal Coil's CEO Dr. Oblivious. The company petitioned the Surgeon General for the throat-clearing cautionary label that it printed on the package:
WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined that smoking causes cancer, heart disease, and birth defects, and that smoking Suicide Cigs additionally causes premature osteoporosis and skeletal decay.
It was this warning that, market analysts said, boosted sales to dramatically high levels, but it also drew the attention of the World Body Health Watch, which removed the cigarettes from the market in 1999.
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Appearing for the first time in the watershed exhibition of comic book art held at the Museum of Postmodern Art in 1994, the origins of this work are shrouded in mystery. What is clear is the penetrating satiric mind behind it, as well as the tour-de-force parody of the original Superhero graphics. This is the sole copy known to exist. Laboratory analysis has revealed that the comic was not printed but carefully hand-drawn and treated to simulate mass production. The subject matter takes a skewed and hilarious view of the assumptions underlying the original Superhero comics. In spite of the supposedly open-minded atmosphere of the '90's, it initially caused great consternation.
No author has claimed credit for the work, and attribution has been speculative, ranging from Matt Groening to Bill Griffith. One eccentric even claimed that the work was created by the British painter Francis Bacon, channeled from the 'other side' by a trance-medium.
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William Jefferson Clinton played this saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show in 1992, during his first presidential campaign. The appearance--his first in public with the instrument--brought the soon-to-be Chief Executive instant notoriety. The saxophone again showed up during the post-inaugural parties of '93, and was played periodically during both terms of Clinton's presidency. Perhaps his most memorable performance with this instrument came during his second State of the Union address, when his late-night woodshedding sessions in the Lincoln Room bore fruit in a credible rendition of Thelonious Monk's "Evidence."
Clinton was the man who initiated on-air live performances during political campaigns. These appearances resulted in such memorable broadcasts as Ross Perot's cowboy poetry recital and Bob Dole's stand-up comedy routine, both during the '96 campaign.
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A dramatic example of privatization, this opportunity gives the winning bidder full ownership rights to the priceless master bedroom in the palace of Louis XIV. Though it will remain open to visits by the public, only the owner will be able to actually sleep here, or whatever.
The Palace of Versailles began as a small chateau outside Paris during the reign of Louis XIII. Under his successor, it became the largest royal residence in the world. Located at the end of a splendidly appointed corridor hung with aristocratic portraits and lit by glowing crystal chandeliers, the bedroom is actually a suite of several sitting rooms that look out on the magnificent palace gardens. Its walls are two feet thick and its elegant carpets add to an atmosphere of hushed excitement. The noble, hand-carved canopied bed was the envy of all, and symbolized the bloated Louie's desire for absolute power over all areas of public and private life. The bedroom additionally contains three huge closets and one secret passage to an adjoining studio. The chamber is, today, perhaps most unique in that it contains not a trace of electronic media. The great gilded mirror opposite the bed, however, does allow two-way viewing.
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Commissioned by the Duke of Urbino, Titian's dynamic Venus recreates the reclining nude originated by his mentor, Giorgione da Castelfranco. These Venetian Renaissance painters re-established the popular theme of Venus as goddess of Love, Nature, and Fertility, praising the ideal beauty with a cagey and alluring lyricism. Titian, or Tiziano Vecelli, became the most important of 16th century Venetian painters. Kings and princes competed for his commissions and he enjoyed a stature equal to Michaelangelo's. His technique presaged the advances of the Impressionists, as he applied layers of color and multiple glazes on rough, overpainted canvas. He set the standard for a mastery of oil painting unrivaled in western art until Rembrandt.
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In "Dance at the Moulin de la Galette," Renoir captured the casual gaiety of 19th century Parisian life, painting his friends at leisure in an open-air restaurant, under patches of mottled light. Never a particularly intellectual or introspective man, Renoir was an optimist who enjoyed pretty things. His paintings celebrate scenes of everyday life with a voluptuary attention to the beauty of the human body. The brilliant color and transitory lighting that heighten the liveliness of this picture are typical of the Impressionists. In his later years, when he broke from Impressionism to pursue more classical interests, Renoir was crippled by rheumatism but continued to paint by tying a brush to his wrist.
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Maillol was a painter, graphic artist, and tapestry designer before dedicating himself fully to sculpture at the age of 40. "La MediterranΘe" is indicative of the dynamic and sensual energy we find in his bronzes. Maillol's formal simplification of the shape and volume of the human body overrode any inclination towards narrative or surface manipulation. The solemnity of this figure stands in direct contrast to the expressionist tendencies of his contemporary, Rodin, with whom he shared a mutual respect. After 1910, however, the work became less interesting and bordered on the prosaic.
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This colossal limestone beast originally guarded the entrance to the Assyrian palace at Khorsabad. Displaying a distinctive stylization of detail, the winged bull with its bearded human head is typical of the polychromed relief carvings Assyrian craftsmen made at the time, to fortify royal portals. Here the artists added a fifth leg to create the simultaneous appearance of repose and forward movement, depending on the angle of view. Derived from early Mesopotamian art, the composite creature reflected the power of the Assyrian kings and protected them against enemies and evil spirits.
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The French government commissioned "The Gates of Hell" in 1880, for the entrance to a museum it never built. Rodin continued to rework and refine the doors for the rest of his life, using many of the figure compositions as maquettes for larger individual pieces, most notably The Thinker. The Gates of Hell is, however, his unchallenged masterpiece. Here, in his fluid interpretation of Dante's Inferno, Rodin placed over 200 figures writhing in pain and agony. Left unfinished at his death, it was not cast in bronze until the 1920s. Despite its incompleteness and unconventional character, it represents a synthesis of all his major themes. Perhaps the greatest sculptor after Michaelangelo, Rodin made work that was intensely expressive and infused with psychological content. With his melding of the Realist and Symbolist techniques of the late 19th century, he became known as "the father of modern sculpture."
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Symbolizing the transient nature of the flesh and worldly beauty, Death and the Maiden has been a recurring theme in painting and funerary sculpture since the Middle Ages. It was especially prevalent in medieval northern art, probably because of the impact of repeated plagues. Baldung's work reflects the styles of Dⁿrer and Cranach, but his unusual color combinations and inventive mastery of the macabre are more typical of his own allegorical paintings. During his career as a painter and graphic artist, he also made designs for stained glass.
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"Queen Mother Head" is a prime example of memorial bronzes produced in the Benin Court style after the 14th Century in Nigeria. The 'cire-perdue,' or lost-wax, casting process dates back to the Ancient Egyptians, though Benin craftsmen developed their own distinctive technical variations. The exaggerated head is typical of the African belief that the head is the center of intelligence and the power of the spirit.
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"Perseus" was commissioned in 1545 by Duke Cosimo I upon Cellini's return to Florence from the court of King Francis. The Medici ruler reserved an honored spot for the large bronze sculpture in the Piazza della Signoria's Loggia dei Lanzi, the center of Florentine public life. Cellini splendidly conveyed the allegorical tale of Perseus beheading the Medusa, an important symbol for the Medici clan, in a macabre, yet graceful Mannerist style. Cellini later narrated with supreme immodesty the travails of this commission and its casting in his entertaining and self-aggrandizing autobiography.
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"Two Haystacks" is one of several paintings Monet made of this scene as he recorded the vagaries of atmospheric lighting during various times of the day. A founding member of the Impressionist Salon, the artist painted many of his subjects with this scientific, yet intuitive, approach, in order to discover for himself the true nature of light and color. Cezanne called him 'Only an eye--but my God, what any eye!' Still, success came slowly. The critic, Louis Leroy, first coined the term 'Impressionism' to deride an early painting by Monet titled, "Impression: Sunrise." In the late 1860s, Monet collaborated with Renoir to mutual artistic advantage, but Monet continued in poverty until the tremendous acclaim he received in an 1889 exhibition he shared with Rodin. In 1883, Monet settled at Giverny, where he created wonderfully elaborate water gardens. Their evanescent presence on his later canvases guaranteed his financial security. Kandinsky later acknowledged the "Haystack" series as the inspiration for his 20th century development of abstract painting.
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"Gynemorform 36D" is one of the most dynamic of the latex Gynemorform series that Coffee T. Army produced around the time of the millennium. Her flexible abstract sculptures perform anatomic devolutions that pierce the interface of human psycho-sexual boundaries. Army is the foremost German artist of the 'fourth wave of feminism.' With her post-Paglian approach to self-empowerment, she has almost single-handedly transformed the social climate of the 21st century, effectively blending black humor and cybergenetics. In 2001, during her 'remote window' exhibition, she claimed to have penetrated the anima of femininity with a self-made mindvox. The instrument had what she termed 'sharp cyberteeth,' with which she claimed an ability to 'chew out' those she labeled 'sexist oppressors.'
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Following the apocalyptic drama of World War I, German artists such as Max Beckmann created a provocative new pictorial presence that came to be known as 'magic realism.' A grotesquely super-real form of romanticism that extended from cubism, its distortions and exaggerations made life in Beckmann's war-torn country comprehensible. His penetrating compositions imparted to viewers a starkly heightened sense of awareness, not only of what the world then looked like, but what it felt like to live in it. "Night" shows the artist melding social and private conflict into an ambiguous but irrefutable statement of inner observation.
In "Night," a particularly intense example of his work, Beckmann piled a jumble of disturbing images upon a shifting plane of existence. Seeking to define what he called 'the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality,' he was able to transfer the fantastic to the visible. By overcrowding the visual space with tightly woven angular constructions, he created a picture that is at once mysterious, shocking, and transcendent. A breakthrough work by a master of 20th century expressionism.
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Like a hall of reflecting mirrors, "Las Meninas," or "The Maids of Honor," reveals Velazquez's mastery of illusionism. His naturalistic tonal lighting became of great interest to the Impressionists a few hundred years later. This enormous group portrait shows the artist at work in his studio with members of the royal family and their attending entourage, which included a group of court dwarfs. The child is the Infanta Dona Marguerita, daughter of Philip IV, Hapsburg King of Spain, for whom Velazquez served most of his life as court painter and chief steward of the palace. The king and queen are portrayed observing the scene--and the viewer--from their spectral position in the mirror behind their daughter.
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Donatello had a significant influence on the work of every major Florentine artist of the Renaissance, most notably Michelangelo. In his marble "David," the future king of Israel stands in triumph over the severed head of Goliath, whom he has unexpectedly slain with a rock from a sling. The sculpture was commissioned by Cosimo de Medici as a symbol of his transcendent civic power and benevolence. Eventually it became a Florentine public monument representing liberty and independence. It was also the first life-sized, free-standing figure to appear in western Europe since Classical times. Meant to be seen from all sides, the figure is overtly sexual in its contraposto stance and represents a stupendous break from the fear and loathing of nudity that was prevalent during the Christian Middle Ages.
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Though such renowned contemporaries as Auguste Renoir and Mary Cassatt considered Edgar Degas the greatest sculptor of the 19th century, "The Little 14-Year-Old Dancer" was the only sculpture Degas showed during his lifetime. First presented at the Impressionist Exhibition of 1881, it was made in wax with real hair, a satin ribbon, and a muslin tutu, and was indicative of his genius as a modeler of implied spontaneity. As the French poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire commented at the time, Degas was 'a cruel but subtle observer who was able to express, without banality, the dazzling, elusive essence of gracefulness.'
Degas' reputation was built mainly on his prodigious mastery of painting and drawing. Later in life, when his eyesight was failing, he created over 70 small wax sculptures of horses, nudes, and ballet dancers but, modest to the end, deemed none of them worthy enough to be cast in bronze. Later recognition of his genius forced their posthumous casting. After his death, at a 1918 Paris auction of his work, sales exceeded anything that had previously occurred in the history of modern art.
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"Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe" (Lunch on the Grass) was first exhibited at the controversial 'Salon des RΘfuses,' organized for the large number of artists who were rejected from the official Salon, which had become mired in the polemics of academic conformity. Manet's stark, in-your-face portrayal of two men in Victorian dress picnicking with one thoroughly modern, unselfconsciously nude woman and another but scantily clad, caused a furor. His directly observed and flatly contoured painting style (derived from Japanese printmaking), with its natural lighting and photographic cropping, assaulted 19th-century aesthetic sensibilities. Later, he became close friends with the Impressionists, who greatly admired his work.
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"The Adoration of the Shepherds" demonstrates El Greco's late painting style--elongated expressionistic figures within a diffuse, spiritually charged, atmospheric landscape. As Renaissance architect and biographer Giorgio Vassari wrote, the painting 'does not appear to be painted, it seems to be alive,' offering several levels of reality at once. El Greco (Kyriakos Theotokopoulos) was born in Crete, studied art in Italy as a young man, then settled in Toledo, Spain to become perhaps the greatest of Mannerist painters. The majority of his commissioned works were for the Church, which suited his intensely spiritual, mystic nature.
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"Ecstasy of Saint Theresa" is the stone masterpiece of the Baroque. Bernini's mixed-media extravaganza for the Cornaro chapel of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome, it is the exalted focal point central to the altar, a restless work demanding multiple views. Bernini was a brilliant architect, painter, theater designer, and sculptor--the last of a great line of universal geniuses to position Italy as the cultural center of Western civilization. Like Michelangelo, he considered sculpture to be the most important of all artistic pursuits.
Saint Theresa was a Spanish mystic who founded 17 convents for Carmelite nuns. As a devout believer during the Catholic Counter-Reformation, Bernini strictly portrayed what Theresa herself described in an autobiography as her 'transverberations.' During these visions she was pierced through the heart by a golden spear of Divine Love, which caused her to swoon in an anguished spiritual exaltation.
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Commissioned by a wealthy local merchant, Enrico Scorvegni, "Lamentation" is one of many fresco scenes adorning the Arena Chapel in Padua, Italy. It depicts the story of the Virgin Mary, the life, death, and Resurrection of Christ, as well as the Last Judgment. The chapel received its name from the former Roman arena over which it was built. A master draughtsman with supreme narrative skills, Giotto broke from the iconographic Gothic and Byzantine formulae to infuse each figure with varied psychological responses. This revolution in style marks him as the true founder of Renaissance painting, able to create a convincing illusion of texture, weight, and depth in all his very expressive work.
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"Riace Warrior" is one of two life-sized bronze figures that were found in the sea back in 1972, near the southern Italian town of Riace. In its firm composition and its expression of a heroically idealized human body, it speaks of the 'severe' style of 5th century Greece. It is hollow-cast in the 'cire-perdue' (lost-wax) process which the Greeks learned from the Egyptians during the 6th century B.C. Few remain of the many original Greek bronzes, as most had been melted down for recycling the metal for use as weapons in later wars.
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"Nike of Samothrace," or "Winged Victory," is one of the finest examples of the Rhodes school of sculpture, which dates from the Hellenistic age. An archetype of the great works of the past, the sculpture originally commemorated a triumphant naval battle over Antiochos III of Syria in 190 B.C. Here, the goddess is seen frozen in time at the moment she descends, powerfully victorious, upon the prow of a warship. The carvers' virtuosic treatment of the marble captured the fluid movement of the drapery pressed against her flesh by the forces of wind and sea. It was found on the island of Samothrace in 1863, located in a northeastern area of the Aegean Sea.
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Here is a charactertistically emotive work by Toulouse-Lautrec, whose fleeting color impressions are set off by a formal control of framing and composition. He was an aristocratic dwarf, crippled by accidents that broke both his legs. A popular figure in the seamy demi-monde of 'fin-de-siecle' Paris, he took for his subjects race tracks, circuses, and exotic cabarets like the Moulin Rouge, whose singers and dancers he befriended. His intimate knowledge of and involvement on the scene gave paintings like "La Toilette" a typically theatric illumination. In addition to his Post-Impressionist paintings he has gained great respect as the creator of many of the best Art Nouveau posters of the period.
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"The Garden of Earthly Delights" is considered the most enigmatic and imaginatively bizarre painting from the end of the Gothic Middle Ages. The left panel of the triptych is most recognizable as 'The Creation of Eve;' the right panel seems to be 'Hell.' Bosch was a religious painter with a love for everyday life and a strong satirical streak. One theory, based on this painting, holds that he was a member of a religious cult practicing alchemy. According to this theory, the central panel of the painting depicts the various stages of an initiation rite into the cult. The psychological aspects of these bizarrely juxtaposed images account for the Surrealists' interest in Bosch several centuries later. The symbolist psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, was equally taken with painting. He proposed that the stages of alchemical transmutation in the Bosch work correspond to the processes of individuation necessary to reach adult maturity.
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"The Arnolfini Marriage" is van Eyck's brilliant and somewhat mysterious visual record documenting the private marriage ceremony of Giovanni Arnolfini, an Italian financier who resettled in the Netherlands, to Giovanna Cenami. A double portrait of wonderful psychological insight, the painting is rich in minute symbolic detail, each referencing the sanctity of human bonding. Van Eyck's revolutionary use of oil paint enabled him to capture the scene with great clarity and realism. His meticulous rendering of the interior space and his use of natural lighting contributed toward making his reputation as the unsurpassed genius of the Netherlands school.
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Produced in Rhodes by artists who specialized in compositions of violence, this "Laoco÷n" vividly portrays the anguished struggle of the Trojan priest, Laoco÷n, who offended the gods when he tried to warn his countrymen against the threat of the Trojan Horse. The sculpture anticipates the Christian ethos of the redemptive power of human suffering and also serves as a paradigm of the decline of Hellenistic power to the emerging Roman Empire. Taken to Italy by the emperor Titus in 69 A.D., the Roman scholar Pliny described it as the greatest sculpture in antiquity. In 1506 it was rediscovered in the Roman Baths of Titus and was brought by Pope Julius II to the Vatican, where Michelangelo, Bernini, and Rubens could study it at their leisure.
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"Mona Lisa," whose famous smile has intrigued the popular imagination for generations, is da Vinci's tour-de-force masterpiece of chiaroscuro painting. It is the perfect expression of his feeling for the enigma of existence. Its forms seem to melt into one another with subtle tonal gradations. In Europe, the "Mona Lisa" is often called "La Gioconda," as it is believed this was a portrait of the wife of Florentine banker Zanobi del Giocondo.
Leonardo was a perfectionist and precocious engineer renowned for his drawings of fantastic inventions, many of which have proved to be prophetic visions of scientific realities today. An architect, town planner, writer and musician as well as a painter and inventor, da Vinci is universally recognized as a genius. His notebooks, written backwards and kept secret from his contemporaries, describe profound observations on proportion, perspective, optics, anatomy, geology, weaponry and such advanced devices as a diving suit and a machine that could be made to fly.
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"Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berri" comprise twelve zodiacal manuscript illustrations of the International Gothic style created by Pol, Jehanequin, and Herman Limbourg for the King of France's brother, Jean, Duke of Berry. This calendar page comes from a "Book of Hours," a liturgical diary detailing daily and seasonal devotional prayers. Each month was illustrated with scenes of daily life--aristocrats at play or, as in this representative page for June details, peasants at work in the fields beneath the bastions of feudalism. Complex symbols of the zodiac appear in arched 'windows' above each illustration. The Duke and the Limbourg brothers all died of the plague in 1416.
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An abrupt departure from earlier idealized visions of the Crucifixion, this astounding work comprises the two central panels of an altarpiece originally commissioned for the Isenheim monastery of Antonite monks. The brothers maintained a sick house for diseased persons, especially those infected with 'Saint Anthony's Fire' ù a bacteriological affliction that caused convulsions and gangrene. The ghastly spectacle of Grⁿnewald's dead Christ, His twisted body punctured by nails and thorns, mirrored the intense suffering of the patients, yet offered them hope through Redemption. Grⁿnewald (Mathis Gothart Neathart) was an architect, hydraulic engineer, and a court painter. In this respect he was a true Renaissance man, yet his entirely personal vision along with the psychological impact of his art presaged later German Expressionism.
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This "PiΘta" depicts the lifeless form of Jesus Christ draped over the lap of a youthful Virgin Mary after His removal from The Cross. Carved by Michelangelo at the age of 24, it is an object lesson in how a man can bring spiritual essence to stone. The work surpassed that of ancient Classicism in its perfection of proportion and virtuosic carving, establishing the artist as the greatest sculptor of the Renaissance. Michaelangelo was also the architect of the dome of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome and even more renowned for painting the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo had been tutored in Neoplatonic philosophy, ancient aesthetics, and anatomy during his youth under the auspices of Lorenzo il Magnifico, a Medici. His tortured life amid political struggles between Florence and Rome over several monumental projects has been well documented, a story that was most dramatically revealed in a popular biographical novel of the 20th century, "The Agony and the Ecstasy."
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In "Guernica," arguments about Cubism, representation and realism fade before a deeply felt expression of agony and rage. One of the outstanding social protest pictures on record, the work was triggered by the saturation bombing of the town of Guernica, the ancient capital of the Basques, during the Spanish Civil War. Utilizing a grim monochrome palette and relying on a flat depiction of events, Picasso stripped the painting to essentials: with these few tools, the artist achieved a tremendous memorial to crimes against humanity. The Christian Slaughter of the Innocents played a central role to the images in this great painting, which also brings to bear elements of Spanish folk culture such as the bullfight. Here Picasso uses the bull to symbolize the forces of Fascism that were tearing the Spanish nation apart, the horse as a metaphor for the agony of his countrymen, whose resistance is signified by the light bulb he painted in the mechanized eye near the top of the frame.
Picasso was the most prolific artist of the 20th century and achieved a level of recognition reserved for great historical genius.
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"The Card Players," one of many similar compositions in Cezanne's later career, ideally suited his visual experiments with the use of line, color, and planes to delineate the spatial relationships of simplified forms. Cezanne began exhibiting with the Impressionists in 1874 but his recognition of the limitations of that style places him in the Post-Impressionist mold. He wanted to make 'something solid and enduring like the art in museums,' he once said. His analytical approach to restructuring painting has gained him the accolade of 'the father of modern painting.'
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An artist in full command of her visual field, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo's life was distinguished by her Marxism, her narcissism, and her bohemian marriage to the muralist Diego Rivera, with whom she kept several pet spider monkeys. Due to a tragic and crippling bus accident at the age of 18, Kahlo worked for most of her life in acute physical pain. Her remarkable self-portraits are a veritable map of her penetrating and sensitive mind, and document her elaborate ù some would say surreal ù fashion sense, as well as the toll her ailments and increasingly troubled marriage took on her appearance. They are striking for the contrast she made between her physical discomfort and her emotional sensitivity to the world around her, which she enlivened with a lush native symbolism. The vibrant "Self-Portrait with Monkey" communicates her trust in the spiritual power of her art, to which she brought a distinctive truth.
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"The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus" describes the mythological tale of the abduction of two mortal sisters, Hilaria and Phoebe, by the gods Castor and Pollux, who had fallen in love with them. The painting reveals Rubens' extraordinary mastery of the human form in motion. Greatly influenced by Italian master painters of the sixteenth century, especially Michelangelo and Titian, his art represents the highest accomplishments of the Baroque in northern Italian painting. Rubens was also a wealthy landowner, art collector, and aristocratic diplomat with a cultured and amiable demeanor reminiscent of the personality of Raphael.
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"The Duke and Dutchess of Urbino" is one of the most spectacular double portraits of the Renaissance. It was commissioned by the great general and art patron, Duke Federico de Montefeltro, as a commemorative to his late wife, Dutchess Battista Sforza, who had died in childbirth two years earlier. Behind them stretches the panoramic landscape of Urbino, Umbria, in the northeast of Italy. Federico's profile is firm, presenting his immense power. It is also frank in portraying his physical characteristics, especially his humped nose, broken during a joust. Della Francesca's style is marked by a certain mathematical beauty of composition; in fact, his interest in mathematics and geometry led him to write the first treatise on perspective. Long neglected after his death, he became perhaps the most revered painter of the early Renaissance.
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"The Villa of the Mysteries" is one of the vast historical treasures archeologists recovered from the ruins of Pompeii during the 19th and 20th centuries. In A.D. 79, Pompeii was buried in volcanic ash by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The ash preserved this small Roman colony and its inhabitants as the explosion caught them conducting their daily affairs. The murals in this room give us an insight into their spiritual life. Here we see a young female novice during her initiation into a mystery religion--probably a cult dedicated to Dionysus. She receives consolation from a priestess after being whipped by an ill-tempered winged goddess, possibly Nike Athena. The image is symbolic of the painful process of enlightenment. The painting style as well as the cult is of Hellenistic derivation.
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"The Three Graces" has been a popular theme in Western art since classical times. Raphael (Raffaello Santi) was the quintessential artist of the Italian High Renaissance. His work reflects a classical balance of line and a keen spatial awareness. His highly studied drawing style, called 'disegno,' was greatly influenced by his older contemporaries, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. A favorite in the papal court of Pope Leo X, son of Lorenzo de Medici, for whom he worked as a painter, Rafael was both an architect and archeologist, named at one point a 'superintendent of the streets of Rome.' He organized the eternal city's first complete survey of its vast treasures of antiquity and adhered to the Neoplatonic philosophy that one achieves civilizing enlightenment through the experience and contemplation of beauty.
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"The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes" prefigures the Eucharist, illustrating the New Testament story in mosaic, thousands of small glass or stone cubes set in intricate patterns into plaster on walls or ceilings. Theodoric, Arian ruler of the Ostrogothic kingdom during the early sixth century, based his capital at Ravenna, located 80 miles south of Venice on the northeastern coast of Italy. It is the renowned center for the best surviving examples of Byzantine mosaics. Theodoric commissioned numerous mosaics, including this one, to decorate his church, Sant' Apollinare Nuovo. Christ is depicted here in the manner and garb of a Roman emperor. The gold background became standard in mosaic design as a means of creating a spiritual atmosphere.
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"Antinous" was the favorite friend of the Roman emperor, Hadrian, who created a cult in homage to the youth after he accidentally drowned in the Nile. Antinous is portrayed as the Greek god Dionysus (Bacchus to the Romans), symbolized by the wine cup and bunches of grapes. He is also given the heroic attributes of Hercules, as shown by the lion-skin cloak. Despite his tyrannical and deviant tendencies, Hadrian ruled over the Golden Age of the Roman Empire. He was also a poet, artist, architect, and scholar who greatly appreciated the Greek art and culture that flourished in Italy during his reign. The tree stump near one of the figure's legs is a structural device used to support the massive weight of the upper portions of the stone sculpture.
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"Raft of the Medusa" is an epic masterpiece of French Romanticism. A history painting of tremendous ambition, it narrates the anguish a group of Algerian immigrants suffered after spending two weeks adrift on a crude raft. The French captain of the government ship, "Medusa," which had sunk off the coast of Senegal, had left his hapless passengers to their fate without the benefit of the lifeboats, which he kept for himself and his crew. Of 149 passengers, only 15 survived. The catastrophe was exacerbated by mutiny, starvation, and cannibalism. Gericault thoroughly investigated the tragic incident with his usual zeal for the macabre, capturing the scene at the moment the survivors sight their rescue ship. In 1819 the painting had a poor reception in Paris, where the political controversy surrounding the story overrode its artistic merit. It received great acclaim after its exhibition a year later in London.
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"Unique Forms of Continuity in Space" is the quintessential product of Futurism, the early 20th century Italian movement that found beauty in modern kinetics. Here Boccioni captures the blur of a striding human figure by employing the Cubist abstraction techniques of fragmenting, expanding, and fusing planar space. It seems to be disintegrating even as it comes together. Although the Futurists derided classical art as having less significance or beauty than a race car, this sculpture has often been favorably compared with the "Nike of Samothrace."
The events of World War I and the accidental death of Boccioni in 1916 eclipsed the Futurist movement, but its impact continued to influence such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian, and the Dadaists.
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Kandinsky was the artist who liberated art from representation. "Black Line" is one of the most important, and certainly one of the most beautiful, canvases in a long series of "Improvisations" and "Compositions" in which he established non-objective color abstraction as a valid and important direction in art. At the age of thirty, Kandinsky quit law, left his native Moscow, and moved to Munich to pursue painting. His early work was influenced by The Fauves and German Expressionists. A member of 'Der Blaue Reiter' (The Blue Rider group) between 1912-16, he summed up his seminal research on abstraction in his 1912 treatise, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art." He refined his later geometric, 'hard-edge,' style of abstraction during his association with the Bauhaus between 1921-1933.
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"Kouros" (boy) figures were a predominant theme of ancient Greek funerary statues. They derived from Egyptian examples having a direct frontal pose with advanced left foot, broad shoulders, straightened arms close to the body, clenched hands, and Archaic smile. The nudity is purely Greek in attitude, revealing that culture's philosophic and aesthetic reverence for the male form. This particular kouros was from Anavysos, Attica. It marked the grave of a young heroic soldier, Kroisos, who died in battle.
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"The Swing" was commissioned by the Baron de Saint-Julien who originally wanted a bishop to appear where the nearly obscured husband now stands to gaze longingly up the billowing dress of his wife. The first artist the baron hired refused, and the job fell to Fragonard. His dreamlike landscape, attention to intimate details, and frivolous content are characteristic of the French Rococo period. The Rococo style flourished under the patronage of the aristocracy, whose desire for decorative, sophisticated, and light-hearted secular scenes seemed boundless.
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This peculiar and frightening dagger is typical of those the Aztecs used in sacrificial offers to the gods of the harvest and the sun. Empowered by the thunderbird handle, it was responsible for the deaths of that culture's political enemies and other outcasts condemned by their society as criminals.
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"Mbulu Ngulu," or "image of a dead man's spirit," was placed over the ancestral bones of the Ba-Kota tribe of Gabon, West Africa. The tribe adhered to the African belief that the head is the dwelling place of the spirit. Primitive African art has had a major stylistic influence on Western artists since the early 20th Century, and is especially visible in the early work of Picasso.
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"Melancholia I" refers to a saturnine state of mind peculiar to the despair given to many a creative genius. It is the frustration and resulting inertia experienced by artists confronted with the insufficiency of intellect and technical prowess to fully discern the secrets of nature. The wealth of chaotic images is symbolic of a mysticism that distinguishes between the melancholy of the imagination from that which causes madness. Dⁿrer was a consummate printmaker, instrumental in bringing the visual discoveries of the Italian Renaissance to Northern Europe.
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This unusual tattoo is one of several sold by Tanks and Poses singer Axel Grease in 1997, following his much-publicized religious conversion to the Church of Tumbling Dice, headquartered in Reno, Nevada. At that time, Grease chose to remove all vestiges of his former life, including the tattoos ornamenting his body. Surgically excised from Grease's chest, the tattoo has been carefully preserved at Cleveland's Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. Its vibrant colors and uniquely detailed form remain a testament to the skill of artist Steward Steiner, a former educator and writer who abandoned academia for illustration.
It apparently represents, in symbolic form, Grease's intense devotion to his mother, although the singer himself has denied this interpretation. His statement: "You never heard of anyone else named Mildred, is that it, dude? Get a life!"
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Many were shocked when former U.S. President Richard Nixon revealed the content of the missing minutes from the Watergate tapes in his self-serving autobiography, published when he had re-established himself as the elder statesman of the Republican Party. Now, following the successful resolution of legal disputes regarding declassified papers in the Nixon estate, the actual tapes have become available for the first time.
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The provenance of these horseshoes had until recently been in some dispute. Now, latent fingerprint identification and DNA blood-typing prove Bush's ownership beyond a doubt. The episode in which Bush drew blood by dropping one of the horseshoes on his bare feet has of course been well documented; afterward he lost interest in the game and took up roaming the malls in his Texas hometown.
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These 1950s drag photos show a heavily made-up J. Edgar Hoover, unopposed chief of the old Federal Bureau of Investigation, sweetly cavorting with his male lover. Though perfectly acceptable by today's standards, the pictures would have scandalized the FBI if they'd come to light during Hoover's lifetime, and would certainly have driven the autocratic G-man from office. Hoover was for many years the most fearsome lawman in America--and perhaps its greatest hypocrite as well. After his death in 1972, it became clear Hoover had not been above employing criminal methods himself to remove from the public arena those identified by some segments of society as deviant. Homosexuality was in the 1950s equated with political activity threatening to the nation. Hoover used illegal wiretaps and hidden surveillance cameras to obtain information damaging to public figures whose policies or lifestyles disturbed his complex sense of moral order. Meanwhile, he turned those cameras on himself, leading an active, if closeted, life as a cross-dressing homosexual. His hotel-room, drag-ball escapades were legend in the gay underground of the 1950s and 60s. The identity of the photographer is unknown.
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Aficionados of fashion history will remember the controversy surrounding Nancy Reagan's acceptance of formal wear as gifts from leading designers. The controversy has continued to the present day; although Mrs. Reagan's estate sold the dresses to the auction house, a group of descendants of the designers is contesting the sale. Sold at the buyer's own risk.
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Although use of hockey sticks to murder opposing players during games became common in the late 1990s (27 such murders have been committed to date), the stick pictured here has been authenticated by the Global Hockey League commissioner as the first to be used in such a fashion. The blood stains on the stick blade are original, and the stick has been autographed by Bruno Johnson, the designated perpetrator.
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These rights are offered at the buyer's own risk. Submerged under 80 feet of water since the Earthquake of '97, the museum's world-famous artifacts and collectibles were inaccessible until recent tremors shifted the ruins. Conservators stand at the ready, and though city officials expect to join them for an extensive inspection of the devastated area, no survey date has yet been put on the calendar. The museum was built in the 1970s and first existed as little more than a one-story studio space near LaBrea. But wise purchase procedures, a growing endowment, and thoughtful, freewheeling exhibitions that employed contemporary work to make sweeping--some said vapid--statements about innovations from the past brought ever greater attendance. When the museum outgrew its limited space, it began construction on the now waterlogged building, which had been considered an architectural jewel. There are no plans to rebuild, and salvage costs are to be borne by the buyer.
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This historic document was signed into law by President Clinton in 1998. Included with the document is an autographed photograph of the ceremony, showing the President and her husband, First Man Bill Clinton. The Amendment at long last guaranteed the voting, housing, and employment rights of all men, women, and children, regardless of race, color, creed, or sexual preference. The amendment passed only when the president suggested lawmakers include a provision allowing citizens the right to choose their parents.
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This production-model fighter was flown by Capt. Alice Benton of the US Air Force, when, leading the pack during the Third Gulf War, she broke the all-time U.S. record for most enemy jets downed. Capt. Benton then went on to become the Air Force Chief of Staff, where she began a massive deaccession program to reduce the number of armed patrol planes maintained by the armed services. "There have been far too many accidents," she said in her first report to the World Body cabinet. "Besides, we have better things to do and happier places to be than battle." However, Benton has encouraged educators to include flying lessons in their elective curricula. "Nothing better in the world to free the mind," she has said. "Nothing more on target for the soul."
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An original Star Wars personal laser tool, with variable intensity adjustment, usable as a flashlight, cigarette lighter or tree pruner. This device was first marketed in 1995, as part of the U.S. government's defense conversion program. The personal laser tool was the only functional product to emerge from the multibillion-dollar Star Wars program, but quickly disappeared after the initial novelty sales, since each of its functions could be performed better and much more cheaply by existing devices.
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Movie theaters, as older bidders may remember, were darkened auditoriums where people gathered to experience motion pictures projected on a silver screen. When, in 1995, the advent of Video-On-Demand enabled film enthusiasts to call up virtually any movie ever made on a home telecomp screen, the movie theater fell into decline. Many large houses were divided into VOD service centers and neighborhood theaters were abandoned entirely. After cerebral implant technology was introduced in 1997, when viewers could watch any movie through direct stimulation of their optic and auditory nerves, group entertainment experiences such as movie theaters faded into antiquity. Still, the grandeur that was Grauman's remains. As Oscar Levant once said of Hollywood, "Strip off the phony tinsel and you'll find the real tinsel underneath."
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(Note condition of sale: owner must promise to operate the park as a museum and keep it open to the public; no changes are permitted without the express permission of the Landmarks Commission.)
Fenway Park harks back to a day when baseball games were played on grass fields with dirt base paths. As fans may remember, grass steadily gave way to artificial turf during the seventies, eighties and nineties. In the late nineties, most parks replaced dirt base paths and pitcher's mounds with SaniSand, made from finely ground recycled plastic. In light of reduced television revenues, the move was inspired by team owners in an effort to keep laundry costs down. The Boston Red Sox left Fenway in 1997, moving to the Turner Television Studios in nearby Wellesley, but the park has been impeccably maintained as a Boston tourist attraction ever since.
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These magnificent sea creatures are the last swordfish known to exist. They reside in Miami's WaterWorld, which will continue as caretaker even after ownership rights are sold. Swordfish were plentiful until the turn of the century, when the Takimoto mercury extraction process made retrieval of mercury from swordfish flesh a profitable business. Swordfish were slaughtered by the thousands, and now only Sammy and Samantha remain.
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Microwave ovens were popular in the latter part of the twentieth century, until the health risks associated with their use became known. Widespread testing showed that long-term proximity to microwaves decreased IQ, particularly in young children and adolescents. Previously, television exposure was thought to have been responsible. Further proof came in 2001, the year after microwaves were banned, when SAT scores of American high school juniors jumped ten points on average. (Sold at buyer's own risk.)
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Mainframes were the original computers and could fill entire rooms. The computing power of this one, IBM's top-of-the-line product in 1986, is easily exceeded by any of today's hand calculators. Buyers should note that, unlike today's battery-operated supercomputers, which fit in any briefcase, the mainframe is not portable. Although few would recognize the brand today, IBM was at one time quite a large company, with several hundred thousand employees. A remnant of the company does still exist, generating mailing labels for Microsoft. A sharp-eyed stock market observer can still find IBM listed as a penny stock in over-the-counter pink sheets.
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Aficionados of political history will remember Robert Dole as the vitriolic Minority Whip of the U.S. Senate from 1993 to 1997. Following an automobile accident in 1996, Dole's spleen was removed. Almost immediately, the senator underwent an amazing personality change, never uttering an unkind word, and, on occasion, even paying compliments to President Clinton. The case forced a re-examination of medieval medical doctrines, which posited that personality traits, or "humors," resided in specific organs of the body. Today, of course, spleen operations are a common tool of psychotherapy.
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Originally manufactured in 1998, before a cure was found for AIDS, "Adam and Eve" were the first android sex partners. These early models, crude compared to today's anthromorphs, were wildly popular. They were taken off the market in 1999, following a rash of deaths attributed to their use. The resulting lawsuits were settled in favor of the manufacturer, Android Power, who proved that the fatalities were caused when owners tinkered with the factory-installed limiters, compelling the androids to perform without end. Perhaps as a result of this flawed design, the original Adam and Eve models have become much sought-after collector's items.
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This unedited raw footage of the faked moon landing in 1969 was first made public in 2002. Until that time, most of the world believed that American astronauts had actually landed on the moon. Rumors did leak out shortly after the alleged mission, but they were quickly dismissed as lunatic speculation, reported only by supermarket tabloids. As everyone now knows, the mission was shot on a studio lot constructed at Landenberg Air Force Base, with a crew given draft deferments from the Vietnam War in exchange for silence. This footage, complete with slates, out-takes, and snippets of off-camera production work, shows how painstakingly the actors and staff worked to create the illusion of the lunar landing.
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Thanks to its unique collection of sperm and ova from Hollywood stars, Nobel Prize winners, athletes, and other desirable progenitors, Superseed was, until its recent bankruptcy, the leading sperm and egg bank. Holdings are particularly strong in genetic material of the late 1990s, including sperm from Hal Martin, Michael Tireson, and Arne Posit, and ova from Sharon Rock, Jennifer Cables, and Tina Rotate. To certify authenticity, every batch of Superseed's holdings has been DNA-sampled and matched via LevelNet to authenticated records in the central World Body Identibank.
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With the demise of professional baseball in 1999, new uses were sought for empty ballparks. One of the most successful conversions was Toronto's NatureDome, a recreation area filled with flora, fauna, air, and water of the 17th century, before the advent of industrial pollution. Inside the Dome, air and water quality are strictly controlled. Visitors may drink from a babbling brook, swim in a mountain stream, or ride the waves at an ocean beach without need of innoculations or detox tablets. No sunblock is required, either, as the Dome's glass provides a filter simulating the ozone layer prior to the 1990s, when the earth still had an ozone. Nature paths wander past bio-engineered replicas of otherwise extinct species, such as cardinals, orioles, and of course, bluejays. Suitable for commercial exploitation or private enjoyment.
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This legendary 200-year-old piece of cheese has survived the long collapse and restitution of Tibet as an independent state. Smuggled out of Lhasa in 1994 by a renegade monk, the cheese found its way to the West via underground smugglers sympathetic to the lhamas' cause. When it appeared on the commodities market a year later, the Chinese government brought charges against the seller, the notorious speculator I. Thoroughgood Fragge, for possession of stolen state treasures. The World Court found for the Chinese, and the cheese was secured in the Potala Palace. Formerly a Tibetan monastery, the palace was now little more than an armed camp. With the liberation of Tibet in the Dharmic Uprising of 1999, the cheese once again found itself on the move, this time to London. There it remained hidden from public view for several years, a prize in the private collection of the former royal family. It was acquired by H. R. Roone in 2003 in an undisclosed arrangement, and soon was back on the trading circuit--this time, unchallenged--in 2006. It is the oldest piece of cheese in existence.
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The skull of the famous Norwegian clairvoyant elk, known as Edgar (after 19th-century medium Edgar Cayce), has never before been available to collectors. Edgar first came to light in 1996, when explorers, lost in the heights of the Galdh°piggen Mountains, literally stumbled across the remarkable animal. After Edgar guided the explorers to safety, stories of the animal's uncanny ability to detect danger and opportunity led impresario Figgard Bragge to acquire the elk. He was startled to find that the animal demonstrated an ability to understand human speech. He then brought Edgar to the World Body Center for Inter-Species research, where the elk lived happily until his death in 2009. The Center's research experiments proved interspecies communication--suspected to be of a telepathic nature--possible beyond a doubt. Edgar's fame later spread unexpectedly with the underground success of Tory Swift's media release, "Elk Dreamtime." It in turn became the first non-sponsored entry to claim the 2004 International Media Biennial's top prize for documentary enlightenment.
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When the Warren Commission, rejecting any suggestion of conspiracy, confirmed its 'single-bullet' theory of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, a national uproar followed. The Commission held that Lee Harvey Oswald's fatal shot passed through the president, wounded Governor John Connally, and grazed the arm of a Secret Service guard in the next vehicle. Many charged a cover-up in progress, insisting there had to be more than one gunman located on either side of the infamous 'grassy knoll' overlooking the scene in Dallas. Independent testimony showed a single bullet fired from Oswald's stationary position on the 6th floor of a nearby book depository could not have followed the roller-coaster trajectory the Commission reported, except by 'magic.' This bullet, recovered from the site and carefully preserved, has traces of the president's genetic material marked on its surface and part of a fingerprint ballistics experts say was Oswald's.
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When in 1997 it was discovered that the sales figures displayed on the Acme Shopping Network were artificial, the booming TV shopping industry suffered a stiff setback. Consumer confidence remained suspended until 1999, when Truth-in-Packaging mandates were made inclusive of electronic media. This self-contained unit was the actual one utilized during the notorious sale that broke the scandal ù the record-breaking number of orders for 'Eau de Bush,' a cologne marketed by the former U.S. president. Investigators discovered that the surging cycle of consumer sales depicted on the TV's feedback screen were in fact regulated by this miniaturized device. It simulated consumer feedback by modeling previously sampled data, increasing the rate and gain by front-mounted digital knobs.
The 'Buyer Al' device is highly prized for its technological properties--the last known computing tool to feature the now-defunct segmented memory architecture processor.
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This compact missionary to the outer regions of space still contains tapes from its last Venus mission, when it made an inexplicable detour from orbit and skipped along the planet's surface, resting here and there to let its cameras record the scene. The astrobot was the first of a new fleet of two-way communications satellites that not only relay recorded information but assemble and analyze its own. The tapes promise curious collectors intimate knowledge of the love planet's surface and magnificent pictures of the outer solar system. Through the gaseous haze around the planet, the system, including the Milky Way, appears to have been shot with a lurid pink filter. The photos are, in the words of one communications specialist, 'both beautiful and bizarre.'
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This is the first prototype of the early tailgate sensors, which became ubiquitous shortly after their introduction in 1997. Featuring the notorious 'Exhaust Flush,' this model triggered the emission of a massive cloud of exhaust from automobile tailpipes whenever the sensor detected another vehicle creeping within the programmed distance. A suit over its excessive emissions was taken to the Supreme Court and resulted in the sensor's ban from the marketplace. Felony charges against an 'exhaust operator,' namely the driver of the host automobile, swiftly followed. The taboo function of the sensors remained so popular, however, that a series of alternative 'punishments' for tailgaters appeared on later models. They included the deafening uni-directional Back-Off Siren, the blinding Too-Close Flash, and the bizarre, universally condemned Squid Soak, which emitted a liquid-smoke concoction that dissolved on impact. Tailgate sensors became obsolete with the introduction of forcefield safety buffers in 2007. With the World Body Automotive Safety Mandate of 2009, these buffers became standard equipment on all moving vehicles.
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Offlands initial model. Because no animal life could survive, the Offlands were populated with such mechanical creatures. This singing-only model was declared an educational hazard when it was found that the lack of an alimentary cycle confused young children on nature walks. Some psychologists also posited that the birds' impact on adults contributed to the rise of the Absolutist sect. The sect, of course, led to the decimation of the Offland colonies, due to the severely reduced sperm count the practitioners' unusual rituals provoked.
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This oddly configured bomb preceded the use of the clever scanners that effectively eliminated the terrorist threat to contemporary life. Cached in absorbent material resistant to accidental bumps and sudden changes in temper, it comes to auction fully armed. Government agents on the trail of an unhappy postal worker who had made a number of threats to his colleagues acquired it at a Des Moines supermall, when the disgruntled employee attempted to plant it in the mall's food court. Collectors are asked to proceed with caution and to keep admirers at a comfortable distance.
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This attractive can represents the first spray-on guard against harmful ultraviolet rays that burned through the thinning ozone layer near the end of the last century. It replaced suntan lotion as the favored method of protection against melanoma. Its sunny appearance and colorful design guaranteed no one would ever leave home without it. Unfortunately, it proved even more deleterious to the atmosphere and less effective for humans than previous agents. Untold thousands suffered uncomfortable burns and other skin ailments before improvements put it back on the market, in gel form, in 2001.
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After research in the early nineties established a genetic differentiation influencing homosexuality, the DownJim Company rushed development on this prototype pocket genetic decoder. Banned by the government from commercial release, it is the only existing, portable genetic decoding device tailored to report such gene configurations. Utilizing what was then new laser-driven sensing technology, the device was activated when placed against the subject's skin. If the subject possessed the gene sequence in question, the decoder beeped loudly. Commercial plans, however, called for a more discreet approach.
DownJim originally designed the PocketGen for sales to the military. It abandoned the project after 1996, when the Supreme Court outlawed discrimination based on genetic traits. The ruling led to the permanent withdrawal of an archaic ban on homosexuals in the U.S. military. DownJim then diverted its PocketGen development to psychological research, where gene sampling became, for a brief period around 2002, a heavily trafficked area in precognitive studies. The company later sold its patent to the Wellfleet Casino Group, which dissolved in 2004.
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These two spotted eggs contain undetermined embryonic animal tissue left over from the failed dinosaur cloning efforts of Jedi enterprises in the late nineties. Jedi scientists, in an endeavor to understand the evolution of life on earth, had attempted to recreate these early life forms and study them under natural conditions. Unfortunately, genetic material used in the experiments was later found to belong not to dinosaurs but buffalo common to southwestern America in an undetermined century.
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It took a lifetime to assemble this impressive collection of rare books, which once belonged to famed Virtual Life Studies scholar, Dr. Zoey Maudlin. Dr. Maudlin's work is fully archived in the library, which has remained intact since his unsolved murder in his study on the day of his 75th birthday. Dr. Maudlin's daughter, Mary Maudlin, discovered the body and put the collection up for sale when negotiations with the Innerweb Museum fell through. Ms. Maudlin was, of course, the first woman to bring a successful 'virtual' paternity suit against the estate of the late Senator Jacob Blabbits. Court papers show she claimed the dead senator impregnated her during a weekend stay at a 'virtual sex' amusement center.
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This unprepossessing cluster of stones may look like a UFO landing site but is actually the disassembled Martian monument retrieved by WASA 15 years ago. Still packed in its unidentified crate, the monument has remained hidden all this time in Hangar 22, the infamous Air Force storage facility in the Nevada salt flats. When a recent news article that questioned the monument's whereabouts proved embarrassing, Captain Yo Hossarian, a hero of the Shuttle Wars and the man in charge at Hangar 22, persuaded WASA administrators to put the monument up for auction. Sold as is.
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Missing for 32 years, the Hubble Space Telescope was recovered remarkably intact from an ice-floe half-buried in the excavation pit of a new supermall near Fairbanks, Alaska. The craft, launched by NASA in 1991, was lost when atmospheric tests of a Cuban-made 'Star Wars' space defense system knocked it out of orbit. Scientists theorize the telescope--really a highly sophisticated photographic space station, crashed into a glacier off the coast of Siberia. Global warming separated the floe from its greater mass and sent it coursing through the Bering Straits. Still fully functional, the telescope is provided with a lens cap manufactured by Whamo.
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The "Resin Goose" is the largest, and certainly the most cleverly designed, human-powered aircraft ever to take to the clouds. In a 1994 chapter of aviation history bizarrely reminiscent of billionaire Howard Hughes' dream to build the biggest airplane ever, Quadrillionare H. Boss Merloe financed the building of this incredible machine. Almost as big as the Hughes-designed Spruce Goose, this airplane was remarkable not only for its innovative light-weight construction, but for its total dependence on environmentally safe human power. Observers may well think its control room more like a gym than an engine compartment: it took a compliment of 86 professional bicyclists working in tandem within the belly of the beast to power a single 15-minute flight. After that, the power level dropped and so, unfortunately, did the plane. It came to a gentle landing in the Rose Garden of the White House, surprising Mr. and Mrs. President, then engaged in a tussle with their new dog on the lawn. The crew was invited to a joyful dinner, when the nameless pup was baptized 'Spruce.'
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Penn Jacobs (Cambridge, MA 1985-2002) was considered a pop art prodigy before his controversial suicide at age 17. This dazzling installation piece is a unique miniature golf course, each hole of which depicts an instance of genocide, war, or political repression. It is the most electrifying contribution Jacobs made to world culture during his brief but productive lifetime.
Hole 1: Murder of 3 Civil Rights Workers, Mississippi, 1964; Hole 2: Auschwitz, 1944;
Hole 3: The Marne, 1914; Hole 4: Firebombing of Dresden, 1945;
Hole 5: Genital Mutilation of Muslim women, 1990s; Hole 6: The Tet Offensive; 1967-68; Hole 7: Ethnic Cleansing of Bosnia, 1993-94; Hole 8: The Berlin Wall, 1961;
Hole 9: The My Lai Massacre, 1968; Hole 10: Soviet "Psychiatric" Ward, c.1966; Hole 11: Tiananmen Square, 1991; Hole 12: Strike-breaking: Penn. Steel Workers, 1933
Hole 13: Kristallnacht, 1933; Hole 14: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945
Hole 15: Turkish Purge of Armenia, 1920; Hole 16: Assassination of Steven Biko, 1977
Hole 17: Attempted Suppression of Dharmic Uprising, Tibet, 1999; Hole 18: Torching of the Ferris-Mott Homeless Camp, 2002
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This manuscript dates from medieval times and is attributed to the enigmatic Monk of Rouen. The manuscript's preface states, 'The music contained herein is to be played on the instruments of the spirit, and enjoyed in the celestial realms,' while the body of the text contains complete documentation for 'the migration of the eye and ear to the celestial realm,' along with techniques for 'the sounding of the celestial instruments.' Discovered in 1997, the manuscript has been the subject of intense scrutiny by musicologists, but their attempts to decode the score have proved futile to corporeal scrutiny. As the text indicates, 'the notes are palpable only to the eyes of the spirit body.' When sections were reproduced in Leonardo in 1999, the American composer Veille Kroller, claiming an ability to read the score, pronounced the work 'sublime.' She promised a transcription that would enable 'all in their right minds to see, corporeally.' However, her death the following year came before the work could be completed. The Kroller scores and notebooks are included in the manuscript's distinct leather casing.
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A cartoonist early in his career, Ronald Hernandez developed into a painter and portraitist of uncommon talent. Gifted with broad creative and intellectual powers, Hernandez exampled the re-emergence of the renaissance man in the late 20th century, a phenomenon that spawned a rich artistic flowering amidst the social and political chaos at the turn of the millennium.
In this portrait of rock legend Jim Morrison, the distance between artist and subject is breached. Many a young star has its light snuffed short; yet, in their time, stars such as these light up the firmament, burning brighter than all the rest. In a dark, cold world, such lights are held precious.
So lifelike is this portrait said to be that "to behold its stare, is as if to loosen death's grip over our dominion." In this lies the true value of Ronald Hernandez's work, for a man's life may end, but the truth remains, forever vigilant.
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Pictured here, a renovated sensory deprivation tank, remade into "Sensorium," the world's first semimobile VR Network uplink/downlink. Used in psycho-physiological experiments of the 1960's and 70's, Sensoria became wildly popular during the 'Overload Rave' and 'Inner Mosh' crazes of the late 90's, when noticeable abuses forced World Body health officials to pull them out of circulation. The combination of infectious, synthetic music known as 'technobop', and Sensorium's trance-inducing atmosphere intensified physical pleasure and incited subscribers to break through barriers of social restraint. At Airbus One, the period's most exclusive club, patrons went raving mad, filling the sensorium with water in an attempt to 'return to the natal sea,' where they drowned.
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In the waning days of the last millennium, when capitalist excess spawned many sectarian movements, the Order of Commerce grew to be one of the largest and most fanatic. Its philosophy was predicated on elevating money to the status of Deity. The Temple of Commerce was its most elaborate house of prayer, built at enormous expense on the former site of the Mall of America. Hundreds of thousands pledged their devotion to the 'Holy Merger of Money and Faith.' Dubbed by the tabloids as the 'Church of Cash,' the Order of Commerce at one point claimed millions of devotees world-wide. The sect collapsed swiftly with the integration of global economies under the World Body rubric.
The temple's interior features the sect's unique confessional booths, where devotees would sit on benches forged from hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of international coinage and gaze for hours at mylar-encased underwriting bonds.
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Pieter Breugel was the last and surely one of the greatest of the early Flemish artists. Nicknamed by later historians 'Breugel the Droll,' to distinguish him from other members of the artistic family he sired, he began his career under the influence of Hieronymous Bosch. Breugel favored a muted palette, as evidenced by "The Blind Leading the Blind," one of his most brilliantly composed late works. His haunting canvases, filled with lively anecdotal detail, depended on common proverbs or the gospels to draw sophisticated conclusions on the human condition. His subjects were often peasants laboring in domestic landscapes, exemplars of his affection for human folly and his appreciation of human dignity.
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Between the 1940s and 1960s, DeeVoxer jukeboxes--coin-operated record players dispensing a wide variety of popular tunes by push-button selection--were the kings of recreational music. They prefigured the 'live' disc jockeys of the decades to follow, men and women who performed individualized 'mixes' of recorded music for throngs of strobe-lighted dancers. Small table-top models that accessed a central floor model became a featured attraction of roadside diners. This DeeVoxer, once the focus of common social play in popular brothels, or 'juke joints,' is one of the earliest and most elegant models the company ever produced. It is distinguished by neon 'water bubble' lights--richly hued, gel-like blobs that float in gracefully arced, lighted tubes in time to the music it plays. It will be sold with the records its last owner left behind, pop tunes dating from the 1940s through the 1980s, when music video and home taping put jukeboxes on the entertainment sidelines.
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This primitive but enduring symbol of humiliation and bigotry was discovered during a recent World Body Housing Authority inspection of a warehouse near the port of New Orleans. Before Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, such auction blocks were the stage on which slave traders displayed their human wares to white plantation owners in the American south. The plantations produced such crops as tobacco and cotton, and were home to black slaves who had been uprooted from their African homes by white traders. Incredible as it may seem, at the time whites assumed themselves to be of a superior race. The block, made of an old tree stump and standing about 2 feet high, still shows signs of the shackles and chains that once imprisoned the slaves traded across its surface.
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This was the weapon Biff Kerblooey used in his 1994 clubbing of former figure skating champion, Suzy Flannigan, then a ten-year-old Wonder Girl. In the attack, one of the most notorious assault cases of the 20th century, Flannigan suffered serious bruises to her knee, but recovered in time to compete in the Nationals.
Kerblooey justified the attack as an innocent attempt to win the affections of Flannigan's chief competitor, 9-year-old Sonia Tardy. Tardy claimed interest only in skating but during the trial admitted she and Biff had been going steady for some time. Kerblooey was packed off to North Dakota's Batterman Home for Boys and Tardy was slapped with a huge fine and deemed ineligible for further competition. The unsporting skater was also relieved of her lucrative product endorsements, while Flannigan became the chief spokesgirl for Timex, Duracell, Dupont Kevlar, and Louisville Sluggers.
In recent years the bat has become the symbol of Oversensitives Anonymous (OSA), a global self-help network founded by the adult Tardy. Due to her efforts, the organization has remade the weapon's image into a sign of emotional integrity, awarding a small, keychain copy of the bat to members who abstain from throwing a tantrum for a period of 12 months. OSA encourages enrollees to pick up a bat during fits of uncontrollable jealousy or other emotional upset, and bang it repeatedly against a rubberized pole.
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In the wake of the great earthquake of '03 and subsequent tidal wave that destroyed much of San Francisco, only one arch of the Golden Gate bridge was left standing. The arduous reconstruction of the nearly lost city included the building of the quakeproof Garcia Tunnel. No longer necessary, the arch was designated to stand as a memorial to the '03 quake victims.
Funds from the sale of the arch will go to the region's Perpetual Relief Fund, as will a modest portion of all future revenues from tourist concessions at the site. Maintenance is the responsibility of the buyer. The arch may not be moved or taken down, in accordance with World Body mandate 416d-2.
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In 2010 AstroCruise daytrippers to the moon found a fossilized rock over one million years old. Embedded within the rock was the outline of a footprint of an unknown creature. Citizens of the earth were shocked by the implication that there was either indigenous life on the moon millions of year ago or that the moon was visited by intelligent life at some other point in the past. Scientists are still trying the explain it.
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In 1999 an unknown 16-year-old youth from the South Bronx borough of New York City wrote a paper that altered the course of Big Science in one quantum leap. In this disarming six-page study, the youth brings the four forces of nature -- gravitation, electro-magnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces -- together into one grand unified theory. Among members of the scientific establishment, who had made billion-dollar, government-sponsored experiments the order of the day, Reggie was both loathed and feared. Not long ago Reggie made news once again, when the president appointed him research chief of the World Body Institute of Physical Science. The kids in the neighborhood said Reggie was always a little different and kept to himself a lot.
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Legend had it that Lincoln wrote this famous speech in 1863, while on a 6-hour train ride from Washington to Gettysburg. However, no original text was ever found. Then one day, in 2008, Ginnie Gerhardt of St. Paul, MN went to her attic and opened an old trunk that she claimed once belonged to her great-grandmother. Inside she found a yellowed envelope, its back bearing an ink-scribbled message in tiny script: 'Four score and seven years ago....' Ginnie, who had a master's degree in American history, took the envelope to Dr. Paul Steuben, a tenured Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. Steuben verified the envelope's authenticity. Lincoln's short 2-1/2 minute speech was a watershed event in American history. It not only changed the course of the Civil War, but had an everlasting impact on the meaning and interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
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In 2009, noted musicologist Benno Gottfried discovered Beethoven's 10th symphony at a used-book fair in Heidelberg, Germany. Gottfried had been leafing through a folder of 19th century documents when he came upon the score. A knowledgeable man, he seized immediately on its importance, offering to pay 35 Deutschemarks for the entire folder. The symphony, which had never been performed, forecasts the structural dissonance that would become common to musical composition a century later.
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Continuing out-of-control population growth and its subsequent pressure on global ecosystems sounded the death knell for rain forests everywhere. In 2010 the last remaining rain forest in the world was enclosed in a sealed bubble environment. This 50-acre tract, located in Papua, New Guinea had been nearly overrun by alien flora and fauna brought to the island by the growing human population, a sizable portion of which carried strange new viruses or peculiar infirmities of the epidermis. It represents the successful last-ditch attempt to save this magnificent ecosystem for posterity. Other efforts to rescue rain forests on other continents had all resulted in failure; once an ecosystem shrinks beyond a certain size, its end is near. Examples are all around us. In 2005 the last rain forest in South America disappeared. In 2007, the rain forest disappeared from Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2009, that of the Indian sub-continent fell to extinction as well.
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In 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean as a passenger. In 1932, she made the trip herself, piloting her own plane. She disappeared during a solo flight over the Pacific in 1937 and, after an extensive search, was presumed dead. In 2005, however, this diary, written in the famed aviatrix's hand, was found on one of the Ru Moor Islands. Its discovery has evidenced the fact that Earhart actually lived a long and fruitful life among the natives of the Ru Moor, her Bali Hai. Although she had many chances to rejoin civilization after her crash landing, Earhart's diary makes it clear she preferred the idyllic life of her adopted home.
Amelia Earhart lived to the age of 92, and when she died in 1985, she left behind seven children, 21 grandchildren, and 15 great grandchildren. The diary was brought to the attention of the press by her survivors, who said their grandmother had requested they wait at least twenty years after her death before disclosing her amazing story. A facsimile copy of the diary, just published by Electron Press, recently hit the best-seller list at number two and promises to become a classic in the Robinson Crusoe mold.
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After a number of natural disasters destroyed much of what remained of the royal family's holdings, the British public, disillusioned by royal squabbles, sex scandals, and sorcery in the Exchequer, voted to abolish the monarchy at last. In 2003, ex-Queen Fergie, faced with massive back taxes, was compelled to put the precious crown jewels up for auction. A major tourist attraction for centuries, the crown jewels are the most astounding collection of royal regalia in the modern world. Though there is no proscription against wearing, loaning, or leasing select items on special occasions, the collection will be sold with the understanding that the buyer keep it intact and on public view, providing his or her own security measures.
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The Voyager was the first space probe to fly by and take photographs of the solar systems's outer planets and their moons. At mission's end, Voyager was sent hurtling out into deep space. On the off chance it might be intercepted by intelligent life sometime in the distant future, the craft was equipped with a laser disk containing essential data about the earth: its position in the solar system, its indigenous life forms, and certain cultural artifacts. Voyager's sudden move back toward earth, on the exact trajectory of its outbound flight, has astounded the scientific community. This turn of events has also become fodder for some especially 'probing' satire among late-night tv talk-show hosts. One of these droll entertainers recently reported that a friend inside WASA had seen a note on the craft reading, 'Please take my name off your mailing list.' The government is putting the spacecraft up for sale in advance of its recovery, with the proviso that it be able to keep the craft for at least a five-year term of scientific study.
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This enchanting collection of tin robots, rayguns, and dump trucks hails from the naive 1950s, when such toys were the delight of children the world over. Standing no more than a few inches high, each piece has been hand-painted by craftsmen and carefully fitted with moving parts attached with tiny lugs and screws. The collection comes to us from the New York City police department's properties division, where it sat for many years gathering dust after aggrandizing Mayor Billy Floodgate's millennial trial for embezzlement. Floodgate had been elected three years earlier, chiefly because he campaigned for a return to the simple life and charmed the great metropolis's citizens with his childlike features and unnerving sense of wonder at all things great and small.
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Originally fashioned out of old railroad dining cars, such roadside eateries as the one pictured here were set beside the road to feed hungry travelers who, after the Second World War, fell in love with the automobile and made them a fixture of American culture. The chrome-sided establishments were often open all night to accommodate long-distance travelers across the open expanse of midwestern states, and had a socializing influence among those who patronized them. By the 1950's, diners had become favored watering holes of that decade's equivalent to today's electronic mall rats. The diners' interiors featured waffled aluminum walls above gas or charcoal-driven grills, and long counters on which home-made baked goods were proudly displayed. Along the windows were vinyl-covered booths containing formica-topped tables on which diners would partake of unpretentious, hearty food and copious amounts of coffee at extremely reasonable prices. Unlike our more isolating experiences with impersonal food partaken quickly by straw, these establishments were 'mom-and-pop' businesses whose customers were made to feel like family. Short-order cooks developed a colorful shorthand speech to communicate with wait staffs: a tuna salad sandwich on toast became 'tuna, whisky down;' a breakfast of hotcakes was a 'stack;' and such dishes as calves' liver smothered in onions with mashed potatoes and gravy was referred to as a 'blue plate special,' while the burger deluxe--a ground beef patty served on a bun with French fries--became a fixture of the American diet.
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This terrifying tool of French executioners, popular in the 18th century, is the same one used to decapitate Marie Antoinette, the nation's unpopular and frivolous Queen. A spoiled, capricious, and extravagant woman, she was more devoted to the needs of her native Austria than to the French. After the bloody outbreak of the 1789 Revolution, she opposed any form of compromise with the rebels. Her unsympathetic response to complaints from the enraged populace was, 'Let them eat cake.' The people, indeed, would have their just desserts. In 1793, as crowds cheered, her bewigged head was placed in the stocks of this terrible machine, and cut from her neck in one fell swoop. The guillotine was named after the French physician, Joseph Guillotin, who first proposed its use. Collectors are warned not to lose their heads over its sale, as the blade--held in place by a badly frayed rope--is still razor-sharp.
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This incredible feature is but a detail of the Colossus that was built around 280 B.C. to stand at the entrance to the harbor of Rhodes. A huge bronze of the sun-god Apollo, or Helios, it was 120 feet high and considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Its nose is the only feature to have survived the centuries nearly intact .
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This magic sword, its handle encrusted with seven priceless jewels, represents the cutting edge of romantic reasoning. According to Sir Thomas Mallory's account of the King Arthur legend, 'Excalibur' means 'cut-steel.' The magisterial blade figured in the semi-historical king's life as the instrument that guaranteed his divine calling to lead the knights of the British Round Table to the Holy Grail, the substance of which no one has ever able to determine. In one version of the story, young Arthur, aided by the sorcerer, Merlin, miraculously pulled the sword from a stone after many stronger men had tried and failed, miserably. In another, Arthur was given the sword by the alluring Lady of the Lake. As he lay dying, Arthur instructed an aide to throw it back in the lake, where a hand slowly drew it under. The group of Celtic folk tales that inspired such stories later became the basis for many other narrative forms, including Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" and the popular 1960 Broadway musical, "Camelot."
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Air raid sirens such as this were common in industrial plants, shopping center parking lots, schools, and other public institutions following World War II, when Cold War tensions between the United States and the former Soviet Union created a high level of paranoia among Americans. At arbitrary times during the year, air raid drills were conducted during which students, workers, and residents were encouraged to 'duck and cover'--squat on the ground with their arms over their heads--to defend themselves against nuclear attack. Such drills became scarce toward the end of the decade, when civic leaders realized there was little individuals could do in the event of an atom bomb explosion. At that time, above-ground nuclear tests were common and the construction of backyard bomb shelters became the rage. By 1960, Cold War tensions were played out more often in the new 'space race,' when both Russia and the U.S. began sending spacecraft into orbit around the earth in a competition for control of the upper atmosphere and beyond.
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This shining example of the world unification efforts is the first result of the currency reform treaty signed in 2005. With a design conceived by a team of top graphic artists, winners of a World Body design trial, the coin celebrates government unification with marvelous clarity and compression. Minted in precious 24-karat gold to commemorate the signing of the treaty, it proudly speaks of the economic stability we have come to enjoy today. On its face we see the map of our politically engineered peace; on its back a firm handshake reminds us that people who pay together, stay together.
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In 1948, the United Nations drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: a bold and direct assertion of the principles that lead to political, civil, economic, social and cultural human rights, and an affirmation that all are born equal in dignity. Fifty years later, traveling across the Carpathian Mountains by yak, a young United Nations field officer was seized with a vision of a new world constitution underpinned by universal moral principles. This is the very copy of the Declaration that inspired that young man: Vassily Gregor, who went on to become the chief architect of the One World Constitution.
Replete with marginal notes, including the first sketches of the Principles of Social Commerce, this document comes to auction for the first time. It was recently uncovered in the excavation of the earthquake-ravaged California District Archives.
Gregor, of course, attained legendary status following his untimely demise in the earthquake, and the One World Constitution is forever linked in the public mind with his name. In fact, common language usage now features the verb, 'to gregor': to bind a social act to moral principles, such as, "She gregored the concert by linking it with donations to the Tibetan Relief Fund."
Several other well-known interests of Gregor are reflected in the marginal notes, including his love of anagrams and his habit of landscape sketching.
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This sculpture is cast from the shoes Eleanor Roosevelt was said to have worn during World War II, while serving in the Red Cross. The work of 20th century human rights education activist and artist Shulamith Koening, six copies were created in the 1990's: one for each continent, to be awarded to grass roots human rights education activists during the Decade of Human Rights, 1995-2005. This particular copy was awarded to Tning Trang, the founder of the South Asian Children's Education Fund, and the developer of the Intuitive Guidance model for teacher training. Proceeds from the sale will go to the Fund.
After the war, Roosevelt became the U.S. Representative to the U.N.Commission on Human Rights, and the Commission's Chair. She was one of the principal drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Here is a portion of her Message of Peace and Human Dignity, from 1958:
"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home ù so close and so small they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood; the school or college; the factory, farm or office. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."
