Artosphere

PARIS- Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, expressed her deep sadness at the death of Professor Ikuo Hirayama, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, on December 2, at the age of 79.
“UNESCO has lost a friend,” she said. “For more than 20 years, Professor Hirayama lent his tireless support to the Organization’s projects, especially in the fields of education, emergency relief and reconstruction. He was particularly concerned with making people aware of the value of cultural heritage as a basis for mutual understanding. He will be missed and remembered fondly by all at UNESCO.”
Professor Hirayama, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, became an eminent painter and public figure. Campaigning for the preservation and restoration of the world’s cultural heritage, he publicized the activities of what he called the “Red Cross Spirit for Cultural Heritage”. This movement aims to help people in conflict or extreme poverty with financial and technical aid for the preservation of their cultural heritage.
A UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador since 1989, Professor Hirayama promoted the preservation of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat temples, China's Mogao Caves, Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddhist monuments and North Korea’s Koguryo Mural Tombs. He also funded the Ikuo Hirayama Silk Road Fellowship Program, which awards fellowships to 100 young Silk Road researchers throughout the world.

The Wave 1870

French police raided the storage rooms of storied French auction house Drouot and swept through the homes of several employees on Wednesday after a missing painting by Gustave Courbet was discovered at the residence of one of the house’s employees, leading to the discovery of other missing paintings.
The painting that prompted the investigation, The Wave, was reported stolen in 2004. Valued at as much as £900,000 ($1.3 million), its disappearance led to the formal judicial inquiry, which launched Wednesday’s action.
In all, 12 people — including an auctioneer, eight commission agents, and three related family members — were detained over the course of the day, though police from the agency charged with combating art trafficking declined to provide further details, citing an ongoing investigation.

The hair of British woman Lindsay Hawker had been cut and her hands and feet were tied with ropes when police officers found her body buried in a sand-filled bathtub at murder suspect Tatsuya Ichihashi’s apartment in Chiba Prefecture in March 2007, investigative sources said Friday.
    Chiba prefectural police believe Ichihashi, 30, tied her up with synthetic resin ropes, which are sold at regular stores, before raping her and cutting her hair, and prepared the sand and the bathtub to conceal her body and foul odors in case of the body decomposing, according to the sources.
    Police discovered an empty bag for the sand for gardening, and cut-off hair, several tens of centimeters long, from a trash bin in his apartment when they found the body of the 22-year-old Hawker on the veranda, the sources said.
    Ichihashi was sent to prosecutors Friday from a detaining facility in Chiba Prison as he was served with a fresh arrest warrant on the charges of murder and rape Wednesday.
    He was initially kept at a police station but was transferred to the facility due to health concerns as he refused food for two weeks following his arrest.
    Ichihashi was arrested Nov 10 in Osaka after being on the run for 32 months on the charge of abandoning Hawker’s body at his apartment. He was indicted on the body-dumping charge on Wednesday.
    He has been eating since the transfer and has gained weight compared with when he was initially arrested, according to the investigative sources.

Ikuo Hirayama is pictured in front of his works at the Hirayama Ikuo Museum of Art. (Mainichi)

Ikuo Hirayama is pictured in this Dec. 18, 2008 file photo. (Mainichi)

Painter Ikuo Hirayama died of stroke at a hospital in Tokyo early Wednesday, it's been learned. He was 79 years old.

Hirayama, an Order of Culture recipient and multi-award winning painter, was best known for his Silk Road-themed works.

However, Hirayama used to refer to his birthplace, Ikuchi Island in the Hiroshima Prefecture city of Onomichi, as the starting point of his career. At his lectures and in his literary works, Hirayama often talked about the island's abundant nature and warm residents, thanking his hometown for raising him.

His gratitude for the island grew even more when the Hirayama Ikuo Museum of Art was established there in April 1997. It was built by the town of Setoda -- later merged into Onomichi -- to revitalize the area. The museum, whose curator is Hirayama's 67-year-old brother Sukenari, boasts a collection of some 2,200 works by Hirayama, including 1,800 drawings from his childhood and 100 watercolor paintings.

Ikuchi Island is located roughly in the middle of the Setouchi Shimanami Kaido expressway that opened in May 1999, which connects Onomichi and the Ehime Prefecture city of Imabari, going through several islands.

Hirayama spent nearly a year producing the masterpiece titled "Shimanami Kaido Gojusan Tsugi" from April 1998, depicting islands and bridges along the expressway and expressing his love for his hometown.

In 2005, Hirayama unveiled a 1.83-meter-long and 3.62-meter-wide pair of screen paintings portraying modern Kyoto, titled "Rakuchu Rakugai-zu," for which he had sketched from a helicopter.

On his visit to Ikuchi Island in April in the same year to display the work there, Hirayama said, "I was going to portray Kyoto some day while depicting the Silk Road and Nara. I painted Kyoto's 1,000 years through modern eyes."

The Ilulissat glacier in Greenland produces around 20 billion tonnes worth of ice bergs each year, making it the most productive glacier in the northern hemisphere. In this video we take a short trip trhough the Ilulissat Icefjord and on to nearby Red Bay.

the planet is getting warmer, you don't need to a scientist to know that!

Shoplifting caused retail stores in Tokyo an estimated 67 billion yen in losses in 2007, far more than the official figure as many shoplifting cases avoid detection, the police said Wednesday.

    The Metropolitan Police Department totaled the value of missing products at retailers and subtracted the sums involved in cases of shop workers’ embezzlement or calculation errors. The 67 billion yen figure was 130 times the average annual total of 500 million yen in losses reported to the police, it said.

    The police held a meeting on shoplifting prevention together with roughly 30 business organizations of bookstores, drugstores, department stores and other retailers the same day and gave guidance on store layouts to prevent shoplifting and asked stores to report all shoplifting cases to the police.

    ‘‘We have to get rid of the sense of ‘mere shoplifting’ and have the entire society work on preventing it,’’ said Toshiro Yonemura, superintendent general of the MPD, at the meeting.

The Immigration guideline requiring foreign nationals to be registered with government health insurance in order to have their visas renewed is to be withdrawn and sent back to the drawing board. A few weeks ago the Kobe City Assembly sent an official communique to the national government. This, as well as an overwhelming backlash from the foreign   community, certain lawmakers, as well as organizations like the Free   Choice Foundation led to the outcome.

Free Choice has been leading   the campaign to get the guideline withdrawn. Kaj Schwermer, Co- Chairman of the Foundation and Coordinator of ETJ in Osaka, reported   to the ETJ discussion list that 'Although not quite the end of the   road, as the guideline will most likely be re-written at some point,   this is a significant step forward for all of us concerned about human   rights and freedom of choice here in Japan and I would like to thank   all of those who had the courage to stand up and make their voices   heard. I’d also like to thank all the people who came forward with   suggestions on how to improve our message and gave constructive   criticism. The response to our little campaign has been overwhelming.   For all the naysayers out there who believed we were tilting at   windmills from the outset, I have three words for you: YES WE CAN!'    Free Choice is now considering tackling other problems and issues   facing foreigners living in Japan.

For more information, please see this page.

Marco Schuler’s solo exhibition at Häusler Contemporary Zürich is the first exhibition of a new series of solo presentations of young international artists who exhibit for the first time in Switzerland. New Position I, the inaugural exhibition, presents sculptures and videos by the German artist.

Marco Schuler’s work revolves around notions of physical strain and testing one’s physical limitations. Marco Schuler’s videos resemble experimental setups. The intensity of the artist’s efforts and his expressive gestures are reminiscent of rituals. In his sculptures, the artist’s body is often substituted with figurative elements.

Marco Schuler was born in 1972 in Bühl / Baden. He lives and works in Munich.

Marco Schuler: Zauberberg. Sculptures and Videos. Häusler Contemporary Zürich, opening reception, November 19, 2009.

David Hockney gifted Bigger Trees near Warter 2007 to Tate in 2008. The oil painting, his largest ever, was made on fifty canvas panels and was executed outside, en plein air. Measuring 4.6 x 12.2 metres (15 x 40 feet), its subject is a typical Yorkshire landscape, west of Bridlington. The work was first exhibited in 2007 at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. David Hockney also presented Tate with two digital photographic renderings of the painting on paper sheets in the same dimensions as the oil.

Focusing on the arrival of spring before trees have come into leaf, Bigger Trees near Warter features two copses, a mighty sycamore tree, buildings and a road curving to the left flanked by early flowering daffodils.

Hockney’s ambition to paint such a large-scale canvas posed a problem as it was impossible for him to step back and view the whole work. He began by making drawings and used these to locate where each canvas would fit in the composition. From these a computer-mosaic of the picture was generated enabling him to step back, albeit in a virtual space. Hockney was then able to take the individual canvas panels to the site and thus create his enormous work over a six-week period.

David Hockney said: ‘My picture is adaptable. You can split it in two and show one or both halves, or even a quarter of it. Or show the painting with two full-scale reproductions that would almost make a cloister.’

Commenting on the gift, Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate said: ‘Standing before David Hockney’s Bigger Trees near Warter, the viewer is overwhelmed by the beauty of the winter trees and the energy of the Yorkshire landscape. In this work he has deftly joined together the tradition of painting en plein air with digital technology on a monumental scale.’

Australia’s venomous redback spiders are on the march in Japan, where they are believed to have arrived years ago as stowaways on cargo ships, a wildlife expert warned Wednesday. The spiders, named after their fiery markings, have infested the Osaka region and are drawing closer to Tokyo, said Japan Wildlife Research Centre official Toshio Kishimoto.

A dozen people have reportedly been bitten in Osaka Prefecture alone, media reports say, including a six-year-old boy who was treated with antivenom in June, the first time the medication had been used in the country.

“Their poison is strong and they are particularly dangerous to people in weak physical condition, like children and the elderly,” Kishimoto said.

“Redbacks are becoming a common species in Japan. They are very numerous, especially in the western region, and are now often sighted in residential areas. Once the spiders spread, it’s hard to eliminate them.”

Redback bites, which inject a potent neurotoxin, have caused numerous deaths in Australia, although an antivenom stocked in hospitals has prevented fatalities more recently.

Redbacks were first spotted in Japan in 1995, around Osaka, a major port where, experts believe, they may have arrived in a container of Australian woodchips used to make paper in Japan.

Several years ago, a major redback infestation was found in the street drainage system of the city, and the arachnids have now spread to prefectures covering roughly a third of the country.

Kishimoto said Japanese people must become more aware of the dangers of redbacks, a species long feared in Australia, where the creatures are known to lurk in garden sheds, in shoes left outdoors, and under toilet seats.

“People need to be warned on how to treat them, and to be careful when they’re out cleaning ditches, and to wear thick cotton gloves for example,” said Kishimoto.

Tokyo police plan to arrest four teenagers from U.S. military families living in Japan on suspicion of attempted murder, Kyodo news agency reported on Wednesday, as tensions simmered over U.S. bases in Japan.

The four, aged 15-18, are suspected of involvement in an incident in August in which a Japanese woman riding a motorcycle ran into a rope stretched across a road in Tokyo near Yokota Air Base and fractured her skull, Kyodo said, citing investigative sources.

Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department declined to comment on the case.

Mitsuru Takahashi, who is in charge of media relations at the public affairs office of Yokota Air Base, said the four have not been arrested and they have not been identified as suspects.

"The U.S. military has heard from the Metropolitan Police Department that such an incident had taken place... We hope that the victim will recover as soon as possible," Takahashi said.

The alliance between the two countries has been jolted before by military accidents and crimes, including the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl by U.S. soldiers based in Okinawa that prompted huge anti-base protests.

Japanese police have also questioned a U.S. soldier about a fatal hit-and-run accident on the southern island of Okinawa.

Under an agreement between the two governments, U.S. forces based in Japan are not obliged to hand over personnel suspected of a crime outside the base unless they are charged, though they have sometimes done so in serious criminal cases.

LONDON—Damien Hirst's new oil paintings may have been critically panned at the Wallace Collection earlier this fall, but if a new exhibition opening today at White Cube is any indication, the bad press hasn't hurt him at all.

According to Tim Marlow, exhibitions director at White Cube, five of the seven largest works in "Nothing Matters" sold even before the show opened, with the most expensive of the lot going for £9.5 million ($15.7 million). Prices begin at £235,000.

On display are a series of large-scale triptychs on which Hirst paints totemic objects (skeletons, ashtrays, medicine capsules, sharks’ maws) one by one and then links them together with a prismatic networks of lines to create a composition.

The White Cube show runs through Jan. 20, 2010.

Studs Terkel, as everybody know, was a man of the people, a champion of the working class, whose every great book, such as his classic bestseller Working, was composed of interviews with the man and woman of the street, which must be why … the FBI kept him under surveillance?

Sad but true, according to a report from the New York City News Service. Apparently, he was that old bugaboo: a “suspected communist” and so the FBI kept him under watch for 45 years.

A Freedom of Information Act request has resulted in the release of those files, which are available via the New York City News Service story, or at least, 147 of the 269 pages contained in the file. (The agency “said many of the documents should remain sealed because of privacy and other reasons,” according to the news story.) The “paper trail spans 1945 to 1990 -– covering everything from Terkel’s McCarthy-era blacklisting to his involvement with Paul Robeson and third-party presidential candidate Henry Wallace to a birthday party toast he once made,” says the report.

Terkel, who died last year at age 96, apparently knew he was being watched, says New Press publisher Andre Schiffrin, Terkel’s publisher and friend, in an Associated Press wire story. Schiffrin says Terkel was “very proud” of the file.

Final irony: the file reveals that Terkel had actually applied for a job at the FBI in 1934 as a “student fingerprint classifier.”

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• About 200,000 animals, including male water buffalo, goats and roosters will be slaughtered over two days
• Animals are sacrificed to the goddess Gadhimai in thanks for wishes granted
• Government officials say they cannot stop the centuries-old tradition, despite opposition
• Animal-rights activists says they don't expect the practice to end overnight but change is needed

Kathmandu, Nepal (CNN) -- The two-day ritual slaughter of tens of thousands of animals -- among the world's largest sacrifice of animals -- began Tuesday in southern Nepal, officials said.

About 200,000 animals, including male water buffalo, goats and roosters will be slaughtered, despite protests from animal rights activists, according to the chief priest of the festival.

People from Nepal and India sacrifice animals to the goddess Gadhimai in the Bara district, about 150 kilometers (about one mile) south of Kathmandu, in thanks for wishes granted.

"This is a divine power center," Mangal Chaudhary, the head priest of the Gadhimai temple, said by phone. "When people wish for a son, a job, good health or anything else come true, they make an offering to the Gadhimai goddess."

He expects more than 5 million people -- 60 percent from India, which shares an open border with Nepal -- to attend the festival.

About 15,000 male water buffalo will be slaughtered, up from 12,000 five years ago, said Chaudhary, who is the 10th generation of his family to serve as chief priest.

Water buffalo are slaughtered on the first day, and other animals on the second day.

via edition.cnn.com

WARNING: Video contains scenes of animal slaughter.

A Chinese court on Monday sentenced to three years in prison a veteran dissident who had criticized the government's response to a 2008 earthquake that killed about 90,000 people.

Huang Qi was convicted of illegally possessing state secrets by the Wuhou district court in the western city of Chengdu, his wife Zeng Li said by telephone.

Zeng said no details were given about the charge, an ill-defined accusation often used by Communist leaders to clamp down on dissent and imprison activists.

Huang was detained on June 10, 2008, after posting articles on his Web site criticizing the government's response to the massive May 2008 earthquake that struck Sichuan province, killing about 90,000 people. Huang had also spoken to foreign media outlets about parent's criticisms that their children had been crushed in badly built schools, complaints the government has attempted to squelch.

Zeng said Huang was taken directly from the court on Monday without being allowed to speak, but added she believed he would appeal the sentence.

Calls to the court and Huang's lawyer, Mo Shaoping, rang unanswered.

Huang has already served a five-year prison sentence on subversion charges linked to politically sensitive articles posted on his Web site.

Since his release in 2005, Huang had supported a wide range of causes, including aiding families of those killed in the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing and publicizing the complaints of farmers involved in land disputes with authorities.

Sarah Palin continues her stranglehold on American media, every celebrity has a scent, Ben tells us what he thinks about 'New Moon,' Sergio rocks out, and Brett examines online eating habits.

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