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SalmanToor
The painter who celebrates kitsch
Salma
Mahmud etches a portrait of the young artist from Pakistan, who
is making waves in his country as well as abroad
 The
agonised expression on the face of the Gorgon Medusa in the centre of
Perseus' mirror-shield as he prepares to cut off her head in Reubens'
Perseus and Andromeda is a foreshadowing of Salman Toor's
horror-struck faces in his varied portfolios. Witness his canvas, The
Useless Prince, recently exhibited at Lahore's innovative Rohtas II
Gallery. This face is reminiscent of his earlier ravaged countenance
of a young man, petrified and amazed, which, in turn, reminds the
viewer of Gustave Courbet's Self Portrait, The Desperate Man, with his
wide staring eyes and hands tearing at his hair.
Paradise Villas (Oil on canvas)
Antikythera
mechanism The world's first computer
Discovered in a shipwreck,
the Antikythera Mechanism exhibited in the National Archaelogical
Museum in Athens was a startling invention. The instrument could, on
any date, determine the exact position of the sun, the moon, the known
planets, their position in the constellations, and also the days left
for the next Olympic games
Siddhartha Wig
I
had chanced upon an interesting article, "Decoding the world's
first computer" a few months ago in a compilation of the best
science writing for the last year. There, among a series of serious
science writings, this had caught my fancy. What amazed me was the
uniqueness of the find, how it was discovered and the thrill of how it
was decoded.
Wake
up to A new dawn
As the world awaits the dawn
of 2012, Shobita Shivshankar lists some
popular sunrise global spots to welcome it
How
do you plan to say goodbye to 2011 and welcome the first rays of the
New Year? Maybe huddled in your blanket in front of the TV watching
the world celebrate; or partying with a small group of friends; or
chanting devotional mantras for prosperity; or just following your
daily routine wondering what’s so special about the first break of
dawn of the New Year?
Back
to the 1980s
Bollywood went retro with a
vengeance this year. The strategy yielded rich dividends as action
potboilers and a biopic about a southern seductress of yore raked in
big bucks, writes Saibal Chatterjee
The
Mumbai movie industry walked backwards in 2011. Retro was in. A slew
of releases sought inspiration in narrative formulations of the 1980s.
Bollywood’s boxoffice fortunes soared as several full-on action
potboilers raked in big bucks.
FRUIT FACTS
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