Chess games of the rich and famous. Max Ernst, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas.
“The King Playing With the Queen,” Max Ernst, 1944 (cast 1954). Collection of Raymond and Patsy Nasher, Nasher Sculpture Museum, Dallas.
Pattern on the wall is created by the unique louvers in the ceiling, designed to let in natural light, but avoid direct sunlight which might damage the art.
The Nasher describes the work:
Like many of Ernst’s sculptures from this period, The King Playing with the Queen features an assemblage of diverse forms cast from containers and household objects. In a playful allution to the Surrealist love for the game of chess, a large, horned king rises out of a flat, tabletop arrangement of elements resembling a game board. He is at once the only player and one of the game pieces. This witty evocation of gamesmanship also intones darker themes of sexual manipulation and dominance. The king reaches out to grasp and move the much smaller queen, and at the same time, deceptively conceals another piece behind his back.
Close up of the Ernst work, showing other pieces on the board, and one piece the king conceals behind his back.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
It’s sort of a game: Which four people should be ensconced in much larger-than-life stone sculptures on the side of a mountain (preferably an ugly mountain that is not sacred to any First Nation, but I digress)?
Found a puzzle slanted toward a Rushmore of science, featuring Einstein, Curie, Newton and Darwin.
Puzzle created by Discover, honoring four greats of science.
Mount Bluesmore, in the old Legends venue: Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, and Howlin’ Wolf.
Heck, this could be a great game: Name four people in any profession, art, field of endeavor, who should be featured on a Mount Rushmore-style monument. Above we’ve got science and Chicago blues. On the real Mount Rushmore, we’ve got the Rushmore of U.S. Presidents.
The real Rushmore, in South Dakota. It features Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln, left to right. National Park Service image.
What other monuments could we have? Painting? Picasso and Rembrandt . . . but there are so many.
Renaissance painting. Abstract painting. Landscapes, portrait painters. Architects. Rock musicians. Classical musicians. Baseball. Football. American football. Fiction authors. Engineers. Women scientists. Tuskegee airmen (that would be tough; every one of them deserve it).
Who do you nominate, for what field? Put nominations in comments. Include pictures if you find one.
Others have played this game:
Rushmore of Disastrous Presidents, featuring Trump, Hoover, George W. Bush, and Richard Nixon. By Dan Adel for Vanity Fair magazine.
Adel’s original, in 2007, featured Warren G. Harding in place of Trump.
Vanity Fair’s Disastrous Presidents Rushmore, in 2007, by artist Dan Adel, adding Warren G. Harding, before Trump.
A ghost Rushmore, featuring Native American leaders:
Four Native Americans posed as alternatives for Rushmore. (Challenge: Can you accurately identify the four? Please do.)
A classical music proposal (would you choose differently?)”
Left to right, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. Gagambo, at Deviant Art.
Sioux tribes have undertaken a drive to respond to what many consider a desecration of their sacred lands, with a massive monument to Crazy Horse, still being carved, and incredibly impressive (if you visit, spend a lot of time at the museum):
President Millard Fillmore, as displayed at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, Washington, D.C.; photo from About.com
Ever on the lookout for images of Millard Fillmore, I found this photo at About.com. This is the “wax” sculpture of Fillmore displayed at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum – D.C.
Looked at a lot of statues and busts in the past year. One of the things that intrigues me is the way people interact with sculpture, particularly the ways and places people touch sculpture.
At Mount Vernon, Americans have a fondness for George Washington’s nose:
Avard Fairbanks‘ very large bust of George Washington invites touching by visitors at the Mount Vernon Visitors Center; people touch his nose. Photo by Ed Darrell; use allowed with attribution, some rights reserved.
Other copies of the bust exist around the country, by Utah sculptor Avard Fairbanks. If I’m correct on the provenance, this one was placed at Salt Lake International Airport for the nation’s bicentennial, then was obtained by George Washington University (one of my alma maters, by the way), and was loaned by GWU to the Ladies of Mount Vernon. (No wonder the thing looked so familiar to me . . . it’s been following me around for years. I wonder when it gets to Texas, or upstate New York.)
Bust of George Washington on the campus of George Washington University — same one? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It’s fun to watch people who stop to look at the bust. Almost inevitably they look a bit awed by it. Then, if they take a minute, they look it up and down, and put out their hand to touch George’s nose.
Almost as if they consider George Washington a good luck charm, and a touch of his nose might rub some luck off onto them. It’s rubbing the nose shiny, an interesting way Americans pay tribute to our first president.
Oh, sure, it’s on the web more as advertising for Konica/Minolta. But it’s still cool.
So-called “Venus de Milo” (Aphrodite from Melos), detail of the upper block: join surface of the right upper arm, with mortise; attachment holes, which probably bore a metal armlet; strut hole above the navel, now covered with plaster. Parian marble, ca. 130-100 BC? Found in Melos in 1820. Wikimedia image
If your school district is nipple intolerant, don’t send your kids there. If you have AP World History, your kids might benefit from seeing Konica/Minolta’s comments and study — you can check it all out in less than ten minutes.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
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Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 