In November 2008 googling for Chagall lithographs, produced 153,000 hits and dozens of of offers, all for more or less the same price. — Because of the crisis, this market has died down.

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Next, a search for fraud Chagall lithograph produced 13,000 hits with  dozens of people complaining that they had bought a lemon. The signature was a fake. The print was worthless. — But this business has died down. The same search got  some 3000 hits  in May 2009, but only 950 in November 2009.

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The problem is that you need a microscope to tell an original lithograph from a computerized imitation, and so the difference between the real work and a fake has become purely conceptual, the same in painting as it has been for ages in sculpture* * *.

***In sculpture and also in architecture and dressmaking, the “original” often exists only on paper as a design or in clay as a model. What can be bought and sold is therefore mostly a “copy”.

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It is probably true that Dalí signed some twenty thousand  sheets of white paper which he sold to his business friends to be printed and peddled later. If the signature is authentic, so is the work; or isn’t it?

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Besides, what if it were “hand-signed”, not by the artist, but by the guy who runs the shop ?

“It’s a very new kind of case for us,” said Tina Shim, deputy city attorney in Los Angeles on efforts to prosecute misdemeanor art offenses. “The art market is relatively unregulated. A lot of low-level fraud goes on.”

In other words, it is very hard to do anything about it.

..The first thumbnail is of a Chagall’s “David escaping”; the second one is Dali’s “Woman at the window”; and the third one is Miró’s “Gold feathered lizard”.

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18th century

Kant is considered the basis of Protestant self-reliance.

He established that philosophy cannot resolve the ultimate mysteries about God, the soul and man’s nature, but offers a way to deal with bogus knowledge. His “Critique” is a truly great thing, but impossible to read except in bits and pieces.

Quote :

– Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of the imagination.

— Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or a lighthouse

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19th century, first half:

Schopenhauer is considered the origin of Romantic nihilism.

He said that our intellect is not sovereign, but is the puppet of deeper whims and wishes. His “Aphorisms” are more fun than philosophy, but easy reading. He truly hated women all his life.

Quote :

— Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

– Compassion is the basis of morality.

– Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt an  affair of the head.

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19th century

Karl Marx, at present still most famous of all. He taught that your thoughts reflect the class that you belong to.

Quotes :

– The ruling ideas of each age have always been the ideas of its ruling class.

– Greek philosophy seems to have met with something that a good tragedy is not supposed to meet with, namely a dull ending.

– The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

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19th century, second half

Nietzsche taught that religion is hypocrisy : God is dead and therefore the “superior human” has to take over to save culture from the spread of nihilism. That “superior human” is not defined by race, but by willpower.

Quote :

Is man simply God’s mistake? Or is God a mistake of man’s?

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There are two dogs sitting on a porch. One dog is fat and one is thin. The fat dog has big round ears, and the thin dog has small pointed ears. The fat dog is of the peaceful kind, and the thin dog spends all his time barking and growling. The thin dog is the son of the fat dog, but the fat dog is not the thin dog’s father, and yet both are relatives of the dog in the picture.

How can this be ?

Solution here ↓

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The farsighted sailors

There are two sailors standing on opposite sides of the ship, one starboard and the other port.  One is looking  west and the other east, and yet they see each other very well.

How is that possible?

Solution here ↓

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The photos are from WordPress blog  http://davidlevine.wordpress.com
The second photo is from the post about Oliver getting a haircut. and means  he is getting ready to resist the barbers with all his might.

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Off topic
Added  November 7, 2009

For my blog I prefer small pictures that can be enlarged, but when I made this photo small, the cat looked as if it had both its eyes open and was watching the viewer. His name is Hunter. — Notice his paws looking like  two fluffy white pompoms neatly placed, one on each side of his face.

First published  February 17, 2009

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Shadowfax became famous as the horse of Gandalf in the War of the Ring. The photos are from http://www.lordoftherings.net/

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Secretariat is considered the best dirt horse ever, and

John Henry the best turf horse. These horses are so specialized that a horse does not race both on grass and on dirt.

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Man O’War is remembered as the best race horse of all times, the winner in all his races except one. The photo is from 1929.

He set three track records, two American records, and three world records in his racing career.  The photo is from
http://www.horsesensations.com/

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Bucephalos was afraid of his own shadow and considered useless.

At the time Alexander was only 12 years old. He wanted that beautiful horse for himself.

He took hold of his bridle and turned him towards the sun. He walked beside him and talked to him while never allowing their shadows to get ahead of them. Finally he lightly put his own jacket on its back. When he saw that the horse accepted the jacket, he jumped on.

Bucephalos accompanied Alexander in his campaigns all the way from Europe to India. The photo is from  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexander_Sarcophagus.jpg

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Hamlet of Bavaria, Germany, is known to photographers for his dream world  elegance.

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Don Quixote made his horse fit for battle by giving him a new name : Rocinante means “formerly an old horse” : rocín antes.

By changing its name, Don Quixote expected to change the way people saw and remembered his horse. This is how the Quixote became the precursor and patron of the advertising industry.

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The Trojan Horse :

There was a war and according to legend the Greeks built a gigantic horse and left it to the Trojans as a good-bye present.

As the story is old, it is no longer quite believable. Mostly the explanation for the stratagem is that the best Greek soldiers were hiding in the belly of the horse. Some also say that the Trojans had to pull down part of their city wall to take that horse into their city, and that left them defenseless.

At any rate, once the Greeks were inside Troy  they killed everything within reach and destroyed the city.

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And then there is that horse that became proverbial when it was not there.

King Richard III was leading his people in battle when he saw himself surrounded by enemies and his horse was wounded and fell. The king shouted :

A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

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Pegasus was the winged horse and difficult to control.

The hero Bellerophon  was sleeping in the temple and the goddess Athena came and gave him a golden bridle.

When Pegasus saw that bridle in Bellerophon’s hands, he came over and asked to wear it.

Bellerophon was probably the son of Poseidon, the powerful ruler of the Sea.

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Horse racing is dangerous, comparable in risk to sky diving and considerably more risky than hang gliding.

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May I introduce you to Her Majesty Elizabeth, the Queen of England ?

She owns horses, but no photos could be found on Google, and so I took this one which is also really nice. (I had never seen her without one of those hats.)

Her horses must be the most beautiful on Earth, since they rarely win at the races, which is a very good sign, because by now there is artifice and cruelty in horse racing, just as there is in other sports.

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The Spanish Riding School established during the Austrian Empire in 1572 in Vienna where the horses dance in a palace.

The two photos are from  http://special.equisearch.com/blog/horsehealth/labels/Spanish%20Riding%20School.html

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The anonymous horse of General Martinez Campos modelled in clay and cast in bronze by Belliure. It is in the Madrid Retiro park.

The fall photo is from Wikipedia. It is in public domain — and the author is given as “Daderot” without further details.

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First published in Otober 2008
Added November 6, 2009

I did find photos of two of the Queen’s horses:  Whitton Poppy, the mom, and Sandringham Sailor II, her foal:

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