Oleksandr Hubarev artwork

- Ukranian art 

Wave and Sunray by Oleksandr Hubarev, 1963

Wave and Sunray by Oleksandr Hubarev, 1963

Bride and Bridesmaids by Oleksandr Hubarev, 1966

Carpathian Fairy Tale by Oleksandr Hubarev, 1964

Hutsuls by Oleksandr Hubarev, 1971

Hidden Van Gogh self-portrait discovered behind earlier painting

The Egg by Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. 

“What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. 

“Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. 

“Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

"Material" by Wojciech Siudmak

Milo Manara's Fast & Illustrated Humankind History Updated [HD]

Maurilio Manara most known as Milo Manara is an Italian comic book writer. There is always some sort of polemic with his work, the way he portraits sexuality and women.

"History of Humankind" is the most viewed WarchildPost post since 2011. More than 240k views. An excellent piece merging erotism, war, culture with all Manara talent on a breathtaking timeline. The evolution of man, with our animalistic instinct, vulnerability, anger, curiosity, lust, passion - this is so human! 

So here it is a version with more resolution - and a bonus updated panel in the end.

[The HD Version was deleted by Blogger servers somehow]

By Milo Manara

Follow up a placeholder (better view bellow):

Super Realistic Doll Faces

 Olga Kamenetskaya "wipes off" dolls makeup from mass produced dolls to replace with a super realistic face.

Van Gogh & Japan

Van Gogh fell under the spell of Japanese printmaking in Paris, where he quickly purchased over 600 prints from a dealer. He hung them in his studio, so he could gradually absorb the influence of these colourful works. More than 100 Japanese prints from his collection are on view in the exhibition.

Exhibition Van Gogh & Japan

 

Ma’agalim - Jane Bordeaux

How Words Help Us to Feel Things

Directed, illustrated & animated by Antonio Vicentini
Written & narrated by Alain de Botton

DESCENT

"In 1562, Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder completed a painting called "The Triumph Of Death". In this panoramic landscape the sky is blotted out by black smoke; ships and dead fish litter the ocean shore; and an army of skeletons experiment with myriad death techniques. The living are badly outnumbered and the variety of fated tortures seems endless. There is little room for whimsy in this tableaux.

Over 200 years earlier, a nasty plague, commonly known as "The Black Death", left a cruel and massive mark on European civilization, wiping out half of Europe’s total population. This was a quiet pervasion of death - an invisible pathogen carried by herds of tired rats. This plague triggered a series of social and economic upheavals with profound effects on the history of medieval Europe, guiding its survivors into the sort of self-inflicted darkness pictured by the Elder Bruegel.

Looking back at this historical trajectory, Peter Burr, Mark Fingerhut, and Forma have created a spiraling interdimensional narrative aptly titled DESCENT - a meditation on one of humanity’s blackest hours. Taking the form of a desktop application, descent.exe gives the user a brief glimpse of a world descending into darkness - an unrelenting plague indifferent to the struggles of the user.

There is a silver lining, however, tucked into the software’s final sweep. An equanimous watcher, reduced to a single eye, looks on as the plague of rats that has infested your desktop destroys itself.
This video is a recording of descent.exe running alongside Fingerhut's deepdesktop.exe."



Visuals: Peter Burr
Programming: Mark Fingerhut
Music: Forma - Descent (from Physicalist, Kranky 2016)

Dannyboy

Wax Models of Food in Japan

Excerpt from 'Tokyo-Ga' by Wim Wenders

The View From Famous Landscapes

Photographer Oliver Curtis with his clever collection "Volte-face". A four year endeavour focusing the opposite direction of famous places.

Taj Mahal, India

Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro

Wailing Wall, Jerusalem

Lenin’s Tomb, Russia

Mao Mausoleum, Tiananmen Square

Mona Lisa, Louvre

Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan

Stonehenge

Great Wall of China

‘Arbeit macht frei’ Gates, Auschwitz

White House, Washington D.C.

Colosseum, Rome

Statue of Liberty, New York

[artist: Oliver Curtis]

[Jim McKenzie] The Scarecrow

Nintendo Super Famicom 3DS [Design & Box]

This is the Super Famicom, the Japanese Super Nintendo (Super NES):

And this is the box it came in:

This is the Nintendo 3DS, the GameBoy of this generation:

And this is the Nintendo 3DS with the Super Famicom's skin:

And this is the box it came in ♥:

♥♥♥♥Nintendo♥♥♥♥

Yu Yu Hakusho by Wizyakuza

[Wizyakuza]

Adventure Chrono (Trigger Time)