ART DECO


Art Deco was the most glamorous and popular style of the twentieth century (from 1920 until 1939, between the two World Wars, it was, without a doubt, a period marked with many contrasts...)

The term Art Deco was derived from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, an exhibition celebrated in Paris in 1925. So it was a movement originated in Europe in 1925 and quickly became popular over the world.

This movement was influenced, basically, by industrial machinery. It's interesting to know that many of the Art Deco designers rejected traditional materials for their work and they decided to work with unusual materials like ebony, marble and rare and expensive wood (different types of materials and precious metals too)

Art Deco was in many different areas like architecture, furniture, industrial desing, decorative arts, fashion, painting and jewellery. It was an important break with traditional styles, a real reaction to the flowing lines of Art Nouveau and, obviously, it became fastly a popular style (but be careful, although Art Deco was "very popular" it was not easily accessible because it was and it is now very expensive...)

Art Deco represented the fast modernization of the world and offered elegant environments. Maybe you ask and want to know how you can distinguish this style from other ones: it’s very easy because you can detect many examples of Art Deco when you see the influence of Far and Middle Eastern design, Greek, Roman, Egypt (of course, Ancient Egypt, like Tutankhamen's tomb, that it was discovered in 1922), Mayan or Precolumbian even Oriental art influence.

Definitely, as you can see, there are important and typical modern elements in this style. In fact, Art Deco was influenced by the modern art movements of Cubism, Futurism, and Constructivism; however, this movement took also some ideas from the ancient geometrical design styles. Art Deco were simpler than Art Noveau (actually we can say that Art Deco is an extension of the French Art Noveau)

In some ways Art Deco was Abstract Art that fastly spread in the society and, of couse, took its place in all aspects of life.

When I think of Art Deco, I think of a loft of lines and nice colours and designs with geometric and clean lines, a really cool sophistication....

If you want to see wonderful pictures of this style, I recommend to you visit theses pages:

http://www.decopix.com/
http://www.fins-de-siecles.com/index.php?lang=en&unit=inch&cat=1
http://www.artdecoworld.com/store01.htm
http://www.artdeco.org/about.html
http://jahsonic.com/ArtDecoFashion.html

I hope you enjoy and see you!

BECOMING HUMAN

Dr. Donald Johanson is one of the best known paleoanthropologist and he shows us this interesting documentary about our origins and the human evolution. His discovery in 1974 of Lucy at Hadar, in Etiopía, an ancient fossil dating back some three million years, is a controversial change in our view of human origins. Lucy is, obviously, the most significant fossil in the world.

Fossils are the remains or imprimints of dead organisms, are the only physical evidence that we posses of ancient life and our planet. Fossils can tell us a lot about the past but are rare and difficult to find.

Fossilization is a chemical process in wich minerals replace the life form’s original cell and it can only take under the most specific circumtances. Although major fossils sites are often uncovered accidentally by miners and amateurs cave explorers, researches also use remote sensing and satellite images to get an overview of the terrain.

It’s interesting to know that a paleontological excavation is a very careful process because the location of an object is as important as the object itself… archaelogists need to know objects and their origin, the place where it was found and its association (everything found nearly is very important indeed)

Humans are members of the biological order primates. It’s a diverse group that includes prosimians, monkeys, apes and humans. Although they are very different from each other, all primates share many important similarities that make us, as a group, different from other animals. For example: big brains. Primates and particularly humans have extremely large brains compared to their body size. Humans, like many primates, have to learn complex survival and social skills (that means complex social rules and language) and of course, our brains are organized in a different way than brains of other animals, our brains are, definitely highly developed.

Another difficult question for me is the next: Can animals use language? In fact, can animals have language? A few species demonstrate parts of language capability and many experiments show that monkeys can count and understand some concepts like “more” and “less” and even apes can combine symbols with coherent meaning and express thoughts and emotions (of course, they can’t speak as humans do!) In this documentary we can also meet Koko, a nice female gorilla that has a vocabulary of over 1,000 words of American sign language. It’s incredible....

Another interesting point is the difference between religion and science. Science does not invoke supernatural forces to explain natural phenomena. But it doesn’t mean that science and religion are independent, many scientists are religious too... But scientists want to ask how we humans got here and what is our relationship to other animals. And people who have a religious creed ask why are here and what meaning our liffe have and, maybe what is the right kind of life to lead... I think, that in fact, it doesn’t matter what religion or science will to know... because finally we all want to know the same and find answers to this kind of questions.... independently than who is asking, don't we?

See you!