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2005

December

Frederic Edwin Church, Twilight in the Wilderness (1860), Cleveland Museum of Art

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2006

January

A sand castle is a type of sand sculpture which resembles a miniature building, often (but not always) a castle. The two basic building ingredients, sand and water, are available in abundance on a sandy beach. A variant on the sand castle is the drip castle, made by mixing extra water in with the sand, and dripping this wet sand from a fist held above. When the slurry of sand and water lands on existing sand structures, the water is rapidly wicked away leaving the blob of sand in place. The effect is Gaudi-esque. Although sand castles are typically made by children, simply for the fun of making them, sand sculpture is also a form of art. Sand art can be large and/or complex, such as the sophisticated mandala in Buddhist art. Ice and snow are also utilised for art in the form of ice sculptures and snow sculptures.

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February

In Egyptian mythology, 'Tawaret' (also spelt Taurt, Tuat, Taueret, Tuart, Ta-weret, Taweret, and Taueret, and in Greek, Thoeris and Toeris) was originally the demon-wife of Apep, the original god of evil. Since Apep was viewed as residing below the horizon, and only present at night, evil during the day was envisaged as being a result of Tawaret's maleficence. As the counterpart of Apep, who was always below the horizon, Tawaret was seen as being the northern sky, the constellation roughly covering the area of present-day Draco, which always lies above the horizon. Thus Tawaret was known as mistress of the horizon, and was depicted as such on the ceiling of the tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings. In art, Tawaret was depicted as a composite of all the things the Egyptians feared, the major part of her being hippopotamus, since this is what the constellation most resembled, with the arms and legs of a lioness, and with the back of a crocodile.

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March

Wojciech Kossak (Paris, France, December 31, 1857 – July 29, 1942, Kraków, Poland) was a Polish painter and member of the celebrated Kossak family of painters and writers. Wojciech Kossak's work was very different in subject matter and style from Jan Matejko's; Kossak belonged to a later generation of artists. Like Matejko, however, he is known for paintings depicting the history of Polish arms and notable battles of Central and Eastern Europe. One of his works depicts the oath taken by Polish national hero, Tadeusz Kościuszko, in the Kościuszko Uprising against Imperial Russia in 1794.

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April

Stained glass today generally refers to glass that has been coloured by added metallic salts during its manufacture. It is an art and a craft that requires the artistic skill to conceive of the design and the engineering skills necessary to assemble the piece. Early stained glass artists were limited to a very few primary colours, but today almost any colour can be produced. Begun in Eastern Asia and among Muslim designers, the art of stained glass reached its height in the Middle Ages, particularly 1150-1250. In the nineteenth century, Romanticism and the Gothic revival caused renewed interest in stained glass. Important contributions to the art were made by William Morris (English, 1834-1898), Edward Burne-Jones (English, 1833-1898), John La Farge (American, 1835-1910) and Louis Comfort Tiffany (American, 1848-1933).

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May

Henry Moore was a British sculptor. The son of a mining engineer, Moore became well known for his large-scale abstract cast bronze and carved marble sculptures. Substantially supported by the British art establishment, Moore helped to introduce a particular form of modernism into the United Kingdom. His signature form is a pierced reclining figure, first influenced by a Toltec-Maya sculpture known as "Chac Mool", which he had seen as a plaster cast in Paris in 1925..

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June

The Panthéon is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris, France. It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve, but after many vicissitudes now combines liturgical functions with its role as a famous burial place. It is an early example of Neoclassicism, with a façade modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, surmounted by a small dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's "Tempietto". Located in the Ve arrondissement on the top of Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, the Panthéon looks out over all of Paris.

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July

The music of the Nakhi (or Naxi) people of China has a 500 year history, and with its mixture of literary lyrics, poetic topics, and musical styles from the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, it has developed its own unique style and traits. Taoist in origin, and fused with some indigenous elements, Dongjing music was introduced to the Nakhi from the central plains during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Today it is the most well-preserved musical form in China.

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August

The Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, California is the seventh hall of the Los Angeles Music Center, serving (among other purposes) as the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The Frank Gehry-designed building, an example of Deconstructivism, opened on October 23, 2003 and features his trademark plastic cladding. While the architecture (as with other Gehry works) evoked mixed opinions, the acoustics of the concert hall were widely booed in contrast to its predecessor, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

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September

Another Place is a piece of modern sculpture by Antony Gormley. Currently erected on Crosby Beach, Liverpool, England, it will be moved to New York, United States in November 2006. The sculpture consists of 100 cast iron figures which face out to sea, spread over a 2 mile (3.2 km) stretch of the beach. Each figure is 189 cm tall (nearly 6 feet 2½ inches) and weighs around 650 kg (over 1400 lb).

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October

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 – 1881) was considered one of the greatest Russian writers, whose works have had a profound and lasting effect on twentieth-century fiction. His works often feature characters living in poor conditions with disparate and extreme states of mind, and exhibit both an uncanny grasp of human psychology as well as penetrating analyses of the political, social and spiritual states of Russia of his time. Many of his best-known works are prophetic precursors to modern-day thoughts. He is sometimes considered to be a founder of existentialism, most frequently for Notes from Underground, which has been described by Walter Kaufmann as "the best overture for existentialism ever written."

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November

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December

Angel of the North is a modern sculpture created by Antony Gormley, which was erected in Gateshead, England.

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2007

January

Thomas More, by Hans Holbein the Younger.

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February

In Russian folk tales, Baba Yaga can supply Ivan the Fool or Tsarevich with a flying carpet or some other magical gifts like a ball that rolls in front of the hero showing him the way or a towel that can turn into bridge. Such gifts help the hero to find his way "beyond Thrice-Nine Lands, in the Thrice-Ten Kingdom".

In 1880, the rich industrialist Savva Mamontov commissioned Viktor Vasnetsov to illustrate the folk tale about Tsarevich Ivan and Firebird. The painting represents Ivan returning home after capturing the Firebird, which he keeps in a cage. Ivan is riding the flying carpet in the early morning mist. This work was Vasnetsov's first attempt at illustrating Russian folk tales and inaugurated a famous series of paintings on the themes drawn from Russian folklore. When exhibited at the 8th exhibition of the Peredvizhniki, the painting was panned by leading critics as a commercially motivated betrayal of realism and return to the aesthetics of Romanticism. On the other hand, it was enthusiastically received by the Slavophile artists from the Abramtsevo art colony.

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March

The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist, by Leonardo da Vinci.

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April

Computer generated image as digital art. The image was created using POV-Ray 3.6. The glasses, ashtray, and pitcher were modeled with Rhinoceros 3D and the dice with Cinema 4D.
Created by Gilles Tran and rendered by Deadcode

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