Giorgio de Chirico - the Anguish of Departure 1914

Cat and dog chess - photo play from Worth1000 (out of action from user-overload when I looked just now, but they say it'll be up and running soon). The site runs a whole series of photomontage competitions by theme.

Joost Swarte - Dutch cartoonist & graphic designer.

Edwared Wadsworth - The Beached Margin, 1937

Time for a bit of Trumpton. Ah sweet nostalgia. Not that I ever lived in Trumpton - never been there as far as I know. And if I did I'd probably only be allowed to shake and nod my head!

Juan Gris - Portrait of Josette, 1916

Victor Vasarely, 1978. A fine piece of Op Art.

Luc Ferrari

Another obituary in the world of electronic music - the composer Luc Ferrari died on August 22nd. Considering my interest in this area of music, I shamefully know little about him, but now my appetite has been whetted by reading about him on Wikipedia, from which this quote:

Ferrari's Presque rien No. 1 "Le Lever du jour au bord de la mer" (1970) is regarded as a classic of its kind. In it, Ferrari takes a day-long recording of environmental sounds at a Yugoslavian beach and, through editing, makes a piece that lasts just twenty-one minutes. It has been seen as an affirmation of John Cage's idea that music is always going on all around us, and if only we were to stop to listen to it, we would realise this.

This is an LP cover design I think.

Surreal giraffe photomontage by Grete Stern.

Robert Moog

Marking the passing of the electronic music pioneer Robert Moog, the inventor of the Moog synthesizer, who died at the age of 71 on 21st August. Great page of info and resources on Wikipedia, also obit on BBC news.

Degas - Edmond Duranty, 1879

Eric Ravilious - Train Landscape

From amongst the curiosities on Miqel.com

Peter Lanyon - "Built Up Coast" 1960

Dickens timeline, from David Perdue's Charles Dickens page.

My favourite Dickens? It's also my favourite novel read so far - "Great Expectations". Not the most typical - tighter, less rambling, virtually no caricatures. "Bleak House" runs a close second - it is rambling in the best sort of way, and is stuffed full of caricatures.

This book looks fun. It's a Tate Gallery book from 1973. For some reason I love cartoons about Modern Art, and there's some lovely ones in here.

A fieldmouse in its micro-home pre-fab tennis ball. Photo from Home & Country magazine. My mum has been sharing the living room with a woodmouse recently, but it seems to have moved out now. It eeked out an existence on some leftover hazlenuts from last Christmas.

Miro: Solar Bird (1969)

Kettle of Fish Back on the Boil

This blog is officially not moribund (for now).

(Different) Kettle of Fish is a great joyous slice of serendipity - random(ish) images and words from on and off the Internet. Emphasis on painting, drawing, sculpture, computer art, illustration, and artistic or curious photography. But also dipping into the Scrapbook of Serendipity on such subjects as:

Sherlock Holmes, telephones, surreal fish, chess, Alice, lighthouses, musical instruments, chocolate, frosty nature, rockets, robots, labyrinths, bicycles, vegetables, castles, giraffes, and Brighton.

The Picture of Everything, by Howard Hallis