Portal:The arts

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The arts

The arts or creative arts are a vast range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling, and cultural participation. The arts encompass diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing, and being in an extensive range of media. Both dynamic and a characteristically constant feature of human life have developed into stylized and intricate forms. This is achieved through sustained and deliberate study, training, or theorizing within a particular tradition, generations, and even between civilizations. The arts are a vehicle through which human beings cultivate distinct social, cultural, and individual identities while transmitting values, impressions, judgements, ideas, visions, spiritual meanings, patterns of life, and experiences across time and space. (Full article...)

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The pyramid of Unas (Egyptian: Nfr swt Wnjs "Beautiful are the places of Unas") is a smooth-sided pyramid built in the 24th century BC for the Egyptian pharaoh Unas, the ninth and final king of the Fifth Dynasty. It is the smallest Old Kingdom pyramid, but significant due to the discovery of Pyramid Texts, spells for the king's afterlife incised into the walls of its subterranean chambers. Inscribed for the first time in Unas's pyramid, the tradition of funerary texts carried on in the pyramids of subsequent rulers, through to the end of the Old Kingdom, and into the Middle Kingdom through the Coffin Texts that form the basis of the Book of the Dead. (Full article...)
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Dress from Pantheon ad Lucem, shoes from Natural Dis-tinction Un-natural Selection (Spring/Summer 2009); presented at the exhibition Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse (2023 staging)

Pantheon ad Lucem (Autumn/Winter 2004) is the twenty-fourth collection by British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. Inspired by ideas of rebirth, ancient Greek garments and science fiction films including 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Star Wars (1977), the collection focused on sleek draped, wrapped, or tied jersey designs in light and neutral colours, with some evening wear in darker colours. Contrasting the slimline items were heavier garments including tweed suits and fur coats. McQueen expressed his fascination with altering the silhouette, emphasising the hips to a degree that was uncommon for him. (Full article...)
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Control is the third studio album by American singer Janet Jackson, released on February 4, 1986, by A&M Records. Her collaborations with the songwriters and record producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis resulted in an unconventional sound: a fusion of rhythm and blues, rap vocals, funk, disco, and synthesized percussion that established Jackson, Jam and Lewis as the leading innovators of contemporary R&B. The distinctive triplet swing beat utilized on the record is also considered to be a precursor to the new jack swing genre. The album became Jackson's commercial breakthrough and enabled her to transition into the popular music market, with Control becoming one of the foremost albums of the 1980s and contemporary music. (Full article...)
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Stefani in October 2016

Gwen Renée Stefani Shelton (/stəˈfɑːni/ stə-FAH-nee; born October 3, 1969) is an American singer-songwriter and fashion designer. She is a co-founder, lead vocalist, and the primary songwriter of the band No Doubt, whose singles include "Just a Girl", "Spiderwebs", and "Don't Speak", from their 1995 breakthrough studio album Tragic Kingdom, as well as "Hey Baby" and "It's My Life" from later albums. (Full article...)
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Charles Holden, 1946

Charles Henry Holden (12 May 1875 – 1 May 1960) was an English architect best known for designing many London Underground stations during the 1920s and 1930s, the Underground Electric Railways Company of London's headquarters at 55 Broadway, for the University of London's Senate House and for Bristol Central Library. He created many war cemeteries in Belgium and northern France for the Imperial War Graves Commission. (Full article...)
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Slay Tracks: 1933–1969 (usually referred to as Slay Tracks) is the debut EP by American indie rock band Pavement. Pavement—at that time, a duo of just its two founding members Stephen Malkmus (guitar, vocals) and Scott Kannberg (guitar)—recorded Slay Tracks with producer and future member Gary Young (drums) during a four-hour session. Pavement self-released the EP as a 7" vinyl record on the band's own record label Treble Kicker in 1989. The music of Slay Tracks was influenced by indie and punk rock bands such as Swell Maps and The Fall, and many of the lyrics were inspired by life in the band's hometown of Stockton, California. (Full article...)
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Norwich War Memorial (also known as Norwich City War Memorial or Norwich Cenotaph) is a First World War memorial in Norwich in Eastern England. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the last of his eight cenotaphs to be erected in England. Before Lutyens' involvement, several abandoned proposals had been made for commemorating Norwich's war dead, and by 1926 the newly elected lord mayor was determined to see the construction of a memorial before he left office. He established an appeal to raise funds for local hospitals in memory of the dead as well as a physical monument. He commissioned Lutyens, who designed an empty tomb (cenotaph) atop a low screen wall from which protrudes a Stone of Remembrance. Bronze flambeaux at either end can burn gas to emit a flame. Lutyens also designed a roll of honour, on which the names of the city's dead are listed, which was installed in Norwich Castle in 1931. (Full article...)
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Dreamsnake is a 1978 science fiction novel by American writer Vonda N. McIntyre. It is an expansion of her 1973 novelette "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand", for which she won her first Nebula Award in 1974. The story is set on Earth after a nuclear holocaust. The central character, Snake, is a healer who uses genetically modified serpents to cure sickness—one snake is an alien "dreamsnake", whose venom gives dying people pleasant dreams. The novel follows Snake as she seeks to replace her dreamsnake after its death. (Full article...)
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Sonic X (Japanese: ソニックX, Hepburn: Sonikku Ekkusu) is a Japanese anime television series based on Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog video game series. Produced by TMS Entertainment under partnership with Sega and Sonic Team, and directed by Hajime Kamegaki, Sonic X initially ran for 52 episodes, broadcasting on TV Tokyo from April 2003 to March 2004. A further 26 episodes aired in North America, Europe, and the Middle East from 2005 to 2006. The American localization and broadcasting were handled by 4Kids Entertainment, which edited it and created new music. (Full article...)
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Titian's depiction, painted 1520–23, of Bacchus's arrival on Naxos. This scene forms the climax of the opera.

L'Arianna (SV 291, Ariadne) is the lost second opera by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. One of the earliest operas in general, it was composed in 1607–1608 and first performed on 28 May 1608, as part of the musical festivities for a royal wedding at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua. All the music is lost apart from the extended recitative known as "Lamento d'Arianna" ("Ariadne's Lament"). The libretto, which survives complete, was written in eight scenes by Ottavio Rinuccini, who used Ovid's Heroides and other classical sources to relate the story of Ariadne's abandonment by Theseus on the island of Naxos and her subsequent elevation as bride to the god Bacchus. (Full article...)
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James Russell Lowell, c. 1855

James Russell Lowell (/ˈloʊəl/; February 22, 1819 – August 12, 1891) was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the fireside poets, a group of New England writers who were among the first American poets that rivaled the popularity of British poets. These writers usually used conventional forms and meters in their poetry, making them suitable for families entertaining at their fireside. (Full article...)
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Léal Souvenir, oil on oak, 33.3 cm × 18.9 cm. National Gallery, London

Léal Souvenir (also known as Timotheus or Portrait of a Man) is a small oil-on-oak panel portrait by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, dated 1432. The sitter has not been identified, but his highly individual features suggest a historical person rather than the hypothetical ideal usual at the time in northern Renaissance portraiture; his slight and unassuming torso is contrasted with a sophisticated facial expression. His features have been described as "plain and rustic", yet thoughtful and inward-looking. The sitter was apparently significant enough a member of the Burgundian duke Philip the Good's circle that his court painter portrayed him. (Full article...)
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The church's west façade, facing
the market place

St Denys' Church is a medieval Anglican parish church in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, England. While a church and a priest have probably been present in the settlement since approximately 1086, the oldest parts of the present building are the tower and spire, which date to the late 12th and early 13th centuries; the stone broach spire is one of the earliest examples of its kind in England. The Decorated Gothic nave, aisles and north transept were built in the 14th century. The church was altered in the 19th century: the north aisle was rebuilt by the local builders Kirk and Parry in 1853 and the tower and spire were largely rebuilt in 1884 after being struck by lightning. St Denys' remains an active parish church. (Full article...)
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The seventeenth season of the American medical drama television series Grey's Anatomy was ordered in May 2019, by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), as part of a double renewal with the sixteenth season. Shortly after, Krista Vernoff signed an agreement to continue serving as the showrunner of the series. Filming on the series began in September 2020 while the season did not premiere until November 12, 2020, both dates being delayed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, for the 2020–2021 broadcast television season. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on television only allowed seventeen episodes to be produced, the fewest of any season since the fourth season. Numerous safety protocols were also implemented across various areas of production to prevent COVID-19 transmission. (Full article...)
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Zappa performing at Ekeberghallen in Oslo, Norway, in 1977

Frank Vincent Zappa (/ˈzæpə/ ZAP-ə; December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he also produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. His work is characterized by nonconformity, improvisation sound experimentation, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation. (Full article...)