Author: James

The Minotaur is a mythical creature usually described as having a man’s body, and the head and tail of a bull. In the Ancient Greek and Roman stories, the Minotaur lived in the middle of a giant maze called The Labyrinth and was killed by the hero Theseus.

Minotaur Facts

• In Greek mythology, the word Minotaur was a proper noun. The word Minotaur was the name of one individual. In recent times, the word is often used in novels and TV shows to describe a species or race of bull-headed creatures.
• According to Ancient Greek mythology, the Minotaur was the offspring of Pasiphae (Minos of Crete’s wife) and a white bull. As the Minotaur grew, it became violent and dangerous, and it lived off human flesh.
• Minos instructed the mastercraftsman Daedalus to build the Labyrinth to house the Minotaur. It was located near his palace in Knossos.
• Although the Minotaur is commonly shown with the head of a bull on a man’s body, other depictions exist of the creature with a man’s head on a bull’s body.
• In the Theseus myth, Theseus (a prince from Athens) volunteered to enter the Labyrinth and kill the Minotaur. Aided by Ariadne (Mino’s daughter), Theseus used a ball of thread to mark his route through the maze, and he killed the Minotaur with his bare hands (or a club, or a sword depending on which version you read).
• Although ruins of a palace have been discovered at Knossos in Crete, no evidence of the Labyrinth has yet been unearthed.
• The Minotaur makes an appearance in Dante’s Inferno. Virgil distracts the beast by taunting him with details from the Theseus myth.
• Albert Skira’s 1930s literary magazine was named Minotaure. Over the years, the magazine featured covers by famous artists such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, and Max Ernst.
• In the short story The House of Asterion, Jorge Luis Borges tells the Minotaur story from the beast’s perspective.
• Minotaurs featured in the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game developed by Gary Gygax.
• The Minotaur appears in the 2018 Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey videogame, the Hades videogame from 2020, Total War Saga: Troy, Heroes of Might and Magic, 2002’s Age of Mythology, Kings’s Quest VI, Teros, and in Miitopia.
• There are numerous movies featuring the Minotaur (or characters based on the Minotaur) including, Time Bandits (1981), Dave Made a Maze (2017), Your Highness (2008), and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1976).
• Master Minotaur, introduced in Fortnite’s Chapter 2: Season 2, is an Epic Outfit (and costs 1500 V-Bucks).
• The Minotaur is a minor character in the 2005 Rick Riordan novel Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Theif.
• Minotaurs appear in the Dragonlance books by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weiss. The Minotaur Empire is located to the east of the continent of Ansalon.
• In 2018, a French company called La Machine created a kinetic sculpture of a minotaur. It was more than 15 metres tall, and it marched through the streets of Toulouse in France. It is now located in Halle De La Machine in Toulouse.
• A statue of Theseus and the Minotaur made by Antonio Canova in the 1780s is on display in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
• In Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, there is a statue called The Hare and the Minotaur. It is located on The Promenade and it was designed by the artist Sophie Ryder. It is made of reclaimed scrap metal.
• A statue of the Minotaur by Michael Ayton is located on the terrace outside the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. It was originally designed for a private estate and found its way to this location after several moves.
• David Gemmell’s fantasy book Dark Prince features a character based on the Minotaur.
• Minotaurs feature in the Blood Bowl board game. Some of their star players included Mad Bull Chainspleen, Udder Destruction, Bellow Thunderslam, and Grashnak Blackhoof.

Here are ten quotes from Marcus Rashford, the Manchester United and England footballer, and a campaigner against child hunger and racism.

Food poverty is contributing to social unrest. Add school closures, redundancies, and furloughs into the equation and we have an issue that could negatively impact generations to come. It all starts with stability around access to food.

Marcus Rashford (September, 2020)

Education is only effective when children can engage in learning. Right now, a generation who have already been penalised during this pandemic with lack of access to educational resources are now back in school struggling to concentrate due to worry and the sound of their rumbling stomachs.

Marcus Rashford (October, 2020)

#endchildpoverty is not about children going hungry during the school holidays, this is about children going hungry full-stop. Let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture here. There are at least 1.5 million school children we are not reaching with the free school meal scheme.

Marcus Rashford (October, 2020)

I don’t have the education of a politician, many on Twitter have made that clear today, but I have a social education having lived through this and having spent time with the families and children most affected. These children matter. And as long as they don’t have a voice they will have mine.

Marcus Rashford

Of course I am happy to play in any of the attacking roles, but for me, where I can score the most goals is down the middle.

Marcus Rashford on his best position on the football pitch.

I want to score more goals; the main ambition is goals.

Marcus Rashford

What families are going through now, I’ve once had to go through that, and it’s very difficult to find a way out. It’s very important for me to help people who are struggling. Whether the outcome changes or doesn’t change. That’s why I wrote it.

Marcus Rashford on writing an open letter to the UK government.

I learn something new every game. Every game is always different, no matter how you try and think about it beforehand.

Marcus Rashford

For me, sometimes it’s more important to perform well in training and know that I am improving rather than scoring in a game. It’s doing the hard work, day in, day out.

Marcus Rashford

Emotionally, making my debut has been the highlight so far. I didn’t know I was starting until three minutes before. I went in and put my shirt on, and the team were already in the tunnel.

Marcus Rashford on making his Manchester United debut in 2016 at the age of 18

Vivienne Westwood was a fashion designer from England. She was best known for shaping the fashion of London’s punk movement in the 1970s.

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Vivienne Westwood Facts

• Vivienne Westwood was born Vivienne Isabel Swire in 1941 in Tintwistle in Cheshire, England.
• She took a course in jewellery-making and silversmithing at the University of Westminster but quit after just one term. Instead, she trained as a primary school teacher and made jewellery in her free time, selling it from a stall on London’s Portobello Road.
• Vivienne Westwood met Derek Westwood in 1962, and they got married the same year. She designed and made her own wedding dress.
• The marriage of Vivienne and Derek Westwood ended when Vivienne met Malcolm McClaren. Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood lived together in Balham, London, and they collaborated to produce pieces of clothing.
• In the 1970s, Vivienne Westwood co-managed a shop with Malcolm McClaren that became a hub for the London punk scene. The Sex Pistols band, managed by Malcolm McClaren wore clothes designed by Vivienne Westwood and McClaren, and Vivienne Westwood is often credited as being one of the key architects of punk style.

Vivienne and Malcolm use clothes to shock, irritate and provoke a reaction but also to inspire change. Mohair jumpers, knitted on big needles, so loosely that you can see all the way through them, T-shirts slashed and written on by hand, seams and labels on the outside, showing the construction of the piece; these attitudes are reflected in the music we make. It’s OK to not be perfect, to show the workings of your life and your mind in your songs and your clothes

Viv Albertine

• The first Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McClaren fashion collection to be shown to the media was called Pirate, and they went on to collaborate on other collections, including Savages (1981), Punkature (1982), and World’s End (1984).
• In the late-1980s, Vivienne Westwood combined the Victorian crinoline (a stiff petticoat designed to hold a skirt away from the body) and the miniskirt, creating the mini-crini.
• In 2007, Vivienne Westwood designed the academic gowns for London’s King’s College.
• She also designed uniforms for Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic cabin crew.
• Vivienne Westwood designed for numerous big-name clients over the years, including Dita Von Teese (wedding dress), Marion Cotillard (dress for film premiere), Princess Eugenie (dresses for the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton), and Pharrell Williams (Buffalo hat).
• In the video game Final Fantasy XV one of the characters, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, is shown wearing a wedding dress designed by Vivienne Westwood.
• In the 2008 Sex and the City movie, one of the main characters, Carrie Bradshaw, wears a Vivienne Westwood wedding dress.
• Although she was at times a supporter of both Britain’s Labour Party and the Conservative Party, in 2015 she supported the Green Party of England and Wales.
• In 2017, she endorsed Jeremy Corbyn’s bid to become Prime Minister at the UK general election. He was unsuccessful.
• She supported many different campaigns, charities, and causes over the years, including PETA, climate change awareness, the Trillion Fund (clean energy), Liberty, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
• In 2008 Vivienne Westwood published the Vivienne Westwood Opus 2008 book at London Fashion Week. It featured 97 large-format Polaroid photographs. The subjects include Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Sarah Ferguson, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sir Bob Geldof.
• Vivienne Westwood was awarded the OBE in 1992, and the DBE in 2006 for services to fashion.
• She was included in the updated version of Peter Blake‘s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Beatles album cover.
• In 2012, one of Vivienne Westwood’s tartan outfits appeared on a Royal Mail postage stamp to celebrate Great British Fashion.
• She is a vegetarian.
• She moved into a house in Clapham, London, once owned by Captain James Cook’s mother.
• Vivienne Westwood was twice named British Designer of the Year.
• The Richest website estimates that Vivienne Westwood had a net worth of more than £150 million.
• In recent years, many celebrities have worn clothes and accessories designed by Vivienne Westwood, including Dua Lipa, Hailey Bieber, Rita Ora, Gigi Hadid, Elle Fanning, Miley Cyrus, and Kristen Stewart.
• Vivienne Westwood died on 29th December 2022. She was 81.
• Following her death, celebrities such as the designer Marc Jacobs, the actress Kim Catrall, the supermodel Claudia Schiffer, and former Spice Girl, Victoria Beckham.

Kurt Schwitters was a German artist. Although he produced works of poetry, painting, sculpture, and graphic design, he is best known for his works of collage.

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Facts About Kurt Schwitters

• Kurt Schwitters was born in 1887 in Hannover, Germany.
• In 1901, as a teenager, he experienced his first epileptic fit.
• He studied art at the Dresden Academy, and then he began a career as an artist, initially as a post-impressionist.
• His work became more expressionist as World War I progressed.
• Although Kurt Schwitters was conscripted into the 73rd Hanoverian Regiment in 1917, he was exempted due to his epilepsy. During World War I, he worked as a draftsman in a factory.
• The style of work he produced changed dramatically in the years following the end of World War I.
• Kurt Schwitters produced his first abstract collages in 1919. He called these works Merz (after text appearing on one of the paper fragments).
• In his collages, Kurt Schwitters included fragments of found objects, personal items (such as tickets, and items given to him by friends), and pieces of newspaper.

I could see no reason why used tram tickets, bits of driftwood, buttons and old junk from attics and rubbish heaps should not serve well as materials for paintings; they suited the purpose just as well as factory-made paints.

Kurt Schwitters

• From 1923 to 1937, he worked on an ambitious 3-D construction at his Hanover studio. It started out as a single column, but soon expanded to fill his enitr working and living space with a series of angular pillars, caves, and grottoes. He called this work Merzbau.
• From 1937-1948, Kurt Schwitters and his son fled Germany for Norway to avoid being arrested by the Gestapo. his wife remained in Germany to manage their four properties.
• When the Nazi’s invaded Norway in 1940, Kurt Schwitters moved to Leith in Scotland before being relocated to Hutchinson Camp in Douglas in the Isle of Man.
• During his internement, Kurt Schwitters produced more than 200 works of art.
• He was released from the internment camp in 1941, and he moved to London.
• In London, he was in contact with the artists Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
• During this period of his career, Kurt Schwitters started to incorporate more natural elements into his work, including pebbles, and sea-worn pottery.
• In 1944, Kurt Schwitters suffered a stroke, and he learned that his wife had died of cancer in Germany.

• He moved to the Lake District in 1947, and he died in 1948 on the day after he had received the news that he had been granted British citizenship. He was sixty years old.
• The artists Damien Hirst, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Eduardo Paolozzi, Ed Ruscha, and Al Hansen, have all said that Kurt Schwitters has influenced their work.
• In 2014, one of Kurt Schwitters’ 1920s works, Ja-Was?-Bild (an abstract composition combining paper, cardboard, fabric, wood, and nails), sold at auction for just under £14 million.

Photorealism is an art genre in which the artist attempts to recreate a photographed image in another medium. The work is incredibly detailed and faithful to the source image. As a result, works of photorealism often feel cool and emotionless, as the artist is trying to achieve a perfect copy of what was seen through the camera’s lens, free from emotion or artistic style.

The term Photorealism was first used by Louis L Meisel (an American gallery owner and art dealer) in 1969 to describe artists who gathered information with cameras and photographs and produced work that appeared photographic.

Who were the first Photorealists?

Know as the American Photorealists, the first Photorealist artists included Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Ralph Goings, Chuck Close, Don Eddy, Richard McLean, John Salt, Tom Blackwell, Ron Kleeman, and Ben Schonzeit.

These artists worked independently of each other, and produced landscapes, portraits, and still lifes.

Many of the original Photorealists moved away from this genre of art as their careers progressed and evolved, but since 2000 and the rise in digital photography, new Photorealist artists have emerged.

Other artists who have produced works of Photorealism include Roberto Bernardi, Bryan Charnley, Raphaella Spense, Glennray Tutor, Tjalf Sparnaay, Robert Neffson, Clive Head, and William Nichols.

What is the difference between Hyperrealism and Photorealism?

Although the term Hyperrealism has been used to describe the work of Photorealist artists, the Hyperrealism movement is considered a distinct offshoot of the Photorealism genre.

Unlike Photorealist painters who focused on recreating mundane and everyday scenes in a precise, mechanical manner without emotion or narrative, the Hyperrealists, using digital photography as their starting point, try to create an illusion of reality that is not present in the original (creating a simulation of something which has never really existed). Hyperrealist works often focus on social, cultural, and political themes, and they often portray the subject with emotion and feeling.

Hyperrealist painters at once simulate and improve upon precise photographic images to produce optically convincing visual illusions of reality, often in a social or cultural context.

Petra Halkes

Some artists who have produced works of Hyperrealism include Dennis Peterson, Gottfried Heinwein, Ron Mueck, Andreas Orosz, Peter Maier, Mark Jenkins, Eric Dillman, and Jack Mendenhall.

Famous Photorealist Paintings

Some of the most well-known works of Photorealism include:

• ’71 Buick by Robert Bechtle
• Gum Ball No 10 by Charles Ball
• Stanley II by Chuck Close
• Tattoo by Robert Cottingham
• The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum by Richard Estes
• Medalion by Richard McLean
• McDonald’s Pickup by Ralph Goings
• A Season of Moment by Glennray Tutor
• Shiva Blue by Audrey Flack