Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece the “Mona Lisa” in the “musee du Louvre” in Paris/AFP Photo
March 12, 2017 13:57 By Mariktte Le Roux
Agence France-Press
PARIS, March 10, 2017 (AFP) – The subject of centuries of scrutiny and debate, Mona Lisa’s famous smile is routinely described as ambiguous. But is it really that hard to read?
Apparently not.
In an unusual trial, close to 100 per cent of people described her expression as unequivocally “happy”, researchers revealed on Friday.
“We really were astonished,” neuroscientist Juergen Kornmeier of the University of Freiburg in Germany, who co-authored the study, told AFP.
Kornmeier and a team used what is arguably the most famous artwork in the world in a study of factors that influence how humans judge visual cues such as facial expressions.
Known as La Gioconda in Italian, the Mona Lisa is often held up as a symbol of emotional enigma.
The portrait appears to many to be smiling sweetly at first, only to adopt a mocking sneer or sad stare the longer you look.
Using a black and white copy of the early 16th century masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci, a team manipulated the model’s mouth corners slightly up and down to create eight altered images — four marginally but progressively “happier”, and four “sadder” Mona Lisas.
A block of nine images were shown to 12 trial participants 30 times.
In every showing, for which the pictures were randomly reshuffled, participants had to describe each of the nine images as happy or sad.
“Given the descriptions from art and art history, we thought that the original would be the most ambiguous,” Kornmeier said.
Instead, “to our great astonishment, we found that Da Vinci’s original was… perceived as happy” in 97 per cent of cases.
– All in the context –
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A second phase of the experiment involved the original Mona Lisa with eight “sadder” versions, with even more nuanced differences in the lip tilt.
In this test, the original was still described as happy, but participants’ reading of the other images changed.
“They were perceived a little sadder” than in the first experiment, said Kornmeier.
The findings confirm that “we don’t have an absolute fixed scale of happiness and sadness in our brain” — and that a lot depends on context, the researcher explained.
“Our brain manages to very, very quickly scan the field. We notice the total range, and then we adapt our estimates” using our memory of previous sensory experiences, he said.
Understanding this process may be useful in the study of psychiatric disorders, said Kornmeier.
Affected people can have hallucinations, seeing things that others do not, which may be the result of a misalignment between the brain’s processing of sensory input, and perceptual memory.
A next step will be to do the same experiment with psychiatric patients.
Another interesting discovery was that people were quicker to identify happier Mona Lisas than sad ones.
This suggested “there may be a slight preference… in human beings for happiness, said Kornmeier.
As for the masterpiece itself, the team believe their work has finally settled a centuries-old question.
“There may be some ambiguity in another aspect,” said Kornmeier, but “not ambiguity in the sense of happy versus sad.”
The boot of a Mercedes Benz stocked with luxury goods is bound to bring back memories of the dark days of the
A red bicycle symbolises the need for policymakers who can pedal carefully.
Stockbroker Sirivat Voravetvuthikun lost a fortune when the stock market crashed, began the long road back by selling sandwiches on the street, and now runs several businesses.
March 12, 2017 01:00 By Khetsirin Pholdhampalit
The Sunday Nation
Twenty years after the economy fainted, Museum Siam offers a fresh diagnosis
TWENTY YEARS have passed since the “tom yum kung crisis” – the financial meltdown that began in Thailand and swept across Asia. The fallout is still with us as economies struggle to regain lost ground – and so too does the bitterness linger.
Now there’s an exhibition at Museum Siam looking back at the economic firestorm and seeking to extract morals from it.
Continuing through July 2, “Tom Yum Kung Studies: Lessons (Un)Learned” owes its title in part to the classroom-like set-up, in which different aspects of the financial crisis are examined in turn.
The boot of a Mercedes Benz stocked with luxury goods is bound to bring back memories of the dark days of the “Tom Yum Kung crisis”. The memories will be gloomiest of all for the rich Thais to had to sell off their possessions to earn badly needed cash.
“Although the 1997 economic crisis was a major event in Thailand’s history and affected all sectors of society, it taught Thais to find new ways to survive,” says Museum Siam director Rames Promyen. “It led to a rise in freelancing, small and medium-sized enterprises, green businesses and a knowledge-based economy.”
In the first “classroom”, the subject of study is “Have we really broken free of the debt problem?” It’s pointed out that the post-crisis Thaksin Shinawatra government’s payment of Bt60 billion to the International Monetary Fund, an instalment towards Thailand’s total debt of Bt510 billion, was a long way from bailing the country out. The national debt currently stands at Bt930 million – equivalent to Bt15,000 per citizen.
The original architect’s sketch of the Sathorn Unique Tower shows what might have been had the baht not keeled over. The high-rise was never completed and is now just a famous skeleton.
Bangkok’s most famous “ghost tower” haunts the exhibition in the form of the original sketch of the Sathorn Unique Tower by Rangsan Architect. When government policy went awry and triggered the crisis, the stock market lost three-quarters of its value in a matter of days. A chain of financial firms went bankrupt, thousands of jobs were lost, and major real-estate projects were halted, including the high-rise on Sathorn Road, which has been nothing more than a skeleton ever since.
People now over 45 will well remember other flotsam of a drowning economy. There was the yellow container that held “Sirivat Sandwiches”, bearing symbols of the floating baht and the IMF. The sandwich was named for stockbroker Sirivat Voravetvuthikun, who lost millions in the crisis, yet refused to give up.
Sirivat had been earning Bt10 million a day, but was not only bankrupted by the market collapse – he ended up Bt1 billion in debt. He started climbing out of that debt by selling Bt25 sandwiches on the street. Though still owing, Sirivat is today running coffee shops and a sushi catering service and selling canned herbal drinks.
Stockbroker Sirivat Voravetvuthikun lost a fortune when the stock market crashed, began the long road back by selling sandwiches on the street, and now runs several businesses.
The boot of a Mercedes Benz in the exhibition is stocked with luxury goods, mementoes of the good times before the bubbles started popping. The wealthy scrambled to sell off assets in order to survive, and Benz dealer Wasant Pothipimpanon was there to help with his “Market of the Formerly Rich” on Bangkok’s Soi Thonglor. Someone even came in with the necessary papers for selling his private plane.
“The country had been relying heavily on foreign capital inflow and external markets,” Wasant notes. “No one was shy about spending. But they ended up embarrassed when they had to sell off their luxury items.”
Luxury items represent the economic bubbles that burst.
Being mortified might at least have awakened some rich people to the wisdom of the “sufficiency economy” espoused by His Majesty the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Wasant says. The erstwhile spendthrifts learned instead to live according to their basic needs.
A portrait of the late monarch and a summary of this philosophy are displayed along with a copy of his 1998 New Year’s greeting card, in which he encouraged people to persevere in those gloomy times.
Museum Siam curator Taweesak Woraritrueang-urai believes there was indeed a bright side to the nightmare.
“A lot of the white-collar workers who lost their jobs starting holding car-boot sales to sell their possessions, and that induced in them an entrepreneurial spirit. The result was a surge in small and medium-sized businesses and to the start-ups we see today.
“Plus, a lot of people returned to their family farms upcountry and followed the King’s advice on integrated and sustainable agriculture.”
Replicas of bank savings books speak of financial collapse and crude capitalism.
The adage that suffering makes you stronger proved true for countless people. In one room you can watch videotape interviews of seven familiar figures who overcame severe difficulties. Among them are writer Ploy Chariyaves, designer Saranont Limpanont, filmmaker Prempapat Plittapolkranpim and Saichon Payaownoi, founder of the Ban Rai Cafe.
Prempapat was eight years old when the 1997 meltdown occurred and his well-to-do family was hit hard. No more would he be playing with toys costing thousands of baht. Instead, every single baht the family owned had to be spent carefully, as is clear from his grandfather’s daily debt ledger, also on view.
“I remember being so tired one day that I took a public mini-van home instead of the bus as usual, and it cost Bt8,” Prempapat says. “When my mum found out, she scolded me and hit me hard for wasting money.
“But the crisis taught me to be a faster learner than other kids. I learned about finances and taxation when I was still a child and understood the realities of life. The difficulty we went through forced me to find other ways to make money, and one way was making short films, still a very new idea a decade ago, and I started winning cash prizes.”
Several full-length movies have been made with their roots in the economic crisis. These include “Concrete Cloud”, directed by Lee Chatametikool, “Sixty Nine” by Pen-ek Ratanaruang and “102 Bangkok Robbery” by Tanit Jitnukul. The harsh realities of modern life also turned filmmakers – and viewers – back to classical times, with Nonzee Nimibutr’s “Nang Nak” and “Dang Bireley’s and Young Gangsters” and Wisit Sasanatieng’s “Tears of the Black Tiger” becoming hits.
These are all remembered in the exhibition in the form of movie posters and brief video interviews with the directors.
“People probably wanted to disengage from reality after the crisis,” Nonzee surmises. “They wanted to escape and get caught in a different kind of happiness.”
Thailand, Asia’s anticipated “fifth tiger”, lost all of its economic momentum and now lags far behind several neighbouring countries.
Before the storm, Thailand was widely expected to become the fifth “Asian tiger” economically, following Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. There’s an infographic showing the jagged path the baht has taken since 1995. Overall, the Thai economy has grown by just 32 per cent, far behind those of Vietnam at 70, Indonesia at 66 and the Philippines at 60 per cent.
What’s gone wrong here when neighbouring countries are rebounding so well? Have a look at the red bicycle near the museum’s exit. It’s meant to signify that we need policymakers who can pedal national development carefully and impartially.
You might still need this coin bank printed with the reminder “Debt”.
The souvenirs on sale are amusing. You can buy a cap with the word “Creditor” on the front – or “Debtor” if you’re still rebounding too. There’s a coin bank that says “Debt” and, for the eternally optimistic, a board-game in which you roll the dice for millions.
DEEP IN THE SOUP
The free-admission exhibition “Tom Yum Kung Studies: Lessons (Un)Learned” continues through July 2.
Museum Siam on Bangkok’s Sanam Chai Road near Tha Tien is open daily except Monday from 10 to 6.
A file photo of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in front of his work “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 2016” in his studio in Berlin on February 21, 2017. / AFP PHOTO
March 11, 2017 14:00 By Agence France-Presse
Refugees are the focus of the biggest installation of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei which goes on display next week at the National Gallery in Prague
Called “Law of the Journey”, the 70-metre-long (230-foot-long) inflatable boat with 258 oversize refugee figures will be shown from March 16 through the rest of the year, the gallery said.
“The largest individual object by this Chinese artist reflects his intense interest in the fate of refugees, which led him to 40 refugee camps in different locations across the globe,” it said.
Ai spent the last year visiting such migrant and refugee hotspots as the US-Mexican border badlands to the Turkish-Syrian frontier and crowded holding camps on Greek islands.
“When I first came to Lesbos, we found a half sunken boat there. I asked to be taken to it and sent the other people away. I wanted to experience what it was like to be there alone,” Ai said, quoted in the gallery statement.
“I felt what it was like to be on a poorly equipped boat, all by myself, as an insect on a leaf in the middle of the lake,” added the 59-year-old painter, sculpture and photographer.
“In the boat I found a baby bottle and a Bible soaked with seawater. That was when I decided to explore this, to go after all those thoughts that are in my head.”
An outspoken critic of the Chinese government, Ai was detained in 2011 for 81 days and had his passport confiscated for four years. He later travelled to Berlin where his wife and son live.
Recently he has staged several high-profile exhibitions inspired by migrants, including decking out the columns of Berlin’s Konzerthaus with 14,000 orange life jackets from Lesbos.
Last month, he said he has looked with dismay at the Trump presidency, the US entry ban on Syrian refugees, the attempt to deny visas to citizens of several mainly Muslim nations, the pledge to build a wall with Mexico and invoke mass deportations.
An artist working across different mediums, Xue Mu conceptualises alternatives to a conventional life experience.
Viewers are embraced in monochromatic and minimalist installations and confronted with large-scale drawings and photographs that demand attention and contemplation.
By deconstructing Rodin’s “The Thinker” and Michelangelo’s David, “Liquid Truth”, Xue Mu presents a body of work created through a series of re-photographing, where the iconic images are subjected to distortion, repeatedly photographed in the process. The playful distortion of the three-dimensional statue is rendered in two-dimensions, depicting a layering of visual and conceptual experiences, each more removed from the first.
“Liquid Truth” questions the reliance on interpretation of existing knowledge, and so Mu’s work creates a perceptual distance from the original and its associations, deconstructing subjectivity in the process of understanding. The distance from an original evokes an awareness of the fixedly familiar ways in which our lives seem to be organised.
A visual artist based in Amsterdam and Nanjingm Xue Mu is an alumnus of de Rijksakademie Voor Beeldende Kunsten (2011-2012), Gerrit Rietveld Academie (2009) and Dutch Art Institute (2006). Between 2013 and 2015 her projects were presented in art institutions at de Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, de Appel Arts Centre, He Xiangning Art Museum Shenzhen and AMNUA Nanjing.
Mu has also been commissioned several times for public art projects in the Netherlands.
Her abstract artworks and deconstructions are on show until March 19 at Yeo Workshop, Gillman Barracks, 1 Lock Road, Singapore 108 932, in Singapore.
The retrospective “Val 1967 – 2016” dedicated to the late Bangkok-based French artist Valerie Goutard is presenting her 17 stunning pieces at S Gallery of Sofitel Bangkok Sukhumvit until May 21.
Goutard, known simply as Val, grew up in South America, Africa, and Europe. She first came upon sculpture in 2001 and, up until her death last October, followed her inner journey, immersing herself in observations of nature and listening to her intuition.
Val’s monumental sculptures are a combination of art and architecture. In terms of art, her sculptures reflect on the attitudes and emotions of man and how we interact with nature and the surrounding environment. Many of her art works are human-shaped sculptures with two or more men in the sculpture itself. In terms of architecture, her artwork reflects structure, how a building is constructed with the use of all lines and shapes.
In 2004, Val established her workshop in Bangkok, where she worked surrounded by her team, who assisted her in creating her sculptures. Over the years, these took on monumental proportions. Her works are held in permanent collections in Thailand, and have been widely exhibited across Asia from Hong Kong to Singapore, Shanghai to Taiwan. Her noted participation at the Shanghai Art Fair in 2010, together with the unveiling of a huge sculpture named Urban Life as part of the Jing’An International Sculpture Project, established her reputation amongst renowned sculptors.
Val was often commissioned to create her large-scale artworks for public and private settings. These included Inle Balance III and Urban Gathering for the Sofitel in Bangkok, Waiting III which was installed in Taipei New Times Square in 2014, and more recently in 2015, Inequilibre, which is on display in the highest residential tower in Singapore.
Amongst numerous other high profile projects, Val was also invited by the glass masters of ARS Murano to work with them in their studio on new glass creations. After several journeys to Venice, she married glass, bronze and light to create a collection of unique pieces titled Tenth Eonian Initiative.
Last October, Val passed away in a tragic road accident in Thailand. A few days before, she had just finished a 36-metre sculpture for a private collector in Taiwan.
Continuing its focus on regional perspectives, the Jim Thompson Art Centre is organising group exhibition “People, Money, Ghosts (Movement as Metaphor)” featuring works engaged with the idea and process of travel and migration. The participating artists are Cambodian artist Khvay Samnang, Filipino duo Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho, and Vietnamese Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai, who’s based in Hue.
Continuing its focus on regional perspectives, the Jim Thompson Art Centre is organising group exhibition “People, Money, Ghosts (Movement as Metaphor)” featuring works engaged with the idea and process of travel and migration. The participating artists are Cambodian artist Khvay Samnang, Filipino duo Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho, and Vietnamese Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai, who’s based in Hue.
Curated by Roger Nelson, the show features works created not in the artists’ home cities, but rather in distant sites charged with locally-specific meanings, both historical and contemporary. The works consider movement both as an experience, and as an object of artistic research. Each of the artists has chosen questions and concerns relating to the displacement of people, the shifts in foreign capital, and haunting after-effects as historical traces in contemporary locations. These sites of interest mirror the artists’ own experiences of movement and processes of working.
Two projects by Samnang explore movement in expanded Cambodian contexts. “Day by Day (2014-7)” by Thanh Mai looks at the experience of stateless Vietnamese migrant communities living in floating villages in Cambodia and in Vietnam.
Lien and Camacho. Meanwhile, present a new series comprising objects they term “video sculptures”. These explore the figure of a kind of ghost found in locations throughout Southeast Asia; a mythical creature which self-segments, leaving its legs in the (literal or metaphorical) forest while its head and torso fly through the city to terrorise its inhabitants.
The show continues until June 18. The Jim Thompson Art Centre is on Soi Kasemsan 2 near the National Stadium BTS station. It’s open daily from 9am to 8pm. Admission is free.
Rare and vintage stamps go under the spotlight today until Sunday as Quartier Gallery at EmQuartier
Rare and vintage stamps go under the spotlight today until Sunday as Quartier Gallery at EmQuartier joins with the Philatelic Association of Thailand under the Patronage of Her Royal Highness Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, the Federation of Inter-Asian Philately and Thailand Post in organising the “Four Nations Stamp Exhibition 2017 Thailand”. The exhibition, which aims to uphold stamp collections in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, is now in its fourth edition with each country taking turns to host the event.
Visitors will not want to miss the showcase of stamps and other rare collector’s items honouring His Majesty the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej. These include the stamps issued to mark the late Monarch’s coronation on May 5, 1950 as well as those marking his 5th Wedding Anniversary and his 6th Cycle Birthday Anniversary.
Stamps and souvenirs can be purchased as keepsakes from Thailand Post. The highlight is the horoscope stamp collection (Rooster Year), featuring a picture drawn by Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn with the logo of the event.
An iStamp service allows visitors to print a customised stamp for Bt60 per set, which can be used as a real postage stamp.
There will also be a reservation registration for the latest stamps of the second trimester as well booths selling stamps and souvenirs from partner countries. Admission is free.
For more than a decade Swarovski’s collaboration with Disney has brought much-loved characters to life in the most brilliant of ways, illuminating consumers’ hearts the world over.
For more than a decade Swarovski’s collaboration with Disney has brought much-loved characters to life in the most brilliant of ways, illuminating consumers’ hearts the world over.
This season the classic fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast” is re-imagined in enchanting new ways and sparkles to life through a brilliantly crafted collection.
True beauty shines from within and radiates from the exquisitely crafted Belle and the Beast, a couple plumbing the hidden depths of true love.
To complete the collection Swarovski artisans have recreated the mystical Enchanted Rose that plays a pivotal role in the story and the upcoming live-action musical film.
The enchanted Rose, the mystical flower from the Disney live-action retelling of “Beauty and the Beast”, inspires the collection.
The rose in the film is the Beast’s hourglass, ticking away the moments of his life in a race against time. It represents youth and is a symbol of inner beauty and love. The element of enchantment is brilliantly detailed and brought to life by the use of Swarovski crystal. The crystal is the centrepiece, in the form of a beautifully faceted rose, showing exceptional sparkle and light refraction.
The Beauty and the Beast Limited Edition 2017 (Bt650,000), hand set with 57,000 Swarovski crystals, depicts the most famous scene in the film that made movie history as the first to use computer-generated imagery.
In the upcoming live-action film, the bell jar becomes the centrepiece, and this is what inspired the Beauty and the Beast Enchanted Rose Limited Edition 2017 (Bt109,000), of which only 350 pieces are available around the world.
Artists Palut Marod, Sorayut Duangjai and Thanaporn Nartwanitchayakul are presenting their work in the joint exhibition “When a Man Loves a Woman” at CentralWorld’s Centara Grand from March 20 to May 20.
Artists Palut Marod, Sorayut Duangjai and Thanaporn Nartwanitchayakul are presenting their work in the joint exhibition “When a Man Loves a Woman” at CentralWorld’s Centara Grand from March 20 to May 20.
On view daily from 10 to 8, the exhibition inspired by love and relationships doubles as a fund-raiser for the Friend of Women Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that helps women in needed.
Palut’s mono-prints address women’s feelings, Sorayut’s “contemporary Thai” paintings of animals depict the love of a father for his wife and child, and Thanaporn’s sculptures of women radiate joy, warmth and tenderness.
Learn more and order a catalogue at (02) 100 1234, extension 6753-6.
This file photo taken on February 22, 2017 shows an artwork by German artist Gerhard Richter, entitled “Eisberg, 1982”, which sold at auction in London on March 8, 2017 for 17.7 million pounds ($21.6m US dollars, 20,400 Euros). /AFP
March 10, 2017 12:37 By Agence France-Presse
Gerhard Richter’s arctic scene “Eisberg”, broke the record for a landscape at Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale on Wednesday, selling for 17.7 million pounds ($21.6 million, 20.4 million euros).
The frozen landscape — which had been estimated at 8-12 million pounds — had been kept in a private European collection for the past 30 years.
But the evening auction also saw many other records shattered.
Christopher Wool’s Untitled painting sold for 7.1 million pounds ($8.6 million, 8.2 million euros), double its highest estimate, while a Pat Seir painting went for over three times its highest estimate, at 681,000 pounds ($828,000, 786,000 euros).
German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans also set a new personal record in his first appearance in a Sotheby’s sale. His chromogenic print went under the hammer for 460,000 pounds ($560,000, 531,000 euros).
David Hockney’s 1990 painting of his Malibu home was auctioned off for 1.7 million pounds ($2 million, 1.9 million euros). It was last sold in 2010 for #508,000.
Overall, the auction achieved 118 million pounds ($143.6 million, 136.2 million euros) in sales, a 69 per cent increase on the previous year’s auction.
Christie’s, which held its own postwar and contemporary sales the previous day in London, managed a 96.3 million pound haul ($117.7 million, 117.1 million euros).
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