RINO MEMORY DAY

Just 500 years ago, on 27th January of 1516 the famous Indian rhinoceros described by Albrecht Dürer died. Dürer’s famous woodcut was based on a written description and sketch by Valentim Fernandes, a Moravian printer and book editor, who saw the rhinoceros in the last summer in Lisbon at the Ribeira Palace, when it was fighting with an elephant.  The owner of the animal, King Manuel of Portugal decided to present the rhinoceros as a gift to Pope Leo X. The King wanted the papal grants of exclusive possession to the new lands that his naval forces had been exploring in the Far East. The rhinoceros embarked in December 1515 for the voyage to Rome. The vessel stopped in Marseille on 24th of January in order to show the animal to King Francis I of France. After resuming its journey, the ship was wrecked in a storm as it passed through the narrows of Porto Venere on the coast of Liguria. The rhinoceros, chained and shackled to the deck, was unable to swim to safety and drowned. The carcass of the rhinoceros was recovered and its hide was returned to Lisbon, where it was stuffed. Some reports say that the mounted skin was sent to Rome in any case. 
On 27 of January there will be a Rinoceros Memory Day in Utisz Gallery. The lecture starts at 6 pm. Address: Budapest Honvéd utca 3. 4th floor. Entrance is free for all readers of Utisz Blog.

ANAMORPHIC UNIVERSE

Do We Live in an Anamorphic Universe?http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2016/01/do-we-live-in-an-anamorphic-universe/

FOOTNOTE FOR THE COLUMNS

Footnote for my previous message: the poster columns (or advertising pillars) are called morris columns as well (French: colonne morris) named after Gabriel Morris, a printer, who held the concession for advertising in Paris in 1868. They are also called Litfaß columns (German: Litfaßsäule) named after the German printer and designer Ernst Litfaß, who installed the first 100 pieces in the city of Berlin in 1855. The first 60 poster pillars appeared in Budapest in 1888, they were the Emmerling pillars (Vilmos Károly Emmerling was the owner of them). I made the post (Columns in Danger) and I wrote this footnote, because  the poster columns are started to be removed from the streets of Budapest as a result of a stupid political fight.

COLUMNS IN DANGER

EXHIBITION IN PORTO

Exhibition related to the International Year of Light 2015 in the Museum of Science of the University of Porto. 

Ilustração de “As aventuras do Capitão Hatteras”, de Júlio Verne, com retrato anamórfico do autor / Illustration of “The adventures of Captain Hatteras”, by Jules Verne, with anamorphic portrait of the author. István Orosz, 1983. Cortesia do Autor / Courtesy of the Author   

Anamorfoses 
A anamorfose é uma figura plana que parece distorcida e sem significado até ser vista de uma determinada perspetiva ou após reflexão num espelho piramidal, cónico ou cilíndrico, como é o caso. Os primeiros exemplos de anamorfoses de reflexão na arte europeia datam do séc. XVII, tendo como objetivo camuflar caricaturas ou cenas exibindo práticas de bruxaria. No séc. XIX viriam a tornar-se muito populares, dentro da categoria de recreações óticas. István Orosz, artista gráfico, pintor e ilustrador húngaro, é uma das maiores referências contemporâneas na criação de desenhos anamórficos. Na construção de uma anamorfose de espelho cilíndrico, a relação objeto-imagem pode ser aproximadamente tratada como uma transformação em que círculos concêntricos e linhas radiais são convertidos nas linhas, respetivamente, horizontais e verticais de uma grelha ortogonal regular.
Anamorphoses 
Anamorphosis is a painting or drawing on a flat surface that looks distorted and meaningless unless it is viewed from a certain perspective or by means of reflection on a conical or cylindrical mirror, as is the case. The earliest examples of mirror anamorphic art work date from the 17^th century, being used as a means for disguising derisive pictures or scenes meant for the practice of sorcery. Anamorphoses became quite popular in the 19^th century, as optical recreations. István Orosz, Hungarian painter, graphic designer and illustrator, has done some of the most accomplished contemporary anamorphic drawings. When creating a cylindrical mirror anamorphosis, the object-image relation can be approximately handled as a transformation where concentric and evenly spaced circles and radial lines are converted into horizontal and vertical lines of a regular rectangular grid.