Pas de Deux by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Roadside shrines in Poland depicting pensive Christ.

Image from @TheChurchInAsia on X (Twitter)

Simon Critchley, Mysticism

William C. Chittick, "The Spirituality of the Sufi Path"

Stanley Szwarc’s Visionary Cross Purposes Stanley Szwarc (1928-2011), a Polish book keeper turned metal worker and then artist after arriving in the United States, gave no indication of being particularly religious, but he did like making crosses. A prolific creator of objects from scrap stainless steel, always demonstrating over-the-top imagination, Szwarc made hundreds of crosses, if not thousands. He produced jewelry, he made crosses to be hung on the wall, and he crafted cruciform objects with no apparent use other than to be carriers of his endless combinations of geometric shapes. Szwarc liked to say that no two of his objects, be they crosses, vases, key fobs or boxes, were alike. The evidence plainly supports that contention while demonstrating a virtuosic artistic vision that could not contain itself, always seeking out fascinating ways to vary the ornamentation, to create objects of surprise, delight and striking beauty. Szwarc was one of the great self-taught artists of the 20th Century.

Illuminated Internet (2024-2025)

Details from the painting Medea meditating on killing her children (1852), by Bezzuoli.

Denver Art Museum.

Farnese de Andrade, Minas 4, 1978. Fonte: Coleção Stützer, São Paulo.

1979 postcards featuring Misha, the mascot of the Moscow Summer Olympics

— Vladimir Lenin, quoted in Lenin in Zurich: A Memoir by Valeriu Marcu, 1943

Soviet Era Murals in Kazakhstan and Tashkent, Uzbekistan