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L'Inconnue De La Seine
''L'Inconnue de la Seine'' (English: ''The Unknown Woman of the Seine'') was an unidentified young woman whose putative death mask became a popular fixture on the walls of artists' homes after 1900. Her visage inspired numerous literary works. In the United States, the mask is also known as . History According to an oft-repeated story, the body of the young woman was pulled out of the River Seine at the Quai du Louvre in Paris around the late 1880s. Since the body showed no signs of violence, suicide was suspected. A pathologist at the Paris Morgue was, according to the story, so taken by her beauty that he felt compelled to make a wax plaster cast death mask of her face. It has been questioned whether the expression of the face could belong to a drowned person. According to the draughtsman Georges Villa, who received this information from his master, the painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre, the impression was taken from the face of a young model who died of tuberculosis around 18 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death Mask
A death mask is a likeness (typically in wax or plaster cast) of a person's face after their death, usually made by taking a cast or impression from the corpse. Death masks may be mementos of the dead, or be used for creation of portraits. It is sometimes possible to identify portraits that have been painted from death masks because of the characteristic slight distortions of the features caused by the weight of the plaster during the making of the mould. The main purpose of the death mask from the Middle Ages until the 19th century was to serve as a model for sculptors in creating statues and busts of the deceased person. Not until the 1800s did such masks become valued for themselves. In other cultures a death mask may be a funeral mask, an image placed on the face of the deceased before burial rites, and normally buried with them. The best known of these are the masks used in ancient Egypt as part of the mummification process, such as Tutankhamun's mask, and those from M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elisabeth Bergner
Elisabeth Bergner (22 August 1897 – 12 May 1986) was an Austrian-British actress. Primarily a stage actress, her career flourished in Berlin and Paris before she moved to London to work in films. Her signature role was Gemma Jones in '' Escape Me Never'', a play written for her by Margaret Kennedy. She played Gemma first in London and then in the Broadway debut, and in a film version for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1943, Bergner returned to Broadway in the play ''The Two Mrs. Carrolls'', for which she won the Distinguished Performance Medal from the Drama League. Life and career She was born Ella (Ettel) Bergner in Drohobych, Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Ukraine) to Sara (née Wagner) and Emil (Schmelke Juda) Bergner, a merchant. She grew up in a secular Jewish home. The Hebrew she heard in her childhood was associated with Yom Kippur and Pesach, and on her visits to Israel, she apologized for not knowing the language. She fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kathy Reichs
Kathleen Joan Reichs (née Toelle, born 1950) is an American crime writer, forensic anthropologist and academic. She is an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Early life and education Kathleen Joan Toelle was born in 1950 in Chicago, Illinois. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in anthropology from American University in 1971. In 1972, she completed her Master of Arts in physical anthropology at Northwestern University, where, in 1975, she completed her PhD, also in physical anthropology. Academia and anthropology Since 1975, Reichs has taught at Northern Illinois University, University of Pittsburgh, Concordia University, and McGill University, and currently holds a position as adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In the past, Kathy Reichs has consulted for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina. Reichs has appeared in Tanzania to testify a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haunted (Palahniuk Novel)
''Haunted'' is a 2005 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The plot is a frame story for a series of 23 short stories, most preceded by a free verse poem. Each story is followed by a chapter of the main narrative, is told by a character in main narrative, and ties back into the main story in some way. Typical of Palahniuk's work, the dominant motifs in ''Haunted'' are sexual deviance, sexual identity, desperation, social distastefulness, disease, murder, death, and existentialism. The synopsis on the dustjacket describes ''Haunted'' as a satire of reality television, but according to Palahniuk, the novel is actually about "the battle for credibility" that has resulted from the ease with which one can publish through the use of modern technology. The cover of the 2006 U.S. trade paperback reprint features a glow-in-the-dark image. Plot summary Each of the book's chapters contains three sections: a story chapter, which acts as a framing device for the otherwise unconnected short s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chuck Palahniuk
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk (; born February 21, 1962) is an American freelance journalist and novelist who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He has published 19 novels, three nonfiction books, two graphic novels, and two adult coloring books, as well as several short stories. His first published novel was ''Fight Club'', which was adapted into a film of the same title. Early life Palahniuk was born in Pasco, Washington, the son of Carol Adele (née Tallent) and Fred Palahniuk. He has French and Ukrainian ancestry. His paternal grandfather migrated from Ukraine to Canada and then to New York in 1907. Palahniuk grew up living in a mobile home in Burbank, Washington. His parents separated when he was 14 years old, and they subsequently divorced, often leaving him and his three siblings to live with their maternal grandparents at their cattle ranch in eastern Washington. Palahniuk acknowledged in a 2007 interview that he is a distant nephew of actor Jack Palance ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Drowning Girl
__NOTOC__ ''The Drowning Girl: A Memoir'' is a 2012 novel by American writer Caitlín R. Kiernan, set in Providence, Rhode Island. The story's protagonist and unreliable narrator, India Morgan Phelps (also known as Imp), has schizophrenia. It has been described as an "eerie masterpiece of literary horror and dark fantasy" containing elements of magical realism. It has also been described as semi-autobiographical. The novel has been translated into a number of languages, including French, German, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, and Turkish. Synopsis ''The Drowning Girl'' follows the story of India Morgan Phelps, an unreliable narrator struggling with hereditary mental illness. India states that she has decided to write down the bizarre events that occurred two years ago (the entirety of the novel is written as a fictionalized memoir). Early in the novel, she befriends her eventual roommate and lover, a transgender woman named Abalyn Armitage. India works at an art suppl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resusci Anne
Resusci Anne, also known as Rescue Anne, Resusci Annie, CPR Annie, Resuscitation Annie, Little Annie, or CPR Doll is a model of medical simulator used for teaching both emergency workers and members of the general public. Resusci Anne was developed by the Norwegian toy maker Åsmund S. Lærdal and the Austrian-Czech physician Peter Safar and American physician James Elam, and is produced by the company Laerdal Medical. The distinctive face of Resusci Anne was based on ''L'Inconnue de la Seine'' (English: The unknown woman of Seine), the death mask of an unidentified young woman reputedly drowned in the River Seine around the late 1880s. Åsmund Lærdal chose to use a woman's face on the mannequin as he thought male trainees might be reluctant to kiss a man's face. The face was sculpted by the Norwegian-Danish sculptor Emma Matthiasen (in Norwegian) The first version of Resusci-Annie was presented by Lærdal at the First International Symposium on Resuscitation at Stavanger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caitlín R
Caitlin () is a female given name of Irish origin. Historically, the Irish name Caitlín was anglicized as Cathleen or Kathleen. In the 1970s, however, non-Irish speakers began pronouncing the name according to English spelling rules as , which led to many variations in spelling such as Caitlin, Catelynn, Caitlyn, Katlyn, Kaitlin, Kaitlyn, Katelyn and Katelynn. It is the Irish version of the Old French name ''Cateline'' , which comes from Catherine, which in turn comes from the Ancient Greek Αἰκατερίνη (Aikaterine). Catherine is attributed to St. Catherine of Alexandria. Along with the many other variants of Catherine, it is generally believed to mean "pure" because of its long association with the Greek adjective καθαρός ''katharos'' (pure), though the name did not evolve from this word. Notable people Literature * Caitlin Brennan, pseudonym of Judith Tarr, American fantasy writer * Cait Brennan, American screenwriter and performer * Caitlin Davies, Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Hillyer
Robert Silliman Hillyer (June 3, 1895 – December 24, 1961) was an American poet and professor of English literature. He won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1934. Early life Hillyer was born in East Orange, New Jersey to an old Connecticut family. He attended Kent School in Kent, Connecticut. After high school, he attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1917. While there, he was the editor of the literary magazine ''The Harvard Advocate, and was'' affiliated with the group known as the Harvard Aesthetes. When World War I began, he went to France and volunteered for the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with Harvard classmate John Dos Passos. Once the United States entered the war, he joined the American forces. After serving as an ambulance driver, Hillyer later returned to France to work in the US Ordnance Department. After the Armistice, Hillyer worked as a military courier for the 1919 peace conference in Paris. For a while Hillyer and John Dos Passos sh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Recognitions
''The Recognitions'' is the 1955 debut novel of US author William Gaddis. The novel was initially poorly received by critics. After Gaddis won a National Book Award in 1975 for his second novel, ''J R'', his first work gradually received new and belated recognition as a masterpiece of American literature. In 2005, ''Time'' included ''The Recognitions'' in its list of "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005". Plot The story loosely follows the life of Wyatt Gwyon, son of a Calvinist minister from rural New England; his mother dies in Spain. He plans to follow his father into the ministry. But he is inspired to become a painter by ''The Seven Deadly Sins'', Hieronymous Bosch's noted painting which his father owned. Gwyon leaves New England and travels to Europe to study painting. Discouraged by a corrupt critic and frustrated with his career, he moves to New York City. He meets Recktall Brown, a capitalistic collector and dealer of art, who makes a Faustian deal w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Gaddis
William Thomas Gaddis, Jr. (December 29, 1922 – December 16, 1998) was an American novelist. The first and longest of his five novels, ''The Recognitions'', was named one of TIME magazine's 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005 and two others, ''J R'' and ''A Frolic of His Own'', won the annual U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. National Book Foundation: Awards"National Book Award Winners: 1950–2009" Retrieved March 28, 2012. A collection of his essays was published posthumously as '' The Rush for Second Place'' (2002). ''The Letters of William Gaddis'' was published by Dalkey Archive Press in February 2013. A MacArthur Fellow, Gaddis is widely considered one of the first and most important American postmodern writers."William Gaddis: A Portfolio," ''Conjunctions'' 41 (2003), 373–415. Life and career Gaddis was born in New York City to William Thomas Gaddis, who worked "on Wall Street and in politics", and Edith (Charles) Gaddis, who worked her way up from being secr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Wiseman
David Wiseman (born September 11, 1981 in Pasadena, California) is an American artist and designer whose work is known for its detailed craftsmanship and dialogue with traditional filigree decorative arts. His work spans from bronze filigree patterned screens and gates to bronze and terrazzo furniture, and from animal sculptures to porcelain vases. About Wiseman's work ranges from expansive site-specific installations to furniture and sculptural lighting. Wiseman credits his awe for nature as his motivating inspiration: "I have always been drawn to nature in my work," he says. "And within the natural world, magnificent patterns abound, from crystalline structures to honeycombs, and cell formations to ocean swells." Admiration for designers who were part of the Vienna Secession, like Dagobert Peche and Josef Hoffman; the French artist duo Les Lalanne; as well as traditional patterns from India, France, Korea, and Japan are a large part of Wiseman’s inspiration. “A century ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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