Mickeys

More than 5,000 people have posed naked on the steps of the Sydney Opera House – in the name of art.

Huge numbers outside Sydney Opera House

It was the latest project by American photographer Spencer Tunick, who has organised similar displays of naked humanity all over the world.

The volunteers turned up before dawn and found the cloudy conditions were a little cooler than they would have liked, especially as many of them had to stand around naked for two hours.

They were instructed to wave, lie down, and embrace someone standing next to them, in a display to mark the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival.

One participant, Steven Anglier, said: “I thought it could be a bit awkward at first to dress down and have people looking at you.

“But it’s funny because, when you’re naked but everybody else is naked, you feel like you’re dressed up because everybody looks the same, so no one is looking at no one else.

“It’s really a weird experience because you think there could be something sexual behind, but there’s not.”

But Mr Tunick admitted that some found it embarrassing when he asked them to embrace and kiss someone next to them.

Exotic dancers at the photoshoot

“It was difficult to get the straight participants to embrace the gay participants and vice versa, so, I was very happy that that last set up finally got done and everyone came together, united, friendly kiss, a loving kiss in front of this great structure.”

Grant Denyer, a weather presenter from Channel 7 who was broadcasting live from the Opera House, was persuaded to shed his clothes and join in.

One of those intending to take part was Amanda Burke, who is pregnant with twins and was due to give birth several hours after the nude photoshoot.

Many were shy to begin with, including two exotic dancers who are used to taking off their clothes for a living.

They told Sky News: “It was more nerve-wracking getting naked with everybody else than what we normally do.

“Normally we have no problem, but we were all excited and nervous and giggly.”

Even after the shoot was completed, many people kept their clothes off, wandering naked around the Opera House and posing for their own pictures.

story from SkyNews

Has anyone got any ideas where we can find more info on these stunning wax sculptures?

To see more of Flychelangelo’s work visit CuriousPhotos

VIPs (Very Important Pixels) created by Kistof Saelen serves y’all with a weekly dose of the finest pixel art. Miniature versions of your favorite (in)famous people are represented as recognizable little characters. Check veryimportantpixels.com and see if you can identify ‘em all!

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Some of you might remember a blog I did last year, Only the Creepiest Photos Ever Taken. It was a small collection of something I’d just discovered — Victorian mourning photography, in which the dead are posed as if they were “just sleeping” and photographed, creating an expensive memento mori that was often the only photograph a family would have of the deceased loved one.

Well, I just found something creepier. A lot creepier. It’s a sub-genre of the Victorian mourning portrait, in which photographers clamp and pose the dearly departed in such a way that they look fully awake — usually standing up, eyes either held open by some unknown mechanism (shudder) or with pupils painted over closed eyes, to very, very creepy effect. They’re too crazy and weird not to share with you guys, but I’ll do the nightmare-prone among you a favor and save the first image until after the jump. (There’s nothing lose-your-lunch gross about these — this ain’t rotten.com, after all — they’re just deeply unsettling.)

There’s something just unspeakably creepy about this fireman. At first glance, he looks like a normal, awkwardly-posed guy from the 19th century. But upon closer inspection, you notice a few tell-tale signs: a rigid pose and fingers, a stand not quite completely hidden behind his feet, which is holding him up by some unseen armature on his back, liberal amounts of rouge applied to too-white cheeks, and those blank, blank eyes.

If you really love this photo and feel like you need to hang it in the bathroom, you can buy it now on eBay for $999. The seller hazards a guess that this is a photo of someone who died in the line of duty.

If that wasn’t horrific enough for you, try this one on for size:

This one is horrible for many reasons, not least of which being the distinct possibility that both father and son are dead in this picture. (Why are his hand and face discolored?) Feel free to speculate in the comments. From flickr user VictorianEra.

get the full story from Flickr

Baghdad – A Picasso painting that Iraqi police proudly announced they had found this week appears to be a fake, officials at the Louvre in Paris and the National Museum in Kuwait said on Friday.

Officers had said that the painting was stolen during Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, but a source at the museum in the oil-rich emirate said they had never housed such a work.

“The national museum had no Picasso paintings before the Iraqi invasion,” the official said.

Pictures of the painting, named as “the nakede” (sic) and inscribed “sold by the louvre to the musum” (sic) of Kuwait 1979, and carrying a stamp of the Eiffel Tower, saying “Louvre musem” (sic), indicate it is a forgery.

“Our collection stopped in the middle of the 19th century and we never had a Picasso and we have never sold any of our works,” said an official from the Louvre.

“The Eiffel Tower is not featured on our official stamp.”

The painting, which appears classical in style, and lacking any obvious characteristics of the Spanish cubist and sculptor who died in 1973, was recovered 40km south of Baghdad earlier this week.

taken from News24

Michael Jackson (1984) by Andy Warhol. (Courtesy of the Andy Warhol Estate/Vered Gallery)

A multicoloured portrait of the late Michael Jackson by Andy Warhol is to be auctioned off with a starting price of $800,000 US.

“This Andy Warhol portrait brings together the uncontested King of Pop Art with the uncontested King of Pop. The portrait was painted at the height of their careers and is a celebration of two of the great talents in global cultural history,” said Janet Lehr of the Vered Gallery, agents for the seller, in a statement released on Friday.

The iconic portrait, created in 1984 to celebrate the massive popularity of Jackson’s Thriller album, will be on show at London’s British Music Experience from Aug. 6 to 8th.

The exhibition space is inside the O2 arena where Jackson had been due to perform a series of concerts this summer into September.

The 50-year-old performer suffered a cardiac arrest at his rented home in Los Angeles on June 25. An autopsy report is expected out soon.

Warhol’s Technicolor silkscreens of iconic celebrities such as Liz Taylor and modern objects continue to reap high bids. The artist died in 1987.

The silkscreen, which measures 76.2 by 66 centimetres, is expected to fetch much more than its starting price of $800,000 U.S.

The highest price ever paid for a Warhol portrait was $28 million for Lemon Marilyn in 2007.

The auction of the Jackson portrait will be held at the Vered Art Gallery in East Hampton, N.Y. on Aug. 18.

story from CBC

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Cheeky student Rory McInnes did some DIY at the family home — painting a 60ft WILLY on the roof.

Parents Andy and Clare were delighted when builders finished a new flat roof on their £1million house.

But Rory, 18, had just watched a documentary about Google Earth — which lets internet users view satellite pictures — and decided to make the property stand out.

He grabbed a tin of white paint and climbed up to the roof, where he spent half an hour reproducing the best-known feature of the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset.

For the next 12 months only Rory knew about the giant manhood on the roof near Hungerford, Berks.

Company director Andy, 54, thought it was a wind-up when The Sun contacted him about the painting. He said: “It’s an April Fool’s joke, right? There’s no way there’s a 60ft phallus on top of my house.”

Read the full story from TheSun