Showcase: Gustav Klimt

Posted on by Cosmina

“All art is erotic.”

Gustav Klimt

• 14th of July 1862 – 6th of February 1918

• symbolist painter 

• influences: Japanese, Chinese, Ancient Egyptian and Mycenaean.

• influenced: Egon Schiele.

Gustav Klimt was born in Vienna, in 1862, the first born son of the Klimt couple. His father, Ernst Klimt, worked as an engraver and goldsmith, from whom he learned how to manipulate the famed metal.

Early in his artistic career, he was a successful painter of architectural decorations in a conventional manner, but for the rest of his life and even after, he was always the subject of a controversy.

Continue reading Showcase: Gustav Klimt

The 10 Best Superhero Movies of All-Time

Posted on by Cristian Mihai

This is arguably the best time to put together such a list: the technology is there, allowing for special effects to help us suspend disbelief, the actors who have been cast to play the parts are as brilliant as they come, and studios are investing more and more money into big budget adaptations of comic books.

I have no doubt that we’ll see more and more superhero movies, some of them quite brilliant and easy to recommend.

That being said, here are the ten best superhero movies of all time.

Continue reading The 10 Best Superhero Movies of All-Time

What Really Sells a Book?

Posted on by Cristian Mihai

Some might say the trickiest part is actually selling the book. Or writing it? Opinions differ. But what really sells a book? What marketing tool? What recipe to follow? Is there a recipe?

Well, let’s analyze one of my favorite novels, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, and hope that I’ll be able to offer some insight as to how people decide to buy a book. Continue reading What Really Sells a Book?

Showcase and Interview: Gina Iacob

Posted on by Cristian Mihai
Gina Iacob is a twenty five year old self-taught Romanian artist, who likes to experiment with different techniques and styles. She’s also interesting, interested, inspiring, inspired, and quite funny. Don’t believe me? Check this interview out.

Continue reading Showcase and Interview: Gina Iacob

Metafiction

Posted on by Cristian Mihai

“We’re all searching for something in our art. There are questions, and we always feel close to finding the answers, but we never do.

Artists never create art for what they might find. Some want to free themselves from nightmares, others want to inspire, or raise questions, or make people understand the world around them. Some want to entertain, others want to get rich, but it seems to me that no matter our reason for choosing to become artists, we all find more happiness in the stories or paintings or songs we create than we find in the real world. This is the sad truth: artists choose to live with one eye always closed to the world, the here and the now, and use that awareness to see what others can’t.

Inside the artist’s soul there is always a part that feels no remorse or fear when it comes to all that is dark in human nature. It seems to me that a part of the artist’s soul gets damaged to such an extent that it grows impervious to pain, heat, or cold. Like a scar.” Continue reading Metafiction

The First Rockstar (And How to Deal With Haters)

Posted on by Cristian Mihai


Psychologists believe narcissists to be more creative than other people.

Narcissists are better artists.

And there probably never was and never will be a more narcissistic person than Oscar Wilde.

Yup. The first rock star was a writer. Continue reading The First Rockstar (And How to Deal With Haters)

How to Build Your Personal Brand as a Writer

Posted on by Cristian Mihai

I know, I know. The writer is usually antisocial, asocial, or just shy, and the idea of building a brand is something that only those extroverts take pleasure in doing.

Well, tell you what: in today’s marketplace, if you do not have a brand, you do not exist.

So, what can you do to build an online brand as a writer?

Continue reading How to Build Your Personal Brand as a Writer

Art and The Internet

Posted on by Cristian Mihai

net-art

I believe that right now there are more artists on this Planet, more writers choosing to self-publish or just posting their stories on blogs, more painters selling prints and original artwork on deviantart, etsy, and the likes, more sculptors, more singers and aspiring movie makers trying to get more subscribers on YouTube than ever before.

And I believe this is a good thing. Modern day technology allows us to achieve our most secret of yearnings: to share our art with the world. Maybe you’re reading this post and you’re telling yourself that you don’t make art for that. You create art just for yourself. But for that to be true, you’d never want anyone to read your stories. You’d be the only one who knows you’re a writer or painter or singer. Continue reading Art and The Internet

Showcase: Salvador Dalí’s illustrations of Alice in Wonderland

Posted on by Cristian Mihai

Published by New York’s Maecenas Press-Random House in 1969 and distributed as their book of the month, this illustrated version of Alice in Wonderland  contains 12 heliogravures — one for each chapter of the book and an original signed etching in four colors as the frontispiece. Continue reading Showcase: Salvador Dalí’s illustrations of Alice in Wonderland

Book Review: The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Posted on by Cristian Mihai

From the book’s description:

Unfinished at the time of his death, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon is a story of doomed love set against the extravagance of America’s booming film industry. The studio lot looks like ‘thirty acres of fairyland’ the night that a mysterious woman stands and smiles at Monroe Stahr, the last of the great Hollywood princes. Enchanted by one another, they begin a passionate but hopeless love affair, starting with a fast-moving seduction as slick as a scene from one of Stahr’s pictures. The romance unfolds, frame by frame, watched by Cecilia, a thoroughly modern girl who has taken her lessons in sentiment and cynicism from all the movies she has seen. Her buoyant humor and satirical eye perfectly complement Fitzgerald’s panorama of Hollywood at its most lavish and bewitching.

If the great Francis Scott Fitzgerald would have finished writing this novel, it would have been his masterpiece. Yes, it would have been better than The Great Gatsby, which is my favorite novel of all time, and the only piece of writing I’ve been reading once a year since I was seventeen. Besides Dune. Continue reading Book Review: The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald