Menino Escondido Debaixo do Sofá Espirrando, O Espião que Espirrava (Boy Hiding Under Couch Sneezing, The Sneezing Spy) - Norman Rockwell

Menino Escondido Debaixo do Sofá Espirrando, O Espião que Espirrava (Boy Hiding Under Couch Sneezing, The Sneezing Spy) - Norman Rockwell
Coleção privada
OST - 67x55 - 1921

Appearing on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post in October 1921, Boy Hiding Under Couch Sneezing (The Sneezing Spy) reflects the central role that the theme of young romance played in Norman Rockwell’s body of work. The teenage couple the artist depicts here appeared in several of his illustrations from the 1920s, allowing the audience to follow the progression of their courtship.

In the present work, Rockwell employs his characteristic sympathetic humor to illustrate a moment when the lovers are suddenly disturbed by a younger brother who has been hiding beneath the couch. Rockwell infuses the scene with rich details, such as the Chinese drapery strewn over the arm of the daybed, and successfully incorporates the magazine's standard cover format to create a fully realized scene, transporting his viewer to a specific time and place. Boy Hiding Under Couch Sneezing (The Sneezing Spy) demonstrates not only the full extent of the artist’s technical precision and masterful draftsmanship, but also his seemingly limitless imagination, making it a remarkable example of Rockwell’s unparalleled ability to elevate commercial endeavors into the aesthetic realm. 

Caça ao Espião Vermelho (Red Spy Hunt) - Thomas Maitland Cleland

Caça ao Espião Vermelho (Red Spy Hunt) - Thomas Maitland Cleland
Coleção privada
Óleo sobre placa - 44x66 - 1949

The present work was gifted by Thomas Maitland Cleland to the American actor Joseph Cotten and his wife, Lenore. Cotten gained international recognition for his performances in three films by Orson Welles: Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and Journey into Fear (1943). He was one of the leading Hollywood actors of the 1940s and starred in several notable film classics such as Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943), William Dieterle’s Love Letters (1945) and Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949).

Posto da Standard, Estados Unidos

Posto da Standard, Estados Unidos
Estados Unidos
Fotografia

Nota do blog: Fotografia mostrando um dos postos da Standard nos Estados Unidos. O americano Edward Ruscha se baseou neles para fazer suas famosas pinturas.

Posto da Standard (Standard Station) - Edward Ruscha

Posto da Standard (Standard Station) - Edward Ruscha
MoMA Museu de Arte Moderna de Nova York Estados Unidos
Serigrafia - 65x101 - 1/50

Posto da Standard com Revista Western de Dez Centavos Sendo Rasgada ao Meio (Standard Station with 10-Cent Western Being Torn in Half) - Edward Ruscha

Posto da Standard com Revista Western de Dez Centavos Sendo Rasgada ao Meio (Standard Station with 10-Cent Western Being Torn in Half) - Edward Ruscha
Coleção privada, atualmente emprestada ao Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, Estados Unidos
OST - 165x308 - 1964

The first thing you notice when you encounter this painting is how enormous it is. Over five feet high and nearly twice as long, it gets its own wall at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas. The colors are brilliant and the lines are so straight you fancy the artist laid the painting out on a flat canvas like a roofer, popping chalk lines that laser out from the right low corner nexus to explode in the bright, imagined desert sun. Then you notice the half-torn western magazine in the corner, a real magazine that seems wind-tossed yet somehow fixed into permanence and attached like collage to the painting. The western magazine sold for 10¢ originally; the price is emblazoned on the periodical’s upper left hand corner. On the pumps you can see that 10¢ tax is applied to the gasoline. Other numbers, price per gallon, etc. cannot be read. Just the one: 10¢.

I had a very strong emotional reaction to this picture the first time I saw it. Puzzling, I know. It is so simple. It looks like a postcard, almost, and that is part of it. My father was a man with a firm belief in a fresh start. Whenever things got difficult or he perceived that he had somehow been wronged it was suddenly time to pack up the car with as many of our things as we could fit, and hit the road. Usually we went back and forth between Louisiana and Washington state. Apparently fifteen hundred miles was an almost perfect distance for the shedding of a reputation in those days. Standing still just gave the world a chance to disappoint you, and my father wasn’t having it. Like the cowboys in the stories he figured he just needed to keep moving.  Move on and there’s a chance that this time he will get it right. This one time, let him get it right.

But for me, I loved those trips. Traveling in the car was great. Those were the days before Interstates, when you had to interact with the rest of the country whether you wanted to or not. Those were the days when Route 66 and 287 were paths to magic, where a bad statue of a dinosaur might just make you stop your car and visit some gimcrack tourist trap selling phony tomahawks and cardboard tom-toms. We were terrible rubes in those days, and the west was wide open and mostly empty. The postcards were either landscapes of impossible splendor or jokey cards with Jackalopes and randy cowboys. Kids pleaded for a dime to buy souvenir decals for the back windows or stood at display cases in coffee shop checkouts looking at thirty different kinds of candy bars from a dozen different makers.

And all this traveling, all this starting over, was powered by gasoline. Cheap gasoline made everyone a pioneer. Is it any wonder this picture is painted in red, white, and blue? We were, and I think we still are, the United States of Fossil Fuels. There are no people in this picture and that is how it should be because America is about the corporation now, and Standard Oil is where that kind of thinking started in earnest. John D. Rockefeller is our true founding father. He gave birth to Standard Oil. A good Baptist he tithed every week, and as we all know the tithe is ten percent. 10¢ of every dollar he made went to the church. And he grew famous for handing out dimes to adults he’d meet on the streets. He only gave children a nickel, but for adults 10¢. Meanwhile his company monopolized the industry for a while, wrecked businesses and lives, while he became the single richest individual in human history: richer than Croesus; richer than Solomon. And all the other corporations looked to Standard Oil for inspiration and the world got a little smaller every day, dime by dime, until now the kid stands at the checkout and there are maybe a dozen different candy bars, tops, from two makers and we call that progress. And fifteen hundred miles might as well be next door because your reputation goes wherever you go, available to anyone with a keyboard, and there are no fresh starts for any but the young, and we call that progress, too.

This painting evokes my youth, and cries with me a little bit reminding me that the west that was so alluring before is almost gone now. Reminding me that the western cowboy image we all identified with is almost gone as well.

Almost.
Wind-tossed, half-torn, and sold for a dime.

Bhilai Steel, Bhilai, Índia

Bhilai Steel, Bhilai, Índia
Bhilai - Índia
Fotografia

The Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), located in Bhilai, in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, is India's first and main producer of steel rails, as well as a major producer of wide steel plates and other steel products. The plant also produces steel and markets various chemical by-products from its coke ovens and coal chemical plant. It was set up with the help of the USSR in 1955.

Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) is eleven-time winner of the Prime Minister's Trophy for best integrated steel plant in the country. The plant is the sole supplier of the country's longest rail tracks, which measure 260 metres (850 ft). The 130 - meter rail, which would be the world's longest rail line in a single piece, was rolled at URM, Bhilai Steel Plant(SAIL) on 29 November 2016. The plant also produces products such as wire rods and merchant products. Bhilai Steel Plant has been the flagship integrated steel plant unit of the Public Sector steel company, the Steel Authority of India Limited and is its largest and most profitable production facility. It is the flagship plant of SAIL, contributing the largest percentage of profit.

The government of India and the USSR entered into an agreement, which was signed in New Delhi on 2 March 1955, for the establishment of an integrated iron and steel works at Bhilai with an initial capacity of one million tons of steel ingot.

The main consideration for choosing Bhilai was the availability of iron ore at Dalli Rajhara, about 100 km from the site; limestone from Nandini, about 25 km from the plant, and dolomite at Hirri, about 140 km away, and coal from Korba and Kargali coal fields. The water for the plant comes from the Tandula dam and power from Korba thermal power station. The plant was commissioned with the inauguration of the first blast furnace by then president of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, on 4 February 1959. The plant was expanded to 2.5 million tons in September 1967 and a further expansion to 4 MT was completed in 1988. The main focus in the 4 MT stage was the continuous casting unit and the plate mill, a new technology in steel casting and shaping in India.

Bhilai Steel Plant functions as a unit of SAIL, with corporate offices in New Delhi. Over the years, Bhilai Steel Plant developed an organizational culture that forces its commitment to values and stimulates continuous improvements and higher levels of performance. The chief executive officer controls operations of the plant, township and iron mines. The CEO is assisted by his D.R.O.s(Direct Reporting Officers), i.e. the functional heads, executive directors, general Manager concept of zonal heads, and HODs who integrate functions with clear accountability for achieving corporate vision, company goals and objectives.

Bhilai steel plant is raising its capacity of steel production through modernization and new projects. The major upcoming project is commissioning of giant Blast Furnace of volume 4060 cubic meter with hot metal production capacity of 8000 Tonnes per day.

Projects in progress include a new compressed air station, oxygen plant, new installations to support power requirements and ore handling capacities expansion. Presently, the total requirement of iron ore of Bhilai Steel Plant is met from Dalli Rajhara Iron Ore Complex (IOC). In view of IOC's rapidly depleting reserves, BSP is opening an iron ore mine at Rowghat, about 80 kilometres (50 mi) from Dalli Rajhara in Narayanpur District of Chhattisgarh. Accordingly, Bhilai Steel Plant will develop the mine in Block-A of Deposit-F of Rowghat with a production capacity of 14.0 MT per year during 2011-12. For environmental reasons, the beneficiation plant shall be of dry circuit type. However, the grant of forest clearance under Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 is still pending.

The Bhilai steel plant has created steel for one of the Railways' most challenging projects, construction of the 345 km (214 mi) railway line and plane network between Jammu and Baramulla at an investment of ₹19,000 crore (US$2.7 billion). BSP has also developed a special grade of TMT rebars for use in the high altitude tunnel inside the Banihal Pass. BSP had also developed the special soft iron magnetic plates for the prestigious India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) project of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). It has also developed special grade high-tensile (DMR249A) steel for building India's first indigenously built anti-submarine warfare corvette, INS Kamorta.

The plant was further expanded on 14 June 2018.

Bhilai Steel, Anos 1950, Bhilai, Índia

Bhilai Steel, Anos 1950, Bhilai, Índia
Bhilai - Índia
Fotografia

BMW 507 Roadster Series II 1958, Alemanha

BMW 507 Roadster Series II 1958, Alemanha
Fotografia

By the mid-1950s, BMW began offering true luxury models equipped with a new dual-carburetted V-8 engine. But as its reputation was largely linked to economy cars like the Isetta, BMW sought a game-changing model that would project a new identity.

The resulting 507 roadster featured an advanced box-frame chassis equipped with an upgraded suspension, four-speed synchromesh gearbox, and Alfin drum brakes. Most famously, the 507 was clothed with breathtaking lightweight alloy coachwork penned by Count Albrecht Goertz, a timeless design, punctuated by sensual curves, that ranks among the most significant open sports cars of the 1950s.

Just 252 507s were sold between 1956 and 1959, of which 34 were exported to the United States. Owned by celebrities ranging from Elvis Presley to racing driver John Surtees, the 507 has evolved into the most celebrated post-war BMW, a sublime combination of advanced engineering and elegant style.

Benefitting from decades of ownership by one of America’s foremost marque collectors, as well as a recent restoration, chassis no. 70134 is one of 214 Series II examples, which featured a revised dashboard arrangement and a relocated fuel tank, providing more space for the interior and the reclining soft top. Reportedly sold new through Hoffman Motors of New York, the 507 is rumoured to have originally been owned by a Hollywood producer before being acquired by an architect in Jackson, Mississippi. During its life in Jackson, chassis no. 70134 was spotted by a young man named William Young who fell in love with the car’s looks, kick-starting a lifelong relationship with the marque.

During the 1980s, the roadster passed to two more owners in Pennsylvania before being sold to the respected Oldtimer Garage in Switzerland. By 1985 William Young was a successful businessman in Colorado, and when he saw an advertisement for a BMW 507 in Road & Track, he contacted Oldtimer and bought the car sight unseen. Amazingly, that roadster turned out to be chassis no. 70134, the very same 507 he had once admired years earlier.

The 507 became the centrepiece of Mr Young’s collection, which eventually comprised over 30 important classic BMWs. The unrestored roadster attended numerous events of the BMW Classic Car Club of America over the years and was presented at the 2011 Santa Fe Concorso. It was also featured on the cover of Roundel magazine twice, in December 1996 and August 2011. In 2013 the owner finally sold the 507 to a Texas-based dealer, from whom the car was acquired by the consignor in March of 2014.

The BMW has just completed a comprehensive restoration to its original factory appearance, the first major refurbishment of its life, during which a glove-compartment panel with a signature on it was removed and saved. The signature appears to match one on a signed business card of Count Albrecht Goertz, suggesting that the car was once autographed by its legendary designer. The beautifully restored and rare 507 would make a peerless addition to any assembly of important European sports cars.

BMW Alpina B7 S Turbo 1982, Alemanha

BMW Alpina B7 S Turbo 1982, Alemanha
Fotografia

Alpina Burkard Bovensiepen GmbH & Co. KG is an automobile manufacturing company based in Buchloe, in the Ostallgäu district of Bavaria, Germany that develops and sells high-performance versions of BMW cars.

Alpina works closely with BMW and their processes are integrated into BMW's production lines, thus Alpina is recognized by the German Ministry of Transport as an automobile manufacturer, in contrast to other performance specialists which are aftermarket tuners. For instance, the Alpina B7 is produced at the same assembly line in Dingolfing, Germany (BMW Plant Dingolfing), as BMW's own 7 Series. The B7's twin-turbo 4.4-litre V8 is assembled by hand at Alpina's facility in Buchloe, Germany, before being shipped to BMW for installation, and the assembled vehicle is then sent back to Alpina for finishing touches.

The firm was founded in 1965 by Burkard Bovensiepen, a member of the Bovensiepen family of industrialists.

Avenida São João, 1963, São Paulo, Brasil - Earl Clark

Avenida São João, 1963, São Paulo, Brasil - Earl Clark
São Paulo - SP
Fotografia