The ugliest shopping centre in France is getting a face lift.
Bab of P19 Crew has been busy with some hoardings art.
This looks like the entrance to an old abandoned old abandoned theme park in an English seaside town they forgot to close down. Dismaland rides again. Let's enjoy the art.
They said I was a valued customer, now they send me hate mail
Sophie Kinsella
When I shop, the world gets better, and the world is better, but then it's not, and I need to do it again
Sophie Kinsella
I don't shop very well", Grace said. "I just see what I need and get it.
Maggie Stiefvater
Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase
Erma Bombeck
Lost in the lipstick vogue. Again.
Elvis Costello
A return to hand painted signs. A skill that has all but died out
Once a culture becomes entirely advertising friendly, it seizes to be a culture at all
Mark Miller
The cult of the picturesque:
The concept of the "picturesque" was created by the English clergyman, artist, and writer William Gilpin (1724 - 1804) in his 1768 art treatise Essay on Prints, in which he defined the picturesque — rather tautologically — as "that kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture."
In later publications Gilpin developed the concept more fully. The picturesque may be thought of as halfway between the beautiful, with its emphasis on smoothness, regularity, and order; and the sublime, which is all about vastness, magnitude, and intimations of power; the picturesque must combine aspects of both of those. A picturesque landscape would have characteristics of roughness (which includes textured or variegated surfaces) — indeed, Gilpin wrote that "roughness forms the most essential point of difference between the beautiful and picturesque" — and an absence of regular or linear elements, and would effectively orchestrate a number of additional compositional elements: distance, light/shadow, "variety," and perspective. In Gilpin's words, "Picturesque composition consists in uniting in one whole a variety of parts...." Of considerable importance in the idea of the picturesque is the idea that it is an aesthetic of effect; for all intents and purposes, it is an aesthetic that almost does not exist independently in nature, but only in its perception by the viewer -- and particularly in its arrangement. This is why Gilpin's definition of "picturesque" is tautological; it is not so much a naturally occurring phenomenon as it is a created one, created primarily by painters but also by trained observers. (Gilpin in fact wrote an essay on "Picturesque Travel," effectively explaining how to "create" the picturesque in your mind's eye when you view landscapes.) As Gilpin wrote in "On Picturesque Beauty," beautiful objects are "those which please the eye in their natural state" while picturesque sights "please from some quality capable of being illustrated in painting." The ease with one category of aesthetic blends into another is evidenced by the fact that Gilpin himself often referred not to "the picturesque," but to "picturesque beauty."
Pictures from Villebon Yvette, courtesy Mme Akriche
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