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Art
It is time again to write about a song on the theme of the Moon: »Moondance« by Van Morrison. Released in February of 1970, on the album with the same title, by the musician from Northern Ireland, belongs to the classics amongst the moon songs. It hovers stylistically between rhythm & blues and country rock, but also jazz influences can be recognized. »Moondance« was placed in the English and American Charts. It was never a smash hit, but still today belongs to the concert repertoire of ›Van the Man‹ and can be heard time and again on the radio.
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Japanese woodblock prints have a centuries-long tradition and stand for high quality craftsmanship and artistic expressiveness. In particular, when realizing that this printing technique has been practiced since the 8th century (when letterpress printing in Europe was still a distant prospect), it becomes clear what kind of cultural achievements can be associated with this. A woodblock print works just like a stamp that has been carved into a block of wood. Then the color is applied onto the wood and printed onto paper. If you want to print a variety of colors on top of each other, you need a separate woodblock per each color and hence receive the characteristic depth effect.
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This animation of 2013 is the most successful movie by the Disney Animation Studios yet, and supersedes the previous hit “The Lion King“. Not only in the US and Japan, but this production also received many awards in Germany (amongst other things the Oscar 2014 for ›Best Animated Feature‹ and ›Best Original Song‹) and was a box office hit.
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When the German author Michael Ende wrote »The Neverending Story« from 1977 to 1979, he created a milestone amongst the fantasy children and youth literature. The story about the shy boy Bastian Balthasar Bux on his adventure trip through the world of Fantastica, fascinated millions of readers of all age groups and has been translated into 40 languages up to date.
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The Spanish artist Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) was the most important advocate of surrealism in paintings. His pictures show fantastic and dreamlike scenes, which remain in your memory due to their expression and originality. We also asked ourselves, whether we would be able to discover the Moon in Dalí as well, just like in other paintings (e.g. by Marc Chagal, Paul Klee, Caspar David Friedrich, William Turner, Adam Elsheimer or Petrus van Schendel)? And after a little bit of searching, we managed to find something.
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There is a German poem called »Dunkel war’s, der Mond schien helle«, in which the first line has been dedicated to the Moon and which boasts special features. For one thing, nobody knows who wrote the poem, which is quite unusual coming from the »land of poets and thinkers«. For another thing, it is based on the principle of the »oxymoron«. This is a figure of speech that juxtaposes elements that are contradictory or that are created from terms which are mutually exclusive. Straight away, the first line reveals this principle, because it cannot be »dark«, when the Moon is shining »bright«.
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We have been pondering about, whether a banknote does exist with a depiction of the Moon. Thanks to Google, we found something and discovered a variety of examples from different countries – with popular and less well known currencies. On the left you can see a detail of a Swiss 10 francs note, which depicts our solar system with several planets, amongst them also our Earth and its Moon.
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The American film studio DreamWorks SKG was founded by movie director Steven Spielberg, Disney head of animation Jeffrey Katzenberg and music producer David Geffen, in 1994 (the initials of the founders create the “SKG” in the company’s name). The opening credits of its movies, DreamWorks shows a boy, who sits on the waxing crescent moon while fishing and being surrounded by impressive cloud formations.
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It is 1969 – John Fogerty, the front man and lead guitarist of the rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) writes the song »Bad Moon Rising«. He was inspired by a black-and-white movie called »The Devil and Daniel Webster«, in which almost an entire city is obliterated by a hurricane. Fogerty creates gloomy lyrics that warn about the threat of destruction and its bringer of ill luck, being the rising Moon.
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The American-British space thriller »Gravity« of 2013, offers next to its extraordinary suspenseful action, breathtaking images of space that show apart from the Earth and the Sun also the Moon. The director of the movie is Alfonso Cuarón (who also directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). The movie is commercially very successful and has already brought in the multiple of its production cost, shortly after its release.
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