Very beautiful, from Dark Roasted Blend.

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1. The Future of Science… Is Art

When you watch cats, birds and flying squirrels jump, land and glide from place to place without a second thought, rarely injured, with great grace and efficiency, most people think this is simply encoded into their species. This ability comes from their animal form, nothing more.

Some people though see this movement as something to learn. David Belle, a French martial artist and gymnast, along with childhood friends, developed a series of tactics and movements known as Parkour, “the art of displacement.” In a similar way to martial arts, which defines movement to harm or defend against an attacker, Parkour practices techniques to flee, as quickly and efficiently as possible. The best way to get the idea is to watch a video:

Yamakasi and Free Running have their roots in Parkour, but in addition to fleeing with speed and efficiency, they add aesthetics and self improvement to their purpose. In practice, this means Yamakasi and Free Running may add flips, turns and other technically inefficient movements if they are beautiful to see or perform. Another difference is Parkour’s stance against martial arts-like competitions, feeling Parkour is not a competitive practice but one of cooperation and self improvement. Some other forms do not hold this stance. All three forms are amazing to watch, both visually and athletically, like dance and many types of martial arts.

Practitioners of Parkour are known as traceur (men) or traceuse (women). Movements can be dangerous, but the practice has the philosophy être et durer (to be and to last), intending to avoid short and long term injuries (which are inefficient, and efficiency is the goal of movement.)

The artform has spread worldwide and has been featured in films and documentaries.

Here is a documentary on Yamakasi:
Learn more: Parkour, David Belle, Yamakasi, and Free Running

Sites: Parkour.net, Yamakasi Korea, Mad3run Parkour team, and American Parkour

Films featuring Parkour, Yamakasi or Free Running:
District B13, co-starring David Belle; Casino Royale; The Bourne Ultimatum; and the region 2-only (won’t work in US/Canada DVD players) documentary Jump London. (The films Yamakasi and Les Fils Du Vent are also out there but many are disappointed with the amount of Yamakasi featured, in addition to simply being bad films.)

Travel to France (Travelocity) or learn French (Rosetta Stone).

Related posts:

1. People Become Sugar Gliders and Flying Squirrels

When you paint images not with spray cans or pigment, but instead by cleaning dirt and pollution from public places in artistic patterns – painting the image by removing dirt – this is reverse graffiti. This defaces no surface, and in fact starts to clean what a city should have cleaned to begin with. In order to remove the image, you don’t sandblast or get out the toxic cleaners. Instead you just finish cleaning the surface. The whole surface returns to its original bright clean color. Just like someone writing “Wash Me!” into the grime on a dirty car windshield might shame someone into actually washing their car just to get rid of the message – so reverse graffiti artists cause cities to clean where they should have already.

In São Paulo Brazil, artist Alexandre Orion:

In Paris, corporate reverse graffiti (for the Electronic Arts game Burnout, but through a beautifully designed guerrilla campaign at Kah Ra Shin):

Related books: Graffiti Brasil and Street World: Urban Culture and Art from Five Continents.

Travel to Brazil or France (Travelocity).

Related posts:

1. Graffiti Artists at the Bethlehem Wall
2. Graffiti Animation Runs Across Walls
3. Brazilian and Russian Street Art

Since the New York Times opened its complete archive on the web (previously it was only available as a web subscription), many people have been scouring the site for interesting history.

The first mention of Picasso comes on May 19, 1912, with this:

…it is to be regretted that this unquestionably talented artist, who is practically unknown to the British public, should now make his debut with a series of childish, not to say imbecile, scribbles that are of no interest either as independent works of art or steps toward achieving complete work….they are just fumbling, incompetent scribbles of no consequence whatsoever.

Remember that next time you get a bad review.

Read the 1912 story.

Get works by or about Pablo Picasso.