Smile

A smile is a facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a "Duchenne smile". Smiles performed without the eye contraction can be perceived as "fake".

Among humans, smiling is an expression denoting pleasure, sociability, happiness, or amusement. It is distinct from a similar but usually involuntary expression of anxiety known as a grimace. Although cross-cultural studies have shown that smiling is a means of communication throughout the world, there are large differences between different cultures, with some using smiles to convey confusion or embarrassment.

Historical background

Primatologist Signe Preuschoft traces the smile back over 30 million years of evolution to a "fear grin" stemming from monkeys and apes who often used barely clenched teeth to portray to predators that they were harmless. The smile may have evolved differently among species and especially among humans. Apart from Biology as an academic discipline that interprets the smile, those who study kinesics and psychology such as Freitas-Magalhaes view the smile as an affect display that can communicate feelings such as love, happiness, pride, contempt, and embarrassment.

Smile! (novel)

Smile! is a children's book by Geraldine McCaughrean. In 2004 it won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize Bronze Award.

References

Smile (The Beach Boys album)

Smile (occasionally typeset as SMiLE) was a projected album by American rock band the Beach Boys intended to follow their 11th studio album Pet Sounds. After the group's songwriting leader Brian Wilson abandoned large portions of music recorded between 1966 and 1967, the band recorded and released the dramatically scaled-down Smiley Smile album in its place. Some of the original Smile tracks eventually found their way onto subsequent Beach Boys studio and compilation albums. As more fans learned of the project's origins, details of its recordings acquired considerable mystique, and it was later acknowledged as the most legendary unreleased album in the history of popular music.

Working with lyricist Van Dyke Parks, Smile was composed as a multi-thematic concept album, existing today in its unfinished and fragmented state as an unordered series of abstract musical vignettes. Its genesis came during the recording of Pet Sounds, when Wilson began recording a new single: "Good Vibrations". The track was created by an unprecedented recording technique: over 90 hours of tape was recorded, spliced, and reduced into a three-minute pop song. It quickly became the band's biggest international hit yet; Smile was to be produced in a similar fashion. Wilson touted the album "a teenage symphony to God," incorporating a diverse range of music styles including psychedelic, doo-wop, barbershop singing, ragtime, yodeling, early American folk, classical music, and avant-garde explorations into noise and musical acoustics. Its projected singles were "Heroes and Villains", a Western musical comedy, and "Vega-Tables", a satire of physical fitness.

Nude (Renoir, Belgrade, 1910)

Nude (1910, French: Nu, Serbian: Купачица / Kupačica) is a painting by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It is oil on canvas, and was painted in 1910. In 1996 the estimated worth was about 6 million US Dollars. The painting is currently housed in the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade. The painting was given to the Serbian people by Prince Paul of Yugoslavia.

History

The painting was stolen in 1996 by an amateur Roma thief. During the theft, it was badly damaged and was recovered in poor condition, requiring a year of restoration. After the Renoir was stolen, the entire foreign art collection was moved to the museum warehouse to protect the collection until a better security system could be installed.

References

Nude (Charis, Santa Monica)

Nude (Charis, Santa Monica) is a photograph taken by Edward Weston in 1936. It shows an apparently nude woman with her arms wrapped around her legs while she sits on a blanket in bright sunlight against a darkened doorway. The dynamic balance of the light and dark accentuate the curves and angles of the woman's body; at the same time her face and all but the slightest hint of her pubic area are hidden from view, requiring the viewer to concentrate on her arms, legs, feet and hands. It is an image of a nude that concentrates solely on the forms of the body rather than the sexuality. The model was his muse and assistant, Charis Wilson, whom he married a year later.

Making the photograph

The Great Depression years of the early 1930s were hard on Weston, who, in spite of his relative fame, struggled to make ends meet. In early 1935 he closed his studio in Glendale and moved into a house with his three sons Brett, Cole and Kim at 446 Mesa Road in Santa Monica, California. The house was a modest two-bedroom bungalow, with not much personal space for the four of them. Even so, later that year he asked Wilson to join him, and she soon moved in. All five managed to live in the same space for several years.

Neon (disambiguation)

Neon is a chemical element. It may also refer to:

Lighting

Classical antiquity

Biology

Television

Comics

Companies

Neon (Jay Sean album)

Neon is the fourth studio album by British R&B singer Jay Sean. The album was released on 30 July 2013, by Cash Money Records and distributed by Republic Records. The album features guest appearances from Busta Rhymes, Ace Hood and Rick Ross.

Background

Jay Sean began working on his fourth album and second with Cash Money Records under the name Freeze Time in July 2010. At the time, he stated that he had completed roughly 75 percent of the album and that guests included Lil Wayne, Pitbull and Nicki Minaj. Sean also co-headlined with Joe Jonas on the Joe Jonas & Jay Sean Tour with JoJo as the opening act. Sean released a mixtape titled The Mistress in September 2011 and a Japan exclusive album titled Hit the Lights in January 2012.

But in February 2012, during an interview with Clevvermusic, when Jay Sean was asked about his long delayed fourth studio album he said "Let me tell you what happened with, Freeze Time. I curse myself with it because it got frozen in time and didn't come out." He further added "and guess what, I've changed the name and scrapped it; I'm done with Freeze Time; I'm over Freeze Time. The album is coming out which is done, finito, in a few months".