The egg and the oyster

Two scenes from タンポポ (Tanpopo, "The Dandelion"), a movie in which food is the main character, the only thing that binds the various characters and scenes together. If you're lucky enough to know Japanese or German (the subtitles' language), you can watch the full movie, starting here.

Pearls before swine

The two brothers Primo and Secondo have some trouble educating the American public in the delights of Italian cuisine. From Big Night, (1998), starring Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub. The silent waiter is played by Latin singing sensation Marc Anthony.

Pee Wee's Big Breakfast

Pee Wee Herman makes his breakfast using a Rube Goldberg machine in Pee Wee's Big Adventure (1985), Tim Burton's debut feature film.

About to touch

We can't make out the man making a leap in Henri Cartier-Bresson's 1932 photograph Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare. His foot is about to touch the water, and his jump seems to imitate the graceful grand jeté performed by the ballet dancer on the posters in the background. It's hard to look at this photographg without imagining the splash that must have followed it.
A much larger version of this photo is here.

The earliest man

This is a statue that represents a warrior named Kroisos, although we do not know if Kroisos actually looked like this, nor do we know who made the statue. Kroisos' gravestone reads, "Stop and show pity beside the marker of Kroisos, dead, whom once in battle's front rank raging Ares destroyed."

The statue, which dates back to the 6th century BCE, was on his grave, and it's among the very first cases of a statue being made to present an ordinary man rather than a god or a king. There are many statues like this one, known as Kouroi, all of them walking toward us, left foot forward, and with a frozen smile on their faces, known as the Archaic smile.

The rock band Tin Machine, led by singer David Bowie, put a picture of four Kouroi on the cover of their 1991 CD "Tin Machine II". When the album was released in the United States, the penises of the Kouroi had to be airbrushed out of sight of the prudent American public.

Here comes the cavalry

Red Cavalry Riding, by the painter Kazimir Malevich, who was ethnically Polish, born in Kiev, and a citizen of the Soviet Union. Malevich grew up in various Ukrainian villages with minimal exposure to art, but grew up to become one of the most important painters of his generation. He also made the decors for a play by Mayakovsky, no stranger to this blog.

The Fall

Daedalus was the creator of the labyrinth in which reigned, imprisoned, the Minotaur. In order to keep their silence, Daedalus and his son Icarus were imprisoned on an island. Inventor that he was, Daedalus created two pairs of wings that would carry him and Icarus in flight from the island.
"Don't go too close to the water, or the splashing waves will make your wings wet and heavy," he warned Icarus, "and don't get too close to the sun, either, or its hot rays will melt the wax that holds the feathers together."
Yet Icarus, who was just a boy, delighted in flying and forgot these warnings completely. As he flew higher and higher, his wings fell away and they were lost to him. Icarus tumbled down into the sea. He drowned.
You will find Icarus in this painting (as created in 1558 by the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder). You may want to check the bigger version.