title: Mamta Mohandas

text: In 2009, she starred in the comedy film "Guru En Aalu" alongside Madhavan, and the thriller "Passenger", sharing screen space with Dileep and Sreenivasan, respectively. The film "Passenger", in which she played the role of a television reporter, became a turning point in Mohandas's career. She was initially approached to play the lead role in the 2009 Telugu dark fantasy "Arundathi". She refused the offer, and the movie went on to become one of the highest grossers that year. In 2010, she worked with Jayaram in "Kadha Thudarunnu" directed by Sathyan Anthikkad, for which she won her first Best Actress Award from Filmfare. This film also won her the Kerala State Film Award for Second Best Actress, the Vanitha award for best actress – Malayalam, the Mathrubhumi award for best actress – Malayalam and the Asianet award for the best actress- Malayalam. Other projects in 2010 included "Musafir" with Rahman, "Anwar" with Prithiviraj, and "Kedi" with Nagarjuna. Mamta's first film in 2011 was the Malayalam film "Race", in which she played the role of Niya, wife of a cardio surgeon Abey (Kunchacko Boban). The film failed to do well at the box office. Her next release in Malayalam was "Naayika". In 2012, she appeared in her third Tamil film, "Thadaiyara Thaakka", directed by Magizh Thirumeni. In 2013 she starred in "Paisa Paisa" with Indrajith. In 2014 she starred in "To Noora with Love" as a Muslim character.


title: Mamta Mohandas

text: Mohandas made a comeback to Malayalam movie industry with Ranjith Shankar's Mammooty starrer "Varsham". She shared her screen space again with Dileep in "Two Countries" after doing "My Boss" with him.


title: Mamta Mohandas

text: In 2016, Mohandas starred opposite Mammootty in "Thoppil Joppan", and she also signed the movie "Baby Sitter" alongside Biju Menon. In early 2017, she signed "Crossroad", an anthology film in which she plays an orthodox Muslim. She also appeared in an extended cameo in "Udaharanam Sujatha" with Manju Warrier. In mid-2017, she signed "Detroit Crossing" aka "Ranam" opposite Prithviraj, but had to opt out because she did not have fresh dates to allocate for the project.


title: Mamta Mohandas

text: In 2020 Mohandas acted in the crime thriller feature film "Forensic" in which she played the role of police officer Rithika Xavier IPS .


title: Mamta Mohandas

text: Mohandas is trained in Carnatic and Hindustani music, and first sang playback in the Telugu film "Rakhi", singing the title song under Devi Sri Prasad's direction, making her debut in the Telugu film industry as a singer before making her acting debut in Telugu. She went on to win the 2006 Filmfare Best Female Playback Singer Award for that song.


title: Mamta Mohandas

text: Subsequently, she was asked to sing several songs for composer Devi Sri Prasad, including "Akalesthe Annam Pedtha" for the Chiranjeevi-starrer "Shankardada Zindabad" (later dubbed as "Daddy Mummy" in the Tamil film "Villu"), "36-24-36" for the film "Jagadam", "Mia" for "Tulasi", and "Ghanana (Funny)" and the title song for the film "King". Other music directors she has worked with include M. M. Keeravani (for her own films "Yamadonga" and "Krishnarjuna", also "Chandamama"), R. P. Patnaik (for "Andamaina Mansulo"), Chakri (for "Victory"), Nithin Raikwar (for her own film "Homam") and Thaman (for "Jayeebhava").


title: Mamta Mohandas

text: In Tamil, she sang "Kaalai Kaalai" in the film "Kaalai", which starred Silambarasan in the lead role. She sang "Idai Vazhi" for the comedy film "Goa" under noted composer Yuvan Shankar Raja's direction. Both songs featured her singing alongside Benny Dayal. She was heard for the first time in her mother tongue, Malayalam, in the 2010 film "Anwar". She has also recorded a song for her film "Thriller". In the film 'Mohabath', she sang a duet with Hariharan. She sang "Iravil Viriyum" in her 2012 film "Arike". She sang "Karuppana Kannazhagi" in the film Aadupuliyattam.


title: Mamta Mohandas

text: Mohandas got engaged to Prajith Padmanabhan, a Bahrain-based businessman, on 11 November 2011. They married on 28 December 2011 in Thalassery. On 12 December 2012, the couple applied for divorce.


title: Mamta Mohandas

text: Mohandas is a cancer survivor, and has battled Hodgkin lymphoma since 2010. In April 2013, she had a relapse of the cancer and underwent cancer treatment in UCLA. Since 2014, she has resided in Los Angeles.


title: Mamta Mohandas

text: In 2012, Mohandas started working in television, hosting the quiz show "Kayyil Oru Kodi" on Surya TV, which was later cancelled. She also judged the show D 4 Dance.


title: Mamta Mohandas

text: Mohandas was the brand ambassador along with actress Bhavana for the team Kerala Strikers for the Celebrity Cricket League (CCL) held in 2013, captained by Mohanlal, who is also one of the owners of the team, and vice-captain Indrajith Sukumaran. On November 14, 2020, Mohandas launched her own production company Mamta Mohandas Productions.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His "oeuvre" documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, Spain, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Born in Florence to American parents, he was trained in Paris before moving to London, living most of his life in Europe. He enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter. An early submission to the Paris Salon in the 1880s, his "Portrait of Madame X", was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter in Paris, but instead resulted in scandal. During the next year following the scandal, Sargent departed for England where he continued a successful career as a portrait artist.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: From the beginning, Sargent's work is characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working "en plein air". Art historians generally ignored society artists such as Sargent until the late 20th century.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: The exhibition in the 1980s of Sargent's previously hidden male nudes served to spark a re-evaluation of his life and work, and its psychological complexity. In addition to the beauty, sensation, and innovation of his oeuvre, his same-sex interests, unconventional friendships with women, and engagement with race, gender-nonconformity and emerging globalism, are now viewed as socially and aesthetically progressive, and radical.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent is a descendant of Epes Sargent, a colonial military leader and jurist. Before John Singer Sargent's birth, his father, FitzWilliam (b. 1820 Gloucester, Massachusetts), was an eye surgeon at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia 1844–1854. After John's older sister died at the age of two, his mother, Mary Newbold Singer (née Singer, 1826–1906), suffered a breakdown, and the couple decided to go abroad to recover. They remained nomadic expatriates for the rest of their lives. Although based in Paris, Sargent's parents moved regularly with the seasons to the sea and the mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: While Mary was pregnant, they stopped in Florence, Tuscany, because of a cholera epidemic. Sargent was born there in 1856. A year later, his sister Mary was born. After her birth, FitzWilliam reluctantly resigned his post in Philadelphia and accepted his wife's request to remain abroad. They lived modestly on a small inheritance and savings, leading a quiet life with their children. They generally avoided society and other Americans except for friends in the art world. Four more children were born abroad, of whom only two lived past childhood.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Although his father was a patient teacher of basic subjects, young Sargent was a rambunctious child, more interested in outdoor activities than his studies. As his father wrote home, "He is quite a close observer of animated nature." His mother was convinced that traveling around Europe, and visiting museums and churches, would give young Sargent a satisfactory education. Several attempts to have him formally schooled failed, owing mostly to their itinerant life. His mother was a capable amateur artist and his father was a skilled medical illustrator. Early on, she gave him sketchbooks and encouraged drawing excursions. Sargent worked on his drawings, and he enthusiastically copied images from "The Illustrated London News" of ships and made detailed sketches of landscapes. FitzWilliam had hoped that his son's interest in ships and the sea might lead him toward a naval career.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: At thirteen, his mother reported that John "sketches quite nicely, & has a remarkably quick and correct eye. If we could afford to give him really good lessons, he would soon be quite a little artist." At the age of thirteen, he received some watercolor lessons from Carl Welsch, a German landscape painter. Although his education was far from complete, Sargent grew up to be a highly literate and cosmopolitan young man, accomplished in art, music, and literature. He was fluent in English, French, Italian, and German. At seventeen, Sargent was described as "willful, curious, determined and strong" (after his mother) yet shy, generous, and modest (after his father). He was well-acquainted with many of the great masters from first hand observation, as he wrote in 1874, "I have learned in Venice to admire Tintoretto immensely and to consider him perhaps second only to Michelangelo and Titian."


title: John Singer Sargent

text: An attempt to study at the Academy of Florence failed, as the school was reorganizing at the time. After returning to Paris from Florence, Sargent began his art studies with the young French portraitist Carolus-Duran. Following a meteoric rise, the artist was noted for his bold technique and modern teaching methods; his influence would be pivotal to Sargent during the period from 1874 to 1878.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: In 1874 Sargent passed on his first attempt the rigorous exam required to gain admission to the École des Beaux-Arts, the premier art school in France. He took drawing classes, which included anatomy and perspective, and gained a silver prize. He also spent much time in self-study, drawing in museums and painting in a studio he shared with James Carroll Beckwith. He became both a valuable friend and Sargent's primary connection with the American artists abroad. Sargent also took some lessons from Léon Bonnat.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Carolus-Duran's atelier was progressive, dispensing with the traditional academic approach, which required careful drawing and underpainting, in favor of the "alla prima" method of working directly on the canvas with a loaded brush, derived from Diego Velázquez. It was an approach that relied on the proper placement of tones of paint. Sargent would later create a painting in this style that prompted comments such as: "The student has surpassed the teacher."


title: John Singer Sargent

text: This approach also permitted spontaneous flourishes of color not bound to an underdrawing. It was markedly different from the traditional atelier of Jean-Léon Gérôme, where Americans Thomas Eakins and Julian Alden Weir had studied. Sargent was the star student in short order. Weir met Sargent in 1874 and noted that Sargent was "one of the most talented fellows I have ever come across; his drawings are like the old masters, and his color is equally fine." Sargent's excellent command of French and his superior talent made him both popular and admired. Through his friendship with Paul César Helleu, Sargent would meet giants of the art world, including Degas, Rodin, Monet, and Whistler.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent's early enthusiasm was for landscapes, not portraiture, as evidenced by his voluminous sketches full of mountains, seascapes, and buildings. Carolus-Duran's expertise in portraiture finally influenced Sargent in that direction. Commissions for history paintings were still considered more prestigious, but were much harder to get. Portrait painting, on the other hand, was the best way of promoting an art career, getting exhibited in the Salon, and gaining commissions to earn a livelihood.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent's first major portrait was of his friend Fanny Watts in 1877, and was also his first Salon admission. Its particularly well-executed pose drew attention. His second salon entry was the "Oyster Gatherers of Cançale", an impressionistic painting of which he made two copies, one of which he sent back to the United States, and both received warm reviews.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: In 1879, at the age of 23, Sargent painted a portrait of teacher Carolus-Duran; the virtuoso effort met with public approval and announced the direction his mature work would take. Its showing at the Paris Salon was both a tribute to his teacher and an advertisement for portrait commissions. Of Sargent's early work, Henry James wrote that the artist offered "the slightly 'uncanny' spectacle of a talent which on the very threshold of its career has nothing more to learn."


title: John Singer Sargent

text: After leaving Carolus-Duran's atelier, Sargent visited Spain. There he studied the paintings of Velázquez with a passion, absorbing the master's technique, and in his travels gathered ideas for future works. He was entranced with Spanish music and dance. The trip also re-awakened his own talent for music (which was nearly equal to his artistic talent), and which found visual expression in his early masterpiece "El Jaleo" (1882). Music would continue to play a major part in his social life as well, as he was a skillful accompanist of both amateur and professional musicians. Sargent became a strong advocate for modern composers, especially Gabriel Fauré. Trips to Italy provided sketches and ideas for several Venetian street scenes genre paintings, which effectively captured gestures and postures he would find useful in later portraiture.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Upon his return to Paris, Sargent quickly received several portrait commissions. His career was launched. He immediately demonstrated the concentration and stamina that enabled him to paint with workman-like steadiness for the next twenty-five years. He filled in the gaps between commissions with many non-commissioned portraits of friends and colleagues. His fine manners, perfect French, and great skill made him a standout among the newer portraitists, and his fame quickly spread. He confidently set high prices and turned down unsatisfactory sitters. He mentored his friend Emil Fuchs who was learning to paint portraits in oils.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: In the early 1880s, Sargent regularly exhibited portraits at the Salon, and these were mostly full-length portrayals of women, such as "Madame Edouard Pailleron" (1880) (done "en plein-air") and "Madame Ramón Subercaseaux" (1881). He continued to receive positive critical notice.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent's best portraits reveal the individuality and personality of the sitters; his most ardent admirers think he is matched in this only by Velázquez, who was one of Sargent's great influences. The Spanish master's spell is apparent in Sargent's "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit", 1882, a haunting interior that echoes Velázquez's "Las Meninas". As in many of his early portraits, Sargent confidently tries different approaches with each new challenge, here employing both unusual composition and lighting to striking effect. One of his most widely exhibited and best loved works of the 1880s was "The Lady with the Rose" (1882), a portrait of Charlotte Burckhardt, a close friend and possible romantic attachment.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: His most controversial work, "Portrait of Madame X" (Madame Pierre Gautreau) (1884) is now considered one of his best works, and was the artist's personal favorite; he stated in 1915, "I suppose it is the best thing I have done." When unveiled in Paris at the 1884 Salon, it aroused such a negative reaction that it likely prompted Sargent's move to London. Sargent's self-confidence had led him to attempt a risque experiment in portraiture—but this time it unexpectedly backfired. The painting was not commissioned by her, and he pursued her for the opportunity, quite unlike most of his portrait work where clients sought him out. Sargent wrote to a common acquaintance:


title: John Singer Sargent

text: It took well over a year to complete the painting. The first version of the portrait of Madame Gautreau, with the famously plunging neckline, white-powdered skin, and arrogantly cocked head, featured an intentionally suggestive off-the-shoulder dress strap, on her right side only, which made the overall effect more daring and sensual. Sargent repainted the strap to its expected over-the-shoulder position to try to dampen the furor, but the damage had been done. French commissions dried up and he told his friend Edmund Gosse in 1885 that he contemplated giving up painting for music or business.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Prior to the Madame X scandal of 1884, Sargent had painted exotic beauties such as Rosina Ferrara of Capri, and the Spanish expatriate model Carmela Bertagna, but the earlier pictures had not been intended for broad public reception. Sargent kept the painting prominently displayed in his London studio until he sold it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1916 after moving to the United States, and a few months after Gautreau's death.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Before arriving in England, Sargent began sending paintings for exhibition at the Royal Academy. These included the portraits of "Dr. Pozzi at Home" (1881), a flamboyant essay in red and his first full-length male portrait, and the more traditional "Mrs. Henry White" (1883). The ensuing portrait commissions encouraged Sargent to complete his move to London in 1886. Notwithstanding the Madame X scandal, he had considered moving to London as early as 1882; he had been urged to do so repeatedly by his new friend, the novelist Henry James. In retrospect his transfer to London may be seen to have been inevitable.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: English critics were not warm at first, faulting Sargent for his "clever" "Frenchified" handling of paint. One reviewer seeing his portrait of "Mrs. Henry White" described his technique as "hard" and "almost metallic" with "no taste in expression, air, or modeling." With help from Mrs. White, however, Sargent soon gained the admiration of English patrons and critics. Henry James also gave the artist "a push to the best of my ability."


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent spent much time painting outdoors in the English countryside when not in his studio. On a visit to Monet at Giverny in 1885, Sargent painted one of his most Impressionistic portraits, of Monet at work painting outdoors with his new bride nearby. Sargent is usually not thought of as an Impressionist painter, but he sometimes used impressionistic techniques to great effect. His "" is rendered in his own version of the Impressionist style. In the 1880s, he attended the Impressionist exhibitions and he began to paint outdoors in the "plein-air" manner after that visit to Monet. Sargent purchased four Monet works for his personal collection during that time.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent was similarly inspired to do a portrait of his artist friend Paul César Helleu, also painting outdoors with his wife by his side. A photograph very similar to the painting suggests that Sargent occasionally used photography as an aid to composition. Through Helleu, Sargent met and painted the famed French sculptor Auguste Rodin in 1884, a rather somber portrait reminiscent of works by Thomas Eakins. Although the British critics classified Sargent in the Impressionist camp, the French Impressionists thought otherwise. As Monet later stated, "He is not an Impressionist in the sense that we use the word, he is too much under the influence of Carolus-Duran."


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent's first major success at the Royal Academy came in 1887, with the enthusiastic response to "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose", a large piece, painted on site, of two young girls lighting lanterns in an English garden in Broadway in the Cotswolds. The painting was immediately purchased by the Tate Gallery.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: His first trip to New York and Boston as a professional artist in 1887–88 produced over 20 important commissions, including portraits of Isabella Stewart Gardner, the famed Boston art patron. His portrait of Mrs. Adrian Iselin, wife of a New York businessman, revealed her character in one of his most insightful works. In Boston, Sargent was honored with his first solo exhibition, which presented 22 of his paintings. Here he became friends with painter Dennis Miller Bunker, who traveled to England in the summer of 1888 to paint with him en plein air, and is the subject of Sargent's 1888 painting "Dennis Miller Bunker Painting at Calcot".


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Back in London, Sargent was quickly busy again. His working methods were by then well-established, following many of the steps employed by other master portrait painters before him. After securing a commission through negotiations which he carried out, Sargent would visit the client's home to see where the painting was to hang. He would often review a client's wardrobe to pick suitable attire. Some portraits were done in the client's home, but more often in his studio, which was well-stocked with furniture and background materials he chose for proper effect. He usually required eight to ten sittings from his clients, although he would try to capture the face in one sitting. He usually kept up pleasant conversation and sometimes he would take a break and play the piano for his sitter. Sargent seldom used pencil or oil sketches, and instead laid down oil paint directly. Finally, he would select an appropriate frame.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent had no assistants; he handled all the tasks, such as preparing his canvases, varnishing the painting, arranging for photography, shipping, and documentation. He commanded about $5,000 per portrait, or about $130,000 in current dollars. Some American clients traveled to London at their own expense to have Sargent paint their portrait.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Around 1890, Sargent painted two daring non-commissioned portraits as show pieces—one of actress Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth and one of the popular Spanish dancer "La Carmencita". Sargent was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, and was made a full member three years later. In the 1890s, he averaged fourteen portrait commissions per year, none more beautiful than the genteel "Lady Agnew of Lochnaw", 1892. His portrait of Mrs. Hugh Hammersley ("", 1892) was equally well received for its lively depiction of one of London's most notable hostesses. As a portrait painter in the grand manner, Sargent had unmatched success; he portrayed subjects who were at once ennobled and often possessed of nervous energy. Sargent was referred to as "the Van Dyck of our times." Although Sargent was an American expatriate, he returned to the United States many times, often to answer the demand for commissioned portraits.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent exhibited nine of his portraits in the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent painted a series of three portraits of Robert Louis Stevenson. The second, "Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson and his Wife" (1885), was one of his best known. He also completed portraits of two U.S. presidents: Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Asher Wertheimer, a wealthy Jewish art dealer living in London, commissioned from Sargent a series of a dozen portraits of his family, the artist's largest commission from a single patron. The Wertheimer portraits reveal a pleasant familiarity between the artist and his subjects. Wertheimer bequeathed most of the paintings to the National Gallery. In 1888, Sargent released his portrait of Alice Vanderbilt Shepard, great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Many of his most important works are in museums in the United States. In 1897, a friend sponsored a famous portrait in oil of Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Phelps Stokes, by Sargent, as a wedding gift.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: By 1900, Sargent was at the height of his fame. Cartoonist Max Beerbohm completed one of his seventeen caricatures of Sargent, making well known to the public the artist's paunchy physique. Although only in his forties, Sargent began to travel more and to devote relatively less time to portrait painting. His "An Interior in Venice" (1900), a portrait of four members of the Curtis family in their elegant palatial home, "Palazzo Barbaro", was a resounding success. But, Whistler did not approve of the looseness of Sargent's brushwork, which he summed up as "smudge everywhere." One of Sargent's last major portraits in his bravura style was that of Lord Ribblesdale, in 1902, finely attired in an elegant hunting uniform. Between 1900 and 1907, Sargent continued his high productivity, which included, in addition to dozens of oil portraits, hundreds of portrait drawings at about $400 each.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: In 1907, at the age of fifty-one, Sargent officially closed his studio. Relieved, he stated, "Painting a portrait would be quite amusing if one were not forced to talk while working…What a nuisance having to entertain the sitter and to look happy when one feels wretched." In that same year, Sargent painted his modest and serious self-portrait, his last, for the celebrated self-portrait collection of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent made several summer visits to the Swiss Alps with his sisters Emily and Violet (Mrs Ormond) and Violet's daughters Rose-Marie and Reine, who were the subject of a number of paintings 1906–1913.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: As Sargent wearied of portraiture he pursued architectural and landscapes subjects. During a visit to Rome in 1906 Sargent made an oil painting and several pencil sketches of the exterior staircase and balustrade in front of the Church of Saints Dominic and Sixtus, now the church of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, "Angelicum". The double staircase built in 1654 is the design of architect and sculptor Orazio Torriani (fl.1602–1657). In 1907 he wrote: "I did in Rome a study of a magnificent curved staircase and balustrade, leading to a grand facade that would reduce a millionaire to a worm..." The painting now hangs at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University and the pencil sketches are in the collection of the Harvard University art collection of the Fogg Museum. Sargent later used the architectural features of this stair and balustrade in a portrait of Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent's fame was still considerable and museums eagerly bought his works. That year he declined a knighthood and decided instead to keep his American citizenship. From 1907 on, Sargent largely forsook portrait painting and focused on landscapes. He made numerous visits to the United States in the last decade of his life, including a stay of two full years from 1915 to 1917. In April 1917 Sargent was visiting the Miami estate of James Deering and was invited to cruise the Florida Keys with James and his brother Charles Deering aboard James' yacht "Nepenthe". Sargent was much more interested in the "mine of sketching" that was the estate, not at all interested in fishing, and made the cruise "reluctantly," doing some watercolor sketches (including "Derelicts", 1917).


title: John Singer Sargent

text: By the time Sargent finished his portrait of John D. Rockefeller in 1917, most critics began to consign him to the masters of the past, "a brilliant ambassador between his patrons and posterity." Modernists treated him more harshly, considering him completely out of touch with the reality of American life and with emerging artistic trends including Cubism and Futurism. Sargent quietly accepted the criticism, but refused to alter his negative opinions of modern art. He retorted, "Ingres, Raphael and El Greco, these are now my admirations, these are what I like." In 1925, shortly before he died, Sargent painted his last oil portrait, a canvas of Grace Curzon, Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston. The painting was purchased in 1936 by the Currier Museum of Art, where it is on display.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: During Sargent's long career, he painted more than 2,000 watercolors, roving from the English countryside to Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. Each destination offered pictorial stimulation and treasure. Even at his leisure, in escaping the pressures of the portrait studio, he painted with restless intensity, often painting from morning until night.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: His hundreds of watercolors of Venice are especially notable, many done from the perspective of a gondola. His colors were sometimes extremely vivid and as one reviewer noted, "Everything is given with the intensity of a dream." In the Middle East and North Africa Sargent painted Bedouins, goatherds, and fishermen. In the last decade of his life, he produced many watercolors in Maine, Florida, and in the American West, of fauna, flora, and native peoples.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: With his watercolors, Sargent was able to indulge his earliest artistic inclinations for nature, architecture, exotic peoples, and noble mountain landscapes. And it is in some of his late works where one senses Sargent painting most purely for himself. His watercolors were executed with a joyful fluidness. He also painted extensively family, friends, gardens, and fountains. In watercolors, he playfully portrayed his friends and family dressed in Orientalist costume, relaxing in brightly lit landscapes that allowed for a more vivid palette and experimental handling than did his commissions ("The Chess Game", 1906). His first major solo exhibit of watercolor works was at the Carfax Gallery in London in 1905. In 1909, he exhibited eighty-six watercolors in New York City, eighty-three of which were bought by the Brooklyn Museum. Evan Charteris wrote in 1927:


title: John Singer Sargent

text: To live with Sargent's water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held, with the luster of a bright and legible world, 'the refluent shade' and 'the Ambient ardours of the noon.'


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Although not generally accorded the critical respect given Winslow Homer, perhaps America's greatest watercolorist, scholarship has revealed that Sargent was fluent in the entire range of opaque and transparent watercolor technique, including the methods used by Homer.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: As a concession to the insatiable demand of wealthy patrons for portraits, Sargent dashed off hundreds of rapid charcoal portrait sketches, which he called "Mugs". Forty-six of these, spanning the years 1890–1916, were exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1916.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: All of Sargent's murals are to be found in the Boston/Cambridge area. They are in the Boston Public Library, the Museum of Fine Arts, and Harvard's Widener Library. Sargent's largest scale works are the mural decorations that grace the Boston Public Library depicting the history of religion and the gods of polytheism. They were attached to the walls of the library by means of marouflage. He worked on the cycle for almost thirty years but never completed the final mural. Sargent drew on his extensive travels and museum visits to create a dense art historical mélange. The murals were most recently restored in 2003–2004 by a team from the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent worked on the murals from 1895 through 1919; they were intended to show religion's (and society's) progress from pagan superstition up through the ascension of Christianity, concluding with a painting depicting Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount. But Sargent's paintings of "The Church" and "The Synagogue", installed in late 1919, inspired a debate about whether the artist had represented Judaism in a stereotypical, or even an anti-Semitic, manner. Drawing upon iconography that was used in medieval paintings, Sargent portrayed Judaism and the synagogue as a blind, ugly hag, and Christianity and the church as a lovely, radiant young woman. He also failed to understand how these representations might be problematic for the Jews of Boston; he was both surprised and hurt when the paintings were criticized. The paintings were objectionable to Boston Jews since they seemed to show Judaism defeated, and Christianity triumphant. The Boston newspapers also followed the controversy, noting that while many found the paintings offensive, not everyone agreed. In the end, Sargent abandoned his plan to finish the murals, and the controversy eventually died down.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Upon his return to England in 1918 after a visit to the United States, Sargent was commissioned as a war artist by the British Ministry of Information. In his large painting "Gassed" and in many watercolors, he depicted scenes from the Great War. Sargent had been affected by the death of his niece Rose-Marie in the shelling of the St Gervais church, Paris, on Good Friday 1918.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent was a lifelong bachelor with a wide circle of friends including both men and women such as Oscar Wilde (whom he was neighbors with for several years), lesbian author Violet Paget, and his likely lover Albert de Belleroche. Biographers once portrayed him as staid and reticent. However, recent scholarship has theorised he was a private, complex, and passionate man whose homosexual identity was integral to shaping his art. This view is based on statements by his friends and associations, the overall alluring remoteness of his portraits, the way his works challenge 19th-century notions of gender difference, his previously ignored male nudes, and some nude male portraits, including those of Thomas E. McKeller, Bartholomy Maganosco, Olimpio Fusco, and that of aristocratic artist Albert de Belleroche, which hung in his Chelsea dining room. Sargent had a long friendship with Belleroche, whom he met in 1882 and traveled with frequently. A surviving drawing suggests Sargent might have used him as a model for "Madame X", following a coincidence of dates for Sargent drawing each of them separately around the same time, and the delicate pose suggestive more of Sargent's sketches of the male form than his often stiff commissions.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: It has been suggested that Sargent's reputation in the 1890s as "the painter of the Jews" may have been due to his empathy with, and complicit enjoyment of, their mutual social otherness. One such Jewish client, Betty Wertheimer, wrote that when in Venice, Sargent "was only interested in the Venetian gondoliers". The painter Jacques-Émile Blanche, who was one of his early sitters, said after Sargent's death that his sex life "was notorious in Paris, and in Venice, positively scandalous. He was a frenzied bugger."


title: John Singer Sargent

text: There were many relationships with women: it has been suggested that those with his sitters Rosina Ferrara, Virginie Gautreau, and Judith Gautier may have tipped into infatuation. As a young man, Sargent also courted for a time Louise Burkhardt, the model for "Lady with the Rose".


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Sargent's friends and supporters included Henry James, Isabella Stewart Gardner (who commissioned and purchased works from Sargent and sought his advice on other acquisitions), Edward VII, and Paul César Helleu. His associations also included Prince Edmond de Polignac and Count Robert de Montesquiou. Other artists Sargent associated with were Dennis Miller Bunker, James Carroll Beckwith, Edwin Austin Abbey and John Elliott (who also worked on the Boston Public Library murals), Francis David Millet, Joaquín Sorolla and Claude Monet, whom Sargent painted. Between 1905 and 1914, Sargent's frequent traveling companions were the married artist couple Wilfrid de Glehn and Jane Emmet de Glehn. The trio would often spend summers in France, Spain, or Italy, and all three would depict one another in their paintings during their travels.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: In a time when the art world focused, in turn, on Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism, Sargent practiced his own form of Realism, which made brilliant references to Velázquez, Van Dyck, and Gainsborough. His seemingly effortless facility for paraphrasing the masters in a contemporary fashion led to a stream of commissioned portraits of remarkable virtuosity ("Arsène Vigeant", 1885, Musées de Metz; "", 1897, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and earned Sargent the moniker, "the Van Dyck of our times."


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Still, during his life his work engendered negative responses from some of his colleagues: Camille Pissarro wrote "he is not an enthusiast but rather an adroit performer," and Walter Sickert published a satirical turn under the heading "Sargentolatry." By the time of his death he was dismissed as an anachronism, a relic of the Gilded Age and out of step with the artistic sentiments of post-World War I Europe. Elizabeth Prettejohn suggests that the decline of Sargent's reputation was due partly to the rise of anti-Semitism, and the resultant intolerance of 'celebrations of Jewish prosperity.' It has been suggested that the exotic qualities inherent in his work appealed to the sympathies of the Jewish clients whom he painted from the 1890s on.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Nowhere is this more apparent than in his portrait "" (1908), in which the subject is seen wearing a Persian costume, a pearl encrusted turban, and strumming an Indian tambura, accoutrements all meant to convey sensuality and mystery. If Sargent used this portrait to explore issues of sexuality and identity, it seems to have met with the satisfaction of the subject's father, Asher Wertheimer, a wealthy Jewish art dealer.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Foremost of Sargent's detractors was the influential English art critic Roger Fry, of the Bloomsbury Group, who at the 1926 Sargent retrospective in London dismissed Sargent's work as lacking aesthetic quality: "Wonderful indeed, but most wonderful that this wonderful performance should ever have been confused with that of an artist." And, in the 1930s, Lewis Mumford led a chorus of the severest critics: "Sargent remained to the end an illustrator ... the most adroit appearance of workmanship, the most dashing eye for effect, cannot conceal the essential emptiness of Sargent's mind, or the contemptuous and cynical superficiality of a certain part of his execution."


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Part of Sargent's devaluation is also attributed to his expatriate life, which made him seem less American at a time when "authentic" socially conscious American art, as exemplified by the Stieglitz circle and by the Ashcan School, was on the ascent.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: After such a long period of critical disfavor, Sargent's reputation has increased steadily since the 1950s. In the 1960s, a revival of Victorian art and new scholarship directed at Sargent strengthened his reputation. Sargent has been the subject of large-scale exhibitions in major museums, including a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1986, and a major 1999 traveling show that exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Art Washington, and the National Gallery, London.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: In 1986, Andy Warhol commented to Sargent scholar Trevor Fairbrother that Sargent "made everybody look glamorous. Taller. Thinner. But they all have mood, every one of them has a different mood."


title: John Singer Sargent

text: In a "TIME" magazine article from the 1980s, critic Robert Hughes praised Sargent as ""the unrivaled recorder of male power and female beauty in a day that, like ours, paid excessive court to both.""


title: John Singer Sargent

text: In 1922 Sargent co-founded New York City's Grand Central Art Galleries together with Edmund Greacen, Walter Leighton Clark, and others. Sargent actively participated in the Grand Central Art Galleries and their academy, the Grand Central School of Art, until his death in 1925. The Galleries held a major retrospective exhibit of Sargent's work in 1924. He then returned to England, where he died at his Chelsea home on April 14, 1925, of heart disease. Sargent is interred in Brookwood Cemetery near Woking, Surrey.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: Memorial exhibitions of Sargent's work were held in Boston in 1925, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at the Royal Academy and Tate Gallery in London in 1926. The Grand Central Art Galleries also organized a posthumous exhibition in 1928 of previously unseen sketches and drawings from throughout his career.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: "" was sold in 2004 for US$8.8 million and is located at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art at Bentonville, Arkansas.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: In December 2004, "Group with Parasols (A Siesta)" (1905) sold for US$23.5 million, nearly double the Sotheby's estimate of $12 million. The previous highest price for a Sargent painting was US$11 million.


title: John Singer Sargent

text: In 2018, Comedy Central star Jade Esteban Estrada wrote, directed and starred in "Madame X: A Burlesque Fantasy", a story based on the life of Sargent and his famous painting, "Portrait of Madame X".


title: Kellie Martin

text: Kellie Martin (born October 16, 1975) is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Rebecca "Becca" Thatcher in "Life Goes On" (1989–1993), Lucy Knight on "ER" (1998–2000), Samantha Kinsey in the "Mystery Woman" TV film series (2003–2007), and as Hailey Dean in the "Hailey Dean Mystery" TV film series (2016–2019).


title: Kellie Martin

text: Martin began her acting career at age seven, when her aunt who was a nanny for actor Michael Landon's children helped her land a guest spot on the Landon-produced series "Father Murphy". At the age of 11, she was a contestant during Young People's Week on the Bob Eubanks-hosted version of "Card Sharks".


title: Kellie Martin

text: Martin had a recurring role on season three of "" (1987–1988). She also contributed the voice of Daphne Blake on the animated series "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo" in 1988–1991. In 1989, Martin began the role of Rebecca "Becca" Thacher on the family drama "Life Goes On", which ran on ABC for four seasons. She also played the role of Emily in 1989's "Troop Beverly Hills", starring Shelley Long. Martin also co-hosted the 1989 pilot of "America's Funniest Home Videos" alongside Bob Saget.


title: Kellie Martin

text: From 1991 to 1995, Martin supplied the voice of Molly Tasmanian Devil on "Taz-Mania". In 1993, she played Sherry in "Matinee", and made a guest appearance as Cleo Walker on an episode of "seaQuest DSV", titled "Brothers and Sisters".


title: Kellie Martin

text: In 1994, she starred in her own series, "Christy". Also in 1994, she starred in the Lifetime movie "A Friend to Die For". In 1995, she starred in "The Face on the Milk Carton", a TV film based on the book by Caroline Cooney about a teenager who finds out she was kidnapped from her real family 13 years prior and had been raised by the parents of her kidnapper. She was in "A Goofy Movie" as the voice of Roxanne, Max's love interest.


title: Kellie Martin

text: In 1996, Martin starred as deaf abuse-victim Laura Keyes on Lifetime's TV movie "After the Silence" (or "Breaking Through"). She starred in a made for TV movie "Hidden in Silence" (Lifetime Television). From 1998–2000, Martin appeared on the medical drama "ER" as medical student Lucy Knight. Martin was still going to Yale at the time and postponed her education so that she could join the cast. When she left ER, she stopped acting for three years and returned to Yale to finish her degree in art history.


title: Kellie Martin

text: In 2003, Martin starred in "Mystery Woman", a Hallmark Channel movie about the owner of a mystery bookshop who solves actual crimes. From 2005 to 2007, she made ten more "Mystery Woman" movies for Hallmark, two of which she directed. Also in 2003, Martin had a supporting role on the comedic film "Malibu's Most Wanted".


title: Kellie Martin

text: In 2006, she starred in the Lifetime movie "Live Once, Die Twice", followed by "No Brother of Mine" in 2007. Also in 2007, Martin provided the voice for the adult-version of Barbara Gordon on "Artifacts", an episode of "The Batman".


title: Kellie Martin

text: In 2009, Martin was a guest on "Grey's Anatomy", episode "No Good at Saying Sorry." She also guest starred in the "Ghost Whisperer" episode "Stage Fright" as Cally O'Keefe. She has guest starred on the "Private Practice" episode "The Way We Were".


title: Kellie Martin

text: In 2012, she played Army Captain Nicole Galassini on the Lifetime Network television series "Army Wives".


title: Kellie Martin

text: In 2016, Martin began starring in a new Hallmark Movies & Mysteries Channel show "Hailey Dean Mystery" as the protagonist Hailey Dean who is a former prosecutor turned therapist and solves mysteries. The Hailey Dean Mysteries are based on characters from Nancy Grace's "New York Times" best-selling series of mystery books about Dean.


title: Kellie Martin

text: In 2017, she played police officer Kimberly Leahy in seven episodes of the TBS comedy series "The Guest Book".


title: Kellie Martin

text: Martin graduated from Yale University in 2001 with a degree in art history. She was a member of the Saybrook Fellowship. She married Keith Christian on May 15, 1999, in his hometown of Polson, Montana. They have two daughters.


title: Kellie Martin

text: Martin owns and operates her own toy store and has authored a novel, "Madam: A Novel of New Orleans" from Plume.


title: Patti Davis

text: Patricia Ann Davis (' Reagan; born October 21, 1952) is an American actress and author. She is the daughter of U.S. president Ronald Reagan and his second wife, Nancy Reagan.


title: Patti Davis

text: Patricia Ann Reagan was born to Ronald and Nancy Reagan on October 21, 1952, in Los Angeles, California. She is the older sister of Ron Reagan, and the younger adopted sister of Michael Reagan as well as half sister of the late Maureen Reagan. She went to grade school at The John Thomas Dye School in Bel Air, and graduated from the Orme School of Arizona in 1970. After considering Ohio University and several Midwestern colleges, she initially attended Northwestern University from 1970 to 1971, where she studied creative writing and drama. She then attended the University of Southern California for two years. She changed her last name to her mother's maiden name, Davis, in an effort to have an independent career. She was active in the anti-nuclear movement before her father was elected president, and continued her activism through his term, stirring controversy and creating strife in the family. Davis is a critic of the Republican Party, with which she has never been affiliated.


title: Patti Davis

text: In the early 1980s, Davis acted in a few television shows before getting her first publishing deal. In 1986, she published her first novel, "Home Front". She used elements of her own life to create a fictional story, and because of that the book became controversial and she was widely criticized. Following her second novel "Deadfall", she wrote an autobiography called "The Way I See It", in which she revealed many family dramas and secrets. She has since spoken publicly about how she regrets the form, but not the content, of the critique she presented in the book.


title: Patti Davis

text: In the July 1994 issue of "Playboy", Davis posed for the magazine with a full frontal pictorial. This issue of the magazine also displayed Davis on its front cover. This issue is considered to be one of the magazine's most controversial covers. Davis has posed for other magazines such as "More" in 2011. Playboy also issued a VHS tape as a complement to the 1994 issue.


title: Patti Davis

text: When her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she began writing "The Long Goodbye" which was published in 2004. During that time, she began writing for magazines and newspapers, including "The New York Times", "Newsweek" and "Time". Her original screenplay, "Spring Thaw", became the 2007 Hallmark Channel movie "Sacrifices of the Heart" starring Melissa Gilbert and Ken Howard.


title: Patti Davis

text: In 1969, Patty Reagan applied to Ohio University and Northwestern to study journalism, and enrolled in the latter. In the 1970s, Davis lived with Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon. By this time, her mother, Nancy Reagan, had disowned her for living together with Leadon as an unmarried couple. Together, Davis and Leadon co-wrote the song "I Wish You Peace", which appeared on Eagles album "One of These Nights". In the 1980s, she dated Timothy Hutton and later had a two-year relationship with Peter Strauss. In recent years, Davis has expressed her frustration about having to date with the Secret Service monitoring her as they had time limits on evening dates and monitoring her and her partners actions together, which is in part, why she rushed her relationship with her future husband, Paul Grilley. In 1984, she married Grilley, a yoga instructor and one of the founders of Yin Yoga. They divorced in 1990, without children and Davis never remarried.


title: Patti Davis

text: Davis is a vegetarian and has disagreed with laws that outlaw the use of marijuana. In 2011, she launched "Beyond Alzheimer's" at UCLA, which she still runs.


title: Patti Davis

text: In a September 20, 2018, op-ed for the "Washington Post", Davis wrote that she had been sexually assaulted nearly 40 years earlier by a studio executive. The op-ed was released the same week Christine Blasey Ford recounted an alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Davis released the piece in support of Blasey Ford when she had been criticized for not remembering details of the alleged assault.


title: Patti Davis

text: After the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in October 2018, Davis accused President Donald Trump of failing to provide solace to the nation in times of tragedy: "Let's stop asking him!"


title: Patti Davis

text: On August 1, 2019, Davis wrote an editorial in the "Washington Post" condemning denigrating comments made by her father about black Africans at the United Nations in a 1971 phone conversation with President Richard Nixon which Nixon taped. The tapes were publicly released the day prior. In the editorial, Davis wrote: "There is no defense, no rationalization, no suitable explanation for what my father said on that taped phone conversation."


title: Patti Davis

text: In October 2021, she expressed her disdain for John Hinckley Jr. being fully released following the 1981 assassination attempt on her father. These views contradicted those of her brother, Michael Reagan, who openly expressed forgiveness for Hinckley.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: "Drivers License" (stylized in all lowercase) is the debut single by American singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo. It was released on January 8, 2021, through Geffen and Interscope Records, as the lead single from her debut studio album, "Sour" (2021). She co-wrote the song with its producer Dan Nigro. Containing poignant lyrics detailing heartache, "Drivers License" is a power ballad blending bedroom pop, indie pop, and power pop styles. It is characterized by a minimalist, piano-led production, incorporating kick drums, harmonies, syncopated hand-claps, and a dreamy bridge. One of 2021's most successful songs, "Drivers License" launched Rodrigo's music career.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: The song documents the "multifaceted" emotions Rodrigo endured after a heartbreak. She teased the song on her social media for many months in 2020, before announcing it on January 4, 2021. The official music video was posted to YouTube alongside the song's release, in which Rodrigo drives around a suburban area after receiving her driver's license and reminisces about her memories of the song's subject, who encouraged her to obtain the license. "Drivers License" was met with widespread critical acclaim; praise centered on Rodrigo's cathartic songwriting, emotional vocals, and the song's stirring production, with many underscoring its Taylor Swift and Lorde influences. The song won Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2022 Grammy Awards, where it was also nominated for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: "Drivers License" broke a string of records, including the Spotify record for the most single-day streams for a non-holiday song (achieved on its fourth day of release) and the biggest first-week for a song on Spotify and Amazon Music. The song topped the US "Billboard" Hot 100 and made Rodrigo the youngest artist ever to debut atop the chart. The song spent eight consecutive weeks at number one. It has been certified five-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Elsewhere, "Drivers License" reached number one in 25 countries, as well as spending multiple weeks atop the charts in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. It also peaked within the top ten in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, South Africa and various others. As of October 2022, the song has over 1.5 billion streams on Spotify, ranking amongst the 100 most streamed songs on the platform.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: While American singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo starred in the 2019 Disney+ mockumentary series "", she contributed a self-written song called "All I Want" to the soundtrack, which was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for earning over 500,000 units in the United States. The series was renewed for a second season in 2021. Rodrigo signed to Geffen Records, a subsidiary of Interscope Records, intending to release her debut EP in 2021.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: She teased the song for many months in 2020, including some lyrics on Instagram. She posted a snippet, captioned "Wrote dis the other day. vv close to my heart. gonna call it drivers license I think lol", where she plays the song on a piano. The song was announced on January 4. The song was released to all digital music and streaming platforms four days later, alongside a music video on YouTube. It is the lead single to her debut studio album "Sour", which Rodrigo had originally planned to be an EP. "Drivers License" impacted US contemporary hit radio on January 19.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: Steered by piano, "Drivers License" is an atmospheric power ballad, that has been described as a bedroom pop, indie pop, and power pop song, with elements of folk and indie rock. It was inspired by the disorienting emotions Rodrigo felt after a recent breakup. She wrote the song with its producer, Daniel Nigro. The song is written in the key of B major and has a fast tempo of 144 beats per minute, with double time kick drum and claps on the second verse and lead-in. Rodrigo's vocal range on the song spans from the low note of G to the high note of F. Lyrically, the song has Rodrigo drive through a suburban area, upset and angry, pondering whether any of the subject's feelings were ever true.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: The song begins with the sound of Rodrigo's mother's car engine starting, followed by a "door ajar" chime that fades into a pulsing piano key. Rodrigo delivers soprano vocals that grow into "cathartic howls of pain" as the song progresses, along with a swelling crescendo followed by an emotional chorus. The minimalist instrumentation also consists of syncopated hand-claps and stomping harmonies, and reaches its peak in a rich bridge of layered vocals with the catchphrase "I still fuckin' love you". As stated by Rodrigo, the song has Lorde and Taylor Swift influences, which was also noted by critics. Rodrigo also stated that the EP "Minor" (2020) by American singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams inspired the musical style of "Drivers License".


title: Drivers License (song)

text: In an interview with "Vogue" magazine, Rodrigo acknowledged the song had grammatical errors, including the lack of an apostrophe ("Drivers License" vs "Driver's License") and the contradictory double negative: "I've never felt this way for no one".


title: Drivers License (song)

text: "Drivers License" received widespread acclaim from critics upon its release. "Clash" critic Robin Murray dubbed the song a "sensational pop statement, an impeccable melodic moment right from the off". He praised its firm songwriting and atmospheric production. Matthew Kent, writing for "The Line of Best Fit", complimented the song's euphoric sound and poignant lyricism, and asserted that the single is packed with "emotional punch after emotional punch". They dubbed the song a "stunning" and "stirring" debut single. Kelsie Gibson of "PopSugar" opined that the song gives off "major Lorde and Taylor Swift" influences, who are two of Rodrigo's musical inspirations. "Stereogum" critic Chris DeVille described "Drivers License" as a cinematic and old-fashioned power ballad, a "prime Spotify-core sadgirl fare" that starts "as a trembling Phoebe Bridgers song" and concludes as a "resplendent "Folklore" track".


title: Drivers License (song)

text: Listing it amongst best new music, "Teen Vogue"'s Claire Dodson commented that Rodrigo employs soaring vocals, and capture "small details" in the song. Dodson thought the song channels "the songwriting prowess she already brings to the table". Naming it one of the "10 Cool New Pop Songs to Get You Through The Week", "Billboard" writers Gab Linsberg and Jason Lipshutz branded "Drivers License" the type of debut single "that aspiring artists dream of", where Rodrigo perfects her heartbreak's "fragility and heightened emotion". They commended the singer's range in the song, swinging between the crescendo's "stomp-clap harmonies" and the bridge's "choked-up balladry". Ellise Shafer of "Variety" found the song relatable and vulnerable, and complimented its production and vocal performance. Shafer noted it as "a must-hear for any pop enthusiast".


title: Drivers License (song)

text: Calling the song an "early contender for song of the year", "Rolling Stone" critic Brittany Spanos noted that the production of "Drivers License" is reminiscent of Lorde's "Melodrama" (2017), while the lyrics and "detailed" storytelling channel Swift's "Fearless" (2008). Spanos lauded Rodrigo's songwriting skills and emotional potency at age 17, and added that "she could likely become pop's next great raconteur". Justin Curto of "Vulture" opined that "Drivers License" mixes "the intimate arrangements of "Folklore" and "Evermore" with the high stakes pop of "Lover", tying it all together with a dramatic, Swiftian bridge". He also added that Rodrigo's calm vocals sound like Billie Eilish, while her anthemic moments recall Lorde, with hints of Alessia Cara. Jared Richards of "Junkee" stated that the song has "an irreducible quality, capturing a very specific heartbreak", blending "the slow-build piano-belters and bridge breakdowns of Lorde's "Melodrama" with Swiftian songwriting", and regarded it 2021's "Big Pop Moment".


title: Drivers License (song)

text: In May 2021, "Billboard" ranked "Drivers License" third on their ranking of the "100 Greatest Song Bridges of the 21st Century", and in June 2021, they ranked the song as the best song of 2021 so far, with Rania Aniftos calling the song "the start of Rodrigo's reign as pop's most captivating new storyteller".


title: Drivers License (song)

text: "Drivers License" was met with widespread commercial success worldwide, with publications calling it the year's biggest hit in early 2021. Upon release, the song reached number one on international Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music songs charts. "Billboard" reported that, in its first three days in the US, the song sold over 16,000 digital downloads and received more than 21 million streams. Compared to its release day, the song's total streams increased by 122% on its second day, and rose another 32% in its third day.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: The song broke the Spotify record for most one-day streams for a non-holiday song, with over 15 million global streams on its fourth day (January 11, 2021). The next day, it extended its record with over 17 million streams. It also broke the record for fastest song to reach 100 million streams on Spotify. "Drivers License" went on to break the Spotify record for most streams of a song in a single week, with over 65 million streams in the week ending January 14, 2021. It also broke the record for the biggest global first-week streams for a song in Amazon Music history, and became the most requested song of a single day on Alexa.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: "Drivers License" also reached number one on both "Billboard" Global and "Billboard" Global Excl. U.S. charts, generating 130 million streams and 49,000 sales with the former, and 54.5 million streams and 12,000 sales on the latter. It marked the highest weekly streaming total in the world for a song by a female artist, with 130.06 million streams, surpassing the 130.042 million sum for Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You". The song topped both the global charts for three consecutive weeks, becoming the first song by a female artist to do so ever since the charts' inauguration, and the second overall after "Dákiti" (2020) by Bad Bunny and Jhay Cortez. It stayed atop both the charts for eight consecutive weeks.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: "Drivers License" debuted atop the "Billboard" Hot 100, giving Rodrigo her first number-one single in the United States, and making her the first female artist since Carrie Underwood to have their first single debut at number-one on the chart. It marked her second entry on the chart, after "All I Want". It collected 76.1 million streams, 38,000 digital downloads, and 8.1 million airplay impressions in its opening week. Surpassing Jawsh 685, who topped the chart with "Savage Love (Laxed - Siren Beat)" (2020), Rodrigo became the most-recently-born artist to top the Hot 100, and the youngest since Billie Eilish, who achieved it with "Bad Guy" (2019), and is the youngest artist ever to debut atop the Hot 100. "Drivers License" topped the "Billboard" Streaming Songs and Digital Song Sales charts as well, staying atop both for three consecutive weeks. "Billboard" noted the song as one of the most dominant number-one hits of all time, garnering more than double the Hot 100 units of its closest competitor, "Mood" (2020). "Drivers License" spent eight consecutive weeks atop the Hot 100; it became the seventh single in the chart's history to have debuted at number one and spend at least its first eight weeks at the spot.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: As of July 2021, "Drivers License" was the most streamed song of 2021 so far, with 582.8 million on-demand streams. It is also the most streamed audio track (460.2 million), the most watched video (122.6 million views), the sixth best-selling digital song (199,000 downloads), and the eighth biggest song across all formats of radio (1.227 billion audience impressions).


title: Drivers License (song)

text: In the United Kingdom, "Drivers License" debuted at the top of the UK Singles Chart dated January 21, 2021, earning 2.407 million total streams on January 12, 2021, alone. The song broke the record for highest single-day streams in British history for a non-Christmas song, surpassing the previous record held by Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" (2017). With 95,000 units moved in its first week, "Drivers License" also had the biggest opening week for a number one debut single on the UK Singles Chart since Zayn Malik's "Pillowtalk" (2016). "Drivers License" spent nine weeks at the top of the UK Singles Chart, becoming the longest run at the top for a solo female artist since Tones and I' s "Dance Monkey" spent eleven consecutive weeks at the top in 2019. Spurred by "Drivers License", "All I Want" reached number 32, marking her second top-40 entry in the UK.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: In Ireland, "Drivers License" debuted at the top of the Irish Singles Chart. It was the country's most downloaded and streamed song its first two weeks, outperforming the rest of the top five combined. It has so far remained at number one for nine consecutive weeks; "All I Want" charted simultaneously, reaching a new peak of number 16.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: In Australia, "Drivers License" debuted at the top of the ARIA Singles Chart dated January 24, 2021, scoring Rodrigo her first number one song in Australia. In doing so, the song became the first debut single to top the ARIA Singles Chart since Harry Styles' "Sign of the Times" in 2017. "Drivers License" spent six consecutive weeks atop the chart.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: The video, directed by Matthew Dillon Cohen, adopts a vignette aesthetic and depicts Rodrigo's healing from heartbreak. She receives her driver's license in the video, but instead of going to her old lover's house like she used to dream of, she finds herself aimlessly cruising suburban side streets. Rodrigo reminisces about moments from her brief relationship. At the beginning of the video, she is embraced by the happy memories only, but eventually, all the toxic traits of her ex-partner confront her. The video received positive comments from critics for its visuals.


title: Drivers License (song)

text: "Drivers License" has been credited with launching Rodrigo's music career. The instant commercial success of the song upon its release has been attributed to the rise of niche market for bedroom pop, the song's emotional lyricism and appeal, TikTok, the tabloid journalism and social media speculation surrounding the song, and Rodrigo's Disney career. "The Indian Express" opined that song is a part of the DIY movement in the music industry, where young artists (mostly post-millennials), such as Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, and Tate McRae, are capable of making music of "near-studio quality" without leaving the house. Commenting on the song's unprecedented success, Spotify's Becky Bass stated that "We've never seen anything like this, where you do have a newer artist that just comes out of the gate in such a dominant way, and just continues to grow".


title: Drivers License (song)

text: "Paper" remarked that the song is a "product of years of pop trends" that resonates with millions of listeners, similar to the rise of Eilish in 2019, Lorde in 2013, or Taylor Swift in the late 2000s, but occurred instantly in Rodrigo's case, because of recent technological innovations like TikTok that has altered the course of the music industry. The TikTok hashtag "#driverslicense" amassed over 888.5 million views in one week. "Paper" also highlighted consumers' interest in the song's romantic background (a phenomenon of listeners being invested in the drama between Disney co-stars) as a factor for the song's success. "The New York Times" writer Joe Coscarelli wrote that the song was spurred not only by its quality, but also the gossips surrounding it, paired with the label's marketing plan, and support from celebrities like Swift. He noted the autobiographical song bolstered tabloids and listeners to "piece together its real-life parallels", while TikTok videos led to social media posts, "which led to streams, which led to news articles, and back around again", generating an "unbeatable" feedback loop. Coscarelli added that, similar to Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and Selena Gomez, Rodrigo took "her experiences within the Disney machine and attempted to translate them for a broader, more adult audience".


title: Drivers License (song)

text: "Stereogum"s Chris DeVille found Rodrigo to be an example of "actor-turned-pop stars" who profit off their best-known roles, such as her "Bizaardvark" and "", which "created a massive built-in audience for a prospective Rodrigo music career"; "Drivers License" maximized this interest by referencing the "behind-the-scenes drama" involving Joshua Bassett, who co-stars with Rodrigo in "", and Sabrina Carpenter. DeVille added that the song "will have ripple effects" that affect the industry in 2021 and beyond, as its bedroom pop sound is challenging hip-hop's dominance on streaming platforms. Douglas Greenwood, writing for "I-D", asserted that "Drivers License" contains "all of the old-school ingredients of a hit".


title: Drivers License (song)

text: "Insider" dubbed the song an "early 2021 cultural touchstone", citing its "sad girl appeal" echoing Generation Z (similar to Lorde and Eilish), the celebrity romance associated with its lyrics (like that of Swift), the song's cinematic bridge, its TikTok popularity, and radio friendliness as contributing factors to the song's success. Music journalist Laura Snapes, writing for "The Guardian", wrote "Drivers License" is the "epitome of new-school pop songwriting", in which power ballads are sonically intimate and subdued, rather than bombastic, with lyrics delving into specific and complex emotions. The February 20, 2021 episode of "Saturday Night Live" included a skit in which English actor Regé-Jean Page and six other male cast members recited the song's lyrics. Responding to the tabloid speculation around the song's subjects, Rodrigo stated: "I put it out not knowing that it would get that reaction, so it was really strange [when] it did. I just remember [everyone being] so weird and speculative about stuff they had no idea about. I don't really subscribe to hating other women because of boys. I think that's so stupid, and I really resent that narrative that was being tossed around."


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: Terravision is a 3D mapping software developed in 1993 by the German company ART+COM in Berlin as a "networked virtual representation of the earth based on satellite images, aerial shots, altitude data and architectural data". Development of the project was supported by the Deutsche Post (now Deutsche Telekom).


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: In 2014, ART+COM filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming its 2001 product Google Earth infringed the 1995 patent rights of Terravision. It lost in May 2016 as the jury of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware found in favor of Google. It also lost on appeal at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 2017.


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: Terravision is a networked virtual representation of the earth based on satellite images, aerial shots, altitude data and architectural data collected by the company in 1993.


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: The project was realized by Joachim Sauter, Pavel Mayer, Axel Schmidt, Gerd Grueneis, Dirk Luesebrink, Hendrik Tramberend and Steffen Meschkat using Onyx Computers developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc.


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: Because Terravision was the first system to provide a seamless web navigation and visualization of the earth in a massively large spatial data environment, Joachim Sauter called it a prequel to Google Earth.


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: Terravision was developed starting in 1993, originally as an art project by ART+COM in Berlin, a collective of artists and computer hackers, some from the Chaos Computer Club.


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: In 1994, ART+COM filed a patent called "Method and Device for Pictorial Representation of Space-related Data."


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: In 1995, then Deutsche Post (now Deutsche Telekom) approached Art+Com searching for high-end applications for its high-speed VBN network.


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: In 1994, Art+COM presented its project then named it "T_Vision" at the International Telecommunication Union Plenipotentiary Conference in Kyoto on twin monitors of a RealityEngine by Silicon Graphics. An image of the earth in space on a five-foot television screen could be spun by a large trackball beside it. According to Mark Pesce, ART+COM's two main programmers Pavel Meyer and Axel Schmidt were able to fix the software program which they had set up in Berlin on a different machine, in the last 10 minutes prior to opening of the conference. "T_Vision" was shown one month later to the public for the first time at the Interactive Media Festival in the Variety Arts Center, Los Angeles, winning the judge's $5,000 prize.


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: Google Earth was released in 2001. By 2006, Art+Com emailed Google about Terravision. Google chief technology officer Michael Jones visited to discuss licensing and Michelle Lee, then a Google lawyer, showed interest in the patent. However Art+Com did not accept the offer, and in 2010 reissued its patent, asking Google to get a license under their patent. When this did not occur, Art+Com filed a lawsuit against Google in February 2014 for patent infringement, seeking US$100 million.


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: In May 2016, the jury of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware found, that a Stanford Research Institute (SRI) geographical visualization system known as "SRI TerraVision" was used earlier than Terravision.


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: In October 2017, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed that decision and invalidated Art+Com's patent.


title: Terravision (computer program)

text: Terravision and its creators feature in the 2021 German miniseries "The Billion Dollar Code" made by Netflix which recounts the history of the program in a fictionalized account and ends with the 2014 patent infringement lawsuit they brought against Google. The series, which was shown on Netflix is prefaced by an episode of interviews with the ART+COM developers of Terravision and their legal representative.


title: Amy Schneider

text: Amy Schneider (born May 29, 1979) is an American writer and game show contestant. Winning 40 consecutive games on the quiz show "Jeopardy!" from November 2021 to January 2022 and the November 2022 Tournament of Champions, she holds the second-longest win streak in the program's history, behind only Ken Jennings (74 games), who hosted the show as she competed. She is the most successful woman and most successful transgender contestant ever to compete on the show, in terms of both the length of her streak and her $1.6 million in winnings.


title: Amy Schneider

text: Schneider is known for her skill in the Final Jeopardy! round, having responded correctly 30 out of 41 times in her run. She lives in Oakland, California. Across all American game shows, she is the ninth highest-earning contestant of all time.


title: Amy Schneider

text: Schneider grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and attended Chaminade-Julienne High School. In eighth grade, she was voted "Most likely to appear on "Jeopardy!"" by her classmates.


title: Amy Schneider

text: Throughout her run on "Jeopardy!", she expressed admiration for past champions Ken Jennings, James Holzhauer, Matt Amodio, and Julia Collins (the first woman to win 20 games in a row, at the time "Jeopardy!"'s second longest streak). On a January 2022 episode of "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen", Schneider said that she hoped Jennings would become the permanent host of the program, citing his comforting and empathetic presence.


title: Amy Schneider

text: Schneider has a cat named Meep, a name given to her at the shelter before adoption, "because the only noise she would make was 'meep'. Me and my girlfriend said we would find another name for her, but she kept making that noise, and we realized it was the right name."


title: Amy Schneider

text: Schneider is a trans woman; she completed gender transition in 2017. On January 19, 2022, Schneider was awarded a GLAAD Special Recognition honor for her "Jeopardy!" performance.


title: Amy Schneider

text: Schneider's first victory occurred on the November 17, 2021, episode, dethroning five-day champion Andrew He. In the following 14 games, she only missed one Final Jeopardy! question. She missed a second in her 16th win. In total, Schneider has won over $1 million on "Jeopardy!", the fifth-most winnings of any contestant on the show in all play. Schneider is the first openly transgender contestant to qualify for the Tournament of Champions. Her winning streak came one year after Kate Freeman became the first openly transgender contestant to win on the show. Schneider, who viewed Freeman's victory and several other trans contestants' losing appearances on the show as inspiration, has described the significance of having a trans identity: "The fact is, I don't actually think about being trans all that often, and so when appearing on national television, I wanted to represent that part of my identity accurately: as important, but also relatively minor." After surpassing Matt Amodio's 38-game winning streak in the January 24, 2022, episode, Schneider took second place for the most consecutive wins in "Jeopardy!" history at 39, only behind Jennings's 74 consecutive wins.


title: Amy Schneider

text: Schneider was defeated in her 41st episode, aired on January 26, 2022, finishing second behind Rhone Talsma, a librarian from Chicago, Illinois. The "Final Jeopardy!" clue was, "The only nation in the world whose name in English ends in an H, it's also one of the 10 most populous." Talsma responded, "What is Bangladesh?", which was correct, putting him ahead of Schneider who had no response. Her winnings totaled over $1,300,000, ranking her fourth in most money won in regular-season play behind Jennings, Holzhauer, and Amodio.


title: Amy Schneider

text: Schneider appeared in the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions that aired in November 2022. On November 21, she won the tournament, along with its $250,000 grand prize.


title: Amy Schneider

text: Schneider has explained that when she sees a category where she is weak, she gets it "out of the way first. That way, if there were any doubles in that category, they would come up when there wasn't as much money to be wagered." Later, she described her wagering strategy in a runaway game with little competition: "round up the second place score to the nearest thousand, double it, subtract it from my score, and then subtract another thousand in case I'd messed something up. Schneider said that doing crossword puzzles helps her think of words "as both a concept and a collection of letters at the same time".


title: Harappa

text: Harappa (; Urdu/) is an archaeological site in Punjab, Pakistan, about west of Sahiwal. The Bronze Age Harappan civilisation, now more often called the Indus Valley Civilisation, is named after the site, which takes its name from a modern village near the former course of the Ravi River, which now runs to the north. The core of the Harappan civilization extended over a large area, from Gujarat in the south, across Sindh and Rajasthan and extending into Punjab and Haryana. Numerous sites have been found outside the core area, including some as far east as Uttar Pradesh and as far west as Sutkagen-dor on the Makran coast of Baluchistan, not far from Iran.


title: Harappa

text: The site of the ancient city contains the ruins of a Bronze Age fortified city, which was part of the Harappan civilisation centred in Sindh and the Punjab, and then the Cemetery H culture. The city is believed to have had as many as 23,500 residents and occupied about with clay brick houses at its greatest extent during the Mature Harappan phase (2600 BC – 1900 BC), which is considered large for its time. Per archaeological convention of naming a previously unknown civilisation by its first excavated site, the Indus Valley Civilisation is also called the Harappan Civilisation.


title: Harappa

text: The ancient city of Harappa was heavily damaged under British rule, when bricks from the ruins were used as track ballast in the construction of the Lahore–Multan Railway. The current village of Harappa is less than from the ancient site. Although modern Harappa has a legacy railway station from the British Raj period, it is a small crossroads town of 15,000 people today. In 2005, a controversial amusement park scheme at the site was abandoned when builders unearthed many archaeological artefacts during the early stages of building work.


title: Harappa

text: The Harappan Civilisation has its earliest roots in cultures such as that of Mehrgarh, approximately 6000 BC. The two greatest cities, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, emerged circa 2600 BC along the Indus River valley in Punjab and Sindh. The civilisation, with a possible writing system, urban centres, drainage infrastructure and diversified social and economic system, was rediscovered in the 1920s also after excavations at Mohenjo-daro in Sindh near Larkana, and Harappa, in west Punjab south of Lahore. A number of other sites stretching from the Himalayan foothills in the east Punjab, India in the north, to Gujarat in the south and east, and to Pakistani Balochistan in the west have also been discovered and studied. Although the archaeological site at Harappa was damaged in 1857 when engineers constructing the Lahore-Multan railroad used brick from the Harappa ruins for track ballast, an abundance of artefacts have nevertheless been found.


title: Harappa

text: . Towards the end Harappan civilisation lost features such as writing and hydraulic engineering. As a result the Ganges Valley settlement gained prominence and Ganges cities developed.


title: Harappa

text: The earliest recognisably Harappan sites date to 3500 BC. This early phase lasts till around 2600 BC. We then enter the Mature phase from 2600 BC to 2000 BC. This is when the great cities were at their height. Then, from around 2000 BC we have a steady disintegration that lasts till 1400 BC – what is usually called Late Harappan. There is no sign that the Harappan cities were laid waste by invaders. The evidence strongly points to natural causes. A number of studies show that the area which is today the Thar desert was once far wetter and that the climate gradually became drier.


title: Harappa

text: The Indus Valley civilization was basically an urban culture sustained by surplus agricultural production and commerce, the latter including trade with Elam and Sumer in southern Mesopotamia. Both Mohenjo-daro and Harappa are generally characterised as having "differentiated living quarters, flat-roofed brick houses, and fortified administrative or religious centers." Although such similarities have given rise to arguments for the existence of a standardised system of urban layout and planning, the similarities are largely due to the presence of a semi-orthogonal type of civic layout, and a comparison of the layouts of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa shows that they are in fact, arranged in a quite dissimilar fashion.


title: Harappa

text: The weights and measures of the Indus Valley Civilisation, on the other hand, were highly standardised, and conform to a set scale of gradations. Distinctive seals were used, among other applications, perhaps for the identification of property and shipment of goods. Although copper and bronze were in use, iron was not yet employed. "Cotton was woven and dyed for clothing; wheat, rice, and a variety of vegetables and fruits were cultivated; and a number of animals, including the humped bull, was domesticated," as well as "fowl for fighting". Wheel-made pottery—some of it adorned with animal and geometric motifs—has been found in profusion at all the major Indus sites. A centralised administration for each city, though not the whole civilisation, has been inferred from the revealed cultural uniformity; however, it remains uncertain whether authority lay with a commercial oligarchy. Harappans had many trade routes along the Indus River that went as far as the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Some of the most valuable things traded were carnelian and lapis lazuli.


title: Harappa

text: What is clear is that Harappan society was not entirely peaceful, with the human skeletal remains demonstrating some of the highest rates of injury (15.5%) found in South Asian prehistory. Examinations of Harappan skeletons have often found wounds that are likely to have been inflicted in battle. Paleopathological analysis demonstrated that leprosy and tuberculosis were present at Harappa, with the highest prevalence of both disease and trauma present in the skeletons from Area G (an ossuary located south-east of the city walls). Furthermore, rates of craniofacial trauma and infection increased through time demonstrating that the civilisation collapsed amid illness and injury. The bioarchaeologists who examined the remains have suggested that the combined evidence for differences in mortuary treatment and epidemiology indicate that some individuals and communities at Harappa were excluded from access to basic resources like health and safety.


title: Harappa

text: The Harappans had traded with ancient Mesopotamia, especially Elam, among other areas. Cotton textiles and agricultural products were the primary trading objects. The Harappan merchants also had procurement colonies in Mesopotamia as well as which served as trading centres. They also traded extensively with people living in southern India, near modern-day Karnataka, to procure gold and copper from them.


title: Harappa

text: By far the most exquisite and obscure artefacts unearthed to date are the small, square steatite (soapstone) seals engraved with human or animal motifs. A large number of seals have been found at such sites as Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. Many bear pictographic inscriptions generally thought to be a form of writing or script. Despite the efforts of philologists from all parts of the world, and despite the use of modern cryptographic analysis, the signs remain undeciphered. It is also unknown if they reflect proto-Dravidian or other non-Vedic language(s). The ascribing of Indus Valley Civilisation iconography and epigraphy to historically known cultures is extremely problematic, in part due to the rather tenuous archaeological evidence for such claims, as well as the projection of modern South Asian political concerns onto the archaeological record of the area. This is especially evident in the radically varying interpretations of Harappan material culture as seen from both Pakistan- and India-based scholars.


title: Harappa

text: In February 2006 a school teacher in the village of Sembian-Kandiyur in Tamil Nadu discovered a stone celt (tool) with an inscription estimated to be up to 3,500 years old.


title: Harappa

text: The area of the late Harappan period consisted of areas of Daimabad, Maharashtra, and Badakshan regions of Afghanistan. The area covered by this civilisation would have been very large with a distance of around .


title: Harappa

text: Clay and stone tablets unearthed at Harappa, which were carbon-dated 3300–3200 BC., contain trident-shaped and plant-like markings. "It is a big question as to if we can call what we have found true writing, but we have found symbols that have similarities to what became Indus script" said Dr. Richard Meadow of Harvard University, Director of the Harappa Archeological Research Project. This primitive writing is placed slightly earlier than primitive writings of the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, dated c.3100 BC. These markings have similarities to what later became Indus Script which has not been completely deciphered yet.


title: Sine wave

text: A sine wave, sinusoidal wave, or just sinusoid is a mathematical curve defined in terms of the "sine" trigonometric function, of which it is the graph. It is a type of continuous wave and also a smooth periodic function. It occurs often in mathematics, as well as in physics, engineering, signal processing and many other fields.


title: Sine wave

text: The sine wave is important in physics because it retains its wave shape when added to another sine wave of the same frequency and arbitrary phase and magnitude. It is the only periodic waveform that has this property. This property leads to its importance in Fourier analysis and makes it acoustically unique.


title: Sine wave

text: This equation gives a sine wave for a single dimension; thus the generalized equation given above gives the displacement of the wave at a position "x" at time "t" along a single line.


title: Sine wave

text: In two or three spatial dimensions, the same equation describes a travelling plane wave if position "x" and wavenumber "k" are interpreted as vectors, and their product as a dot product.


title: Sine wave

text: For more complex waves such as the height of a water wave in a pond after a stone has been dropped in, more complex equations are needed.


title: Sine wave

text: The term sinusoid describes any wave with characteristics of a sine wave. Thus, a cosine wave is also said to be "sinusoidal", because formula_7, which is also a sine wave with a phase-shift of /2 radians. Because of this head start, it is often said that the cosine function "leads" the sine function or the sine "lags" the cosine. The term "sinusoidal" thereby collectively refers to both sine waves and cosine waves with any phase offset.


title: Sine wave

text: The human ear can recognize single sine waves as sounding clear because sine waves are representations of a single frequency with no harmonics.


title: Sine wave

text: To the human ear, a sound that is made of more than one sine wave will have perceptible harmonics; addition of different sine waves results in a different waveform and thus changes the timbre of the sound. Presence of higher harmonics in addition to the fundamental causes variation in the timbre, which is the reason why the same musical note (the same frequency) played on different instruments sounds different. On the other hand, if the sound contains aperiodic waves along with sine waves (which are periodic), then the sound will be perceived to be noisy, as noise is characterized as being aperiodic or having a non-repetitive pattern.


title: Sine wave

text: In 1822, French mathematician Joseph Fourier discovered that sinusoidal waves can be used as simple building blocks to describe and approximate any periodic waveform, including square waves. Fourier used it as an analytical tool in the study of waves and heat flow. It is frequently used in signal processing and the statistical analysis of time series.


title: Sine wave

text: Since sine waves propagate without changing form in "distributed linear systems", they are often used to analyze wave propagation. Sine waves traveling in two directions in space can be represented as


title: Sine wave

text: When two waves having the same amplitude and frequency, and traveling in opposite directions, superpose each other, then a standing wave pattern is created. Note that, on a plucked string, the interfering waves are the waves reflected from the fixed endpoints of the string. Therefore, standing waves occur only at certain frequencies, which are referred to as resonant frequencies and are composed of a fundamental frequency and its higher harmonics. The resonant frequencies of a string are proportional to: the length between the fixed ends; the tension of the string; and inversely proportional to the mass per unit length of the string.


title: Genital piercing

text: Genital piercing is a form of body piercing that involves piercing a part of the genitalia, thus creating a suitable place for wearing different types of jewellery. Nevertheless, the term may also be used "pars pro toto" to indicate all body piercings in the area of anus, perineum, genitals and mons pubis, including piercings such as anal, guiche, and pubic that do not involve perforation of genitalia. Genital piercings can be done regardless of sex, with various forms of piercings available. The main motive is beautification and individualization; in addition, some piercings enhance sexual pleasure by increasing stimulation. Pre-modern genital piercings is most culturally widespread in Southeast Asia, where it has been part of traditional practice since ancient times. Records of genital piercing are found in the "Kama Sutra".


title: Genital piercing

text: The traditional prehistoric and historic practice of genital piercing is most culturally widespread in Southeast Asia (particularly in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and Myanmar), where the insertion of various kinds of implants into the penis were common until modern times, in addition to other ancient body modifications like tattooing, supercision or circumcision, pearling, ear piercings and ear plugs, gold teeth fillings, teeth filing, teeth blackening, and artificial cranial deformation. The primary purpose of such inserts were to enhance pleasure. The practice also spread to neighboring regions, where scattered references to genital piercings exist, like the South Asian "apadravya", a male genital piercing that passes vertically through the glans (unlike most Southeast Asian piercings which are inserted horizontally), in the "Kama Sutra" (2nd century AD). Other smaller traditions of genital piercings also arose independently in other cultures (like in Central America).


title: Genital piercing

text: In the Philippines, penile piercings were widely documented by European explorers among the Visayan people. Visayan penile piercings consists of a rod or bar (usually made from gold, brass, tin, or ivory; and often ornamented) called the "tugbuk" or "tudruk" that is inserted horizontally through the glans of the penis. Its ends are attached to the "sakra" (also transcribed as "sacra" or "sagra"), a wheel or half-ring (made from the same material as the "tugbuk") that goes around the head of the penis, similar to a cock ring. The "sakra" comes in many variants, but is usually ornamented with blunt knobs around the circumference. The ends of the "tugbuk" are then secured to the "sakra" with plugs (also often ornamented). The Italian explorer Antonio Pigafetta who accompanied Ferdinand Magellan in the first circumnavigation of the globe describes the practice as such:


title: Genital piercing

text: These piercings were done to boys at an early age. They were meant to enhance sensation and pleasure during sexual activity for both men and women. Notably, Pigafetta describes that it was the women who controlled how the penis with the "sakra" is inserted. Men without penile piercings were reported to be derided by women as "asog" ("impotent" or "effeminate"). The practice was heavily suppressed by the Spanish clergy and eventually lost during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines, as it was considered by the Spanish clergy to be a "sin of the flesh."


title: Genital piercing

text: The "ampallang", a similar piercing (which also passes horizontally through the glans, but differs in that it is not attached to a ring), is found in different tribes throughout Sarawak and Sabah on the island of Borneo. Genital piercings became first introduced in western countries by ethnographic report, done by explorers such as in the 19th century. The Dutch explorer Anton Willem Nieuwenhuis described in his ethnographic record "In Centraal Borneo: reis van Pontianak naar Samarinda" – documenting his travel through Borneo in 1897 – the procedure of an ampallang piercing:


title: Genital piercing

text: Piercing the genitals became a short-lived trend at the end of the 19th century, in particular for upper classes of the society: "It was during the Victorian era that the practice of body piercing in the Western world reemerged. Many men and women of the Victorian royalty chose to receive nipple and genital piercings.″


title: Genital piercing

text: However, the popularity diminished again, with genital piercings becoming rather uncommon in the western world until the second half of the 20th century. In the 1970s, they were introduced to the emerging body modification community by the early piercings pioneers like Jim Ward and Doug Malloy, many of them associated with the legendary piercing studio The Gauntlet in Los Angeles. With the advent of Piercing Fans International Quarterly in 1977, information about genital piercings became available to a wider community. Genital piercings were later sported by the modern primitives movement that developed during the 1980s in the San Francisco Bay Area. Still, only until the 21st century, genital piercing was confined to a body modification subculture.


title: Genital piercing

text: Just like nipple piercings, genital piercings became increasingly more popular and part of mainstream culture in the second decade of the 21st century, with ″nice and normal″ people endorsing them. Many celebrities such as Christina Aguilera, Fantasia Barrino, Pete Doherty, Janet Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, Katarina Waters, or Pete Wentz, stated that they had or planned to have genital piercings. Genital piercings nowadays have a growing demand, especially in a young adult, college-aged population.


title: Genital piercing

text: With regard to (female) genital piercings, Marilyn W. Edmunds, adjunct clinical professor at the Johns Hopkins University, stated, "Women with genital piercings are no longer on the social fringe or part of the 'punk' culture who are experimenting with behaviors that are 'socially provocative.' Over the past 30 years, genital piercing has become mainstream, and women engage in it for a variety of reasons."