Professor Robert Langdon. Robert Langdon is back in this fifth novel of the series. From the beginning he is identified as a Professor, and the professor’s (imaginary) web page is still available. The name Langdon was taken from the creator of the ambigrams, John Langdon, key to Brown’s first novel in the series, Angels & Demons.
forty foot-tall dog. This is the so-called “Puppy” by Jeff Koons.
suspended walkway
Mission accomplished. This may refer to thecontroversial speech by president George Bush in 2003. But there are other instances of the quotation.
towering black widow spider . . . wire mesh sac filled with glass orbs
Salvador Dali mustache. (1904-1989). Dali was a Spanish surrealist a painter. His mustache in itself was a work of art , sculpted into a shape to indicate ten minutes past ten o’clock.
Ivy Club at Princeton . We learn that Langdon was at Princeton almost thirty ago and daily swam lap[s, a practice he continues at Harvard, and that has served him well in a number of adventures.
Jackson Pollock‘s drip paintings. Pollock (1912-1956) was an American painter, abstract expressionist. His drip painting as Langdon notes are his signature works.Langdon (and Brown) always the teacher, gives the reader a quick introduction to modern art. In the previous novels art has played a leading role, in part inspired and informed by Brown’s real life wife, Blythe, an art historian.
Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup cans Warhol (1928-1987) an American painter known as one of the key originators of Pop Art. The soup cans are his his trademark. Displayed at the New York Museum of Moder Art (MOMA) there were thirty two individual canvases arranged to resemble cans on a supermarket shelf. One additional interesting connection was Warhol’s work on The Last Supper, calling to mind The DaVinci Code.
Mark Rothko‘s simple rectangles of color. (1903-1970) Born in the Russian Empire, what is today Latvia, this American painteris known, as was Pollock, as an abstract expressionist. This style was called “multiform.”
Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516). This Dutch painter is represented in many of the world’s major museums. His Garden of Earthy Delights is in the Prado in Madrid.
Francisco de Goya (1746-1828). The Spanish painter known for his romantic style is well represented in the Prado. On elf his paintings is of “The Sagrada Familia.”
da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) who gives his name to the novel that made Robert Langdon and Dan Brown famous,The DaVinci Code, was born in Vinci but came to prominence in Florence and Rome. Consequently he figures in the novels, Angels & Demons and Inferno. Two of his best known paintings are “The Last Supper“and the “Mona Lisa.”
de Kooning Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) This Dutch born American painter is also an abstract expressionist. Among his many paintings is a series entitled Women.
one of the finest collection of modern art on earth The Guggenheim in Bilbao possesses among others works by Rothko and de Kooning.
the mystery is half the fun. Willie Wonka in the children’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory muses that “the mystery was half the fun.” Indeed the statement might be applied as an epigraph to all of Brown’s novels, as her leads readers through familiar objects with hidden secrets right before our eyes.
twenty years ago, young Eddie Kirsh. One of Langdon’s first students in his freshman seminar Codes, Ciphers, and the Language of Symbols. The time and age of Langdon are becoming increasingly more apparent. He had been an undergraduate at Princeton thirty years ago making him at least almost fifty. Four years of undergraduate university and several more years of graduate school leading to a Doctorate degree would account for Ihis teaching at Harvard for twenty years.
Now the student has surpassed the teacher A famous example of the student surpassing the teacher is in Russian literature The poet Zhukovsky on reading Alexander Piushkin’s poem Ruslana nd Liudmila sent him a portrait with the note: “To the victorious pupil from the vanquished teacher.” Brown is familiar with Russian literature and has cited, for example, Nikola Gogol author of Dead Souls in Inferno. There are other Russian connections in The Lost Symbol. The figure of Obi wan Kenobi in Star Wars also comes to mind.
MIT Media lab. MIT is the abbreviation for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Founded in 1861 and located in Cambridge, not far from Harvard, this is considered one of the greatest universities bringing together some of the brightest technically oriented minds on the planet for study and research. The building itself is an architectural marvel designed by I.M. Pei.
private bachelor of arts! . . . Langdon’s martial status. The Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) is the traditional four year degree at American colleges and universities. Langdon is still a a bachelor (unmarried male), though he has crossed path with a number of brilliant attractive young women in his adventures.
Impressionist art Here as elsewhere we have included a link to the Khan Academy for its educational value. Impressionism is a school for art that emerged in France in the second half of the nineteenth century. Among its practitioners were Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas.
do the exact opposite . Brown has been criticized before for his liberal, some consider, excessive use of italics.
short rib crudo . . .Boston’s Tiger Mama. A Southeast Asian restaurant in Boston that includes Chili Spiced Pork Rib Crudo on the menu.
stories of the Creation There are literally dozens of creation myths. Joseph Campbell who provides the epigraph of the novel spent a lifetime studying myths. His Power of Myth became a television series on the topic of shared myths.
Genesis The first book of the Bible tells the story of creation: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
Hindu story of Brahma Brahma is the Hindu Creator God, There are varying versions as to how Brahma came about, why he has four heads and how he accomplished the task of creation.
Science and religion are not competitors, they’re two different languages trying to tell the same story. This concept of the tension between science and religion dating back to the Renaissance figures prominently in the novels, Angels & Demons and Inferno.
FedEx envelope. FedEx is an American corporation that delivers parcels and packages overnight. The logo and envelopes are easily identifiable.
image of two people standing face to face. Rubin vase optical illusion. This and other such ambiguous or reverse image forms are the creation of a Danish psychologist, Edgar Rubin in 1915. it is an example of not seeing or seeing what is right before our eyes.
clever allusion. to the role of the chalice or the Holy Grail in The DaVinci Code.
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao . . . thirty thousand titanium tiles. Celebrating its twentieth anniversary this October (2017), the Museum is indeed one of the world’s largest collections of Modern Art and likely to gain far greater recognition with the appearance of the novel, Origin. 
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao has a performance of Chasmata, coinciding very closely with the publication of the novel. It is described as follows:
One of the main events to mark the Museum’s 20th Anniversary, Chasmata is a show bringing art and science together. Organized with the invaluable collaboration of BBK, without whose support it would not have been possible, as well as the cooperation of the European Space Agency (ESA), Chasmata will take the audience on a “journey into space” through unpublished images of Mars and the presence of astronaut Pedro Duque, who will share with the participants a message coming from the International Space Station.
In Chasmata, contemporary art meets the cosmos at the crossroads through several fields: astrogeology, instrumental music, electronic music, and the visual arts. Chasmata finds inspiration in the cosmos, Frank Gehry’s building, and Richard Serra’s The Matter of Time, through the saxophone and new technologies.
Frank Gehry 1997 New Yorker . Gehry (1929- ) is a Canadian born American architect.The article was published on October 13, 1997 — almost exactly twenty years ago. His creations also include the Fish Pavilion in Barcelona.
deconstructivist buildings
Disney Concert Hall Los Angeles
BMW World in Munich
new library at Langdon’s alma mater This is actually the Lewis Science Library at Princeton, designed by Gehry.
The Fog Sculpture Accompanied b y the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1IkqaY7zos
Fujiko Nakaya
Louvre
Prado
enter the mouth of the dragon
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