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From Mona Lisa’s Secret Number to Duchamp’s Hidden Face: 5 Conspiracy Theories That Will Blow Up Your Art WorldDid Duchamp lie about finding his readymades? Did Anthony Quinn's painting predict 9/11? The truth is art there.\ In a lot of ways, this was the Year of the Conspiracy Theory. Fabulations and connect-the-dots conjectures of all sorts found their way from the margins to the center. The phenomenon very much affects art—which makes some sense, in that art is designed as fodder for fantasizing. Most of the time, such speculation is as consequential as the latest theory about Game of Thrones,...

Since its 2003 publication, "The Da Vinci Code" has caused quite a stir. Since its debut to glowing reviews, it has sold more than 40 million copies in at least 44 languages [ref]. In addition to being a bestseller, it's sparked a lot of controversy. It's a work of fiction, but it presents itself as based in fact, and many critics have raised questions about whether those facts are accurate. It's no secret that the HowStuffWorks staff likes to take things apart and see what makes them tick. Some of us are also the kind of sticklers who point out...

WILLIAMSBURG — Advocates of our version of “The DaVinci Code” were back in town Friday, calling for another excavation to locate the “secret vault” of Sir Francis Bacon, which they still allege is buried beneath the churchyard of Bruton Parish Episcopal Church. It is a replay of a saga from 14 years ago that put the church in an awkward position of dispelling some very weird myths. A media circus resulted. The story propagated by Sir Francis Bacon's Sages of the Seventh Seal has all the elements of Dan Brown's theological thriller. The Bacon story relies on a conspiracy theory...

FOR the past 15 years, she has been Kabbalah’s most high profile and dedicated follower. But now Madonna has apparently ditched the controversial faith and taken up with Opus Dei – the secretive Catholic sect made famous in The Da Vinci Code. The singer is said to be intrigued by the organisation and spent Friday with priests from the centre’s London HQ. The move follows her alleged falling out with some Kabbalah leaders after reports that cash raised for her Malawi charity was squandered. Last night a source claimed: “She has invested so much into Kabbalah so she was devastated...

A New York couple have been charged with defrauding a wealthy musician to the tune of $20 million (£12.3 million) after he innocently visited their computer servicing company to have a virus removed from his laptop. The hard-to-believe story started started in 2004 when moneyed pianist Roger Davidson asked Mount Kisco computer store owners Vickram Bedi, 36, and his Icelandic girlfriend Helga Invarsdottir, 39, to rid his computer of a virus. On learning of Davidson's wealth, the pair are alleged to have concocted an elaborate social engineering scam that defrauded him of somewhere between the $6 million the police have...

Tom Hanks, who plays the character Robert Langdon in the controversial new film Angels & Demons, has described the plot as “playing fast and loose with the truth”. The plot of the film sees a secret society known as the Illuminati try to destroy the Vatican in order to take revenge for a massacre against its members by the Catholic Church. The film is the prequel to The Da Vinci Code, which claimed that the Church covered up Jesus’ secret marriage to Mary Magdalene. Leaders within the Catholic Church have already condemned the film as offensive to Catholics. The Catholic...

The recent movie, The Golden Compass, is little more than a reinterpretation of Sony films’ blasphemous The Da Vinci Code, reengineered for children.  Many writers have rightly criticized the film from its multiple censurable aspects, and who could blame them?  After all, there are myriad angles from which it should be condemned.  It portrays the Catholic Church as an evil institution called the “Magisterium,” led by men who live in buildings resembling cathedrals, dress like bishops and strive to control men’s minds.  Furthermore, author Philip Pullman is an avowed atheist who has affirmed: “I am trying to undermine the...

An Italian IT expert claims to have found a secret image of the Virgin Mary and a Knight Templar inside Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper.Pesci Slavisa said the image can only be seen in a certain light and that he had to use his computer skills to reveal it.“I noticed a strange effect, like a shadow, when I was looking through a magazine with a reproduction of The Last Supper,” the 36-year-old explained.“So I scanned the painting and printed it onto a transparent sheet, which I then laid over the original image.“The result is a new painting with...

Archaeologist sparks hunt for Holy Grail By Nick Pisa in Rome Last Updated: 8:47pm BST 20/06/2007 An archaeologist has sparked a Da Vinci Code-style hunt for the Holy Grail after claiming ancient records show it is buried under a 6th century church in Rome. The cup - said to have been used by Christ at the Last Supper - is the focus of countless legends and has been sought for centuries. Alfredo Barbagallo, an Italian archaeologist, claims that it is buried in a chapel-like room underneath the Basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, one of the seven churches which...

_______~~~Book/Movie Review of The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown~~~_______         Book Review of:         THE         DAVINCI        CODE         XX*X*X**               XXXX  Novel by: DAN BROWN Reviewed by: G. W. Watts   NEW: Book/Movie Review of Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code" ; http://gordonwatts.com/DaVinci.html ; http://hometown.aol.com/gww1210/myhomepage/DaVinci.html ; http://www.geocities.com/gordon_watts32313/DaVinci.html *_Book (and limited Movie) Review of The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown_* WELCOME, Visitor: Please Turn on your computer speakers & maximize 3-D Stereo Enhancement for best sound! The DaVinci Code is set to open in theatres nationwide Friday, 19 May 2006. (Film based on Dan Brown's book by the same name.) ** Register...

MOVIEGOERS in Manila may have to go to neighboring cities to watch “The Da Vinci Code” after the city council yesterday passed a resolution prohibiting the showing of the controversial movie. The resolution said the movie, which was based on US author Dan Brown’s explosive novel, “is undoubtedly offensive and contrary to established religious beliefs which cannot take precedence over the right of the persons involved in the film to freedom of expression.” The resolution, which was passed just hours before cinemas in Manila and other parts of the metropolis began showing the movie, cited a provision in the Revised...

At a screening late on Tuesday in Cannes, members of the audience laughed at the thriller's pivotal moment, and the end of the $125 million picture was greeted with stony silence.

The DaVinci Delusion That Cannot Be Ignored--May 16 --> Posted to Jans_eUpdates for May, 2006 May 16 - The DaVinci Delusion That Cannot Be Ignored I had hoped I could ignore this social and spiritual tsunami but I cannot. When "The DaVinci Code" has sold 45 million copies and millions more are eagerly going to enter theatres this summer for the film, cautions must be sounded as many are doing. There is no name on earth that evokes such instant and blinding hatred than does the Name of Jesus Christ to all enemies of the gospel. And though the book...

If "such lies and errors had been directed at the Koran or the Holocaust," said Archbishop Angelo Amato, the Vatican's secretary for the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, "they would have justly provoked a world uprising." The archbishop was speaking of "The Da Vinci Code," the Ron Howard film that debuts at Cannes and opens worldwide this week, and is expected to gross $500 million by summer's end. The archbishop's point is undeniable. Blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, published a few months ago in a Danish newspaper and reprinted on the front...

With less than three weeks before the May 19 release of the Sony Pictures version of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, worries continue to mount among Christians about both the book’s and the movie’s impact. But should non-Christians be concerned, too? Absolutely. Jews in particular need to be aware of the gift mega-selling Dan Brown has given, in all innocence, to anti-Semites. As everyone knows by now, Brown uses a gripping suspense story set in the present to inform us that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and that he has descendants living in Europe today. Furthermore, the members...

Filmmaker Ron Howard says that the upcoming movie based on Dan Brown's mega-hit novel "The Da Vinci Code" will not soften the story's more controversial elements. There will be "no placating," he tells Newsweek in its annual "Who's Next" double issue, which names the up-and-comers in politics, business, science, sports and the arts that will make headlines in 2006. "It would be ludicrous to take on this subject and then try to take the edges off. We're doing this movie because we like the book," he says. Since "The Da Vinci Code" was published in 2003, the book has become...

As soon as Tom Hanks wraps up shooting on his role in The Da Vinci Code, he will play "as real-life (and rather controversial) Texas congressman Charlie Wilson in CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR, written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing). It's based on the true story of a womanising politician who ran one of the largest-ever CIA operations. "Hanks will play a congressman whose penchant for booze and women earned him the nickname Good Time Charlie. He watched his political career almost go down the drain in the early 1980s when he was caught in a hot tub tryst with two...

Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" is sparking a lot of controversy because of its distortions about the history of Christianity, fantasies concerning the messianic bloodline and supposed iconography embedded in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci. Predictably, Hollywood has jumped at the chance to assail the Gospels and is making a film out of Brown's novel. Tom Hanks will star in and Ron Howard will direct the cinematic version of the book. According to a poll conducted by the National Geographic Channel in Canada, where almost 20 percent of the population has read "The Da Vinci Code," people are...

Home > Christianity Today Magazine > Faith & Thought > History Christianity Today, June 2004 Why the 'Lost Gospels' Lost Out Recent gadfly theories about church council conspiracies that manipulated the New Testament into existence are bad—really bad–history. by Ben Witherington III | posted 05/21/2004 In Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, villain Leigh Teabing explains to cryptologist Sophie Neveu that at the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325) "many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon," including the divinity of Jesus. "Until that moment," he says, "Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet. …...

The National Catholic Reporter´s Rome correspondent John Allen is about to publish a study of Opus Dei that challenges its common depiction as a secretive and sinister cult within the Catholic Church. An interview with Allen in Newsweek focuses on the book´s role as an answer to the view of Opus Dei in Dan Brown’s best-selling thriller, The Da Vinci Code. Opus Dei, it says, is a secretive society of men and women who have sought political power to further the interests of a wealthy elite. The book, and Allen, have been praised by conservatives who are normally hostile to...