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Weston, Neville. "THE REAL VAN GOGH: the artist and his letters." Craft Arts International 79 (2010): 78-80. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 15 Nov. 2010. In this article it explains the life of Van Gogh. It turns out he had health problems and did not take care of himself. Van Gogh did not eat at times, drank excessively, and smoked. His bipolar mood greatly influenced his paintings. Throughout his life he wrote letter to his brother, which today are translated. The letters are considered to be real literature and inform the reader about his life.

Hip-hop style, a controversial dress form associated with rap music culture in the 1990s, is analyzed and interpreted based on premises associated with structural approaches to semiotics. The semiotic system is isolated in time, and three coding operations are considered in terms of the relationships they establish between elements of the system and potential meanings ascribed to these: paradigmatic alignment (bipolar opposition), denotation and connotation (literal and extended descriptions), and figurative devices (implied figures of speech). Results reveal the structure of the system in terms of a dialectic between signs in the hip-hop system and signs in the system of conventional dress. Components of the rule system of conventional dress are exposed, and figurative language supporting the hip-hop system is described. The hip-hop system is construed as an example of a larger category of appearance-related systems designated extraordinary dress, poised in opposition to ordinary appearance forms. Implications include potential contributions to theory development. (From the OhioLINK abstract.)