Monkeys are haplorhine ("dry-nosed") primates, a paraphyletic group generally possessing tails and consisting of approximately 260 known living species. Many monkey species are tree-dwelling (arboreal), although there are species that live primarily on the ground, such as baboons. Most species are also active during the day (diurnal). Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent, particularly Old World monkeys.

Lemurs, lorises, and galagos are not monkeys; instead they are strepsirrhine ("wet-nosed") primates. Like monkeys, tarsiers are haplorhine primates; however, they are also not monkeys. There are two major types of monkey: New World monkeys (platyrrhines) from South and Central America and Old World monkeys (catarrhines of the superfamily Cercopithecoidea) from Africa and Asia. Hominoid apes (gibbons, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans), which all lack tails, are also catarrhines but are not considered monkeys. (Tailless monkeys may be called "apes", incorrectly according to modern usage; thus the tailless Barbary macaque is sometimes called the "Barbary ape".) Because old world monkeys are more closely related to hominoid apes than to new world monkeys, yet the term "monkey" excludes these closer relatives, monkeys are referred to as a paraphyletic group. Simians ("monkeys") and tarsiers emerged within haplorrhines some 60 million years ago. New world monkeys and catarrhine monkeys emerged within the simians some 35 millions years ago. Old world monkeys and Hominoidea emerged within the catarrhine monkeys some 25 millions years ago. Extinct basal simians such as Aegyptopithecus or Parapithecus [35-32 Million years ago] are also considered monkeys by primatologists.

Monkeys (Chair) is a sculpture by the American artist Jeff Koons (112 x 23 x 26 in). It was made in 2002 within the framework of the Popeye Series and is now in possession of the Collection Uli Knecht.

Description

The sculpture is a somewhat surreal combination of everyday objects. Three monkeys, which resemble very much inflatable children’s toys, are connected together. They form a chain that dangles from the ceiling. A white straw chair is attached at the lowest end of the chain. The sculpture illustrates Jeff Koon’s fascination for children’s toys which becomes particularly evident in the Popeye Series for which Koons sought inspiration in floating aids in the shape of animals. The monkeys that feature in the sculpture remind of the game Barrel of Monkeys in which the players have to gain the hook-tailed monkeys in a chain. Monkeys (Chair) is an example of Koons’s strategy of mashing up ideas and methods of Pop, Conceptual, and appropriation art with handicraft and popular culture.

Susan Minot /ˈmaɪnət/ (born 7 December 1956) is an American novelist and short story writer.

Early life

Minot was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She grew up in Manchester, Massachusetts, the second of eight children. She graduated from Concord Academy and then attended Brown University, where she studied writing and painting; in 1983 she graduated from Columbia University School of the Arts with an M.F.A. in creative writing.

Career

Her first book, Monkeys, won the 1987 Prix Femina Étranger. She has also received an O. Henry Prize and a Pushcart Prize for her writing.

Sexuality and the difficulties of romantic relationships are a constant theme in Minot's work. Her second book, Lust and Other Stories, focuses on "the relations between men and women in their twenties and thirties having difficulty coming together and difficulty breaking apart". Reviewing her novella Rapture in The Atlantic Monthly, James Marcus notes that "Sex and the single girl have seldom been absent from Susan Minot's fiction", and Dave Welch at Powells.com identifies one of Minot's themes as "the emotional safeguards within family and romantic relations that hold people apart". About Lust, Jill Franks observes that Minot