For the length of his fairly brief career, Mr. Denny, who was born in 1982 in Auckland, New Zealand, has demonstrated an interest in technology, obsolescence, methods of display, the transmission of information and the readymade, that art formula on which the sun never sets.
Yet as art formulas go, nothing beats paintings based on photographs.
However, recent paintings by contemporary Indian artists, which plug traditional materials like sand and tribal signifiers into the European-derived abstract equation, often seem uncomfortably derivative as they trot out, with academic seriousness, the modernism-plus-tribal-art formula.
Ms. Evanovich, besides having a state-of-the-art formula for sexy thrillers, also has a state-of-the-art Web site (www.evanovich.com), which has the freshest information available on her books.
BBC transport correspondent Richard Westcott has been given access to a state-of-the-art Formula One car simulator developed by Ferrari and Shell.
Omar Sharif enjoys a late career comeback in François Dupeyron's "Monsieur Ibrahim," a genuine charmer based on a well-worn art-house formula.
Yet even a director of Zhang's standing has found that foreign interest dwindles when he strays too far from the martial arts (wuxia) formula.
Using Blake's drawings as playful companion pieces to art is a formula that makes this book, published in cahoots with the National Gallery, a winner.
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Applying the Pandora formula to art may not work, or sit well with the notoriously offline and discerning tastes of the art industry, but it's an important experiment — and one that could help develop our inner art critics.
"It's one part art, one part scientific formula," he says.
