I found the carbon footprint analysis (a paper - pdf) by the MIT class @ http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/mit-class-calcu.html interesting because I think Timothy Gutowski and his team were spot on + definitely we may have to change our lifestyle to save the environment.
Useful links:
www.mit.edu
www.ieee.org
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Art During The Great War
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
Before the War Mr Christopher R W Nevinson was only known to the few as a young artist of promise. After studying at the Slade School of Art, he had formed ties of friendship in Paris with the Italian artist Gino Severini, and so had become influenced by Futurism. He was also interested in Cubism, and though he never definitely adhered to ‘Vorticism,’ he exhibited once with Mr Wyndham Lewis, Mr Edward Wadsworth, Mr William Roberts, and other Vorticists. During the early stages of the War Mr Nevinson was driving a motor ambulance behind the Belgian Front, and being invalided with rheumatic fever early in 1915 he was able to resume painting during his convalscence. Thus he was practically the first artist who had the opportunity to exhibit in London pictures of the War based on personal experience of the realities of modern fighting. It was in the spring of 1915 that Mr Nevinson showed his first three war pictures in the exhibition of the London Group at the Goupil Gallery, and though these betrayed Futurist and Cubist influence, they were perfectly intelligible as illustrations of actual incidents.
Dr Johnson maintained that there was some good to be got out of every book, and similarly it may be argued that there is some good to be got out of every artistic theory. It was the peculiar distinction of Mr Nevinson to leave aside all the extravagances of Futurism and Cubism, and snatch from them the two things which helped him to render realistically a new world in a new way. The particlar good thing in the work of the Italian Futurists was their successful suggestion of movement. By a generous use of slanting lines in the composition,Mr Nevinson gave a vivid sense of movement and life to his early painting ‘Returning to the Trenches.’ His French soldiers, with packs on their backs, their bodies and rifles sloping in the direction in which they were marching, were not portrayed as they would be shown in a photograph: the aim here was not to portray a group of individual soldiers, but to express the onward rush of an advancing army, and this impression was vividly and irresistibly conveyed. Further, the use of straight lines and avoidance of curves—characteristics derived from Cubism—suggested that the movement was that of a vast machine rather than of a collection of human beings.
The distinguished art critic, Mr A Clutton Brock, has pointed out in one of his essays that for fifty years or more a belief has been growing on us that man is a machine and ‘should be conscious of the fact that he is one.’ The popular play ‘R.U.R’ was an expression of this consciousness in dramatic form; in painting it was confessed by the Cubist method which, as Mr Clutton Brock has said,
does express, in the most direct way, the sense that in war man behaves like a machine or part of machine, that war is a process in which man is not treated as a human being but as an item in a great instrument of destruction, in which he ceases to be a person and is lost in a process. The cubist method, with its repetition and sharp distinction of planes, expresses this sense of a mechanical process better than any other way of representation.
Familiarity with the working of the ‘war machine’ prepared the mind of the public to accept that vision of the world as a complicated piece of mechanism which is the essence both of Cubism and Futurism. The War offered to the Cubists one of the few subjects which their technique was fitted to express, and the marvel is that this opportunity, missed by the French and Italian inventors of the new method, was seized upon with conspicuous success by a handful of almost unknown British artists.
From the first Mr Nevinson stood out from all previous painters of war by reason of his power in suggesting movement, and the implication in his pictures that modern war was not the affair of human individuals, but the creaking progress of a complicated machine. His remarkable painting of the interior of a hospital, ‘La Patrie’ now the property of Mr Arnold Bennett, is tragical in its intensity, but it is the tragedy of automata crushed and mangled in the revolutions of a pitiless machine. Other artists have painted the interiors of base-hospitals, pictures of men bandaged but smiling, and attended by a bevy of comely nurses, so that the spectator might imagine it was rather pleasant than otherwise to be wounded; but Mr Nevinson permits no falsifying of the facts; he shows us the reality of the thing, the broken débris of the war-machine, the pain and the suffering and, above all, the relative insignificance of the individual pawn in this mighty war game.
Art During The Great War (continued)
2
Before the War Mr Christopher R W Nevinson was only known to the few as a young artist of promise. After studying at the Slade School of Art, he had formed ties of friendship in Paris with the Italian artist Gino Severini, and so had become influenced by Futurism. He was also interested in Cubism, and though he never definitely adhered to ‘Vorticism,’ he exhibited once with Mr Wyndham Lewis, Mr Edward Wadsworth, Mr William Roberts, and other Vorticists. During the early stages of the War Mr Nevinson was driving a motor ambulance behind the Belgian Front, and being invalided with rheumatic fever early in 1915 he was able to resume painting during his convalscence. Thus he was practically the first artist who had the opportunity to exhibit in London pictures of the War based on personal experience of the realities of modern fighting. It was in the spring of 1915 that Mr Nevinson showed his first three war pictures in the exhibition of the London Group at the Goupil Gallery, and though these betrayed Futurist and Cubist influence, they were perfectly intelligible as illustrations of actual incidents.
Dr Johnson maintained that there was some good to be got out of every book, and similarly it may be argued that there is some good to be got out of every artistic theory. It was the peculiar distinction of Mr Nevinson to leave aside all the extravagances of Futurism and Cubism, and snatch from them the two things which helped him to render realistically a new world in a new way. The particlar good thing in the work of the Italian Futurists was their successful suggestion of movement. By a generous use of slanting lines in the composition,Mr Nevinson gave a vivid sense of movement and life to his early painting ‘Returning to the Trenches.’ His French soldiers, with packs on their backs, their bodies and rifles sloping in the direction in which they were marching, were not portrayed as they would be shown in a photograph: the aim here was not to portray a group of individual soldiers, but to express the onward rush of an advancing army, and this impression was vividly and irresistibly conveyed. Further, the use of straight lines and avoidance of curves—characteristics derived from Cubism—suggested that the movement was that of a vast machine rather than of a collection of human beings.
The distinguished art critic, Mr A Clutton Brock, has pointed out in one of his essays that for fifty years or more a belief has been growing on us that man is a machine and ‘should be conscious of the fact that he is one.’ The popular play ‘R.U.R’ was an expression of this consciousness in dramatic form; in painting it was confessed by the Cubist method which, as Mr Clutton Brock has said,
does express, in the most direct way, the sense that in war man behaves like a machine or part of machine, that war is a process in which man is not treated as a human being but as an item in a great instrument of destruction, in which he ceases to be a person and is lost in a process. The cubist method, with its repetition and sharp distinction of planes, expresses this sense of a mechanical process better than any other way of representation.
Familiarity with the working of the ‘war machine’ prepared the mind of the public to accept that vision of the world as a complicated piece of mechanism which is the essence both of Cubism and Futurism. The War offered to the Cubists one of the few subjects which their technique was fitted to express, and the marvel is that this opportunity, missed by the French and Italian inventors of the new method, was seized upon with conspicuous success by a handful of almost unknown British artists.
From the first Mr Nevinson stood out from all previous painters of war by reason of his power in suggesting movement, and the implication in his pictures that modern war was not the affair of human individuals, but the creaking progress of a complicated machine. His remarkable painting of the interior of a hospital, ‘La Patrie’ now the property of Mr Arnold Bennett, is tragical in its intensity, but it is the tragedy of automata crushed and mangled in the revolutions of a pitiless machine. Other artists have painted the interiors of base-hospitals, pictures of men bandaged but smiling, and attended by a bevy of comely nurses, so that the spectator might imagine it was rather pleasant than otherwise to be wounded; but Mr Nevinson permits no falsifying of the facts; he shows us the reality of the thing, the broken débris of the war-machine, the pain and the suffering and, above all, the relative insignificance of the individual pawn in this mighty war game.
Art During The Great War (continued)
Wiener Werkstätte
The first exhibition devoted to Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry, now open at the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue in New York, includes 40 pieces, many made by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, founders of the firm. Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry is open until June 30, 2008.
Useful links:
http://wiener-werkstaette.com
www.neuegalerie.org
Useful links:
http://wiener-werkstaette.com
www.neuegalerie.org
Random Thoughts
It is important to understand your own fortitude and zone of comfort. The worst thing is to be intrinsically uncomfortable. It means you are likely to jump and make the wrong decision and be panicked out of something for no good reason. You will never hold a strong position in something when you will be the first out of it. Remember that events are by definition in the public consciousness, and if you react to what is in the newspapers, you are probably going to be doing the same thing at the same time as everyone else. If it initiates the same activity as others, then you're not applying any superior knowledge.
- Colin McLean
- Colin McLean
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Graphic Novel Update
I found nbc.com/heroes online comic-book concept interesting. I liked it. Great idea!
Useful links:
http://www.nbc.com/Heroes
www.gameloft.com
www.heroestheseries.com
Useful links:
http://www.nbc.com/Heroes
www.gameloft.com
www.heroestheseries.com
Celebrating Sixties
(via budgettravel) A new museum celebrating Sixties' counterculture and music is set to open this summer on the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival (bethelwoodscenter.org.museum).
A must-visit.
Useful link:
www.bethelwoodscenter.org
A must-visit.
Useful link:
www.bethelwoodscenter.org
Diamond Promotion Service Update
I really liked the Diamond Promotion Service (DPS) microsite @ http://www.dps.org/promotingyourreputation/index.html because it provides excellent reference materials on consumer confidence issues + customer loyalty. Brilliant!
Useful link:
www.dps.org
Useful link:
www.dps.org
Lean Lexicon
Lean Lexicon by Lean Enterprise Institute + Chet Marchwinski + John Shook is a great reference book + it explains A3 lean methodology perfectly.
Useful link:
www.lean.org
Useful link:
www.lean.org
Art During The Great War
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
A survey of the work of official war artists and others
1
It was shown in the last chapter how at the beginning of the present century the art world was deluged with theories and ‘isms’, while several of the pictures illustrated afforded evidence that a sinister violence and subterranean unrest became manifest in European painting before it exploded in European politics and precipitated a great war. On the Continent—and to a slighter extent in England also—the ‘wild men’ of painting had betrayed in form and color that spirit of merciless aggression which eventually provoked Armageddon. The principal British contribution to the extreme left of modern painting was a development of Cubism known as ‘Vorticism,’ and it is not altogether without significance that the leader of this movement, Mr P Wyndham Lewis, should have begun in the early spring of 1914 a series of abstract paintings with titles taken from military textbooks. His ‘Plan of Campaign’, exhibited at London in June 1914, was based not on any vision of landscapes and figures, but on such a diagram of a battle disposition as we may find in any history book. The parallel lines and blocks stand for the divisions of contending forces, and the heavy blocks in the upper right hand corner are supposed to represent te extended left wing of one army outflanking and falling with superior on the right wing of the other army. This is the ‘plan of campaign’. Here again we have a curious premonition of the War expressed in paint. The case of Mr Wyndham Lewis typifies the general effect the War had on art. When a student at the Slade School Mr Lewis made himself remarked by the uncommon power of his drawing. Caught up in the vortex which swept so many ambitious young artists into the whirlpool of ‘abstract painting’ because of their desire to attain novelty at all costs, Mr Lewis was led in the years immediately preceding the War to paint ‘abstract’ pictures, incomprehensible to the multitude and difficult for even the initiated to understand. Then in 1918, after two years experience with the heavy artillery in France, he returned to London and returned to realism. ‘The Gun Pit,’ which he painted for the Canadian War Memorials, was no abstract picture, but a perfectly comprehensible painting based on vision, on his remembered experience with the big guns and of the big-built men who worked them.
The chief effect of the War on painting, therefore, was to bring about a return to realism, but it was a new realism modified, as we shall see, by certain principles derived from movements which, in themselves, appeared to be extravagant. Not only did the War restore to sanity many of the most promising of the younger artists, it also prepared the public to accept and understand their works. Youthful artists, who in peace time might have waited till middle age before their talent was recognized, became famous in a year or two. The wall of prejudice was broken down by the unparalleled unheaval of our normal world, so that even conservative minds were ready to consider impartially a new vision of new events. Further, though there was no slackness on the part of the younger artists in joining the colors, the artistic activity of Great Britain may be said to have reached its zenith during the years of War. Never before had so much official and State patronage been given to British artists, never before did the British public so clearly recognize that picture-making was not a mere pasttime but an activity which had its own function and purpose of usefulness to humanity.
As early as 1914-15 the first public recognition of the artist’s value to the State in war time came in connection with the recruiting campaign. ‘Art for art’s sake’ was dead and done with, but in its place was substituted a new gospel of ‘Art for the Idea’s sake.’ Art was recognized as an element of education and social progress, because nothing else in the world could impress an idea so vividly and lastingly on the human memory. During the first winter and spring of the War close on a hundred posters were commissioned from various artists by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, and 2,500,000 copies of these posters were distributed throughout the United Kingdom. In addition to these official posters, generous contributions were made to the campaign by several private firms. The recruiting posters issued by the London Electric Railways will be long remembered for their efficiency and artistic qualities, notably Mr Brangwyn’s ‘Remember Belgium’ and Mr G Spencer Pryse’s ‘The Only Road for an Englishman’. Later the use as a poster during the War Savings Campaign of a reproduction of Whistler’s portrait of his Mother—as a gentle reminder that ‘Old Age Must Come’—was significant of a growing belief on the part of Authority that the most artistic picture can make the widest public appeal.
Simultaneously with the appearance of the recruiting posters on the hoardings, came the war cartoons in the newspapers. It is impracticable to give a list of the British artists who did excellent work in this direction—every reader will remember notable drawings.
Meanwhile what of painting? It was said rather bitterly in 1916 that ‘no visitor to the Royal Academy would know that there was a war on.’ It may be admitted frankly that the exhibitions in these years looked much the same as those in years of peace. Pictures of the War were infrequent, and when present they were rarely successful. The failure of the older artists to grapple with the situation was neither surprising nor shameful. They did not possess the requisite experience. Some endeavored to the topical, and envisaged the War after their memory of Crimean pictures, changing the uniforms into khaki but repeating the old arrangements. But sword-waving officers, swaggering cavalrymen, and neatly brushed infantry were no longer convincing even to civilians. Standing before an Academy picture of a charge, a wounded New Zealander was overheard to remark: ‘That’s absurd! One man with a machine gun would wipe out the lot.’ New methods of warfare demanded new methods of painting for their efficient expression. The battle in art, as at the Front, was for the young, and the first man to capture the imagination of London by his war pictures was a young artist hitherto practically unknown.
Art During The Great War (continued)
A survey of the work of official war artists and others
1
It was shown in the last chapter how at the beginning of the present century the art world was deluged with theories and ‘isms’, while several of the pictures illustrated afforded evidence that a sinister violence and subterranean unrest became manifest in European painting before it exploded in European politics and precipitated a great war. On the Continent—and to a slighter extent in England also—the ‘wild men’ of painting had betrayed in form and color that spirit of merciless aggression which eventually provoked Armageddon. The principal British contribution to the extreme left of modern painting was a development of Cubism known as ‘Vorticism,’ and it is not altogether without significance that the leader of this movement, Mr P Wyndham Lewis, should have begun in the early spring of 1914 a series of abstract paintings with titles taken from military textbooks. His ‘Plan of Campaign’, exhibited at London in June 1914, was based not on any vision of landscapes and figures, but on such a diagram of a battle disposition as we may find in any history book. The parallel lines and blocks stand for the divisions of contending forces, and the heavy blocks in the upper right hand corner are supposed to represent te extended left wing of one army outflanking and falling with superior on the right wing of the other army. This is the ‘plan of campaign’. Here again we have a curious premonition of the War expressed in paint. The case of Mr Wyndham Lewis typifies the general effect the War had on art. When a student at the Slade School Mr Lewis made himself remarked by the uncommon power of his drawing. Caught up in the vortex which swept so many ambitious young artists into the whirlpool of ‘abstract painting’ because of their desire to attain novelty at all costs, Mr Lewis was led in the years immediately preceding the War to paint ‘abstract’ pictures, incomprehensible to the multitude and difficult for even the initiated to understand. Then in 1918, after two years experience with the heavy artillery in France, he returned to London and returned to realism. ‘The Gun Pit,’ which he painted for the Canadian War Memorials, was no abstract picture, but a perfectly comprehensible painting based on vision, on his remembered experience with the big guns and of the big-built men who worked them.
The chief effect of the War on painting, therefore, was to bring about a return to realism, but it was a new realism modified, as we shall see, by certain principles derived from movements which, in themselves, appeared to be extravagant. Not only did the War restore to sanity many of the most promising of the younger artists, it also prepared the public to accept and understand their works. Youthful artists, who in peace time might have waited till middle age before their talent was recognized, became famous in a year or two. The wall of prejudice was broken down by the unparalleled unheaval of our normal world, so that even conservative minds were ready to consider impartially a new vision of new events. Further, though there was no slackness on the part of the younger artists in joining the colors, the artistic activity of Great Britain may be said to have reached its zenith during the years of War. Never before had so much official and State patronage been given to British artists, never before did the British public so clearly recognize that picture-making was not a mere pasttime but an activity which had its own function and purpose of usefulness to humanity.
As early as 1914-15 the first public recognition of the artist’s value to the State in war time came in connection with the recruiting campaign. ‘Art for art’s sake’ was dead and done with, but in its place was substituted a new gospel of ‘Art for the Idea’s sake.’ Art was recognized as an element of education and social progress, because nothing else in the world could impress an idea so vividly and lastingly on the human memory. During the first winter and spring of the War close on a hundred posters were commissioned from various artists by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, and 2,500,000 copies of these posters were distributed throughout the United Kingdom. In addition to these official posters, generous contributions were made to the campaign by several private firms. The recruiting posters issued by the London Electric Railways will be long remembered for their efficiency and artistic qualities, notably Mr Brangwyn’s ‘Remember Belgium’ and Mr G Spencer Pryse’s ‘The Only Road for an Englishman’. Later the use as a poster during the War Savings Campaign of a reproduction of Whistler’s portrait of his Mother—as a gentle reminder that ‘Old Age Must Come’—was significant of a growing belief on the part of Authority that the most artistic picture can make the widest public appeal.
Simultaneously with the appearance of the recruiting posters on the hoardings, came the war cartoons in the newspapers. It is impracticable to give a list of the British artists who did excellent work in this direction—every reader will remember notable drawings.
Meanwhile what of painting? It was said rather bitterly in 1916 that ‘no visitor to the Royal Academy would know that there was a war on.’ It may be admitted frankly that the exhibitions in these years looked much the same as those in years of peace. Pictures of the War were infrequent, and when present they were rarely successful. The failure of the older artists to grapple with the situation was neither surprising nor shameful. They did not possess the requisite experience. Some endeavored to the topical, and envisaged the War after their memory of Crimean pictures, changing the uniforms into khaki but repeating the old arrangements. But sword-waving officers, swaggering cavalrymen, and neatly brushed infantry were no longer convincing even to civilians. Standing before an Academy picture of a charge, a wounded New Zealander was overheard to remark: ‘That’s absurd! One man with a machine gun would wipe out the lot.’ New methods of warfare demanded new methods of painting for their efficient expression. The battle in art, as at the Front, was for the young, and the first man to capture the imagination of London by his war pictures was a young artist hitherto practically unknown.
Art During The Great War (continued)
The Diamond Trading Company Update
(via idexonline) The Diamond Trading Company (DTC) has released the full list of its Sightholders, broken down into UK, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa Canada and industrial Sightholders @ www.dtcsightholderdirectory.com
The info was educational and useful.
The info was educational and useful.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Ullens Center For Contemporary Art
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) was founded in Beijing by collectors Guy + Myriam Ullens + I think they have created a unique platform for emerging artists to share and learn.
A must-visit.
Useful link:
www.ucca.org.cn
A must-visit.
Useful link:
www.ucca.org.cn
Simple Visuals
Explanatory videos = simple + creative + clear = sticks! The simple visuals are great. I liked it.
Useful link:
www.commoncraft.com
Useful link:
www.commoncraft.com
Ayala Museum
(via Wiki) The Ayala Museum is an art and history museum located at the corner of Makati Avenue and Dela Rosa Street, beside the Greenbelt Mall in Makati City, The Philippines + it is one of the leading museums in the Philippines, as well as one of the most modern.
A must-visit.
Useful links:
www.ayalamuseum.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayala_Museum
http://www.newsweek.com/id/134270
A must-visit.
Useful links:
www.ayalamuseum.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayala_Museum
http://www.newsweek.com/id/134270
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The first phase of Cubism is simple in comparison with the second, for if the first consisted in cutting up natural objects into geometrical shapes, the second consisted in shuffling the pieces. This curious development, with which the name of Picasso is chiefly associated, professed to show, not merely one aspect of objects, but a number of sectional aspects seen from different standpoints and arbitrarily grouped together in one composition. By this method the painting of a simple object like a teacup is transfigured into an unrecognizable fugue—consisting of fragments of the cup as seen from above, from the sides, and, as held up in the air, from below. These ingenious conglomerations, professing to give us ‘the greater reality’ of things seen, leave us as bewildered, confused, and uninformed as a metaphysician’s analysis of truth and error. As an example of the second phase of Cubism we give Picasso’s ‘Portrait of M Kahnweiler’, in which all we can recognize are fragmentary frontal aspects of his waistcoat (with watch-chain), left eye, left ear, and one side of his nose drowned in a chaotic sea of various aspects of receipt-files and other unrecognizable objects. Thus a movement which originated in an attempt to secure a primitive simplicity was led astray by false doctrine, till it finally wandered into a blind alley of complexity, for the complications of neo-Impressionist painting were child’s play in comparison with the entaglements of the puzzle-pictures of the later Cubists.
Following upon the distortions of M Matisse and the strange pictures of the Cubists, in which the facts of vision were either ignored or so juggled with that they became incomprehensible, it is not surprising that yet another school of painters arose who abandoned representation as an indispensable element in picture-making and argued that painting should be as free as music to give emotional pleasure without any appeal to association of material ideas. This claim that painting should be abstract, and not concern itself with the concrete, was argued by the Polish artist Wassily Kandinsky, working at Munich in 1914, more convincingly in his book The Art of Spiritual Harmony than in his kaleidoscopic pictures. In theory it seems plausible enough that if a musician is free to weave melodies without reference to natural sounds, a painter should be free to construct compositions without reference to natural forms. It is also true that the emotional pleasure we derive from the stained-glass windows of an old cathedral does not depend on the subject painted. We are enchanted with the radiant beauty of the pattern of color. So far so good, but now comes the point that no artist living or dead has yet succeeded in convincing the world that these stained-glass windows would give us any keener or purer emotional pleasure if they had no subjects, or been able himself to produce an abstract painting more beautiful in color and pattern than paintings based on concrete forms.
Kandinsky, however, went a step further, and claimed that his abstract paintings were not mere dream patterns, but had a meaning for the initiated in that they were based on the psychological effect on the observer of various lines and colors. But these effects are by no means definitely established, they are still a subject for speculation, and till they are fixed by the common consent of mankind, experiments in the ‘art of spiritual harmony’ must necessarily be uncertain and inconclusive. Indeed, in Kandinsky’s own ‘Compositions’—as his abstract paintings are entitled—outward and visible signs alone give us a clue to the inward and spiritual meaning, and it is by discerning faint traces of a gun carriage, a puff of smoke, and falling houses in one of his pre-War pictures, painted in 1913, that we obtain a sense of that ‘clash and conflict of ideas in the spiritual world’ that the painting is said to express.
The sectional representation of divers aspects of different objects was developed with an added emphasis on the expression of movement, by the group of Italian painters known as the ‘Futurists’. Futurism was a literary as well as an artistic movement, and it was largely a protest against the tyranny of the past on the part of ardent nationalists, who resented that the present achievements of their country should be obscured by the glory of its past. The leader of the movement was a writer, Signor Marinetti, and his skilled pen justified the extraordinary practices of his artist friends by sonorous phrases. A pictorial record of the commonplace fact that the seat of a chair is visible after the sitter has got up and walked away, was majestically alluded to as an example of ‘the plastic interpenetration of matter.’ As regards color, the Futurists accepted the divisionism and complementarism of the neo-Impressionists, but in the rendering of form they sought to introduce new principles: ‘Universal dynamism must be rendered in painting as a dynamic sensation; movement and light destroy te materiality of bodies.’ An amusing example of the ‘dynamic decomposition of matter’ is Giacomo Balla’s painting ‘A Lady and her Dog’, which may be regarded as a synthesis of rapid motion photography. A multiplicity of paws and tails indicates that the animal is trotting with wagging tail, four ghostly chains suggest the whirling of his lead, and an army of shoes presents the movement of his owner’s feet. In concentrating their endeavors on the expression of movement, the Futurists attempted to convert painting from an art of space to an art of time. Their daring experiments have produced few pictures likely to stand the test of time, but possibly an exception may be made for Signor Balla’s ‘Centrifugal Force’. This painting of revolving spheres shooting forth golden sparks into an azure void was not only decorative in design and color, but also nobly expressive of the Force that shoots meteorolites through the universe. An abstract painting that succeeds in expressing an abstract idea is clearly legitimate art, but pictures of this calibre are unfortunately the exception among abstract paintings.
Nevertheless it would be wrong to assert that the experiments of the modern extremists in painting have been wholly valueless. Technically they have widened the horizon of painting and opened the road to a new realism in which the firm structure and rigid design of te Cubists can be combined with a truth and beauty of color derived from the Impressionists. Psychologically their work is of profound interest to every student of history. Coming events cast their shadow before them on the field of art. The patient reader who has followed this history thus far will have observed the increasing endeavor on the part of painters to give an expression of strength. In examining their works he will have noticed that, however greatly they may vary in their aspects and styles, nearly all of them contain en element of violence. These Fauviste, Cubist, and Futurist paintings never soothe us to rest; they aim at galvanising us into action. All of them must be regarded as symptoms, as expressions in art of the unrest, agitation, and suppressed violence seething subterraneously in Europe prior to the oubreak of the Great War.
The first phase of Cubism is simple in comparison with the second, for if the first consisted in cutting up natural objects into geometrical shapes, the second consisted in shuffling the pieces. This curious development, with which the name of Picasso is chiefly associated, professed to show, not merely one aspect of objects, but a number of sectional aspects seen from different standpoints and arbitrarily grouped together in one composition. By this method the painting of a simple object like a teacup is transfigured into an unrecognizable fugue—consisting of fragments of the cup as seen from above, from the sides, and, as held up in the air, from below. These ingenious conglomerations, professing to give us ‘the greater reality’ of things seen, leave us as bewildered, confused, and uninformed as a metaphysician’s analysis of truth and error. As an example of the second phase of Cubism we give Picasso’s ‘Portrait of M Kahnweiler’, in which all we can recognize are fragmentary frontal aspects of his waistcoat (with watch-chain), left eye, left ear, and one side of his nose drowned in a chaotic sea of various aspects of receipt-files and other unrecognizable objects. Thus a movement which originated in an attempt to secure a primitive simplicity was led astray by false doctrine, till it finally wandered into a blind alley of complexity, for the complications of neo-Impressionist painting were child’s play in comparison with the entaglements of the puzzle-pictures of the later Cubists.
Following upon the distortions of M Matisse and the strange pictures of the Cubists, in which the facts of vision were either ignored or so juggled with that they became incomprehensible, it is not surprising that yet another school of painters arose who abandoned representation as an indispensable element in picture-making and argued that painting should be as free as music to give emotional pleasure without any appeal to association of material ideas. This claim that painting should be abstract, and not concern itself with the concrete, was argued by the Polish artist Wassily Kandinsky, working at Munich in 1914, more convincingly in his book The Art of Spiritual Harmony than in his kaleidoscopic pictures. In theory it seems plausible enough that if a musician is free to weave melodies without reference to natural sounds, a painter should be free to construct compositions without reference to natural forms. It is also true that the emotional pleasure we derive from the stained-glass windows of an old cathedral does not depend on the subject painted. We are enchanted with the radiant beauty of the pattern of color. So far so good, but now comes the point that no artist living or dead has yet succeeded in convincing the world that these stained-glass windows would give us any keener or purer emotional pleasure if they had no subjects, or been able himself to produce an abstract painting more beautiful in color and pattern than paintings based on concrete forms.
Kandinsky, however, went a step further, and claimed that his abstract paintings were not mere dream patterns, but had a meaning for the initiated in that they were based on the psychological effect on the observer of various lines and colors. But these effects are by no means definitely established, they are still a subject for speculation, and till they are fixed by the common consent of mankind, experiments in the ‘art of spiritual harmony’ must necessarily be uncertain and inconclusive. Indeed, in Kandinsky’s own ‘Compositions’—as his abstract paintings are entitled—outward and visible signs alone give us a clue to the inward and spiritual meaning, and it is by discerning faint traces of a gun carriage, a puff of smoke, and falling houses in one of his pre-War pictures, painted in 1913, that we obtain a sense of that ‘clash and conflict of ideas in the spiritual world’ that the painting is said to express.
The sectional representation of divers aspects of different objects was developed with an added emphasis on the expression of movement, by the group of Italian painters known as the ‘Futurists’. Futurism was a literary as well as an artistic movement, and it was largely a protest against the tyranny of the past on the part of ardent nationalists, who resented that the present achievements of their country should be obscured by the glory of its past. The leader of the movement was a writer, Signor Marinetti, and his skilled pen justified the extraordinary practices of his artist friends by sonorous phrases. A pictorial record of the commonplace fact that the seat of a chair is visible after the sitter has got up and walked away, was majestically alluded to as an example of ‘the plastic interpenetration of matter.’ As regards color, the Futurists accepted the divisionism and complementarism of the neo-Impressionists, but in the rendering of form they sought to introduce new principles: ‘Universal dynamism must be rendered in painting as a dynamic sensation; movement and light destroy te materiality of bodies.’ An amusing example of the ‘dynamic decomposition of matter’ is Giacomo Balla’s painting ‘A Lady and her Dog’, which may be regarded as a synthesis of rapid motion photography. A multiplicity of paws and tails indicates that the animal is trotting with wagging tail, four ghostly chains suggest the whirling of his lead, and an army of shoes presents the movement of his owner’s feet. In concentrating their endeavors on the expression of movement, the Futurists attempted to convert painting from an art of space to an art of time. Their daring experiments have produced few pictures likely to stand the test of time, but possibly an exception may be made for Signor Balla’s ‘Centrifugal Force’. This painting of revolving spheres shooting forth golden sparks into an azure void was not only decorative in design and color, but also nobly expressive of the Force that shoots meteorolites through the universe. An abstract painting that succeeds in expressing an abstract idea is clearly legitimate art, but pictures of this calibre are unfortunately the exception among abstract paintings.
Nevertheless it would be wrong to assert that the experiments of the modern extremists in painting have been wholly valueless. Technically they have widened the horizon of painting and opened the road to a new realism in which the firm structure and rigid design of te Cubists can be combined with a truth and beauty of color derived from the Impressionists. Psychologically their work is of profound interest to every student of history. Coming events cast their shadow before them on the field of art. The patient reader who has followed this history thus far will have observed the increasing endeavor on the part of painters to give an expression of strength. In examining their works he will have noticed that, however greatly they may vary in their aspects and styles, nearly all of them contain en element of violence. These Fauviste, Cubist, and Futurist paintings never soothe us to rest; they aim at galvanising us into action. All of them must be regarded as symptoms, as expressions in art of the unrest, agitation, and suppressed violence seething subterraneously in Europe prior to the oubreak of the Great War.
Heard On The Street
I guess that suckers come in all shapes, sizes, and colors and that at one time or another, we're all suckers.
Gregor Schneider
Gregor Schneider is an artist + his art works/concepts are interesting because they are different from the mainstream, but in my view some are shocking, really.
Useful link:
www.gregorschneider.de
Useful link:
www.gregorschneider.de
Environment Update
It's always good to learn that scientists/inventors/entrepreneurs are constantly looking for new ways to save the environemnt, I found the ideas @ http://www.newsweek.com/id/130625/page/1 interesting. I think they were brilliant.
Monday, April 28, 2008
John Calleija
There is something special about John Calleija's jewelry designs: beauty and soul.
Useful link:
www.calleija.com.au
Useful link:
www.calleija.com.au
All the Money In The World
All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make--and Spend--Their Fortunes by Peter W. Bernstein + Annalyn Swan is an inspiring book + provides insider's view of what makes them tick and how they got to the top.
Distance Learning vs Nearness Learning
I found the article on distance learning @ http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11088431 very interesting, in fact, I think Nearness learning is more appropriate term than Distance learning.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
3
If we look at the southern landscape by Cézanne, we shall perceive that in his desire to make the objects look solid and enduring the artist has sharpened some curves into angles and emphasized cubic forms. This method of expressing the volume of objects was seen to be powerful and effective, and was seized upon by certain of the Fauves, who, desirous above all things of being forcible, elaborated their discovery into a dogma. Further, they supported their practice by a specious theory based on a smattering of science. We have seen how at the beginning of the present century there was a craze for the Primitive among a certain section of artists. These young men picked up from mineralogists the idea that crystal was the primitive form of all things. A strange new test was applied to pictures: Did they or did they not show evidence of crystallization? A phrase torn from a scientific handbook was adopted as an aesthetic watchword:
All secondary forms arise from the decrement of particles from the edges and angles of these primitive forms.
Therefore to restore natural objects and human beings to their ‘primitive’ forms, it was necessary to eliminate all curved lines and to reconstruct forms and faces in their ‘primary form’, octahedraon, dodecahedron, six-sided prism or whatever other geometrical figure might be most suitable. Among the earliest pictures embodying this new doctrine were landscapes in which meadows were crumpled up into crisp, candy-like masses, and marines in which all the waves had a sharp edge. These pictures were the work of a young Frenchman names Georges Bracque; and it is still a matter for considerable argument whether Bracque or the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is to be regarded as the true founder of Cubism.
Picasso was born at Malaga in 1881, and appeared in Paris about the end of the nineteenth century as an accomplished and masterly draughtsman. His early work ‘Mother and Child’ shows the normality of his art and his genuine gifts before he attached himself definitely to the Fauviste movement. Possessed of the quick and fertile brain of an inventive engineer, Picasso poured forth in quick succession a number of paintings of startling novelty in a variety of styles before he reached the mode that is now known as Cubism. On his practice, the outcome of a restless search for novelty of effect and of tireless experiments in pattern-making, others built up a new pseudo-philosophy of art. As a theory Cubism was based on two dogmatic assertions and a fallacious conclusion. It was argued:
1. Strength is beauty.
2. A straight line is stronger than a curved line.
It is hardly necessary to point out how fairly are both these contentions, for in the first place nothing is more beautiful or weaker than a flower, and in the second it is a commonplace of construction that an arch is stronger than a horizontal on two perpendiculars. Nevertheless, blind to the error of their major and minor premise, the Cubists with a parade of logic proceeded to the conclusion that a painting wholly composed of straight lines is stronger and therefore more beautiful than a painting containing curved lines. Picasso’s ‘Head of a Lady in a Mantilla’ illustrates the first phase of Cubism, in which the human body is cut up into geometrical forms. It is a ‘crystallization’ of a human head, which looks less like a painting than a woodcarving executed by a savage with a blunt instrument, yet once our eyes have grown accustomed to the strange barbarism of the technique we have to acknowledge that this head is not altogether wanting in expression.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
3
If we look at the southern landscape by Cézanne, we shall perceive that in his desire to make the objects look solid and enduring the artist has sharpened some curves into angles and emphasized cubic forms. This method of expressing the volume of objects was seen to be powerful and effective, and was seized upon by certain of the Fauves, who, desirous above all things of being forcible, elaborated their discovery into a dogma. Further, they supported their practice by a specious theory based on a smattering of science. We have seen how at the beginning of the present century there was a craze for the Primitive among a certain section of artists. These young men picked up from mineralogists the idea that crystal was the primitive form of all things. A strange new test was applied to pictures: Did they or did they not show evidence of crystallization? A phrase torn from a scientific handbook was adopted as an aesthetic watchword:
All secondary forms arise from the decrement of particles from the edges and angles of these primitive forms.
Therefore to restore natural objects and human beings to their ‘primitive’ forms, it was necessary to eliminate all curved lines and to reconstruct forms and faces in their ‘primary form’, octahedraon, dodecahedron, six-sided prism or whatever other geometrical figure might be most suitable. Among the earliest pictures embodying this new doctrine were landscapes in which meadows were crumpled up into crisp, candy-like masses, and marines in which all the waves had a sharp edge. These pictures were the work of a young Frenchman names Georges Bracque; and it is still a matter for considerable argument whether Bracque or the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is to be regarded as the true founder of Cubism.
Picasso was born at Malaga in 1881, and appeared in Paris about the end of the nineteenth century as an accomplished and masterly draughtsman. His early work ‘Mother and Child’ shows the normality of his art and his genuine gifts before he attached himself definitely to the Fauviste movement. Possessed of the quick and fertile brain of an inventive engineer, Picasso poured forth in quick succession a number of paintings of startling novelty in a variety of styles before he reached the mode that is now known as Cubism. On his practice, the outcome of a restless search for novelty of effect and of tireless experiments in pattern-making, others built up a new pseudo-philosophy of art. As a theory Cubism was based on two dogmatic assertions and a fallacious conclusion. It was argued:
1. Strength is beauty.
2. A straight line is stronger than a curved line.
It is hardly necessary to point out how fairly are both these contentions, for in the first place nothing is more beautiful or weaker than a flower, and in the second it is a commonplace of construction that an arch is stronger than a horizontal on two perpendiculars. Nevertheless, blind to the error of their major and minor premise, the Cubists with a parade of logic proceeded to the conclusion that a painting wholly composed of straight lines is stronger and therefore more beautiful than a painting containing curved lines. Picasso’s ‘Head of a Lady in a Mantilla’ illustrates the first phase of Cubism, in which the human body is cut up into geometrical forms. It is a ‘crystallization’ of a human head, which looks less like a painting than a woodcarving executed by a savage with a blunt instrument, yet once our eyes have grown accustomed to the strange barbarism of the technique we have to acknowledge that this head is not altogether wanting in expression.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
Lucas Cranach
Souren Melikian writes about Lucas Cranach and his earliest masterpieces + other viewpoints @ http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/24/arts/melik26.php
Cranach: 8 Mar—8 Jun 2008 @ The Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Useful links:
www.royalacademy.org.uk
www.staedelmuseum.de
Cranach: 8 Mar—8 Jun 2008 @ The Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Useful links:
www.royalacademy.org.uk
www.staedelmuseum.de
Indiana Jones Escapades
(via budgettravel) Expedia has created unique travel deals either based on or inspired by Indiana Jones escapades @ www.expedia.com/indianajones
Brilliant!
Useful link:
www.expedia.com
Brilliant!
Useful link:
www.expedia.com
Judgment Under Uncertainty
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases by Daniel Kahneman + Paul Slovic + Amos Tversky is a fascinating book + I found it useful in analyzing market behavior.
Useful links:
http://www.princeton.edu/~kahneman
www.decisionresearch.org
Useful links:
http://www.princeton.edu/~kahneman
www.decisionresearch.org
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, then, Gauguin appeared to Paris, not only as the inventor of a new style of picture, but also as the protagonist of a new mental attitude towards life and art. At that period there was a certain lassitude among the highly cultured, expressed by the term fin de siècle—and it was not difficult to make out a case for regarding modern civilization as a disease. There is much in city life that is repugnant to some temperaments, and the yearning for simplicity among artists had its parallel in the ‘back-to-the-land’ movement in politics. The argument put forward by a new generation of artists was this: ‘If modern life is diseased, modern art must be diseased also. We can only restore art to health by starting it afresh like children or savages.’ Thus began the reaction against the complexity of neo-Impressionist painting, and this movement, chiefly influenced by the example of Gauguin, gave birth to a group of painters known in Paris as the fauves (i.e wild beasts). This Fauviste movement was an extreme emotional reaction against the cold intellectual tendencies of hyperscientific painting. In so far as these ‘wild beasts’ painters sought to make painting simpler and less complicated, it may be argued that they were moving in a right direction. A similar reaction in England, fifty years earlier, had led Holman Hunt and Millais to go back to the painters before Raphael for qualities of line and color which they though desirable. But the French painters, in their rage against civilization, went much further back: one by one all the Old Masters were swept away by revolutionaries who sought inspiration from the rudimentary art of savages and barbarians. Forcible, childlike scrawls began to appear in Paris exhibitions, and these paintings were based not so much on my new view of Nature as on the savage art of Polynesia and Central Africa. The rough-hewn intensity of negro carvings excited jaded minds which were satiated with the plastic perfection of the sculpture of Michael Angelo.
The passion for simplicity and the desire to secure a maximum of expression with a minimum of means—which are the chief virtues of the Fauves—are found in the highest degree in the work of Henri Matisse, who is generally regarded as the leading exponent of this school. Born in the North of France in 1869, Matisse as a young man made a great reputation among connoisseurs by the extraordinary power of his drawing. Beginning as an almost academic draughtsman, influenced at first by Impressionism and then by Gauguin, painting landscapes, figures, and still-life, the art of Matisse has passed through a number of phases, each of which has had offshoots in a band of imitators. If Gauguin has been the most lasting influence, Matisse is in no sense an imitator of this master. Though he retained the high-keyed Impressionist palette of bright, clean colors, Matisse abandoned the mosaic method of painting, using a sweeping brush and large planes of color to fill in the masses of what are essentially linear designs. Many of his drawings are wonderful in their summary expression of form and movement, but while in his pictures we admire the masterly sureness and simplicity of his drawing, we are often bewildered by his wilful distortion of natural form.
One of his defenders has sought to explain that Matisse exaggerates deformity in a model by a temperamental necessity which pushes him to affirm a truth without discretion to the point of paradox. Most people will find it difficult to accept a passion for realism as a reasonable explanation why an artist should present the calf of a leg as having a greater circumference than a thigh! On the other hand, decorative intent is patent in all the pictures of Matisse, and we frequently find that distortions of form are used to help and emphasize the rhythm and equilibrium of the linear pattern; accordingly it seems more reasonable to conclude that these distortions are wilful, not accidental, and that the painter subordinates natural representation to formal design, and desires us to admire his pictures, not because they are ‘true,’ but because he has created a pattern of line and color which should appeal to pure aesthetic sensibilities. Matisse is historically important, therefore, as a pioneer of the doctrine that mere ‘actuality’ is unimportant to pictorial art. He may also be regarded as the introducer of ‘shock tactics’ into art. Even if we dislike his pictures, we find it difficult to forget them, because they make so forcible an impact on our vision. His ‘Head of a Woman’ is an example of the powerful effect he achieves with the utmost simplicity and economy of means.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, then, Gauguin appeared to Paris, not only as the inventor of a new style of picture, but also as the protagonist of a new mental attitude towards life and art. At that period there was a certain lassitude among the highly cultured, expressed by the term fin de siècle—and it was not difficult to make out a case for regarding modern civilization as a disease. There is much in city life that is repugnant to some temperaments, and the yearning for simplicity among artists had its parallel in the ‘back-to-the-land’ movement in politics. The argument put forward by a new generation of artists was this: ‘If modern life is diseased, modern art must be diseased also. We can only restore art to health by starting it afresh like children or savages.’ Thus began the reaction against the complexity of neo-Impressionist painting, and this movement, chiefly influenced by the example of Gauguin, gave birth to a group of painters known in Paris as the fauves (i.e wild beasts). This Fauviste movement was an extreme emotional reaction against the cold intellectual tendencies of hyperscientific painting. In so far as these ‘wild beasts’ painters sought to make painting simpler and less complicated, it may be argued that they were moving in a right direction. A similar reaction in England, fifty years earlier, had led Holman Hunt and Millais to go back to the painters before Raphael for qualities of line and color which they though desirable. But the French painters, in their rage against civilization, went much further back: one by one all the Old Masters were swept away by revolutionaries who sought inspiration from the rudimentary art of savages and barbarians. Forcible, childlike scrawls began to appear in Paris exhibitions, and these paintings were based not so much on my new view of Nature as on the savage art of Polynesia and Central Africa. The rough-hewn intensity of negro carvings excited jaded minds which were satiated with the plastic perfection of the sculpture of Michael Angelo.
The passion for simplicity and the desire to secure a maximum of expression with a minimum of means—which are the chief virtues of the Fauves—are found in the highest degree in the work of Henri Matisse, who is generally regarded as the leading exponent of this school. Born in the North of France in 1869, Matisse as a young man made a great reputation among connoisseurs by the extraordinary power of his drawing. Beginning as an almost academic draughtsman, influenced at first by Impressionism and then by Gauguin, painting landscapes, figures, and still-life, the art of Matisse has passed through a number of phases, each of which has had offshoots in a band of imitators. If Gauguin has been the most lasting influence, Matisse is in no sense an imitator of this master. Though he retained the high-keyed Impressionist palette of bright, clean colors, Matisse abandoned the mosaic method of painting, using a sweeping brush and large planes of color to fill in the masses of what are essentially linear designs. Many of his drawings are wonderful in their summary expression of form and movement, but while in his pictures we admire the masterly sureness and simplicity of his drawing, we are often bewildered by his wilful distortion of natural form.
One of his defenders has sought to explain that Matisse exaggerates deformity in a model by a temperamental necessity which pushes him to affirm a truth without discretion to the point of paradox. Most people will find it difficult to accept a passion for realism as a reasonable explanation why an artist should present the calf of a leg as having a greater circumference than a thigh! On the other hand, decorative intent is patent in all the pictures of Matisse, and we frequently find that distortions of form are used to help and emphasize the rhythm and equilibrium of the linear pattern; accordingly it seems more reasonable to conclude that these distortions are wilful, not accidental, and that the painter subordinates natural representation to formal design, and desires us to admire his pictures, not because they are ‘true,’ but because he has created a pattern of line and color which should appeal to pure aesthetic sensibilities. Matisse is historically important, therefore, as a pioneer of the doctrine that mere ‘actuality’ is unimportant to pictorial art. He may also be regarded as the introducer of ‘shock tactics’ into art. Even if we dislike his pictures, we find it difficult to forget them, because they make so forcible an impact on our vision. His ‘Head of a Woman’ is an example of the powerful effect he achieves with the utmost simplicity and economy of means.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
Praying Mantis In Amber
Experts believe an 87-million-year-old praying mantis found encased in amber in Japan's northeastern Iwate Prefecture may be a missing link between mantises from the Cretaceous period and modern-day insects.
Julian Ryall writes @ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080425-amber-mantis.html
Useful links:
www.kuji.co.jp
www.kmnh.jp
www.amnh.org
Julian Ryall writes @ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080425-amber-mantis.html
Useful links:
www.kuji.co.jp
www.kmnh.jp
www.amnh.org
Nano Art
I found the Nano photos via Materials Research Society @ http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/04/gallery_nano_art stunningly beautiful + the eye-catching images are truly a unique convergence of science and art.
Useful link:
www.mrs.org
Useful link:
www.mrs.org
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Giuseppe Arcimboldo
(via Wiki) Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books -- that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognisable likeness of the portrait subject.
I liked The Arcimboldo Effect because they have double meaning + that otherness.
Useful links:
www.nhm-wien.ac.at
www.kunsthistorischesmuseum.at
www.palazzograssi.it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Arcimboldo
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2276324,00.html
I liked The Arcimboldo Effect because they have double meaning + that otherness.
Useful links:
www.nhm-wien.ac.at
www.kunsthistorischesmuseum.at
www.palazzograssi.it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Arcimboldo
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2276324,00.html
Nina Paley
I found Nina Paley's computer-generated animated film, Sita Sings the Blues (the ancient Hindu epic the Ramayana + the breakup of Paley's 21st-century marriage) + the imaginative format @ http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/news/2008/04/sita brilliant.
Useful links:
www.ninapaley.com
www.tribecafilmfestival.org
Useful links:
www.ninapaley.com
www.tribecafilmfestival.org
The Journalist And The Whistle Blower
I found Chaim Even Zohar's reflections on investigative journalists dilemmas when dealing with materials provided by whistle blowers + the impact @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp interesting and insightful.
Arnold Lulls
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
In the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London there is a most remarkable album depicting jewels that date from about 1550 to 1610. This is Arnold Lull’s record of the treasures of Queen Anne of Denmark. Some of the drawings were intended as a record of jewels acquired by Anne from 1603 to 1625 after her marriage to King James I of England. To some extent, the album is a pictorial inventory (similar to Mielich’s Kleinodienbuch) of the jewels delivered by Lulls and his collaborators. Some of the pieces are believed to be Lull’s own designs.
Arnold Lull himself was a Dutch jeweler and dealer who appears to have moved to London in 1585, but retained his Dutch nationality. His drawings illustrate a wide range of historic diamond cuts, mostly Table Cuts, square, rectangular and lozenge-shaped, but also a large number of fancy outlines. It is fascinating to find a number of diamond cuts that were obselete by about 1600 and, rather surprisingly, two different Stellar Cut Tables, predecessors of the Brilliants of a later period. The three Chequer Cut diamonds are equally interesting to a diamond historian. There are also two jewels containing Table Cut diamonds of gradually decreasing size set in a row, the earliest known example of this style, now popular with modern designers.
In the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London there is a most remarkable album depicting jewels that date from about 1550 to 1610. This is Arnold Lull’s record of the treasures of Queen Anne of Denmark. Some of the drawings were intended as a record of jewels acquired by Anne from 1603 to 1625 after her marriage to King James I of England. To some extent, the album is a pictorial inventory (similar to Mielich’s Kleinodienbuch) of the jewels delivered by Lulls and his collaborators. Some of the pieces are believed to be Lull’s own designs.
Arnold Lull himself was a Dutch jeweler and dealer who appears to have moved to London in 1585, but retained his Dutch nationality. His drawings illustrate a wide range of historic diamond cuts, mostly Table Cuts, square, rectangular and lozenge-shaped, but also a large number of fancy outlines. It is fascinating to find a number of diamond cuts that were obselete by about 1600 and, rather surprisingly, two different Stellar Cut Tables, predecessors of the Brilliants of a later period. The three Chequer Cut diamonds are equally interesting to a diamond historian. There are also two jewels containing Table Cut diamonds of gradually decreasing size set in a row, the earliest known example of this style, now popular with modern designers.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
2
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) also learnt painting from Camille Pissarro, whose style he copied closely in his early work, but at least he was never a Realist. His father was a Breton, but his mother was a Peruvian Creole, and a passion for the Tropics was in his blood. As a boy he ran away and went to sea, but after several voyages in various parts of the world he returned to Paris and entered business life. One day in a shop window he saw some pictures which brought back memories of the light and color he had seen in the Tropics; he made inquiries as to the authors, and so became acquainted with Pissarro. Gauguin was thirty at this time, and though he began painting now as a amateur, it was not till two years later, in 1880, that he began to exhibit, and another year passed before he decided to give all his time to art. Gauguin soon broke away from the dogmas of the neo-Impressionists, though his debt to them is confessed in the splendor of his color—and for a time he was influenced by Cézanne, this influence showing itself in a tendency towards simplification. Gauguin made certain innovations of his own, he deliberately simplified forms and reintroduced the fashion of binding them with heavy dark outlines, and while his style grew more decorative his subjects became more imaginative.
In one of his letters Van Gogh records that while Gauguin was living with him at Arles he (Van Gogh) was for a while ‘led into working from imagination.’
The association of Gauguin and Van Gogh was unfortunate, for their aims and temperaments were too distinct to mingle with ease. Van Gogh was all humility, Gauguin was proud and haughty, and though the warm-hearted Dutchman venerated his friend, the latter’s cold cynicism often got on his nerves and contributed to his depression. Van Gogh wanted to devote his life to suffering humanity; Gauguin wanted to forget the suffering and dwell in an ‘enchanted land.’ After Van Gogh’s mental collapse at Arles, Gauguin went to Brittany and established himself at Pont Aven, where he found ‘big, simple mortals and an unspoilt Nature.’ But even rural France was too sophisticated for a man whose romantic temperament found its ideal among the unspoilt barbarians of the Pacific. In 1891 Gauguin sailed for Tahiti, where he fulfilled his intention to paint a primitive folk in a primitive style. Admitting the technical interest and decorative merit of Gauguin’s Brittany pictures, it remains doubtful whether he would have been so great a figure in modern art had he not, like R I Stevenson, been fascinated by the life and manners of the Kanakas. His Tahitian pictures with their exotic subjects made a wide appeal to the popular imagination, though they did not become generally known till after the artist’s death in 1903. But if he complained bitterly at the lack of purchasers for his pictures, Gauguin delighted in his new home, and never regretted having left Europe. ‘I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary. I am entering into truth, into Nature.’ Nevertheless he idealized the Nature he found in the Pacific; he dwelt in a land of dreams and his pictures were charming conventions. When a literary friend in Paris quarrelled with his ideal, Gauguin replied: ‘Your civilization is your disease, my barbarism is my restoration to health.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
2
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) also learnt painting from Camille Pissarro, whose style he copied closely in his early work, but at least he was never a Realist. His father was a Breton, but his mother was a Peruvian Creole, and a passion for the Tropics was in his blood. As a boy he ran away and went to sea, but after several voyages in various parts of the world he returned to Paris and entered business life. One day in a shop window he saw some pictures which brought back memories of the light and color he had seen in the Tropics; he made inquiries as to the authors, and so became acquainted with Pissarro. Gauguin was thirty at this time, and though he began painting now as a amateur, it was not till two years later, in 1880, that he began to exhibit, and another year passed before he decided to give all his time to art. Gauguin soon broke away from the dogmas of the neo-Impressionists, though his debt to them is confessed in the splendor of his color—and for a time he was influenced by Cézanne, this influence showing itself in a tendency towards simplification. Gauguin made certain innovations of his own, he deliberately simplified forms and reintroduced the fashion of binding them with heavy dark outlines, and while his style grew more decorative his subjects became more imaginative.
In one of his letters Van Gogh records that while Gauguin was living with him at Arles he (Van Gogh) was for a while ‘led into working from imagination.’
The association of Gauguin and Van Gogh was unfortunate, for their aims and temperaments were too distinct to mingle with ease. Van Gogh was all humility, Gauguin was proud and haughty, and though the warm-hearted Dutchman venerated his friend, the latter’s cold cynicism often got on his nerves and contributed to his depression. Van Gogh wanted to devote his life to suffering humanity; Gauguin wanted to forget the suffering and dwell in an ‘enchanted land.’ After Van Gogh’s mental collapse at Arles, Gauguin went to Brittany and established himself at Pont Aven, where he found ‘big, simple mortals and an unspoilt Nature.’ But even rural France was too sophisticated for a man whose romantic temperament found its ideal among the unspoilt barbarians of the Pacific. In 1891 Gauguin sailed for Tahiti, where he fulfilled his intention to paint a primitive folk in a primitive style. Admitting the technical interest and decorative merit of Gauguin’s Brittany pictures, it remains doubtful whether he would have been so great a figure in modern art had he not, like R I Stevenson, been fascinated by the life and manners of the Kanakas. His Tahitian pictures with their exotic subjects made a wide appeal to the popular imagination, though they did not become generally known till after the artist’s death in 1903. But if he complained bitterly at the lack of purchasers for his pictures, Gauguin delighted in his new home, and never regretted having left Europe. ‘I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary. I am entering into truth, into Nature.’ Nevertheless he idealized the Nature he found in the Pacific; he dwelt in a land of dreams and his pictures were charming conventions. When a literary friend in Paris quarrelled with his ideal, Gauguin replied: ‘Your civilization is your disease, my barbarism is my restoration to health.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
HyperShot
(via Wired) HyperShot is a unique application developed by computer graphics genius Henrik Wann Jensen + it uses a proprietary photon-mapping technique to simulate complex lighting situations ranging from reflected sunlight to spots beamed through colored gels to create ultrarealistic images, like the diamonds @ http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/multimedia/2008/04/st_render?slide=2&slideView=2
Amazing!
Useful link:
http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik
Amazing!
Useful link:
http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~henrik
This Is Dubai
I found the article on Derek Khan @ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/fashion/17CROOK.html interesting because in the jewelry industry it's very difficult for a comeback if you have had a heavily included/blemished career, but here he is, as a stylist to the stars, in Dubai, on his feet. Good luck!
I thought I’d never see jewelry again.
- Derek Khan
I thought I’d never see jewelry again.
- Derek Khan
Contemporary Botanical Artists
Contemporary Botanical Artists: The Shirley Sherwood Collection by Shirley Sherwood + Victoria Matthews is an inspiring book of dazzling beauty.
Useful link:
www.kew.org
Visitors will be able to see the world's first gallery dedicated entirely to botanical art at Kew Gardens in London.
Useful link:
www.kew.org
Visitors will be able to see the world's first gallery dedicated entirely to botanical art at Kew Gardens in London.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Panyu + DMCC
Panyu (China) + DMCC (Dubai) = Diamonds + Colored stones trade. Dubai + Panyu are the new emerging gem and jewelry capital (s) of the world.
Useful links:
www.panyu.gov.cn
www.dmcc.ae
Useful links:
www.panyu.gov.cn
www.dmcc.ae
Heard On The Street
You must practice your skills, study your opponents and work hard + same with the markets.
Cell Phone Movie
Filmmaker Spike Lee + Nokia = a cell phone movie from everyday people. According to Spike Lee with a simple mobile phone, almost anyone can now become a filmmaker. You can submit text, music, video or images at certain times between now and Aug. 21, 2008 to www.nokiaproductions.com
Useful links:
www.nokiaproductions.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Lee
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000490
Useful links:
www.nokiaproductions.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Lee
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000490
Hans Mielich
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
In 1937, Erna von Watzdorf, a research worker at the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden, published a detailed article on Hans Mielich. She furnished proof that after he had finished his studies at the Regensburg Academy of Art, he went to Italy and Spain and there concentrated on the study of crafts such as armor and jewelry. He soon realized that reproducing objects required the same concentration on personality, light and shade as the portrayal of the human face.
He began painting large pièces de résistance at the Bavarian Court and was soon commissioned by Albrecht V Duke of Bavaria, to produce a color inventory of his wife’s jewelry collection. Mielich took over four years to complete the Kleinodienbuch, a vivid work of absolute precision and detail, in which even the interior light reflections in the Pyramidal Point Cut diamonds were depicted. It is possible that he may also have created some original pieces of jewelry , but no drawings of these appear to have been documented. Most of Mielich’s jewelry ‘portraits’ have been acquired by either the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek or the Bayerishces Nationalmuseum, both in Munich.
In 1937, Erna von Watzdorf, a research worker at the Grünes Gewölbe in Dresden, published a detailed article on Hans Mielich. She furnished proof that after he had finished his studies at the Regensburg Academy of Art, he went to Italy and Spain and there concentrated on the study of crafts such as armor and jewelry. He soon realized that reproducing objects required the same concentration on personality, light and shade as the portrayal of the human face.
He began painting large pièces de résistance at the Bavarian Court and was soon commissioned by Albrecht V Duke of Bavaria, to produce a color inventory of his wife’s jewelry collection. Mielich took over four years to complete the Kleinodienbuch, a vivid work of absolute precision and detail, in which even the interior light reflections in the Pyramidal Point Cut diamonds were depicted. It is possible that he may also have created some original pieces of jewelry , but no drawings of these appear to have been documented. Most of Mielich’s jewelry ‘portraits’ have been acquired by either the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek or the Bayerishces Nationalmuseum, both in Munich.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
From Paris Van Gogh went to Arles in the South of France, where he exposed himself to the risks of sunstroke by frequently painting in blazing sunshine without any headcovering. A curious incident made public the fact that he was becoming abnormal. Teasing him for a present, a girl in a café once playfully said to him, ‘Well, if you can’t give me anything else, give me one of your big ears.’ Shortly before Christmas this little waitress, whom the artist admired, was horrified to receive a parcel which was found to contain a freshly severed human ear. Van Gogh was found in bed with his head bleeding and with raging brain fever. Subsequently he was taken to an asylum, but his portrait of himself with a cap on his head and a pipe in his mouth, painted after this breakdown, proves that his hand had not lost its steadiness nor his eye its power to see essentials with brilliant intensity.
In the summer of 1889 he was well enough to leave Arles, and after a short stay in Paris, his brother arranged for him to live in the house of a doctor at Auvers-sur-Oise. Van Gogh appeared to be in the best of health and spirits, and there is no doubt that he fough bravely against the clouds which threatened his keen intellect. But the day came when he felt himself to be a doomed man, with nothing but mental darkness ahead, and on July 28, 1890, in a fit of depression he shot himself fatally. The fact that his mind eventually became unhinged, so that some of the pictures of his last years betray an abnormal vision, does not invalidate the splendid sanity of the bulk of Van Gogh’s productions. Technically Van Gogh got his modelling by sweeping contours, instead of by a series of petty planes, and so gave weight to objects, while cleanly preserving their silhouettes as co-ordinated parts of a decorative design. We are impressed by his strength, as we are by that of Cézanne; but it is not physical strength alone, but also moral force. His color is of a high order and pitch, showing a fine sensibility for the splendor of pigment, but Van Gogh was too seriously absorbed in life and humanity for his paintings ever to degenerate into mere decorations. One of the pictures in which he most completely expressed himself was ‘The Prison Yard’, in which he conjures up wtih forcible economy the tragic aspect of these prisoners pacing their monotonous round, makes the high walls eloquent of the impossibility of escape, and without a touch of sentimentality contrives to express his compassionate pity for these dregs of humanity who are yet ‘men and brothers.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
From Paris Van Gogh went to Arles in the South of France, where he exposed himself to the risks of sunstroke by frequently painting in blazing sunshine without any headcovering. A curious incident made public the fact that he was becoming abnormal. Teasing him for a present, a girl in a café once playfully said to him, ‘Well, if you can’t give me anything else, give me one of your big ears.’ Shortly before Christmas this little waitress, whom the artist admired, was horrified to receive a parcel which was found to contain a freshly severed human ear. Van Gogh was found in bed with his head bleeding and with raging brain fever. Subsequently he was taken to an asylum, but his portrait of himself with a cap on his head and a pipe in his mouth, painted after this breakdown, proves that his hand had not lost its steadiness nor his eye its power to see essentials with brilliant intensity.
In the summer of 1889 he was well enough to leave Arles, and after a short stay in Paris, his brother arranged for him to live in the house of a doctor at Auvers-sur-Oise. Van Gogh appeared to be in the best of health and spirits, and there is no doubt that he fough bravely against the clouds which threatened his keen intellect. But the day came when he felt himself to be a doomed man, with nothing but mental darkness ahead, and on July 28, 1890, in a fit of depression he shot himself fatally. The fact that his mind eventually became unhinged, so that some of the pictures of his last years betray an abnormal vision, does not invalidate the splendid sanity of the bulk of Van Gogh’s productions. Technically Van Gogh got his modelling by sweeping contours, instead of by a series of petty planes, and so gave weight to objects, while cleanly preserving their silhouettes as co-ordinated parts of a decorative design. We are impressed by his strength, as we are by that of Cézanne; but it is not physical strength alone, but also moral force. His color is of a high order and pitch, showing a fine sensibility for the splendor of pigment, but Van Gogh was too seriously absorbed in life and humanity for his paintings ever to degenerate into mere decorations. One of the pictures in which he most completely expressed himself was ‘The Prison Yard’, in which he conjures up wtih forcible economy the tragic aspect of these prisoners pacing their monotonous round, makes the high walls eloquent of the impossibility of escape, and without a touch of sentimentality contrives to express his compassionate pity for these dregs of humanity who are yet ‘men and brothers.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
Art Museums In The Middle East
I found the art museums in the Middle East educational + interesting.
Egyptian Museum
- www.egyptianmuseum.gov.eg
Coptic Museum
- www.copticmuseum.gov.eg
Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil and Wife Museum
- www.mkhalilmuseum.gov.eg
Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
- www.tehranmoca.com
Darat al Funun Home for the Arts
- www.daratalfunun.org
Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts
- www.nationalgallery.org
Tareq Rajab Museum
- http://trmkt.com
Istanbul Modern
- www.istanbulmodern.org
Egyptian Museum
- www.egyptianmuseum.gov.eg
Coptic Museum
- www.copticmuseum.gov.eg
Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil and Wife Museum
- www.mkhalilmuseum.gov.eg
Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
- www.tehranmoca.com
Darat al Funun Home for the Arts
- www.daratalfunun.org
Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts
- www.nationalgallery.org
Tareq Rajab Museum
- http://trmkt.com
Istanbul Modern
- www.istanbulmodern.org
Oum Kalsoum Collection
A necklace (nine rows of pearls with multicolored enamel + white stones) belonging to Oum Kalsoum (a.k.a. The Shining Star of the Middle East), one of the greatest singers of the Arab world, given to the Egyptian singer by the founding president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, will be auctioned by Christies in Dubai, on April 29, 2008.
Useful links:
www.christies.com
www.oumkalthoum.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umm_Kulthum_(singer)
Useful links:
www.christies.com
www.oumkalthoum.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umm_Kulthum_(singer)
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Concert Film
U2 3D: Digital 3D imagery + 5.1 Surround Sound = Immersive theatrical experience @ http://www.u23dmovie.com/?section=trailer
Random Thoughts
Creating a meaningful experience requires thoughtful attention to your customers at every point of contact—what I call the 360-degree experience. There are four components to consider when designing the 360-degree experience: Know where you are in the innovation cycle + Know your DNA + Make emotional connections + Design for the complete experience.
- Sohrab Vossoughi, Founder/President, ZIBA Design
www.ziba.com
- Sohrab Vossoughi, Founder/President, ZIBA Design
www.ziba.com
China Pearls and Jewelry City
It has been reported that Man Sang Holdings Inc. has opened its market center in China's Pearls and Jewellery (CP and J) City in Zhuji, Zhejiang Province, China + it's amazing to note the huge investment the Zhuji Government has undertaken to promote pearl and jewelry trade in the region.
Useful links:
www.man-sang.com
www.cpjcity.com
Useful links:
www.man-sang.com
www.cpjcity.com
Nudge
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler + Cass R. Sunstein is a great book that conveys important lessons (decision making /choice architecture) in an entertaining way + I really liked this book.
Useful link:
www.nudges.org
Useful link:
www.nudges.org
Thomas Cletscher
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
Very fortunately, the majority of the sketches by Thomas Cletscher (1598-1668) have been preserved, and are now in an album in the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam. The drawings themselves date from 1625 to about 1647. They cover a period of rapid development in the evolution of diamond cutting, and include illustrations of actual diamonds of newly introduced types and thus supplement the drawings of contemporary artists.
Cletscher, the son of a wealthy wine merchant, gained much of his experience from his brother-in-law, Jao Colen of Coole, Dean of te Guild of Goldsmiths. In 1650 Cletscher became a professional jeweler and was appointed to the Court of Orange. He became a gem-setter and a specialist in diamonds, and was thus in a position to reproduce with great accuracy the different diamond cuts and their facetings. His drawings and comments five exact details of outline, size, weight, faceting, provenance, and so on. Even those drawings not actually by Cletscher himself are of comparable precision and quality. What he was doing, in fact, was producing a detailed illustrated diary of his family business.
Cletscher eventually became Dean of the Guild of Gold and Silversmiths and Mayor of The Hague. He also had connections with banks and pawnbrokers, as an evaluator and an intermediary in important transactions, such as the pawning and eventual sale in Amsterdam of the British Crown Jewels by Queen Henrietta Maria.
Very fortunately, the majority of the sketches by Thomas Cletscher (1598-1668) have been preserved, and are now in an album in the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam. The drawings themselves date from 1625 to about 1647. They cover a period of rapid development in the evolution of diamond cutting, and include illustrations of actual diamonds of newly introduced types and thus supplement the drawings of contemporary artists.
Cletscher, the son of a wealthy wine merchant, gained much of his experience from his brother-in-law, Jao Colen of Coole, Dean of te Guild of Goldsmiths. In 1650 Cletscher became a professional jeweler and was appointed to the Court of Orange. He became a gem-setter and a specialist in diamonds, and was thus in a position to reproduce with great accuracy the different diamond cuts and their facetings. His drawings and comments five exact details of outline, size, weight, faceting, provenance, and so on. Even those drawings not actually by Cletscher himself are of comparable precision and quality. What he was doing, in fact, was producing a detailed illustrated diary of his family business.
Cletscher eventually became Dean of the Guild of Gold and Silversmiths and Mayor of The Hague. He also had connections with banks and pawnbrokers, as an evaluator and an intermediary in important transactions, such as the pawning and eventual sale in Amsterdam of the British Crown Jewels by Queen Henrietta Maria.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
If we look at his landscapes, or his ‘Card Players’, or his portrait of himself, we do not think first of the light by which these things are seen, but rather of the weight, density, and solidity of the forms depicted. The art of Cézame is simpler and less complicated than that of Monet and Pissarro; his analysis of color is more summary, his expressions ruder and more forcible. His color is entirely his own, and the prevalence of browns in his pictures itself separates him from the other Impressionists; but this brown with him is not a convention, it is true to the color of the sun-scorched landscape of his home, of the South of France, in which he chiefly worked. His paintings may seem clumsy in handling beside the delicate work of Renoir and Sisley, but by reason of his whole-hearted sincerity and honesty of purpose they make a deep and strong impression. Cézanne was not a conscious revolutionary; his pronounced style was the result of a strong, incorruptibly honest mind struggling to express what his eye could see without any preconceived ideas as to the manner of expression. His private life was simple and uneventful, devoted to unremitting toil which was never recognized or honored. After studying in Paris he returned to the South of France, where he lived and married on an allowance of £12 a month made him by his father, a banker. After his father’s death he inherited a share of his fortune, but made little change in his manner of living. He did not paint to make money, but to learn more about Nature and life, and to express what he felt vaguely in his soul. It is related of him that after he had finished a study out-of-doors, he would often leave his painting against the nearest bush. With the last brush-stroke, his interest in the painting ceased: he had done all he could; and it was his wife who surreptitiously followed in his footsteps and garnered in the canvases so difficult at that time to sell.
Of Cézame it may truly be said that he did not paint to live, but lived to paint, and owing to his absorption in the act of painting, and his consequent detachment from life, he tended to paint human beings as if they were still life. So it comes about that some of Cézame’s most impressive paintings are simple pictures of still life. In his work, as M Duret has pointed out, ‘a few apples and a napkin on a table assume a kind of grandeur, in the same degree as a human head or a landscape with sea.’ In painting fruit Cézame seemed able to suggest the tremendous power of Nature, so that pears and apples spread idly on a dinner table become a revelation of the hidden forces of Nature which bring fruits to birth. It is only now and again in his figure paintings that we get a glimpse of the passion for humanity which warms the work of a Rembrandt.
This quality, however, is abundantly present in the work of his younger contemporary, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90), who exclaimed in one of his letters, ‘I want to paint humanity, humanity, and again humanity.’ A Dutchman by birth, Van Gogh was slow to find his true vocation, and he was close on thirty before he began painting. His brief life is full of romance and pathos. Always of a fanatical temper, and the son of a Lutheran pastor, Vincent began to earn his living as assistant to an art dealer, but soon shocked his employers by his habit of quoting the Bible to prospective purchasers and pouring forth passionate sermons if they showed signs of purchasing pictures which he considered to be trivial and unworthy. For a few months he was a schoolmaster in England, but in 1877 he returned to Amsterdam, purposing to become a clergyman. He grew impatient in the dry atmosphere of a theological college; and set out as a misisonary to the mining district of Borinage, in Belgium. Here his ardent sympathies with the hardships of the workers soon got him into trouble with the authorities; he gave away all that he had wtih reckless generosity, and nearly starving himself, he began to relieve his emotions by drawing the people he could not help or comfort. Henceforward art claimed him, and though he had no prospect of being able to support himself in this way, he was encouraged to persevere, and entirely supported by his brother Theo, who had a good position in Paris. At first Van Gogh took Millet for his model, but after he had joined his brother at Paris in 1886 he was influenced by Pissarro and Seurat, and adhered to the neo-Impressionist ideals of painting. But in adopting their palette and technique Van Gogh showed his own individuality by using for the separation of color, not points or patches, but fine lines of pigment, lines whipped on with extraordinary nervous force and passion. His color touches are so alive that they have not inaptly been described as ‘wriggling little snakes.’ His portrait of himself with a beard shows his style of painting soon after he had learnt the secrets of Impressionism, and also reveals his own peculiar character. Van Gogh was not the inventor of a new technique; but he rapidly developed a distinctive style of his own, remarkable for its vehemance of attack. ‘He was the most passionate of painters, and the extraordinary intensity of his vivid impressions may be likened to our vision of things seen momentarily in the duration of a lightning flash.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
If we look at his landscapes, or his ‘Card Players’, or his portrait of himself, we do not think first of the light by which these things are seen, but rather of the weight, density, and solidity of the forms depicted. The art of Cézame is simpler and less complicated than that of Monet and Pissarro; his analysis of color is more summary, his expressions ruder and more forcible. His color is entirely his own, and the prevalence of browns in his pictures itself separates him from the other Impressionists; but this brown with him is not a convention, it is true to the color of the sun-scorched landscape of his home, of the South of France, in which he chiefly worked. His paintings may seem clumsy in handling beside the delicate work of Renoir and Sisley, but by reason of his whole-hearted sincerity and honesty of purpose they make a deep and strong impression. Cézanne was not a conscious revolutionary; his pronounced style was the result of a strong, incorruptibly honest mind struggling to express what his eye could see without any preconceived ideas as to the manner of expression. His private life was simple and uneventful, devoted to unremitting toil which was never recognized or honored. After studying in Paris he returned to the South of France, where he lived and married on an allowance of £12 a month made him by his father, a banker. After his father’s death he inherited a share of his fortune, but made little change in his manner of living. He did not paint to make money, but to learn more about Nature and life, and to express what he felt vaguely in his soul. It is related of him that after he had finished a study out-of-doors, he would often leave his painting against the nearest bush. With the last brush-stroke, his interest in the painting ceased: he had done all he could; and it was his wife who surreptitiously followed in his footsteps and garnered in the canvases so difficult at that time to sell.
Of Cézame it may truly be said that he did not paint to live, but lived to paint, and owing to his absorption in the act of painting, and his consequent detachment from life, he tended to paint human beings as if they were still life. So it comes about that some of Cézame’s most impressive paintings are simple pictures of still life. In his work, as M Duret has pointed out, ‘a few apples and a napkin on a table assume a kind of grandeur, in the same degree as a human head or a landscape with sea.’ In painting fruit Cézame seemed able to suggest the tremendous power of Nature, so that pears and apples spread idly on a dinner table become a revelation of the hidden forces of Nature which bring fruits to birth. It is only now and again in his figure paintings that we get a glimpse of the passion for humanity which warms the work of a Rembrandt.
This quality, however, is abundantly present in the work of his younger contemporary, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90), who exclaimed in one of his letters, ‘I want to paint humanity, humanity, and again humanity.’ A Dutchman by birth, Van Gogh was slow to find his true vocation, and he was close on thirty before he began painting. His brief life is full of romance and pathos. Always of a fanatical temper, and the son of a Lutheran pastor, Vincent began to earn his living as assistant to an art dealer, but soon shocked his employers by his habit of quoting the Bible to prospective purchasers and pouring forth passionate sermons if they showed signs of purchasing pictures which he considered to be trivial and unworthy. For a few months he was a schoolmaster in England, but in 1877 he returned to Amsterdam, purposing to become a clergyman. He grew impatient in the dry atmosphere of a theological college; and set out as a misisonary to the mining district of Borinage, in Belgium. Here his ardent sympathies with the hardships of the workers soon got him into trouble with the authorities; he gave away all that he had wtih reckless generosity, and nearly starving himself, he began to relieve his emotions by drawing the people he could not help or comfort. Henceforward art claimed him, and though he had no prospect of being able to support himself in this way, he was encouraged to persevere, and entirely supported by his brother Theo, who had a good position in Paris. At first Van Gogh took Millet for his model, but after he had joined his brother at Paris in 1886 he was influenced by Pissarro and Seurat, and adhered to the neo-Impressionist ideals of painting. But in adopting their palette and technique Van Gogh showed his own individuality by using for the separation of color, not points or patches, but fine lines of pigment, lines whipped on with extraordinary nervous force and passion. His color touches are so alive that they have not inaptly been described as ‘wriggling little snakes.’ His portrait of himself with a beard shows his style of painting soon after he had learnt the secrets of Impressionism, and also reveals his own peculiar character. Van Gogh was not the inventor of a new technique; but he rapidly developed a distinctive style of his own, remarkable for its vehemance of attack. ‘He was the most passionate of painters, and the extraordinary intensity of his vivid impressions may be likened to our vision of things seen momentarily in the duration of a lightning flash.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
Charles Darwin's Original Drafts Goes Online
Charles Darwin's original notes and draft texts will now be available to everyone free of charge + according to Dr John van Wyhe, a Darwin specialist at Cambridge University, the online archive about Charles Darwin is so vast it would take someone two months to view it all if they downloaded one image per minute.
Useful links:
http://darwin-online.org.uk
http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk
Useful links:
http://darwin-online.org.uk
http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk
All Roads Film Project
All Roads Film Project is a unique National Geographic initiative for indigenous and underrepresented minority-culture artists to share their cultures, stories, and perspectives through the power of film and photography.
Useful link:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/allroads
Useful link:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/allroads
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Random Thoughts
We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one subject, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion and run after it. . . . Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper. . . . Men, it has been well said, think in herds. . . they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly and one by one.
- Charles Mackay
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/m#a516
- Charles Mackay
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/m#a516
Art Cologne
(via Wiki) Art Cologne is an art fair held annually in Cologne, Germany + Art Cologne is Germany's leading art fair and was established in 1967 as the World's first Art Fair + It bills itself as the 'world's oldest art fair', although in fact the 57th Street Art Fair was founded in 1948, almost two decades earlier + Perhaps a fairer title would be the 'world's oldest international art fair' + The fair was instrumental in bringing together geographically separated dealers and galleries and created the first competitive overview of the international art market + For six days each year, the fair brings together 250 leading dealers drawn from dozens of different countries, showcasing the very best that the international art market has to offer + The fair attracts both the trade and the public, including private collectors, curators, artists and art lovers.
Useful links:
http://www.koelnmesse.de/wEnglisch/artcologne/index.htm
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/21/arts/koln.php
Useful links:
http://www.koelnmesse.de/wEnglisch/artcologne/index.htm
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/21/arts/koln.php
A Luxury Perfume Bottle
According to IGC Group, the EXIRE® gold perfume bottle embodies 201 brilliant EXIRE® diamonds (3,67ct) and can contain up to 4ml of perfume and elegantly fit onto a woman’s hand.
Brilliant + a unique piece of art!
Useful link:
www.igcgroup.com
Brilliant + a unique piece of art!
Useful link:
www.igcgroup.com
Oil Paintings From Afghanistan
I found the article on oil paintings from Afghanistan @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7361994.stm interesting because if the paintings are genuine then these may be the oldest known examples anywhere of painting with oil.
Useful link:
www.esrf.eu
Useful link:
www.esrf.eu
Hot Spots
Hot Spots: Why Some Teams, Workplaces, and Organizations Buzz with Energy - And Others Don't by Lynda Gratton is a fascinating book that provides alternative ways via cooperative mindset + boundary spanning + igniting purpose + productive capacity, the essential elements required for business growth and sustainability, with real life examples.
Useful links:
www.lyndagratton.com
www.london.edu
Useful links:
www.lyndagratton.com
www.london.edu
The Lorraine Jewel
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
This rich gold and enamel pendant has been part of the Wittelsbach Collection since Prince Elector Maximilian I inherited it from his first wife, Elizabeth of Lorraine, in 1637. The early history of the jewel is unknown, but experts assume it to be of south German origin and date is to about 1600. The pendant as it was when it was in Elizabeth’s possession, a masterpiece of craftsmanship and good taste, is in no way matched by the ‘new’ pendant into which it was later transformed. The goldsmith entrusted with the alteration had neither the skill nor the artistic sensibility of its original creator.
My first impression on seeing this jewel was that the pendeloque-shaped diamond at the top must be a modern replacement because of its exceptional brilliance and rich faceting. But a careful examination made it clear that the setting had never been touched: the metal was not scratched and the enamel was intact. I realized that I was in the presence of an early gem of masterly fashioning, what one might call an ‘experimental’ brilliant. This and the other diamonds in the pendant, all carefully chosen and of great beauty, show that the jewel was intended to be exceptionally magnificent, displaying only the very best gems. A document of 1637 mentions as the main feature a ‘large triangular diamond’. A few years later this diamond was unset and replaced by a gold triangle set with several smaller diamonds. There is no record of the whereabouts of the large gem.
In attempting to reconstruct the jewel in its original form, it was necessary to decide on the most plausible shape for this large triangular diamond. I toyed with the idea of a triangular Table Cut, or a Gothic Rose Cut with trihedral faceting similar to the four surrounding diamonds, but neither of these seemed adequate. I was also strongly tempted to reproduce the design of the French Blue (now the Hope Diamond) as it was when it was fashioned in 1673, but since I could find no evidence that such a design existed at the beginning of the century, I settled for a rich faceting to match the pendeloque at the top.
This pendeloque is beautifully proportioned. It measures 18 x 13 mm, and has a square table formed by two triangles. There are thirteen facets, mostly triangular, applied all over the crown. The culet is shaped like a kite, closely following the outline of the gem. The five pavilion facets are excellent reflectors and create amazing light effects.
The four medium-sized triangular, trihedrally faceted diamonds surrounding the large triangle are regular Rose Cuts. As was often the case when display was required, the corners are blunt, and in some stones even missing altogether. The sharp triangular effect is achieved by the setting.
The faceting of the Point Cut—the largest of the stones in the gold triangle—was inspired by a crystal with narrow dodecahedral facets instead of edges. The double pyramid is 11 x 11 mm in size, and the angle of inclination is just 2° below the octahedral angle. The four rectangular diamonds in the triangle are normal Table Cuts, again with blunt corners. There are also two smaller Table Cuts and two small Point Cuts. Three fine pearls, typical of Renaissance pendants and documented in this one, are now missing.
This rich gold and enamel pendant has been part of the Wittelsbach Collection since Prince Elector Maximilian I inherited it from his first wife, Elizabeth of Lorraine, in 1637. The early history of the jewel is unknown, but experts assume it to be of south German origin and date is to about 1600. The pendant as it was when it was in Elizabeth’s possession, a masterpiece of craftsmanship and good taste, is in no way matched by the ‘new’ pendant into which it was later transformed. The goldsmith entrusted with the alteration had neither the skill nor the artistic sensibility of its original creator.
My first impression on seeing this jewel was that the pendeloque-shaped diamond at the top must be a modern replacement because of its exceptional brilliance and rich faceting. But a careful examination made it clear that the setting had never been touched: the metal was not scratched and the enamel was intact. I realized that I was in the presence of an early gem of masterly fashioning, what one might call an ‘experimental’ brilliant. This and the other diamonds in the pendant, all carefully chosen and of great beauty, show that the jewel was intended to be exceptionally magnificent, displaying only the very best gems. A document of 1637 mentions as the main feature a ‘large triangular diamond’. A few years later this diamond was unset and replaced by a gold triangle set with several smaller diamonds. There is no record of the whereabouts of the large gem.
In attempting to reconstruct the jewel in its original form, it was necessary to decide on the most plausible shape for this large triangular diamond. I toyed with the idea of a triangular Table Cut, or a Gothic Rose Cut with trihedral faceting similar to the four surrounding diamonds, but neither of these seemed adequate. I was also strongly tempted to reproduce the design of the French Blue (now the Hope Diamond) as it was when it was fashioned in 1673, but since I could find no evidence that such a design existed at the beginning of the century, I settled for a rich faceting to match the pendeloque at the top.
This pendeloque is beautifully proportioned. It measures 18 x 13 mm, and has a square table formed by two triangles. There are thirteen facets, mostly triangular, applied all over the crown. The culet is shaped like a kite, closely following the outline of the gem. The five pavilion facets are excellent reflectors and create amazing light effects.
The four medium-sized triangular, trihedrally faceted diamonds surrounding the large triangle are regular Rose Cuts. As was often the case when display was required, the corners are blunt, and in some stones even missing altogether. The sharp triangular effect is achieved by the setting.
The faceting of the Point Cut—the largest of the stones in the gold triangle—was inspired by a crystal with narrow dodecahedral facets instead of edges. The double pyramid is 11 x 11 mm in size, and the angle of inclination is just 2° below the octahedral angle. The four rectangular diamonds in the triangle are normal Table Cuts, again with blunt corners. There are also two smaller Table Cuts and two small Point Cuts. Three fine pearls, typical of Renaissance pendants and documented in this one, are now missing.
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The Art Of Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, And Picasso
1
What is ‘Post-Impressionism’? This term was invented by the English painter and art critic Mr Roger Fry, to cover various art movements which came after Impressionism, and since some of these movements have been developments of Impressionism, while others have been a reaction from it, confusion can only be avoided by considering separately the principal movements and the artists associated with them.
From the days of Giotto down to the close of the nineteenth century, the development of the main stream of European painting was in the direction of a more perfect representation of the appearances of natural forms. In the nineteenth century two causes contributed to change the direction of painting. One was the invention of Photography, which set painters wondering what part the representative element really played in a picture; the other was the new color science of the Impressionists, who seemed to have pushed truth of representation to a point where further developments were impossible. Ambitious painters sighed, like Alexander, for new worlds to conquer: the problems of foreshortening, of perspective, of the true color of shadows, all had been solved triumphantly by their predecessors. What was there left to be done by a painter who did not wish to imitate the work of any other artist? It was inevitable that a reaction should set in. Painting, had become, as we have seen, a highly complicated and scientific business. A new generation began to argue that, after all, painting was not a science but an art, and that its primary function was not the accurate representation of Nature but the expression of an emotion. A fresh start was made in a new direction. Emphasis was now to be laid on expressing an idea rather than on rendering appearances, and it was held that by reducing the facts of phenomena to a minimum the idea might be able to shine forth more brightly. The vessel of art having become overloaded, it was thought advisable to lighten the ship by throwing some of the cargo overboard.
Already there had been a forerunner in this direction. Honoré Daumier (1808-79), though chiefly known to his contemporaries as a pungent caricaturist and lithographer, also executed oil paintings which have become highly esteemed since his death. These pictures, sometimes satirising the Law Courts whose ‘justice’ roused him to fury, often based on some illuminating incident in the history of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, were unlike any other pictures of his time, and always expressed an idea with a maximum of intellectual force and a minimum of color and pictorial means.
Half a century before his time, he had the courage to eliminate trappings and redundancies from his painting, and to give us plastic conceptions o rugged simplicity. In so doing he anticipated the most interesting and fruitful of modern pictorial movements.
It was from the heart of Impressionism itself that that most powerful reaction began, and the artist usually regarded now as the ‘Father of Post-Impressionism’ is Paul Cézane (1839-1906), who during his lifetime exhibited with the Impressionists and was long thought to be one of them. But though the friend and companion of Pissarro, Renoir, and Monet, Cézanne differed from them in many ways. To begin with, he was a southerner, born at Aix in Provence, while all the others belonged to Northern France; secondly, while accepting their color theories, he never wholly adopted in practice their prismatic palette; thirdly, while they were primarily occupied with registering fugitive effects of light, he was always most concerned with eternal verities. His aim is best explained in his own words: ‘I wish to make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the Old Masters.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
The Art Of Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, And Picasso
1
What is ‘Post-Impressionism’? This term was invented by the English painter and art critic Mr Roger Fry, to cover various art movements which came after Impressionism, and since some of these movements have been developments of Impressionism, while others have been a reaction from it, confusion can only be avoided by considering separately the principal movements and the artists associated with them.
From the days of Giotto down to the close of the nineteenth century, the development of the main stream of European painting was in the direction of a more perfect representation of the appearances of natural forms. In the nineteenth century two causes contributed to change the direction of painting. One was the invention of Photography, which set painters wondering what part the representative element really played in a picture; the other was the new color science of the Impressionists, who seemed to have pushed truth of representation to a point where further developments were impossible. Ambitious painters sighed, like Alexander, for new worlds to conquer: the problems of foreshortening, of perspective, of the true color of shadows, all had been solved triumphantly by their predecessors. What was there left to be done by a painter who did not wish to imitate the work of any other artist? It was inevitable that a reaction should set in. Painting, had become, as we have seen, a highly complicated and scientific business. A new generation began to argue that, after all, painting was not a science but an art, and that its primary function was not the accurate representation of Nature but the expression of an emotion. A fresh start was made in a new direction. Emphasis was now to be laid on expressing an idea rather than on rendering appearances, and it was held that by reducing the facts of phenomena to a minimum the idea might be able to shine forth more brightly. The vessel of art having become overloaded, it was thought advisable to lighten the ship by throwing some of the cargo overboard.
Already there had been a forerunner in this direction. Honoré Daumier (1808-79), though chiefly known to his contemporaries as a pungent caricaturist and lithographer, also executed oil paintings which have become highly esteemed since his death. These pictures, sometimes satirising the Law Courts whose ‘justice’ roused him to fury, often based on some illuminating incident in the history of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, were unlike any other pictures of his time, and always expressed an idea with a maximum of intellectual force and a minimum of color and pictorial means.
Half a century before his time, he had the courage to eliminate trappings and redundancies from his painting, and to give us plastic conceptions o rugged simplicity. In so doing he anticipated the most interesting and fruitful of modern pictorial movements.
It was from the heart of Impressionism itself that that most powerful reaction began, and the artist usually regarded now as the ‘Father of Post-Impressionism’ is Paul Cézane (1839-1906), who during his lifetime exhibited with the Impressionists and was long thought to be one of them. But though the friend and companion of Pissarro, Renoir, and Monet, Cézanne differed from them in many ways. To begin with, he was a southerner, born at Aix in Provence, while all the others belonged to Northern France; secondly, while accepting their color theories, he never wholly adopted in practice their prismatic palette; thirdly, while they were primarily occupied with registering fugitive effects of light, he was always most concerned with eternal verities. His aim is best explained in his own words: ‘I wish to make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the Old Masters.’
Post-Impressionism, Cubism, And Futurism (continued)
Mass Spawning Of Corals On The Palau Archipelago
The BBC article on corals on the Palau archipelago in the western Pacific @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7358423.stm was brilliant. I learned something new.
A Tourist Favorite
I think 'The World's Most Expensive Gold and Jewelry Sparkling Environmental-Friendly Washroom' in Hong Kong @ http://home.howstuffworks.com/most-expensive-toilet-in-world.htm/printable has become a tourist favorite because the gold bathroom is 24-carat solid gold toilet + now Hang Fung Gold Technology Group, the jewelry manufacturer/retailer who owns it may be considering melting down a portion of the solid gold toilet to cash in on the rising price of gold to finance the group's expansion in the mainland China.
Definitely a must-see before it's gone.
Useful link:
www.hangfung.com
Definitely a must-see before it's gone.
Useful link:
www.hangfung.com
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Artists In Exile
Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts by Joseph Horowitz is a fascinating book on how the immigrants created American culture/political strength, and I think they are still changing the cultural landscape of America in mysterious ways.
TIA (This is America).
Useful link:
http://josephhorowitz.com
I am as American as April in Arizona.
- Vladimir Nabokov
TIA (This is America).
Useful link:
http://josephhorowitz.com
I am as American as April in Arizona.
- Vladimir Nabokov
Solar Electric System Online
I found Sungevity's business model very interesting because the web-based system evaluates the solar potential for a given home via satellite data (Microsoft Virtual Earth), provides an estimate of how much the system will save them over 25 years, the prospective increase in the value of their home, and simulated imagery of what their home might look like after solar panels are installed--all that (the calculations for preparing the estimate) in about 10 to 15 minutes.
This is definitely an impulse buy + I liked it.
Useful link:
www.sungevity.com
This is definitely an impulse buy + I liked it.
Useful link:
www.sungevity.com
Customer Relationships
I found the new concept in business @ http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5884.html interesting + deeply satisfied employee = deeply satisfied customer = lifelong profit, makes sense.
Half-Moons
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
A Half-Moon is basically one half or less of a round-cut gem, with the straight side deeply faceted to produce a balanced and attractive design. Like other fancy outlines, it must first have been suggested by irregular rough the shape of a half-moon, a shape which was believed to have talismanic powers.
Half-Moons are rare both in surviving jewels and in contemporary illustrations. Clearly, there was little incentive to fashion such a shape, a wide triangle usually being preferred. Nearly all the examples I have seen have been of Italian origin. While this cannot be pure coincidence, I have been unable to discover any reasonable explanation. According to the eminent specialist Basil Watermeyer, the Half-Moon ‘was probably born through being accidentally cleaved in the faceting process. When this happens on a round cut which is already far advanced, there is just nothing else which can be done. Often rough stones have deep fractures through the side and no other cut but the half-moon can be adapted to it....It is essential that faceting designs have a meeting point midway between table rid and girdle so that the meet of the star and top half can link up.’
A Half-Moon is basically one half or less of a round-cut gem, with the straight side deeply faceted to produce a balanced and attractive design. Like other fancy outlines, it must first have been suggested by irregular rough the shape of a half-moon, a shape which was believed to have talismanic powers.
Half-Moons are rare both in surviving jewels and in contemporary illustrations. Clearly, there was little incentive to fashion such a shape, a wide triangle usually being preferred. Nearly all the examples I have seen have been of Italian origin. While this cannot be pure coincidence, I have been unable to discover any reasonable explanation. According to the eminent specialist Basil Watermeyer, the Half-Moon ‘was probably born through being accidentally cleaved in the faceting process. When this happens on a round cut which is already far advanced, there is just nothing else which can be done. Often rough stones have deep fractures through the side and no other cut but the half-moon can be adapted to it....It is essential that faceting designs have a meeting point midway between table rid and girdle so that the meet of the star and top half can link up.’
Realism And Impressionism In France
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
It has often been asked why a statue by Rodin is different from any other statue, and the explanation is simple: instead of copying Greek sculpture as others had done, Rodin did as the Greeks did—he went direct to Nature. ‘Everything,’ he said, ‘is contained in Nature, and when the artist follows Nature he gets everything.’ Rodin taught his contemporaries that distinction in sculpture is obtained, not by selecting a certain type of figure, but by gift and art of modeling. ‘Sculpture,’ he once said, ‘is the art of the hole and the lump,’ and as he went on he proved that in order to present a true appearance of form it was necessary sometimes to fashion the ‘holes’ and ‘lumps’ not exactly as they existed in anatomy, but as they appeared to the human eye. In this way Rodin introduced impressionism into sculpture, showing us heads and figures as they appeared to the human eye enveloped in atmosphere and bathed in light. His famous monument ‘The Citizens of Calais’ is remarkable, not only for the poignant expression of the different characters of the various figures, but also for the truth of atmosphere and movement in this procession winding its way along slowly and sadly. These are no graveyard figures, but living men moving and breathing in the air that surrounds them. Commemorating an historic incident when France and England were at war, this monument has become a happy and lasting token of the Entente Cordiale, for in addition to the monument at Calais a replica of it has been erected on the Victoria Embankment, London, close to the House of Lords, thanks to the generosity of English admirers of the French sculptor.
The rugged technique by which Rodin obtained his wonderful effects of atmospheric reality was long in establishing itself in public favor, yet there have been few sculptors animated with a more profound respect for the material of their art. It was Rodhin’s love of marble itself which led to a new development of his art, in which he would leave rough the matrix from which his sculpture was hewn, so that delicate heads and figures seemed to grow like flowers out of the marble of their origin. A memorable example of his work in this style is ‘Thought’, in which a feminine head of exquisite refinement and spirituality emerges from a rough-hewn block of marble.
Rodin reached his extreme limit of impressionism in sculpture with his colossal statue of ‘Balzac’, which, when exhibited in the New Salon of 1898, threw the world of art into a condition bordering upon frenzy. The man who twenty years before had been declared too skilful to be genuine was now accused of not knowing the elements of his craft. Yet the sublime simplicity of this figure, loosely wrapped in a dressing-gown, with the upturned face, the lion-maned head of genius, soaring, as it were, to heaven, revealed Rodin at his highest not only as a master of impressionist modelling, but also as a psychologist who could conceive and create an unforgettable expression of the very soul of genius.
It has often been asked why a statue by Rodin is different from any other statue, and the explanation is simple: instead of copying Greek sculpture as others had done, Rodin did as the Greeks did—he went direct to Nature. ‘Everything,’ he said, ‘is contained in Nature, and when the artist follows Nature he gets everything.’ Rodin taught his contemporaries that distinction in sculpture is obtained, not by selecting a certain type of figure, but by gift and art of modeling. ‘Sculpture,’ he once said, ‘is the art of the hole and the lump,’ and as he went on he proved that in order to present a true appearance of form it was necessary sometimes to fashion the ‘holes’ and ‘lumps’ not exactly as they existed in anatomy, but as they appeared to the human eye. In this way Rodin introduced impressionism into sculpture, showing us heads and figures as they appeared to the human eye enveloped in atmosphere and bathed in light. His famous monument ‘The Citizens of Calais’ is remarkable, not only for the poignant expression of the different characters of the various figures, but also for the truth of atmosphere and movement in this procession winding its way along slowly and sadly. These are no graveyard figures, but living men moving and breathing in the air that surrounds them. Commemorating an historic incident when France and England were at war, this monument has become a happy and lasting token of the Entente Cordiale, for in addition to the monument at Calais a replica of it has been erected on the Victoria Embankment, London, close to the House of Lords, thanks to the generosity of English admirers of the French sculptor.
The rugged technique by which Rodin obtained his wonderful effects of atmospheric reality was long in establishing itself in public favor, yet there have been few sculptors animated with a more profound respect for the material of their art. It was Rodhin’s love of marble itself which led to a new development of his art, in which he would leave rough the matrix from which his sculpture was hewn, so that delicate heads and figures seemed to grow like flowers out of the marble of their origin. A memorable example of his work in this style is ‘Thought’, in which a feminine head of exquisite refinement and spirituality emerges from a rough-hewn block of marble.
Rodin reached his extreme limit of impressionism in sculpture with his colossal statue of ‘Balzac’, which, when exhibited in the New Salon of 1898, threw the world of art into a condition bordering upon frenzy. The man who twenty years before had been declared too skilful to be genuine was now accused of not knowing the elements of his craft. Yet the sublime simplicity of this figure, loosely wrapped in a dressing-gown, with the upturned face, the lion-maned head of genius, soaring, as it were, to heaven, revealed Rodin at his highest not only as a master of impressionist modelling, but also as a psychologist who could conceive and create an unforgettable expression of the very soul of genius.
Random Thoughts
According to Tony Tan, GIC's deputy chairman, the world could be facing a recession which is longer, deeper and wider than any recession we have encountered in the last 30 years, if swift actions are not taken.
Useful link:
www.gic.com.sg
Useful link:
www.gic.com.sg
Origin, Ceylon Sapphire
I think the initiative by the Sri Lankan Gem & Jewelry Association to promote their colored stones, especially sapphires is a great idea + it will definitely popularize Sri Lankan sapphires worldwide but also position Sri Lanka on top of the pyramid provided the origin certification is done by a laboratory that is well-known, trusted and recognized worldwide + I don't think the local gem testing laboratories have the same luster like the international laboratories + my view is it makes sense to certify good quality stones of 1 carat and above.
Useful links:
www.facetssrilanka.com
www.srilankagemautho.com
www.ips.lk
Useful links:
www.facetssrilanka.com
www.srilankagemautho.com
www.ips.lk
Second Life Art And Jewelry Show
The First Annual Second Life Art Exhibit & Jewelry Show (April 19 - 20, 2008) via http://www.pr.com/press-release/81473 is an interesting concept + I think it must be the largest art exhibit/jewelry show to date in cyberspace by enthusiasts from both cyber and real worlds.
Brilliant!
Useful links:
www.monogramvirtua.com
http://secondlife.com
Brilliant!
Useful links:
www.monogramvirtua.com
http://secondlife.com
Monday, April 21, 2008
The Father Of Emissions Trading
I found the article on Richard Sandor, a practical visionary, who invented a financial technique of capping and trading pollutants @ http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1732518,00.html interesting because I think his tools, models and ideas may be our best hope for beating climate change.
Useful link:
www.chicagoclimatex.com
Useful link:
www.chicagoclimatex.com
Heard On The Street
The thing you are looking for won't occur until you are so discouraged that you stop looking.
Millionaire Fair
The Moscow Millionaire Fair held in Moscow, Russia is an annual fair for the exclusive Russian millionaires of today + it's perceived as the most famous luxury exhibit in Europe, if not the world + the fair is not just for the very rich, it is open for everyone to enjoy, but I think it's the millionaires who buy the real thing (s).
Useful link:
www.millionairfair.ru
Useful link:
www.millionairfair.ru
Chinese Rhinoceros Horn Carvings
I found the article on Chinese Rhinoceros horn carvings @ http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/18/arts/raahorn.php interesting because they are stylistically different through various periods influenced by changing scholarly tastes + the value factor = size + color + rarity + quality (signed by known and recognized carvers), just like paintings, jewelry and gemstones.
Useful links:
www.christies.com
www.sothebys.com
Useful links:
www.christies.com
www.sothebys.com
Personality Not Included
Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back by Rohit Bhargava is a great book that leads you through the process of properly building a company personality + he explains it all in a practical, understandable way.
I liked it.
Useful link:
www.personalitynotincluded.com
I liked it.
Useful link:
www.personalitynotincluded.com
Hearts
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
Gems which would today be classified as ‘triangular with rounded corners’ or ‘drops’, were at one time described as being heart-shaped. This is clear from many descriptions in French inventories dating from the middle of the seventeenth to far into the eighteenth century. It is quite possible that the term had a long tradition behind it. Another old French term for Heart was chapeau, meaning a tricorne hat.
Gradually, the conventional representation of the human heart became the standard outline. The earliest diamond of this shape that I have come across is in a portrait, A Gonzaga Princess, painted around 1605 by Frans Pourbus the Younger. The large piece of jewelry on the princess’s left sleeve contains a great variety of different cuts. The small Table Cuts and Hogbacks were especially shaped to fit very exactly into the scrolls. The pearly appearance of the small gems at the top of the jewel is puzzling. They may be pearls, but they could equally well be diamonds, like the half-moons in the brooch close to the neckline of the Princess’s dress. If they are diamonds, they are unique in having no facets at all; they must all have been bruted and polished by hand! Of course, they may well be cabochon-cut opaque gems of some other kind.
In August 1968, I analyzed the historical diamonds in a number of collections in Vienna. One of the stones, originally described as a Heart, was a tiny, flat-bottomed, multi-faceted pendeloque set in an oval mount on the Burgundian Court Goblet. Multi-faceted diamonds were not fashionable before the early seventeenth century. It is this fact that has, up to now, led people to believe that it was the final mastering of extensive fashioning that actually created the fashion for Rose Cuts and Brilliants.
E B Tiffany of Henry Birks, the Toronto jewelers, once sent me a photograph of a Heart which is in the Iranian Bank in Tehran. This diamond, said to weigh 22.93 ct, looks very like a Brilliant Cut. It is engraved on the flat end with a text in Persian, which indicates that it was fashioned in 1591 or 1592. It cannot, at that early date, have been an actual brilliant; perhaps it could best be described as a multi-faceted Table Cut.
Tavernier wrote that in 1665, among the treasures of the Mughal Emperor Aurung-Zeb, he saw a ‘trinket’ with a heart-shaped Rose Cut diamond (probably a regular Mughal Cut) weighing 35 ct. The French Blue diamond, when it had been recut in 1673, was also described as heart-shaped. The Blue Heart (31 ct) in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, is another example of a Heart, and there are another two in a shoulder-knot by Diessbach in about 1673 and now in the Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden.
Gems which would today be classified as ‘triangular with rounded corners’ or ‘drops’, were at one time described as being heart-shaped. This is clear from many descriptions in French inventories dating from the middle of the seventeenth to far into the eighteenth century. It is quite possible that the term had a long tradition behind it. Another old French term for Heart was chapeau, meaning a tricorne hat.
Gradually, the conventional representation of the human heart became the standard outline. The earliest diamond of this shape that I have come across is in a portrait, A Gonzaga Princess, painted around 1605 by Frans Pourbus the Younger. The large piece of jewelry on the princess’s left sleeve contains a great variety of different cuts. The small Table Cuts and Hogbacks were especially shaped to fit very exactly into the scrolls. The pearly appearance of the small gems at the top of the jewel is puzzling. They may be pearls, but they could equally well be diamonds, like the half-moons in the brooch close to the neckline of the Princess’s dress. If they are diamonds, they are unique in having no facets at all; they must all have been bruted and polished by hand! Of course, they may well be cabochon-cut opaque gems of some other kind.
In August 1968, I analyzed the historical diamonds in a number of collections in Vienna. One of the stones, originally described as a Heart, was a tiny, flat-bottomed, multi-faceted pendeloque set in an oval mount on the Burgundian Court Goblet. Multi-faceted diamonds were not fashionable before the early seventeenth century. It is this fact that has, up to now, led people to believe that it was the final mastering of extensive fashioning that actually created the fashion for Rose Cuts and Brilliants.
E B Tiffany of Henry Birks, the Toronto jewelers, once sent me a photograph of a Heart which is in the Iranian Bank in Tehran. This diamond, said to weigh 22.93 ct, looks very like a Brilliant Cut. It is engraved on the flat end with a text in Persian, which indicates that it was fashioned in 1591 or 1592. It cannot, at that early date, have been an actual brilliant; perhaps it could best be described as a multi-faceted Table Cut.
Tavernier wrote that in 1665, among the treasures of the Mughal Emperor Aurung-Zeb, he saw a ‘trinket’ with a heart-shaped Rose Cut diamond (probably a regular Mughal Cut) weighing 35 ct. The French Blue diamond, when it had been recut in 1673, was also described as heart-shaped. The Blue Heart (31 ct) in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, is another example of a Heart, and there are another two in a shoulder-knot by Diessbach in about 1673 and now in the Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden.
Realism And Impressionism In France
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
5
By the first principle of Impressionism, the substitution of simulataneous for consecutive vision, sculpture was affected as well as painting. From the time of Louis XIV France had always had talented and accomplished sculptors at her command, but it was not until the era of Impressionism that she produced a great world-sculptor whose name was worthily coupled with that of Michael Angelo. Among the earlier French sculptors Jean Baptiste Pigalle (1714-85) was a pioneer of Realism, his vigorous and fertile imagination giving his sculpture a certain accent of life and origanility. Jean Antoine Houdon (1741-1828), his pupil, was famous for the power and truth of his portrait busts; Francois Rude (1784-1855) was a still greater liberator of French sculpture from a cramping classicism which slavishly imitated the antique. His famous group ‘Le Départ des Volontaires de 1790’ on the Arc de Triomphe shows Rude’s realism and the nobility of his expression of patriotic feeling. Antoine Louis Barye (1796-1875), both painter and sculptor, the contemporary and friend of the Barbizon landscape painters, achieved high distinction by his lifelike sculpture of animals, and his small bronze are still eagerly sought after by collectors.
It was a pupil of Barye, an even greater modeller than himself, who was to achieve the greatest fame won by any sculptor since Michael Angelo, Auguste Rodin was born at Paris in the same year as Monet, 1840. He was of humble origin, and in his youth had to earn his living by working in a mason’s yard, where he became familiar with the material he was destined to master. For years his only studio was his humble bedroom, and it was here that he modelled his early bust, ‘The Man with the Broken Nose,’ which, when exhibited at the Salon, was acknowledged to be a masterpiece of realism, modelled with a power and truth unknown for generations. When his beautiful statue, ‘The Age of Bronze,’ no in Luxembourg, was exhibited in the Salon of 1877, the authorities were so astonished by its masterly modelling that the sculptor was accused of having taken a cast from life. To prove the falsehood of this accusation Rodin made his next statue, ‘St John the Baptist’ rather more than life-size, and again the modelling was miraculous in its perfection. If the ‘Age of Youth’ with its polished rendering of the graceful form of adolscence reminds us of the best Greek sculpture, this second powerful and lifelike rendering of a mature man is comparable to the figures by the master-sculptors of the Renaissance.
Realism And Impressionism In France (continued)
5
By the first principle of Impressionism, the substitution of simulataneous for consecutive vision, sculpture was affected as well as painting. From the time of Louis XIV France had always had talented and accomplished sculptors at her command, but it was not until the era of Impressionism that she produced a great world-sculptor whose name was worthily coupled with that of Michael Angelo. Among the earlier French sculptors Jean Baptiste Pigalle (1714-85) was a pioneer of Realism, his vigorous and fertile imagination giving his sculpture a certain accent of life and origanility. Jean Antoine Houdon (1741-1828), his pupil, was famous for the power and truth of his portrait busts; Francois Rude (1784-1855) was a still greater liberator of French sculpture from a cramping classicism which slavishly imitated the antique. His famous group ‘Le Départ des Volontaires de 1790’ on the Arc de Triomphe shows Rude’s realism and the nobility of his expression of patriotic feeling. Antoine Louis Barye (1796-1875), both painter and sculptor, the contemporary and friend of the Barbizon landscape painters, achieved high distinction by his lifelike sculpture of animals, and his small bronze are still eagerly sought after by collectors.
It was a pupil of Barye, an even greater modeller than himself, who was to achieve the greatest fame won by any sculptor since Michael Angelo, Auguste Rodin was born at Paris in the same year as Monet, 1840. He was of humble origin, and in his youth had to earn his living by working in a mason’s yard, where he became familiar with the material he was destined to master. For years his only studio was his humble bedroom, and it was here that he modelled his early bust, ‘The Man with the Broken Nose,’ which, when exhibited at the Salon, was acknowledged to be a masterpiece of realism, modelled with a power and truth unknown for generations. When his beautiful statue, ‘The Age of Bronze,’ no in Luxembourg, was exhibited in the Salon of 1877, the authorities were so astonished by its masterly modelling that the sculptor was accused of having taken a cast from life. To prove the falsehood of this accusation Rodin made his next statue, ‘St John the Baptist’ rather more than life-size, and again the modelling was miraculous in its perfection. If the ‘Age of Youth’ with its polished rendering of the graceful form of adolscence reminds us of the best Greek sculpture, this second powerful and lifelike rendering of a mature man is comparable to the figures by the master-sculptors of the Renaissance.
Realism And Impressionism In France (continued)
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