The Apu trilogy is a series of three films directed by Satyajit Ray. These films are Pather Panchali (Song Of The Little Road), Aparajito (The Unvanquished) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu). The films were based on the works of the Bengali author Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay.
(via YouTube) Pather Panchali (1955) - The Train scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGaIAWn2PJo
Apur Sansar Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8iiv5lt52U
A real gem + this trilogy is perceived as one of the greatest achievements of Indian film.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Chocolate Lorry Goes To Timbuktu
BBC writes about two British adventurers journey across Europe to West Africa with 2,000 litres (454 gallons) of bio-diesel made from 4,000kg (8,818lb) of chocolate misshapes, the equivalent of 80,000 chocolate bars + to raise awareness of the benefits of bio-diesel + the concept of carbon negative + other viewpoints @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/dorset/7109085.stm
Vanity Fair Portraits
(via The Guardian) Charlotte Higgins writes about portraits of the great by the great + the concept of personality portraiture + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/photography/story/0,,2213818,00.html
The Online Art Market: Hit Or Miss?
Kelly Devine Thomas writes about the Internet art economy + the impact + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=842
Is De Beers Running Scared?
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the in-house problems faced by the Diamond Trading Company (DTC) + De Beers + the De Beers Jewellery joint venture with LVMH + the failure in enforcing Best Practice Principles (BPP) + compliance failures/credibility issues + sightholder dilema/issues + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
The Invention Of Oil Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
Now Hubert van Eyck was born about 1365 near Maestricht, which is no great distance from Cologne. Most probably he studied in the Rhineland capital before he migrated to Flanders and, with his brother Jan, settled in Ghent. The increasing commercial prosperity of Bruges and Ghent attracted artists from the banks of the Rhine, and the School of Cologne declined as the Early Flemish School arose.
Since the time of Vasari, the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck have generally received credit for having discovered oil as a medium for painting. Before their time artists had mixed their colors either with water (frescoes) or with yolk of egg (tempera paintings), and though modern scholarship is inclined to doubt whether the Van Eycks were actually the first to make use of oil, they were beyond question the pioneers of the new medium.
Tradition says that Jan, having one day ‘devoted the utmost pains’ in finishing a picture with great care, varnished it and as usual put it in the sun to dry. But the heat was excessive and split the wooden panel which he had painted. Grieving at the destruction of his handiwork, Jan ‘determined to find a means whereby he should be spared such an annoyance in the future’. After various experiments he discovered that linseed oil and oil from nuts dried more quickly than any which he had tried, and that colors mixed these oils were more brilliant, proof against water, and blended far better than the tempera. Thus was oil painting invented.
‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ at Ghent, executed by the two brothers, is not only the earliest monument of the art of oil painting but it is the most splendid masterpiece produced by any Northern artist before the seventeenth century. Not till Rubens was born, some 200 years later, did Flanders produce the equal of the Van Eycks, and from this fact alone we may deduce the extraordinary mastery of their art.
‘The Adoration of the Lamb’, an elaborate polyptych, is not one picture but a whole collection of pictures. Originally it consisted of the long central panel showing ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and above this three panels of ‘The Virgin,’ ‘God the Father’, and ‘St. John’; on the left of the ‘Lamb’ panel—which measures 7½ feet long by 4½ feet high—were two panels of ‘The Just Judges’ and ‘Christ’s Warriors’ showing ‘The Holy Hermits’ and ‘The Holy Pilgrims’ on the right. On the upper tier the three central figures were flanked by two double-panelled shutters, the painted subjects on one side being ‘Angels Singing’, ‘”Angles Making Music’, and, at the extreme ends, ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’; on the reverse of the shutters are ‘St. John the Baptist’, ‘St. John the Evangelist’ ‘Jodoc Vydt’—the donor of the altar piece—and ‘Wife of Jodoc Vydt.’
The complete altar-piece therefore consisted of twelve panels, four painted on both sides, making sixteen pictures in all. The whole painted surface of this composite picture, or polyptych, amounts to over a thousand feet. Six of these panels were formerly in the Berlin Museum, but having been surrendered to Belgium under the Terms of the Treaty of Versailles, they have now been added to the central panels together with the panels of ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’, formerly at Brussels, so that the whole altar-piece is now seen in its original completeness in the Cathedral of Ghent.
The whole altar-piece was undoubtedly planned and begun by Hubert, who certainly painted the three tremendous central figures and the panel of ‘Angels Making Music’. After Hubert’s death in 1426 Jan van Eyck completed the altar-piece, and probably did not adhere altogether strictly to his brother’s original designs. The difference between the work of the two brothers is one not so much of skill as of temperament. Hubert possessed a solemn spirituality and serious thoughtfulness which was not shared by his more worldly younger brother.
Jan van Eyck, born about 1385, is a more popular and no less eminent figure than his elder brother. He lived on in Ghent and Bruges till 1441 and his works are comparatively numerous, whereas few paintings by Hubert are extant. Shortly before completing the Ghent altar-piece, Jan entered the service of Philip of Burgundy, for whom he undertook several diplomatic missions. In this way he saw Portugal and other foreign countries, and his later paintings betray his affectionate remembrance of the country he had seen in southern climes. Jan was essentially a realist, with his keen gaze ever fixed on the beautiful earth and on human beings rather than on religious doctrines. His real bent is shown in many of his panels for ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’. In the panel of ‘The Annunciation’ his delight in the still-life, in the washbasin and other furniture of the room, in the street view seen through the window, reveals him to be the true father of genre painting. His portraits of Jodoc Vydt and his wife, shows without flattery as a dull but prosperous Flemish burgher and his wife, prove him to be the father of modern portraiture. Both these qualities, his capacity for realistic portraiture and his infinite exactitude in rendering the detail of an interior, are magnificently displayed in ‘Jan Arnolfini and his Wife’, one of the most precious things in the National Gallery.
While Hubert belongs to the austere company of monumental or architectural painters, Jan is a pioneer of domestic painting and one of the first producers of what we now know as a ‘picture’. In this development Jan van Eyck was, doubtless unconsciously, meeting the demand of his time and place.
In Northern churches and cathedrals, which need more light than the Southern, the place occupied by wall paintings was gradually given over to stained-glass windows, which are marked features in the Gothic architecture of Northern Europe. Wall-paintings, which still led the way in Italy, became secondary in Flanders do the decorative panels introduced into wooden screenwork. This much accomplished, it was a short step to meet the demands of a prosperous commercial community by (metaphorically) detaching a panel from his ecclesiastical frame and adapting its subject and style to a private dwelling house.
Thus, while Italy remains the home of the religious picture, Flanders and the Netherlands become more and more the home of secular art. Though he painted other religious subjects beside ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and the miniature ‘Altar piece’ which the Emperor Charles V took with him on his travels, the most famous of the other paintings by Jan van Eyck are portraits. In his portraiture he is uncompromising in his endeavor to state the whole truth; such details as warts and wrinkles, furrows and stubbly beards, he renders with passionate delight and exactitude. A splendid example of Jan’s rugged realism may be seen from portrait in the Berlin Museum, known as ‘The Man with the pinks’. Precisely drawn, true to every wart and wrinkle, the face is so full of life and character that we almost listen for speech to come from the slightly parted lips. Who this man was has never been discovered, but from his costume and the handsome ring on his finger we may deduce that he was a person of position.
Now Hubert van Eyck was born about 1365 near Maestricht, which is no great distance from Cologne. Most probably he studied in the Rhineland capital before he migrated to Flanders and, with his brother Jan, settled in Ghent. The increasing commercial prosperity of Bruges and Ghent attracted artists from the banks of the Rhine, and the School of Cologne declined as the Early Flemish School arose.
Since the time of Vasari, the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck have generally received credit for having discovered oil as a medium for painting. Before their time artists had mixed their colors either with water (frescoes) or with yolk of egg (tempera paintings), and though modern scholarship is inclined to doubt whether the Van Eycks were actually the first to make use of oil, they were beyond question the pioneers of the new medium.
Tradition says that Jan, having one day ‘devoted the utmost pains’ in finishing a picture with great care, varnished it and as usual put it in the sun to dry. But the heat was excessive and split the wooden panel which he had painted. Grieving at the destruction of his handiwork, Jan ‘determined to find a means whereby he should be spared such an annoyance in the future’. After various experiments he discovered that linseed oil and oil from nuts dried more quickly than any which he had tried, and that colors mixed these oils were more brilliant, proof against water, and blended far better than the tempera. Thus was oil painting invented.
‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ at Ghent, executed by the two brothers, is not only the earliest monument of the art of oil painting but it is the most splendid masterpiece produced by any Northern artist before the seventeenth century. Not till Rubens was born, some 200 years later, did Flanders produce the equal of the Van Eycks, and from this fact alone we may deduce the extraordinary mastery of their art.
‘The Adoration of the Lamb’, an elaborate polyptych, is not one picture but a whole collection of pictures. Originally it consisted of the long central panel showing ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and above this three panels of ‘The Virgin,’ ‘God the Father’, and ‘St. John’; on the left of the ‘Lamb’ panel—which measures 7½ feet long by 4½ feet high—were two panels of ‘The Just Judges’ and ‘Christ’s Warriors’ showing ‘The Holy Hermits’ and ‘The Holy Pilgrims’ on the right. On the upper tier the three central figures were flanked by two double-panelled shutters, the painted subjects on one side being ‘Angels Singing’, ‘”Angles Making Music’, and, at the extreme ends, ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’; on the reverse of the shutters are ‘St. John the Baptist’, ‘St. John the Evangelist’ ‘Jodoc Vydt’—the donor of the altar piece—and ‘Wife of Jodoc Vydt.’
The complete altar-piece therefore consisted of twelve panels, four painted on both sides, making sixteen pictures in all. The whole painted surface of this composite picture, or polyptych, amounts to over a thousand feet. Six of these panels were formerly in the Berlin Museum, but having been surrendered to Belgium under the Terms of the Treaty of Versailles, they have now been added to the central panels together with the panels of ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’, formerly at Brussels, so that the whole altar-piece is now seen in its original completeness in the Cathedral of Ghent.
The whole altar-piece was undoubtedly planned and begun by Hubert, who certainly painted the three tremendous central figures and the panel of ‘Angels Making Music’. After Hubert’s death in 1426 Jan van Eyck completed the altar-piece, and probably did not adhere altogether strictly to his brother’s original designs. The difference between the work of the two brothers is one not so much of skill as of temperament. Hubert possessed a solemn spirituality and serious thoughtfulness which was not shared by his more worldly younger brother.
Jan van Eyck, born about 1385, is a more popular and no less eminent figure than his elder brother. He lived on in Ghent and Bruges till 1441 and his works are comparatively numerous, whereas few paintings by Hubert are extant. Shortly before completing the Ghent altar-piece, Jan entered the service of Philip of Burgundy, for whom he undertook several diplomatic missions. In this way he saw Portugal and other foreign countries, and his later paintings betray his affectionate remembrance of the country he had seen in southern climes. Jan was essentially a realist, with his keen gaze ever fixed on the beautiful earth and on human beings rather than on religious doctrines. His real bent is shown in many of his panels for ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’. In the panel of ‘The Annunciation’ his delight in the still-life, in the washbasin and other furniture of the room, in the street view seen through the window, reveals him to be the true father of genre painting. His portraits of Jodoc Vydt and his wife, shows without flattery as a dull but prosperous Flemish burgher and his wife, prove him to be the father of modern portraiture. Both these qualities, his capacity for realistic portraiture and his infinite exactitude in rendering the detail of an interior, are magnificently displayed in ‘Jan Arnolfini and his Wife’, one of the most precious things in the National Gallery.
While Hubert belongs to the austere company of monumental or architectural painters, Jan is a pioneer of domestic painting and one of the first producers of what we now know as a ‘picture’. In this development Jan van Eyck was, doubtless unconsciously, meeting the demand of his time and place.
In Northern churches and cathedrals, which need more light than the Southern, the place occupied by wall paintings was gradually given over to stained-glass windows, which are marked features in the Gothic architecture of Northern Europe. Wall-paintings, which still led the way in Italy, became secondary in Flanders do the decorative panels introduced into wooden screenwork. This much accomplished, it was a short step to meet the demands of a prosperous commercial community by (metaphorically) detaching a panel from his ecclesiastical frame and adapting its subject and style to a private dwelling house.
Thus, while Italy remains the home of the religious picture, Flanders and the Netherlands become more and more the home of secular art. Though he painted other religious subjects beside ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and the miniature ‘Altar piece’ which the Emperor Charles V took with him on his travels, the most famous of the other paintings by Jan van Eyck are portraits. In his portraiture he is uncompromising in his endeavor to state the whole truth; such details as warts and wrinkles, furrows and stubbly beards, he renders with passionate delight and exactitude. A splendid example of Jan’s rugged realism may be seen from portrait in the Berlin Museum, known as ‘The Man with the pinks’. Precisely drawn, true to every wart and wrinkle, the face is so full of life and character that we almost listen for speech to come from the slightly parted lips. Who this man was has never been discovered, but from his costume and the handsome ring on his finger we may deduce that he was a person of position.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Appalachain Spring
Aaron Copland was an American composer of concert + film music + an accomplished pianist + he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in composition for Appalachian Spring + his scores for Of Mice and Men (1939), Our Town (1940), and The North Star (1943), all received Academy Award nominations + the Heiress won best music in 1949.
(via YouTube): Appalachian Spring - Aaron Copland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26cmyrtcTNk
Part One: See and hear Aaron Copland, July 1980
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33uW-4ruKR0&feature=related
Appalachian Spring, pt. 1 Blake Richardson, Conductor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jUzobQcq0M
Appalchian Spring, pt. 2 Blake Richardson, Conductor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBL2sld2sPw&feature=related
Blake Richardson conducts Appalachian Spring (3 of 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qy8wjuXwOE&feature=related
A true American classic + simply beautiful.
(via YouTube): Appalachian Spring - Aaron Copland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26cmyrtcTNk
Part One: See and hear Aaron Copland, July 1980
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33uW-4ruKR0&feature=related
Appalachian Spring, pt. 1 Blake Richardson, Conductor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jUzobQcq0M
Appalchian Spring, pt. 2 Blake Richardson, Conductor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBL2sld2sPw&feature=related
Blake Richardson conducts Appalachian Spring (3 of 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qy8wjuXwOE&feature=related
A true American classic + simply beautiful.
What I Am Going To Do When I Have Mega Millions?
Actually I found the answer via Larry Doyle (New Yorker, August 27, 2007). I suppose I'll have to hire a lawyer to start preemptively suing people who claim that I owe them money or fathered them or blinded them in a bar fight. And I'll need bodyguards with double-O clearance, for insurance purposes. And another lawyer to sue the first lawyer. But, beyond that, my life is going to stay pretty much the way it is, only with the Mega Millions.
That's it for now.
That's it for now.
Weaker-Dollar Fallout
Kelli B Grant writes about the present status of US dollar + impact on big-ticket imported items such as cars, jewelry, wine when the dollar weakens + other viewpoints @ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119533955120197040.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Diamonds Still An Investor's Best Friend As Art Fades
Douwe Miedema writes about the trend among the world's richest to invest in large diamonds + the perception that art is a more speculative investment than precious stones + the concept of fashion fad vs. simple price correction + other viewpoints @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7087633
Clifford Elphick
Andrew Davidson writes about Clifford Elphick, CEO, Gem Diamonds + his way of doing diamond business + knowledge/luck factor + other viewpoints @ http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/BusinessTimes/Article.aspx?id=615129
The Stone-age Auteur
(via The Guardian) Adrian Searle writes about William Kentridge, South Africa's most famous artist + his charcoal animations + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2213950,00.html
The Invention Of Oil Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The Art of the Van Eycks, Memlinc, and the early Flemish masters
1
In the whole history of painting there are no more remarkable figures than the two brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Never before or since has Art made so mighty a stride in the space of one generation. We get some idea of what they achieved if we compare any King or Queen in a pack of playing cards with a modern photograph of a living monarch.
Just as Moliere’s ‘Bourgeois Gentilhomme’ was astounded to find he had been talking prose all his life without knowing it, so some readers may be surprised to learn that they are perfectly familiar with medieval Gothic art, for examples of of it may be found in every pack of playing cards, in which the court cards are survivals of medieval Gothic portraiture.
To obtain the best possible insight into the birth of Gothic art one ought to visit the Cathedral of Brunswick. Here we may see what are probably the best preserved examples of medieval wall paintings. In the choir is a series of pictures, painted about the beginning of the thirteenth century, and one of the best of these represents ‘Herod’s Birthday Feast’. It is perfectly childish, of course, but it is childish in a totally different way from that in which the pictures of Giotto and Angelico are childish. Neither the Italian nor the Brunswick pictures show any sense of perspective or give any real effect of space and distance; but the treatment of the figures greatly differs. In the Italian paintings there is still a faint trace of Greek draughtsmanship distorted by Byzantine dogma, but the Brunswick paintings show quite a new conception of the human body which has nothing to do with Greece or Rome; it is pure Gothic. In these Brunswick paintings the people pictured look like nothing so much as a row of court cards. Herod himself looks as much like a real human being as the King of Hearts look like H.M.King George V.
Now we are in a position to appreciate the art of the brothers Van Eyck. To realize the advance they made we must not compare their figures with the portraits of today or modern photographs, but with the Queen of Spades and the Jack of Diamonds. And we must remember that little over a hundred years separates the style of court card portraiture from the realistic forms of Hubert’s mighty figures surmounting ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and Jan van Eyck’s ‘The Man with the Pinks’.
It is a great misfortune that we know so little about the lives of these amazing men. Many interesting details about the early Italian artists have been preserved to us because Giorgio Vasari, himself an early sixteenth-century Florentine painter, wrote the lives of the preceding and contemporary Italian artists with a fullness and vivacity which make his accounts still fascinating and readable. But there was no biographer of the early Flemish artists, and the few meagre facts we know about them have slowly been unearthed by patient scholarship toiling amid the archives of the cities in which these artists lived.
Therefore it is by the pictures which remain, rather than by any written record, that we must endeavor to reconstruct the flowering of art in Flanders and Northern Europe. But if we do study those works, then it is positively electrifying to behold the mysterious and rapid quickening of the artistic spirit in Flanders.
Of what came between the paintings of Brunswick Cathedral and the art of the Van Eycks, little is known and nothing certain. The very names of the painters of some undoubtedly early pictures are unknown, and all we can say with certainty is that from about the end of the fourteenth century to the middle of the fifteenth century a group of painters flourished on the lower Rhine and became known as the School of Cologne. Several of its members are merely legendary, but the Bimburg Chronicle of 1380 contains an authoritative entry:
‘In this time there was a painter in Cologne of the name of Wilhelm; he was considered the best master in all German Land; he paints every man, of whatever form, as if he were alive.’ This master has been identified as William of Herle (or Cologne), who died about 1378, and though he evidently impressed his contemporaries by his pioneer realism the work of his school is esteemed in our own time for its spiritual calm and peaceful purity. ‘St Veronica’ in the National Gallery is probably painted by William of Cologne or by one of his pupils.
The Art of the Van Eycks, Memlinc, and the early Flemish masters
1
In the whole history of painting there are no more remarkable figures than the two brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Never before or since has Art made so mighty a stride in the space of one generation. We get some idea of what they achieved if we compare any King or Queen in a pack of playing cards with a modern photograph of a living monarch.
Just as Moliere’s ‘Bourgeois Gentilhomme’ was astounded to find he had been talking prose all his life without knowing it, so some readers may be surprised to learn that they are perfectly familiar with medieval Gothic art, for examples of of it may be found in every pack of playing cards, in which the court cards are survivals of medieval Gothic portraiture.
To obtain the best possible insight into the birth of Gothic art one ought to visit the Cathedral of Brunswick. Here we may see what are probably the best preserved examples of medieval wall paintings. In the choir is a series of pictures, painted about the beginning of the thirteenth century, and one of the best of these represents ‘Herod’s Birthday Feast’. It is perfectly childish, of course, but it is childish in a totally different way from that in which the pictures of Giotto and Angelico are childish. Neither the Italian nor the Brunswick pictures show any sense of perspective or give any real effect of space and distance; but the treatment of the figures greatly differs. In the Italian paintings there is still a faint trace of Greek draughtsmanship distorted by Byzantine dogma, but the Brunswick paintings show quite a new conception of the human body which has nothing to do with Greece or Rome; it is pure Gothic. In these Brunswick paintings the people pictured look like nothing so much as a row of court cards. Herod himself looks as much like a real human being as the King of Hearts look like H.M.King George V.
Now we are in a position to appreciate the art of the brothers Van Eyck. To realize the advance they made we must not compare their figures with the portraits of today or modern photographs, but with the Queen of Spades and the Jack of Diamonds. And we must remember that little over a hundred years separates the style of court card portraiture from the realistic forms of Hubert’s mighty figures surmounting ‘The Adoration of the Lamb’ and Jan van Eyck’s ‘The Man with the Pinks’.
It is a great misfortune that we know so little about the lives of these amazing men. Many interesting details about the early Italian artists have been preserved to us because Giorgio Vasari, himself an early sixteenth-century Florentine painter, wrote the lives of the preceding and contemporary Italian artists with a fullness and vivacity which make his accounts still fascinating and readable. But there was no biographer of the early Flemish artists, and the few meagre facts we know about them have slowly been unearthed by patient scholarship toiling amid the archives of the cities in which these artists lived.
Therefore it is by the pictures which remain, rather than by any written record, that we must endeavor to reconstruct the flowering of art in Flanders and Northern Europe. But if we do study those works, then it is positively electrifying to behold the mysterious and rapid quickening of the artistic spirit in Flanders.
Of what came between the paintings of Brunswick Cathedral and the art of the Van Eycks, little is known and nothing certain. The very names of the painters of some undoubtedly early pictures are unknown, and all we can say with certainty is that from about the end of the fourteenth century to the middle of the fifteenth century a group of painters flourished on the lower Rhine and became known as the School of Cologne. Several of its members are merely legendary, but the Bimburg Chronicle of 1380 contains an authoritative entry:
‘In this time there was a painter in Cologne of the name of Wilhelm; he was considered the best master in all German Land; he paints every man, of whatever form, as if he were alive.’ This master has been identified as William of Herle (or Cologne), who died about 1378, and though he evidently impressed his contemporaries by his pioneer realism the work of his school is esteemed in our own time for its spiritual calm and peaceful purity. ‘St Veronica’ in the National Gallery is probably painted by William of Cologne or by one of his pupils.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Daniel Terdiman
New Business Models: Bryan Gardiner writes about Daniel Terdiman + his new book The Entrepreneur's Guide to Second Life: Making Money in the Metaverse + Second Life entrepreneurism + other viewpoints @ http://www.wired.com/print/techbiz/people/news/2007/11/terdiman
Léolo
Léolo (1992)
Directed by: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Screenplay: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Cast: Gilbert Sicotte, Maxime Collin
(via YouTube): Leolo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OqC7ELoRrM
An extravagant fantasy + magical realism + hilarious.
Directed by: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Screenplay: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Cast: Gilbert Sicotte, Maxime Collin
(via YouTube): Leolo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OqC7ELoRrM
An extravagant fantasy + magical realism + hilarious.
People Are More Dangerous Than HIV
A few weeks ago, in a movie theatre, a person felt something poking from her seat When she got up to see what it was, she found a needle sticking out of the seat with a note attached saying
"You have just been infected by HIV".
The Disease Control Center (in Paris ) reports many similar events in many other cities recently. All tested needles were HIV Positive. The Center also reports that needles have been found in cash dispensers at public banking machines.
We ask everyone to use extreme caution when faced with this kind of situation. All public chairs/seats should be inspected with vigilance and caution before use. A careful visual inspection should be enough. In addition, they ask that each of you pass this message along to all members of your family and your friends of the potential danger.
Recently, one doctor has narrated a somewhat similar instance that happened to one of his patients at the Priya Cinema in Delhi. A young girl, engaged and about to be married in a couple of months, was pricked while the movie was going on. The tag with the needle had the message "Welcome to the World of HIV family".
Though the doctors told her family that it takes about 6 months before the virus grows strong enough to start damaging the system and a healthy victim could survive about 5-6 years, the girl died in 4 months, perhaps more because of the "Shock thought".
We all have to be careful at public places, rest God help!
"You have just been infected by HIV".
The Disease Control Center (in Paris ) reports many similar events in many other cities recently. All tested needles were HIV Positive. The Center also reports that needles have been found in cash dispensers at public banking machines.
We ask everyone to use extreme caution when faced with this kind of situation. All public chairs/seats should be inspected with vigilance and caution before use. A careful visual inspection should be enough. In addition, they ask that each of you pass this message along to all members of your family and your friends of the potential danger.
Recently, one doctor has narrated a somewhat similar instance that happened to one of his patients at the Priya Cinema in Delhi. A young girl, engaged and about to be married in a couple of months, was pricked while the movie was going on. The tag with the needle had the message "Welcome to the World of HIV family".
Though the doctors told her family that it takes about 6 months before the virus grows strong enough to start damaging the system and a healthy victim could survive about 5-6 years, the girl died in 4 months, perhaps more because of the "Shock thought".
We all have to be careful at public places, rest God help!
A Date With The Chapmans
(via The Guardian) Absolutely free. Exclusive online art work by Jake and Dinos Chapman @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/page/0,,2212423,00.html
Art Rocks
Barbara Pollack writes about a new generation of artists that combine music, flamboyant costumes, video projections + a new wave of contemporary artists whose projects blur the distinction between popular music and fine art + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1228
Single Or Plain Pointed Star Cuts
(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:
Only in portraits have I ever come across Pointed Star Cuts without girdle facets, but very few portrait painters have ever known enough about jewelry to reproduce gems with any degree of accuracy. Even J.H von Hefner-Alteneck, Professor of Design and Superintendent of the Bayerrisches Nationalmuseum, made a serious but very typical mistake. In his illustrated work on sixteenth-century jewelry, published in 1890, he reproduced a perfect drawing by Mielich but turned the regular Double Rosettes into groups of plain, three-facet Rose cuts—the design which, at the time he was writing, most closely resembled the earlier cut. With his background and training he should certainly have known better. But if someone of the calibre of Hefner-Alteneck was capable of making so glaring an error, how can one rely on details of jewelry by even the greatest portrait painters?
Certainly in Elizabethan portraits, Star Cuts, particularly those of exceptional size, may have been simply combinations of eight triangular diamonds, not unlike the eight-petalled Rosettes of the period. They were clearly inspired by the Pointed Star Cut, but had been created for show, following royal command. However, artists may also have been instructed to exaggerate the splendor of the jewels, as Holbein often did in his portraits of English royalty.
The accession of Elizabeth I to the English throne in 1558 was significant in the world of fashion. Magnificent jewelry, hitherto worn mainly by men, was now used more and more by women. In fact, from now on, opulent jewels gradually became the prerogative of queens. Although in her portrait (The Phoenix Portrait of Elizabeth 1 by Nicholas Hilliard, c. 1575—National Portrait Gallery, London), pearls appear to overshadow Elizabeth’s other jewels, the three large Pointed Star Cut diamonds are the most important gems. I do not believe that any of the Star Cuts could have been sapphires, as is sometimes maintained. Portrait painters frequently painted diamonds with a bluish tinge. Certainly such diamond cuts existed and were favored, particularly by royalty, throughout the sixteenth century.
The diamonds in the brooch (A Gonzaga Princess by Frans Pourbus the Younger, c. 1605—Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence) are all pointed. The square and lozenge-shaped gems are of the Standard type, with four large facets in both crown and pavilion. The rectangular stones are normal Hogbacks. The eight round ones are Star Cuts. Four of the diamonds—assuming that they are correctly reproduced by the artist—were already out of date; their facets meet in a ridge, like basically faceted half-moons. All the gems appear to be pavilion-based and must surely have displayed attractive light effects.
Only in portraits have I ever come across Pointed Star Cuts without girdle facets, but very few portrait painters have ever known enough about jewelry to reproduce gems with any degree of accuracy. Even J.H von Hefner-Alteneck, Professor of Design and Superintendent of the Bayerrisches Nationalmuseum, made a serious but very typical mistake. In his illustrated work on sixteenth-century jewelry, published in 1890, he reproduced a perfect drawing by Mielich but turned the regular Double Rosettes into groups of plain, three-facet Rose cuts—the design which, at the time he was writing, most closely resembled the earlier cut. With his background and training he should certainly have known better. But if someone of the calibre of Hefner-Alteneck was capable of making so glaring an error, how can one rely on details of jewelry by even the greatest portrait painters?
Certainly in Elizabethan portraits, Star Cuts, particularly those of exceptional size, may have been simply combinations of eight triangular diamonds, not unlike the eight-petalled Rosettes of the period. They were clearly inspired by the Pointed Star Cut, but had been created for show, following royal command. However, artists may also have been instructed to exaggerate the splendor of the jewels, as Holbein often did in his portraits of English royalty.
The accession of Elizabeth I to the English throne in 1558 was significant in the world of fashion. Magnificent jewelry, hitherto worn mainly by men, was now used more and more by women. In fact, from now on, opulent jewels gradually became the prerogative of queens. Although in her portrait (The Phoenix Portrait of Elizabeth 1 by Nicholas Hilliard, c. 1575—National Portrait Gallery, London), pearls appear to overshadow Elizabeth’s other jewels, the three large Pointed Star Cut diamonds are the most important gems. I do not believe that any of the Star Cuts could have been sapphires, as is sometimes maintained. Portrait painters frequently painted diamonds with a bluish tinge. Certainly such diamond cuts existed and were favored, particularly by royalty, throughout the sixteenth century.
The diamonds in the brooch (A Gonzaga Princess by Frans Pourbus the Younger, c. 1605—Museo degli Argenti, Palazzo Pitti, Florence) are all pointed. The square and lozenge-shaped gems are of the Standard type, with four large facets in both crown and pavilion. The rectangular stones are normal Hogbacks. The eight round ones are Star Cuts. Four of the diamonds—assuming that they are correctly reproduced by the artist—were already out of date; their facets meet in a ridge, like basically faceted half-moons. All the gems appear to be pavilion-based and must surely have displayed attractive light effects.
The Birth Of Modern Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
5
Romantic mysticism, which budded with Fra Angelico, passed by Lippi to flower with all sweetness and beauty in the art of his pupil, Alessandro Filipepi, famed as Botticelli. Sandro Botticelli was born in Florence about 1447, and was first apprenticed to a goldsmith. To the end of his life he was a jeweler in colors, but owes little beside the name of Botticelli, by which we known him, to his goldsmith master, whom he soon left, to devote himself thenceforth entirely to painting. The thing that differentiates the art of Botticelli from that of all his predecessors is the intensely personal, even egotistical note that he strikes in all his work. The exquisite, delicate melancholy which pervades the expression, both of Christian saints and Pagan gods, in all his pictures, is his own, not theirs, as though he were sorry for them for being saints and gods, and so, by their very nature, deprived of all those ecstasies alike of faith and of doubt, of conviction and speculation, which are the compensating privileges of human imperfection.
The Italy of Botticelli was not the Italy of Fra Angelico. Beauty was no longer the handmaid of religion. The Church was no longer the only patron of art, nor were church walls the only outlet for artists. Cosimo de Medici and Lorenzo the Magnificent did not worry their painters with theological restrictions; it was beauty that they wanted. It was not till his master Lippi left Florence in 1467 to undertake a commission at Spoleto, that Botticelli began to develop his own individuality. Pictures before that date, as ‘The Adoration of the Magi’ in the National Gallery, reflect the art of Lippi. But as soon as the young painter was left alone in Florence, he mixed with other artists like the Pollaiuoli, who had greater knowledge of anatomy than Lippi, and his art made rapid progress. On another page is shown one of the most beautiful of these early works, ‘Judith with the Head of Holophernes’. Muscular action is finely expressed in the swinging stride of the maid who follows bearing the head of of the slain tyrant, while the heroine herself is depicted with all the fresh girlish charm of one of the young Florentine maids who frequented the artist’s studio. In the distance the great army of invasion is seen retreating in confusion through a spacious landscape.
Botticelli’s chief patron in Florence was not Lorenzo the Magnificent, but a distant kinsman of the Duke with the same name. For the villa at Castello, belonging to this younger Lorenzo de Medici, Botticelli painted a number of pictures, among them, about 1477, the famous ‘Primavera’. No more beautiful allegory of the coming of Spring has ever been painted than this picture. In the center Venus, the Goddess of Love, awaits Spring’s coming, with Cupid hovering over her. On her right are the Three Graces, with Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods; on her left gaily-decked Spring advances, gently pushed forward by Flora, the goddess of flowers, and by Zephyr, who personifies the mild west wind. Where’er she treads the flowers spring to life. Beautiful as an interpretation of old Greek legends, which make a human story out of all the phenomena of Nature, this picture is also an expression of the revived pagan delight in physical form which was typical of fifteenth century Florence.
The fame of this and other pictures by Botticelli spread to Rome, whither in 1481 he was summoned by the Pope to assist in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, where three great frescoes, the ‘History of Moses’, ‘Destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram,’ and ‘Temptation of Christ’, remain to this day as a monument of his skill, his energy, and his sense of drama and beauty. After two years in Rome, Botticelli returned to Florence, where, in 1483, he painted the most exquisite of all his Madonnas, ‘The Magnificat’. But the happy days of the painter were drawing to an end. After the death of Lorenzo in 1492 and the accession of his worthless son Piero, Florence was agitated by political troubles; and to that city, tired of pleasure and weary of knowledge, came Girolamo Savonarola, the great reformer priest.
When the Medici were expelled from Florence, the young Lorenzo went with them, and Botticelli lost his best patron. During these tumultuous years Botticelli devoted much of his time to executing a wonder series of illustrations to Dante, the originals of which are still preserved in Vatican Library and the Berlin Museum. These drawings reveal not only an intimate knowledge of the great poem, but also a profound sympathy with the feelings of the poet. Savonarola preached and Botticelli listened, though happily he did not follow the example of some of his contemporaries, and burn his earlier pictures of pagan subjects. Though his brother Simone, who lived with him in these later years, was a fanatical disciple of Savanarola, Sandro himself does not appear to have been wholly converted till the great preacher in turn became the victim of the fury of a fickle populace.
In the same year (1498) in which Savanarola was burned at the stake in the Piazza della Signoria, Botticelli painted his great picture, ‘The Calumny of Apelles’. This work, had a double purpose. Nominally it was an attempt to reproduce a famous lost picture, Calumny, by the ancient Greek painter Apelles, from the description of it given by the Greek writer Lucian. But we can have little doubt that the inward and spiritual meaning of this picture, which shows black-robed Calumny (or according to another interpretation, Remorse) slinking from the radiant presence of the naked Truth, was directed against the calumniators of the martyred friar. Among all Botticelli’s pictures this painting is distinguished by its exquisite finish and richness of detail, and we may regard it as the last great expression of his powers both as a classic and a humanist. Distressed both by the disturbed state of his native city and by the tragic end of Savanoralo, Botticelli fretted himself into melancholia during his last years. The few religious pictures of this period which remain—many of them probably finished by pupils after the master’s death—contain a strange exaggeration of gesture and facial expression, and an almost theatrical vehemence of action, which are entirely foreign to the poetical fantasies of his earlier manner. As an example of the high-strung emotions of his last years, ‘The Mourning of Christ’ may be compared in these pages with the serene tranquility of Botticelli’s early and middle-period work. The happiest painting of his last period is the little ‘Nativity’ in the National Gallery.
5
Romantic mysticism, which budded with Fra Angelico, passed by Lippi to flower with all sweetness and beauty in the art of his pupil, Alessandro Filipepi, famed as Botticelli. Sandro Botticelli was born in Florence about 1447, and was first apprenticed to a goldsmith. To the end of his life he was a jeweler in colors, but owes little beside the name of Botticelli, by which we known him, to his goldsmith master, whom he soon left, to devote himself thenceforth entirely to painting. The thing that differentiates the art of Botticelli from that of all his predecessors is the intensely personal, even egotistical note that he strikes in all his work. The exquisite, delicate melancholy which pervades the expression, both of Christian saints and Pagan gods, in all his pictures, is his own, not theirs, as though he were sorry for them for being saints and gods, and so, by their very nature, deprived of all those ecstasies alike of faith and of doubt, of conviction and speculation, which are the compensating privileges of human imperfection.
The Italy of Botticelli was not the Italy of Fra Angelico. Beauty was no longer the handmaid of religion. The Church was no longer the only patron of art, nor were church walls the only outlet for artists. Cosimo de Medici and Lorenzo the Magnificent did not worry their painters with theological restrictions; it was beauty that they wanted. It was not till his master Lippi left Florence in 1467 to undertake a commission at Spoleto, that Botticelli began to develop his own individuality. Pictures before that date, as ‘The Adoration of the Magi’ in the National Gallery, reflect the art of Lippi. But as soon as the young painter was left alone in Florence, he mixed with other artists like the Pollaiuoli, who had greater knowledge of anatomy than Lippi, and his art made rapid progress. On another page is shown one of the most beautiful of these early works, ‘Judith with the Head of Holophernes’. Muscular action is finely expressed in the swinging stride of the maid who follows bearing the head of of the slain tyrant, while the heroine herself is depicted with all the fresh girlish charm of one of the young Florentine maids who frequented the artist’s studio. In the distance the great army of invasion is seen retreating in confusion through a spacious landscape.
Botticelli’s chief patron in Florence was not Lorenzo the Magnificent, but a distant kinsman of the Duke with the same name. For the villa at Castello, belonging to this younger Lorenzo de Medici, Botticelli painted a number of pictures, among them, about 1477, the famous ‘Primavera’. No more beautiful allegory of the coming of Spring has ever been painted than this picture. In the center Venus, the Goddess of Love, awaits Spring’s coming, with Cupid hovering over her. On her right are the Three Graces, with Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods; on her left gaily-decked Spring advances, gently pushed forward by Flora, the goddess of flowers, and by Zephyr, who personifies the mild west wind. Where’er she treads the flowers spring to life. Beautiful as an interpretation of old Greek legends, which make a human story out of all the phenomena of Nature, this picture is also an expression of the revived pagan delight in physical form which was typical of fifteenth century Florence.
The fame of this and other pictures by Botticelli spread to Rome, whither in 1481 he was summoned by the Pope to assist in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, where three great frescoes, the ‘History of Moses’, ‘Destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram,’ and ‘Temptation of Christ’, remain to this day as a monument of his skill, his energy, and his sense of drama and beauty. After two years in Rome, Botticelli returned to Florence, where, in 1483, he painted the most exquisite of all his Madonnas, ‘The Magnificat’. But the happy days of the painter were drawing to an end. After the death of Lorenzo in 1492 and the accession of his worthless son Piero, Florence was agitated by political troubles; and to that city, tired of pleasure and weary of knowledge, came Girolamo Savonarola, the great reformer priest.
When the Medici were expelled from Florence, the young Lorenzo went with them, and Botticelli lost his best patron. During these tumultuous years Botticelli devoted much of his time to executing a wonder series of illustrations to Dante, the originals of which are still preserved in Vatican Library and the Berlin Museum. These drawings reveal not only an intimate knowledge of the great poem, but also a profound sympathy with the feelings of the poet. Savonarola preached and Botticelli listened, though happily he did not follow the example of some of his contemporaries, and burn his earlier pictures of pagan subjects. Though his brother Simone, who lived with him in these later years, was a fanatical disciple of Savanarola, Sandro himself does not appear to have been wholly converted till the great preacher in turn became the victim of the fury of a fickle populace.
In the same year (1498) in which Savanarola was burned at the stake in the Piazza della Signoria, Botticelli painted his great picture, ‘The Calumny of Apelles’. This work, had a double purpose. Nominally it was an attempt to reproduce a famous lost picture, Calumny, by the ancient Greek painter Apelles, from the description of it given by the Greek writer Lucian. But we can have little doubt that the inward and spiritual meaning of this picture, which shows black-robed Calumny (or according to another interpretation, Remorse) slinking from the radiant presence of the naked Truth, was directed against the calumniators of the martyred friar. Among all Botticelli’s pictures this painting is distinguished by its exquisite finish and richness of detail, and we may regard it as the last great expression of his powers both as a classic and a humanist. Distressed both by the disturbed state of his native city and by the tragic end of Savanoralo, Botticelli fretted himself into melancholia during his last years. The few religious pictures of this period which remain—many of them probably finished by pupils after the master’s death—contain a strange exaggeration of gesture and facial expression, and an almost theatrical vehemence of action, which are entirely foreign to the poetical fantasies of his earlier manner. As an example of the high-strung emotions of his last years, ‘The Mourning of Christ’ may be compared in these pages with the serene tranquility of Botticelli’s early and middle-period work. The happiest painting of his last period is the little ‘Nativity’ in the National Gallery.
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