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

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)

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

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

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

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.

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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)

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

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