A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Directed by: Elia Kazan
Screenplay: Tennessee Williams (play); Oscar Saul (adaptation)
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden
(via YouTube): A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Full Film - Part 1/12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9az00cDaMM
The best adaptation of a great play. Simply great. I enjoyed it.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Tutankhamun Returns In A blaze Of Publicity - And Controversy
(via Guardian Unlimited) Charlotte Higgins writes about the most talked-about exhibitions of the year, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs + the gilded coffinette (used to store the pharoah's viscera, which is inalid with carnelian, obsidian and rock crystal; a fabulously preserved ivory and ebony box; a gessoed wooden chest with decorative fretwork) + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2210359,00.html
Out Of The Attic
Anneli Rufus writes about the evolution and growing appreciation of American folk art + collectors perception of beauty and individuality + the high prices they pay + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1203
Sorting Out The Sunflowers
Sylvia Hochfield writes about Timothy Ryback + the controversy that surrounds the work of one of the world’s best-loved painters + his research (on written expert opinions and technical laboratory analyses of van Gogh paintings, private correspondence among van Gogh scholars, court decisions, unpublished letters by the artist’s associates, unpublished manuscript, biographies of van Gogh, and three volumes of his collected letters) + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/anniversary/top9.asp
Rough Ethics In New York
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the public letter sent by Diamond Manufacturers & Importers of America (DMIA) to the Diamond Trading Company’s (DTC) managing director Varda Shine to secure greater DTC rough supplies for its manufacturers + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
The Birth Of Modern Painting
(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:
The Art of the Florentine Masters, From Giotto and Angelico to Lippi and Botticelli
Giotto, a Shepherd boy, was drawing pictures of his father’s sheep on a slate, when Cimabue, the great artist of the time, happened to be passing by. Struck by the boy’s talent, Cimabue obtained permission from his father and took the lad with him to Florence as his apprentice. When the artist was commissioned to decorate the church at Assisi, he entrusted his apprentice with painting the scenes from the life of St Francis which were to adorn the walls of the upper church. In these frescoes the young Giotto proved himself, in the words of Ruskin, ‘a daring naturalist in defiance of tradition, idealism, and formalism’. Besides his work at Assisi, Giotto also worked at Rome, and important frescoes by him, notably ‘The Bewailing of St Francis’ and ‘Herod’s Birthday Feast’, are in S. Croce at Florence, but the greatest and most famous of all his undertakings is the series of frescoes which he painted in the Chapel of the Arena at Padua. The date of this enterprise can be fixed with some certainty because it is known that in 1306 Dante was Giotto’s guest at Padua, and the poet is said to have assisted the painter in his choice of subjects. Petrarch was also the friend of Giotto.
It is interesting to compare Cimabue’s ‘Madonna and Child’ and his pupil’s ‘The Bewailing of St Francis.’ To be fair to the elder artist, we must remember what came before. We have only to look at Margaritone’s altarpiece in the National Gallery to see the oppressive type of Byzantine art, destitute of any feeling for beauty or truth to nature. From whom Cimabue received his training we know not—there was no famous painter before him—but we do know he was held in high esteem by his contemporaries. The ‘Madonna’ he painted for S.Maria Novella aroused such enthusiasm that it was carried to the church preceded by trumpeters and followed by a procession of Florentines. But whatever the advance made by Cimabue, Giotto advanced still further.
1
If we study Cimabue’s ‘Madonna’ at the National Gallery we find that his figures, though not entirely lifeless as the heavily gilded Byzantine figures, are wooden,formal, and conventional, while Giotto’s figures have individuality and human feeling, and his groups have a new realism and dramatic vigor. Giotto had a more extended range of color than Cimabue; he showed a preference for gayer and lighter schemes, and he gave a more careful imitation of nature than existed in the works of his predecessors. When we hail Giotto as a daring naturalist, we must think of him in relation to the artists who preceded him, and not to those later painters who gradually learnt to give accurate and complete expression to the truths of nature. Yet his Paduan frescoes show, as it has been well said, ‘the highest powers of the Italian mind and hand at the beginning of the fourteenth century.’ Although a shepherd in his youth, it is strange that his drawings of sheep do not appear correct to modern eyes.
As will be seen from his ‘The Bewailing of St.Francis’, his backgrounds, though in a sense true to nature, are not realistic. His buildings and his trees are far too small, being drawn neither in true perspective nor in correct proportion to the human figures. His hills are bare and jagged cliffs, his trees have only a dozen leaves for foliage; but it was an innovation for fields, trees, and animals to appear at all, and no imperfections in their rendering can rob the painter of the glory of having extended the subject matter of his art. Giotto was the first Gothic painter to depict action, to substitute the dramatic human life for eternal repose of the divine. To his contemporaries his realism must have seemed amazing, and we can understand Boccaccio, after looking at earlier Byzantine paintings, writings enthusiastically in the Decamerone:
Giotto was such a genius that there was nothing a Nature which he could not have represented in such a manner that it not only resembled, but seemed to be, the thing itself.
Giotto was not only a painter: he was also an architect. When he returned to Florence in 1334 the city honored him and itself by appointing him Master of the Works of the Cathedral. Two great architectural works were planned and begun by him at Florence, the West Front of the Cathedral and its detached Campanile or bell tower. The latter exists to this day as a monument of his genius, although its author did not live to see its completion. But its lower courses were completed from Giotto’s design, and he was able with his own hand to carve the first course of its sculpted ornaments, illustrating arts and industries, before he died on January 8, 1337.
Giotto was the first of the great Florentine painters. Among his immediate successors was Andrea Orcagna, whose famous ‘The Coronation of the Virgin’ is in the National Gallery. Orcagna was painter, sculptor, architect, and poet. More of a dreamer than his shrewd practical predecessor, Orcagna did not so much develop the realistic side of Giotto as refine and intensify his psychology. He carried on the Giottosque tradition of truth and simplicity, but drama and action appealed to him less powerfully than the expression of emotion and deep religious feeling. In his masterpieces we are arrested not by any movement, but by the variety and intensity of the feelings expressed in the figures. This religious intensity led to a greater formality than is found in Giotto and to a curious suggestion of a return to Byzantine lack of humanity.
The Art of the Florentine Masters, From Giotto and Angelico to Lippi and Botticelli
Giotto, a Shepherd boy, was drawing pictures of his father’s sheep on a slate, when Cimabue, the great artist of the time, happened to be passing by. Struck by the boy’s talent, Cimabue obtained permission from his father and took the lad with him to Florence as his apprentice. When the artist was commissioned to decorate the church at Assisi, he entrusted his apprentice with painting the scenes from the life of St Francis which were to adorn the walls of the upper church. In these frescoes the young Giotto proved himself, in the words of Ruskin, ‘a daring naturalist in defiance of tradition, idealism, and formalism’. Besides his work at Assisi, Giotto also worked at Rome, and important frescoes by him, notably ‘The Bewailing of St Francis’ and ‘Herod’s Birthday Feast’, are in S. Croce at Florence, but the greatest and most famous of all his undertakings is the series of frescoes which he painted in the Chapel of the Arena at Padua. The date of this enterprise can be fixed with some certainty because it is known that in 1306 Dante was Giotto’s guest at Padua, and the poet is said to have assisted the painter in his choice of subjects. Petrarch was also the friend of Giotto.
It is interesting to compare Cimabue’s ‘Madonna and Child’ and his pupil’s ‘The Bewailing of St Francis.’ To be fair to the elder artist, we must remember what came before. We have only to look at Margaritone’s altarpiece in the National Gallery to see the oppressive type of Byzantine art, destitute of any feeling for beauty or truth to nature. From whom Cimabue received his training we know not—there was no famous painter before him—but we do know he was held in high esteem by his contemporaries. The ‘Madonna’ he painted for S.Maria Novella aroused such enthusiasm that it was carried to the church preceded by trumpeters and followed by a procession of Florentines. But whatever the advance made by Cimabue, Giotto advanced still further.
1
If we study Cimabue’s ‘Madonna’ at the National Gallery we find that his figures, though not entirely lifeless as the heavily gilded Byzantine figures, are wooden,formal, and conventional, while Giotto’s figures have individuality and human feeling, and his groups have a new realism and dramatic vigor. Giotto had a more extended range of color than Cimabue; he showed a preference for gayer and lighter schemes, and he gave a more careful imitation of nature than existed in the works of his predecessors. When we hail Giotto as a daring naturalist, we must think of him in relation to the artists who preceded him, and not to those later painters who gradually learnt to give accurate and complete expression to the truths of nature. Yet his Paduan frescoes show, as it has been well said, ‘the highest powers of the Italian mind and hand at the beginning of the fourteenth century.’ Although a shepherd in his youth, it is strange that his drawings of sheep do not appear correct to modern eyes.
As will be seen from his ‘The Bewailing of St.Francis’, his backgrounds, though in a sense true to nature, are not realistic. His buildings and his trees are far too small, being drawn neither in true perspective nor in correct proportion to the human figures. His hills are bare and jagged cliffs, his trees have only a dozen leaves for foliage; but it was an innovation for fields, trees, and animals to appear at all, and no imperfections in their rendering can rob the painter of the glory of having extended the subject matter of his art. Giotto was the first Gothic painter to depict action, to substitute the dramatic human life for eternal repose of the divine. To his contemporaries his realism must have seemed amazing, and we can understand Boccaccio, after looking at earlier Byzantine paintings, writings enthusiastically in the Decamerone:
Giotto was such a genius that there was nothing a Nature which he could not have represented in such a manner that it not only resembled, but seemed to be, the thing itself.
Giotto was not only a painter: he was also an architect. When he returned to Florence in 1334 the city honored him and itself by appointing him Master of the Works of the Cathedral. Two great architectural works were planned and begun by him at Florence, the West Front of the Cathedral and its detached Campanile or bell tower. The latter exists to this day as a monument of his genius, although its author did not live to see its completion. But its lower courses were completed from Giotto’s design, and he was able with his own hand to carve the first course of its sculpted ornaments, illustrating arts and industries, before he died on January 8, 1337.
Giotto was the first of the great Florentine painters. Among his immediate successors was Andrea Orcagna, whose famous ‘The Coronation of the Virgin’ is in the National Gallery. Orcagna was painter, sculptor, architect, and poet. More of a dreamer than his shrewd practical predecessor, Orcagna did not so much develop the realistic side of Giotto as refine and intensify his psychology. He carried on the Giottosque tradition of truth and simplicity, but drama and action appealed to him less powerfully than the expression of emotion and deep religious feeling. In his masterpieces we are arrested not by any movement, but by the variety and intensity of the feelings expressed in the figures. This religious intensity led to a greater formality than is found in Giotto and to a curious suggestion of a return to Byzantine lack of humanity.
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Travels In India
Journey of the author to other mines, and concerning the method of searching for diamonds.
(via Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Travels In India / V Ball / Edited by William Crooke)
While the Messers. Fremlin and Francis Breton were Presidents at Surat on behalf of the English Company, a Jew named Edwards Ferdinand, a free merchant, that is to say not subject to any Company, combined with these two gentlemen, a short time after the mine was discovered, to purchase a stone. This stone was clean and of good form, and weighed 42 carats. Edward went to Europe, and Messers. Fremlin and Breton placed the stone in his hands to sell to the best advantage, and render an account to them. On his arrival at Leghorn he showed it to some Jew friends, who offered him 25000 piastres for it. But as he asked 30000 he was unable to let them have it, and took it to Venice to get it cut. It was well cut, without any injury, but upon being put upon the wheel it immediately broke into nine pieces. I myself was on one occasion deceived by one of these stones, which weighed 2 carats; it broke into small pieces on the wheel when it was only half finished.
A continuation of the Author’s Journeys to the Diamond Mines
I now come to the third mine, which is the most ancient of all, and is situated in the Kingdom of Bengal. You may call it by the name Soumelpour, which is a large town near to which the diamonds are found, or rather by the name Koel, which is that of the river in the sand of which they are found. The country through which this river has its course belongs to a Raja who was formerly a tributary of the Great Mogul, but withdrew from his allegiance during the wars between Shahjahan and Jahangir his father. Immediately on his coming to the throne Shahjahan sent to demand tribute and arrears of it from this Raja, and the Raja, as his property was not sufficient to discharge the whole, quitted the country and took refuge with his subjects in the mountains. Upon the news of the Raja’s first refusal, Shahjahan, who did not know that purposed to abscond, but believed that he intended to defend himself, sent an army into his country, where he was persuaded that he would find an abundance of diamonds. It happened otherwise, however, for those who were sent into the country of the Raja found neither diamonds, inhabitants, nor food, as the Raja had ordered all the grain which his subjects could not carry with them to be burnt, and this was so effectually done that the greater portion of Shahjahan’s army perished of famine. The final result of the matter was, that the Raja returned to his country on agreeing to pay a light annual tribute to the Great Mogul.
The following is the route to be followed from Agra to this mine: from Agra to Halabas, 130 coss; Halabas to Banarous, 33 coss; Banarous to Saseron, 4 coss. From Agra to Sasaram you travel eastwards, but between Sasaram and the mine you turn to the south and come first to a large town—21 coss. This town is that of the Raja of whom I have just spoken, to whom the country belongs which is traversed by the river in which the diamonds are found.
After this town the traveler reaches a fortress called Rohtas—4 coss. It is one of the strongest places in Asia, situated upon a mountain having six great bastions and twenty-seven pieces of cannon, with three trenches full of water in which there are good fish. There is but a single path by which to ascend the mountain, where there is a plain of half a league or so in area, on which corn and rice are cultivated. There are more than twenty springs which irrigate the soil, and all about the mountain from the base to the top, there are precipices covered for the most part with jungle. The Rajas ordinarily held this fortress with from 700 to 800 men, but at present it belongs to the Great Mogul, who acquired it by skill of that great Captain Mir Jumla of whom I have so often had occasion to speak. The last Raja left three sons who betrayed each other; the eldest was poisoned, the second attached himself to the court of the Great Mogul, who gave him the command of 4000 horse, and the youngest maintains his position in the country by paying tribute like his father. All the Kings of India, successors of Tamerlane, have besieged this place without being able to take it, and indeed two of these Kings died in the city of Sasaram.
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Travels In India (continued)
(via Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Travels In India / V Ball / Edited by William Crooke)
While the Messers. Fremlin and Francis Breton were Presidents at Surat on behalf of the English Company, a Jew named Edwards Ferdinand, a free merchant, that is to say not subject to any Company, combined with these two gentlemen, a short time after the mine was discovered, to purchase a stone. This stone was clean and of good form, and weighed 42 carats. Edward went to Europe, and Messers. Fremlin and Breton placed the stone in his hands to sell to the best advantage, and render an account to them. On his arrival at Leghorn he showed it to some Jew friends, who offered him 25000 piastres for it. But as he asked 30000 he was unable to let them have it, and took it to Venice to get it cut. It was well cut, without any injury, but upon being put upon the wheel it immediately broke into nine pieces. I myself was on one occasion deceived by one of these stones, which weighed 2 carats; it broke into small pieces on the wheel when it was only half finished.
A continuation of the Author’s Journeys to the Diamond Mines
I now come to the third mine, which is the most ancient of all, and is situated in the Kingdom of Bengal. You may call it by the name Soumelpour, which is a large town near to which the diamonds are found, or rather by the name Koel, which is that of the river in the sand of which they are found. The country through which this river has its course belongs to a Raja who was formerly a tributary of the Great Mogul, but withdrew from his allegiance during the wars between Shahjahan and Jahangir his father. Immediately on his coming to the throne Shahjahan sent to demand tribute and arrears of it from this Raja, and the Raja, as his property was not sufficient to discharge the whole, quitted the country and took refuge with his subjects in the mountains. Upon the news of the Raja’s first refusal, Shahjahan, who did not know that purposed to abscond, but believed that he intended to defend himself, sent an army into his country, where he was persuaded that he would find an abundance of diamonds. It happened otherwise, however, for those who were sent into the country of the Raja found neither diamonds, inhabitants, nor food, as the Raja had ordered all the grain which his subjects could not carry with them to be burnt, and this was so effectually done that the greater portion of Shahjahan’s army perished of famine. The final result of the matter was, that the Raja returned to his country on agreeing to pay a light annual tribute to the Great Mogul.
The following is the route to be followed from Agra to this mine: from Agra to Halabas, 130 coss; Halabas to Banarous, 33 coss; Banarous to Saseron, 4 coss. From Agra to Sasaram you travel eastwards, but between Sasaram and the mine you turn to the south and come first to a large town—21 coss. This town is that of the Raja of whom I have just spoken, to whom the country belongs which is traversed by the river in which the diamonds are found.
After this town the traveler reaches a fortress called Rohtas—4 coss. It is one of the strongest places in Asia, situated upon a mountain having six great bastions and twenty-seven pieces of cannon, with three trenches full of water in which there are good fish. There is but a single path by which to ascend the mountain, where there is a plain of half a league or so in area, on which corn and rice are cultivated. There are more than twenty springs which irrigate the soil, and all about the mountain from the base to the top, there are precipices covered for the most part with jungle. The Rajas ordinarily held this fortress with from 700 to 800 men, but at present it belongs to the Great Mogul, who acquired it by skill of that great Captain Mir Jumla of whom I have so often had occasion to speak. The last Raja left three sons who betrayed each other; the eldest was poisoned, the second attached himself to the court of the Great Mogul, who gave him the command of 4000 horse, and the youngest maintains his position in the country by paying tribute like his father. All the Kings of India, successors of Tamerlane, have besieged this place without being able to take it, and indeed two of these Kings died in the city of Sasaram.
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Travels In India (continued)
Friday, November 16, 2007
Innovations Networks
New business models: (via Knowledge @ Wharton) Here is an edited transcript of the conversation between Larry Huston + Knowledge @ Wharton on looking for ideas outside the company + other viewpoints @ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1837
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