Saturday, November 24, 2007
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
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