The Pre-Raphaelites

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that for the connoisseurs of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the ‘Old Masters’ began where in the opinion of today they end. We look upon Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Leonardo da Vinci as the end of a great school of painters; but our forefathers were inclined to regard them as the beginning of a great school. Their successors, men like Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), Domenichino (1581-1641), and Carlo Maratti (1625-1713), were at one time esteemed as Masters, though today we recognize that their art was decadent and debased. Cornelius and Overbeck were perfectly right in preferring the painters before Raphael to those who followed him, but they made the deadly error of merely imitating the pictures of the Italian Primitives, instead of going, as they they had done, direct to Nature. Thus the German painters made exactly the same mistake as the late Italian painters had done, and their art was sterile also for the same reason, because it was ‘soup of the soup,’ art based wholly on preceding art.

The effect of the early Christian painters on Ford Madox Brown was to cause him, not to imitate their work slavishly, but to look at Nature for himself, as they did. When he did look he perceived that Nature was far brighter than is appeared to be in the pictures of his British contemporaries. Since the time of Reynolds, Sir George Beaumont’s dictum that a good picture must be a brown picture had been the general opinion, and though certain landscape painters rebelled againts this doctrine as we have seen, no English figure painters made any serious stand against it till Ford Madox Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites began to exhibit.

How had this cult in brown pictures arisen? The explanation is very simple. Painters had observed that the pictures by the recognized great masters, Rembrandt, Titian, Tintoretto, etc., were usually brown in tone, but this brownness was often due, not only to the pigments originally used by the masters, but also to the grime of centuries, to the ‘tone of time.’ Seeking to be praised as ‘Old Masters’ in their own lifetime, painters used artificial means to make their pictures look brown, and were in the habit of painting on a brown bituminous ground in order to give to their pictures a fictitious quality of golden brown light and ‘Rembrandtesque’ shadow. For Madox Brown reversed the general practice of his day by painting his pictures on a white ground, and immediately his color became brighter and truer to Nature.

By the time he was back in England in 1846, Madox Brown had come independently to very much the same conclusions that Hunt and Millais were now whispering to one another, and he had begun to adopt a method of painting very similar to that subsequently practised by the Brotherhood, to whom we must now return.

The Pre-Raphaelites (continued)

Coral Reefs

I found the IYOR campaign about the value and importance of coral reefs and threats to their sustainability educational and useful.

Useful links:
www.iyor.org
www.wri.org

Synaptic Self

Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux is a wonderful book with beautiful insights on how the brain works + I liked it.

European Jewelry: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:

7. The Victorian Period

There was nothing even remotely reminiscent of the classic about a wasp waist, enormous puffed sleeves and wide skirts.

The year 1837 brough Victoria to the English throne, and whether or not that royal lady was responsible for the attitude of mind that marked her reign, the term ‘Victorian’ has come to mean a certain point of view and code of manners. It was the age of romance, or rather, it might be called the age of romantic posing—the day when sweet Alice wept with delight when you gave her a smile and trembled with fear at your frown. Sensibilities were cultivated to excess, and the perfect lady was expected to faint gracefully on the slightest provocation. By the same token men were under obligation chivalrously to protect and guide delicate, fragile, and preferably unintelligent womanhood. ‘Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever.’

Jewelry faithfully followed the trend. The cameo still held a place but rather as a demure jewel of refinement than because of its classic origin. The lapidary of the period supplied his customers with designs based on the Greek but prettified to meet the taste of the day. In accordance with the sentiment of chivalry there was a revival of Gothic design—knights in full armor, elegant lords and ladies of King Arthur’s Court made their romantic way back to earth in miniature on jewels of the period. And as crowning victory of sentiment in ornament came hair jewelry, more elaborate than that which had existed, to a limited extent, in former times. Further details concerning it will be given when we discuss the American version of ‘hairwork’.

Plastic Deformation + Cathode Luminescence In Diamond

I found the article by Hisao Kanda + Hiroshi Kitawaki + Ahmadjan Abduriym on the concept of plastic deformation in treated diamonds via HPHT treatment @ http://www.gaaj-zenhokyo.co.jp/researchroom/2004/2004_03-01en.html useful.

Anthony d'Offay

As an act of artistic philanthropy, the London dealer Anthony d'Offay is giving over almost his entire collection - now conservatively valued at £125m - for the price he paid originally to the nation + Good for the art world!

Useful links:
http://www.doffay.com/artists/index.html
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2260249,00.html

The Outsider

The book The Outsider by Albert Camus (Author) + Joseph Laredo (Translator) is thought-provoking + wonderfully descriptive with many layers of meaning + I liked it.

Random Thoughts

Liars figure, but figures don't lie.