The Garden of Earthly Delights

Hieronymus Bosch was an Early Netherlandish painter of the fifteen and sixteen century. He is well known for his use of artistic imagery to illustrate moral and religious concepts and narratives. One of his most important work is "The Garden of Earthy Delights" which is housed in Museo del Predo in Madrid since 1939 because in the late sixteenth-century, Philip II of Spain purchased most of Bosch's paintings is a triptych made with vivid colors and it was probably intended to illustrate the history of mankind according to medieval Christian doctrine.
Little is known about him and his training since he didn't leave any notebooks or diaries. Because of this reason, it was never easy for academicians to make interpretations about his work and they have often arrived at contradictory interpretations.
Art historian Walter Gibson argues the fact that Bosch's paintings is a world of dreams and nightmares in which form seem to flicker and change before our eyes.
The reason why I am writing about Bosch is that I recently found out an animation film based on Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights painting from a Spanish director. According to Juan Ibanez, the director, the experimental short film hopes to delve into the timelessness of the metaphor as an element of sensitive communication; in how the stories and the data of human experience are interpreted and shown in the artistic act.
The film's pedagogic interest lies in the possibility of offering a new vision of the work of art that is closer to the current visual education which highlights the movement and action over the static-ness of traditional painting. On the other hand, it allows for a deeper comprehension of the symbols which infer and draw closer artistic perceptions from different eras and artistic manifestations.
The teaser of the short animation film can be found at this link:
http://www.elboscomovie.com

Barry Lyndon

Barry Lyndon directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1975 is a film based on the novel "The Luck of Barry Lyndon" by William Makepeace Thackeray. It is about an Irish adventurer on the eighteenth century, his rise and fall in the English society.
The way Kubrick photographed it fascinates me. He wanted to contradict with the conventional way of lighting which is used in dominant cinema and he wanted to get a different feeling for this particular piece. He wanted to achieve photography without electric lighting which meant to be shot with candle lights.
In order to do that, they worked specifically with faster lenses developed by Zeiss for NASA for moon landing. These lenses were super - fast 50 mm. F/0.70 lenses especially developed for low light situations. The lenses had huge apertures and allowed Kubrick and cinematographer to shoot scenes lit with actual candles to an average lighting volume of only three candlepower , "recreating the huddle and glow of a pre-electrical age."
The result seemed potentially more realistic, the method gave a particular period look to the film which is very similar to to eighteenth century paintings, particularly owing a lot to William Hogarth with whom Thackeray had always been fascinated.
William Hogarth was a major English painter, printmaker, social critic who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art.

It is said for Barry Lyndon that the film is consciously a museum piece, its characters pinned to the frame like butterflies.

Worker and Collective Farm Woman

The Worker and Collective Farm Woman was created by Vera Mukhina in 1936 in Moscow. It is a gigantic stainless group of a worker and a collective farmer for the Soviet Economic Achievement Exhibition of 1936. It was so impressive that it became for the Soviet consciousness almost the Russian equivalent of the Statue of Liberty.
What really impresses me in this work is the male and female being together fighting for the same goal. The same can be seen in Russian Constructivist who included both men and women in their work. Constructivism in Russia was mostly influenced by Italian Futurism but they did not possess the same value or violent hostile to the idea of woman creativity. For several reasons, women played a very important role in the Russian avant - garde of the revolutionary years. First of all, the Revolution made a deep impact on Russian society. The other reason for that was the Constructivism which pushed the limits of visual arts, drew artistic practice into areas, such as textile design, which were mostly practiced by women.
In the year 1947, the sculpture became the symbol of the Russian "Mosfilm" Studio. It is maybe the oldest and biggest film studio in Europe and Russia. Commonly considered greatest film directors of Soviet like Eisenstein and Tarkovky and japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosowa have all produced films in that studio.

On the official website of the studio, it is indicated that the majority of motion pictures on the market are created by the studios on Mosfilm premises, which are led by famous Russian cinematographers Vadim Abdrashytov, Valentin Chernykh, Georgy Danelia, Svetlana Druzhinina, Andrey Eshpai, Sergei Govorukhin, Sergei Kolosov, Vladimir Menshov, Vladimir Naumov, Gleb Panfilov, Sergei Soloviov, Alla Surikova etc.
Still today, Mosfilm continue to expand as a film studio and it accommodates state of art technologies, non stop film productions, experienced creative professionals working in all over aspects of film making from pre - production to post - production and a rare collection such as weaponry props since the time of eigtheen century to now, tanks, costumes and landscapes.
The famous symbol of Worker and Collective Farm Woman was appeared for the first time in 1947, in the film "Spring" by Grigoriy Alexandrov.
The website of the Mosfilm can be visited in this link:
http://eng.mosfilm.ru/

The Quest To Regain Egypt's Antiquities

One of the first artifacts that visitors see in the entrance of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo is a fake. It is a reproduction of the Rosetta Stone and unfortunately it is not the only replica.
Today I found out on BBC News that Egyptian Archeologists will travel to the Louvre Museum to collect five ancient fresco fragments stolen from a tomb in the Vally of the Kings in the 1980's but it is reported that there are many other stolen antiquities which they also want back.
The original Rosetta Stone is kept in British Museum. The Stone dates back to 196 BC and was very important for the modern decipherment of the hieroglyphics because it has two Egyptian language scripts (hieroglyphs and demotic) and one in classical Greek. It was discovered by the french in 1799 and given to the English under the terms of the treaty of Alexandria is one the most high profile items that Egypt's chief archeologist would like returned.
Another artifacts that they wish to be returned is the 3,500-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti, wife of the famous Pharaoh Akhenaten that I mentioned before in this blog.
It is also reported in BBC News that thousands of artifacts were spirited out of Egypt during the period of colonial rule and afterwards by archeologists, adventurers and thieves. According to a 1972 United Nations agreement, artifacts are the property of their country of origin and pieces smuggled out must be returned.
"I am very happy that story became very big because this will warn every museum all over the world not to buy stolen artifacts," says Mr Hawass. (Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities) "This will preserve the heritage not only of Egypt but of whole World."

Interiors by Woody Allen

I recently saw the film "Interiors" by Wood Allen which was released in 1978. The film is considered to be Bergmanesque which means that it has been largely influenced by Bergman films which the director doesn't hesitate to agree with the idea. I find the film very important in the sense that I thought that the whole film was an attempt to make a large definition of art or history of art.It is about personal feelings (interiors) that we all possess as individuals and it is about how hard it is to find a way to express ourselves. It is about a family, three sisters, a mother and a father, and sister's husbands. The father is a successful lawyer in New York and he is in his late sixties. The mother is interested in art in general and because of that all his daughters are somehow related to art business. The older sister is a poem writer who is very successful at what she does, the other sister doesn't really know what to do but she is looking for a way to express her feelings through several mediums and the elder sister is an actress who appears mostly on television serials and B movies. One day, the father, suddenly decides to leave her wife and go on by his own. Devastated by the idea, the mother goes into depression and tries to kill herself several times. And the relations in the family becomes very complicated. In a way, the mother wants her husband back but the father already meets with someone and decides to marry her.
Now you may ask, what has got all of these to do with art. Actually, I am much more interested in oral references that the film provides us. During the film, we hear the characters talking about Henri Matisse, African Masks, Ancient Greek Architectures and churches in Europe. And I believe that these are the essential key points that the director wants us to look at.
When the father and the mother first meet after their separation, the mother mentions about the exhibition of a Matisse painting in New York. In 1908, Matisse wrote "A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose itself upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject matter." That was one of the first overt claims that an artist's responsibility is only to himself and that he is bound by no rules in seeking to express himself.


But is this what the father wanted? Let's try to understand his new girlfriend which he is about to marry. The first time he introduces his girlfriend to his daughters, they are shocked by her relaxed and open behavior and that makes them sick. The reason why is because the daughters cannot be that open minded and free in expressing whatever they like to say. The women unlike them is not sophisticated intellectuality but knows how to enjoy life, how to dance, how to drink and eat. And in a particular time, the father mentions her passion to the African Masks and talks about her collections. Now if we think about African art and masks in general, we will understand that most them influenced impressionism and therefore modernism. Artists such as Picasso for example were also collectors of African Masks because they were in fact fascinated by the way they found ways to express themselves, for them what was important was not representing the reality but the reality they saw or imagine. There work was based on essentials and they were mostly abstract. For this subject matter, I believe it is very important to read the first chapters of "The Story of Art" by Gombrich to get a better understanding.


Later on, in the diner, the couple mentions about their trip to Greece, Athens. And the women later adds that she has been in Europe before and visited all the churches and she was sick of it. But she was fascinated by the architecture of Athens. We all know that for years in Europe, churches had great impact in art making. It was only after the churches lost their power in the eighteen century that art became a more self centered craft. Therefore I find very important to look at the scene where the father declares that he is going to marry with someone else. There are in the church.

Futurism and Sport Design

The movement of Futurism was an artistic and social movement which was launched in Paris (even though it is completely Italian) with a document "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism" published in Le Figaro on 20 February, 1909. The Manifesto was written by the Italian poet Flippo Tomasso Marinetti.
"Then the silence deepened. But, as we listened to the old canal muttering its feeble prayers and the creaking bones of sickly palaces above their damp green beards, under the windows we suddenly heard the famished roar of automobiles."
We affirm that the world's splendor has been enriched by a new beauty, the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath - a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot - is more beautiful that the "Victory of Samothrace."
I wrote some of the passages from the manifesto which I find very important to summarize the whole idea. Futurism, in fact, was against the idea of the Italian past. They celebrated the love of speed, technology and violence. For them, what was essential was the technological triumph of man over nature.
One of the important artist of the movement was the sculptor and the painter Umberto Boccioni with his work Unique of Continuity in Past (1913). Boccioni's works represented a style of movement and a new dynamic concept. He wanted shapes to suggest motion and movement. The shapes created by Boccioni is seen as the precursor to the aerodynamics elements used today in sport design: sport cars, motor cycles, helmets and ski boots. They influenced future aerodynamics shapes, polimaterics, style and inventions which I find very interesting.
For more info, you can check the website below.
http://www.montebellunadistrict.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=25&Itemid=31

The Virtual Museum of Iraq

The National Museum of Iraq, also known as Baghdad Archeological Museum was established in 1926 by the British traveler and author Gertrude Bell. Bell along with T.E. Lawrence, helped to define the outline of the modern state of Iraq. She had a major role during the Arab revolt in World War I and she proposed borders within Mesopotamia to include the three Ottoman Empire villayets that later became Iraq.
The National Museum of Iraq's collections are among the most important in the world because of the archeological riches of Mesopotamia. It contains important artifacts from the over 5'000 year of history of Mesopotamia. It was closed in 1991 during the Gulf War, and was not re-opened until April 28, 2000, on the birthday of Saddam Hussein.
In 2003, thousands of artifacts and collections were looted during the Iraq War even though several antiquities experts and representatives from the American Council for Cultural Policy asked Pentagon and the UK government to ensure the museum safety from both combat and looting. U.S. forces did avoid bombing the site and the museum.
The Virtual Museum of Iraq offers visitors the opportunity to move through eight visual galleries and see highlights from the collection from Prehistoric, Sumerian, Akkadian and Neo - Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Achaemenid and Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian and Islamic. There are also animated video clips, texts and 3d representations of the artifacts which I think makes it very interesting. What I really liked was the terracotta lions from the Babylonian Hole, there are actually two and are thought to be from separate periods. They actually show how terracotta was used for architectural decorations instead of more valuable materials like metal and stone. They are situated in the short staircase of the temple Nisaba and Haja.
You can access the virtual museum by this link and discover the Mesopotamia online!

http://www.virtualmuseumiraq.cnr.it/

Vincent van Gogh - Bedroom in Arles

Van Gogh was a Dutch Post-impressionist painter who had great influence on the twentieth century modern art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. First of all, I find this work very important because in some of the letters he wrote for his brother, he explains all his choices he made for this painting. In his writings, he examine all the process he went through and talks about deeply his purpose of distorting the perspective in order to get the feeling he wanted. He says "I had a new idea in my head and here is the sketch of it... This time it's just simply my bedroom, only here color is to do everything, and, giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, to look at the picture ought to rest the brain or rather the imagination."
Van Gogh did not really care about the exact represantion of the room but he was looking for something different. He wanted to convey the feeling of rest to his audiences and in order to do that, he didn't care about the perspective or the exaggeration of the colors. He did not really aim for the photographically exact picture of nature. Van Gogh just wanted to express what he felt.
"And that is all - there is nothing in this room with closed shutters. The broad lines of furniture, again must express absolute rest. Portraits of the wall, and a mirror and a towell and some clothes..."
It is known that the door on the left served the guest room he held prepared for Gauguin.

Akhenaten shook the iron bars of the Egyptian style. He was the king in the period of "The New Kingdom" which was founded after the invasion of Egypt. He forced his religion reforms on his people. He considered and worshipped only one God "Aten"
Styles of art belonging to this period was different from other Egyptian art. His portrait, for exemple, show him as an ugly man, in a naturalistic way. Gombrich argues that he wanted the artists to portray him in all his human frailty or, perhaps, he was so convinced of his unique importance as a prophet that he insisted on a true likeness.
It was also a very important figure for scholars such as Freud for his book Moses and Monotheism.


Akhenaten here, with his wife Nefertiti and his children. It is also a question whether Nefertiti's beauty is idealism or portraiture. For the only time in the Egyptian royal art, Akhenaten's family are portrayed in naturalistic activities while they were showing affections to each other. This must have shocked the Egyptians of his day by their novelty says Gombrich.

Simplicity

Portrait Head - Found in Giza

This is something that I have found while I was doing some research about the Ancient Egypt. What attracts me in this sculpture is that the sculptor was only concerned with the essentials. In a way, he was trying to portray death or was trying to represent the idea of a death person after life. These sculptures were put in a tomb and this one was actually found in Giza. In this portrait every detail is left out. Gombrich says "The observation of nature, and the regularity of the whole, are so eveny balanced that they impress us as being lifelike and yet remote and enduring."

Alexander the Great & Lysippos

“Don’t you dare defend him!” shouted the King. “I summoned Aristotle here to educate him. I commissioned Lysippos to sculpt his image, I minted coins bearing his portrait. Do you understand what all that means? No, my child, the insult and the injury have been to great, too much…”
Lysippos was the personal sculpture of Alexander the Great chosen by his father, Phillip II of Macedon. He was considered one of the greatest sculptor of the classical Greek era, bringing transition into the Hellenistic period.