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Post by cato on Jun 28, 2021 10:52:14 GMT
Beyond all the media hype about who will or will not be at the unveiling of the Princess Diana sculpture this week,I just can't wait to see what the darn thing is going to look like. Its funny how they never go all crazy abstract for high profile sculptures.
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Post by Séamus on Jul 15, 2021 12:22:00 GMT
I'm not sure how many people expected the Diana sculpture to incorporate three representative children of different ethnicities (maybe reparation for Princess Michael's love of blackamoor creations),but,ultimately, it would have to suit Kensington grounds more than a helmet and landmine-detector in bronze (just something that went through my own head). No doubt Mrs Sussex saw symbolism in the toppling of her mother-in-law's statue by indigenous Canadians and their supporters the same week... and removal of General Lee shortly after. And,while postBrexit England's presence in the Euro finals were bound to further ignite the never-distant flames of politics in sport, the strange twist that made the match's politics a racism issue rather than an EU one,street murals at the symbolic forefront,was perhaps symptomatic of the times,for better or worse, also. As for HRH herself- it's easy to use someone as a progressive image when they're no longer alive to give an opinion.
Australia Post recently issued a stamp series to honour (covid) 'Frontline Heroes'. The artist decided that one, depicting hospital staff,would focus mostly on a doctor wearing a hijab. Hijab-wearing medical professionals certainly exist but are as far from being representative as,say for one example, Catholic religious these days (Mother Aikenhead's Sisters, seemingly such an issue of controversy in Ireland at present,were the first ever congregation present in Australia- most major cities on the east coast have a St Vincent's Hospital; trivia: Kylie Minogue had her breast cancer treated in Melbourne's).
It might have meant little beyond the second or two that it takes to send a letter,but for the contrarian consideration that Western Australia became the second state in the country to allow 'assisted suicide',with Queensland now considering it,just as a stamp issue was released lauding mask-wearing frontliners (whom, it's presumed are primarily protecting the elderly and infirm from covid) one of which witnesses to monotheistic faith. Do they realise that multiculturalism can and does assume that ethics are still respected in society?
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Post by Séamus on Aug 19, 2021 2:45:37 GMT
One news service has today pointed to the desolate,largely-colourless painting Remnants of an Army by Lady Elizabeth (Thompson) Butler, a painting of a lone army-man of British-Indian troops (actually a medic) retreating from defeat in Kabul,which she probably painted before her long residence in central Ireland after becoming Catholic. A reminder that western empires have always had difficulties in Afghanistan.
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Post by Tomas on Aug 23, 2021 17:58:00 GMT
Last weeks I've indulged in some of the major online auctions, mostly looking for one or other older painting and finding several presumtive highlight bargains. Three attempts have failed so far. Two fine Swedish landscape painters, one late 19th century from close to where I live and the other a little later, would have cost around 400£ each if bidding had got on further. Last chance was close to a fabulous bargain and shameful to say it grues me still a week after I didn't buy it. It was an aquarel on paper of late 19th century by the once famous artist Fritz von Dardel, an immigrant from Swiss aristocracy who married a Lady from the very foremost family in the whole country, namely the Lewenhaupt. That one went for only about 60£! It was small size, 20x20 cm or so, but would have been very nice to have up, and there is no clue why it came so easy a bargain. Now to my question: how much would you value a thing like this? in comparison to say a rare book or some curiosity, would you find auctioneer paintings or antique things at surprisingly low price worth much more because of the sheer feeling? I think this kind of stuff is like a pleasant area to discover, like a calm contrast to all the boring politics and viruses and vaccinations pseudo-hype.
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Post by cato on Aug 23, 2021 20:25:02 GMT
Last weeks I've indulged in some of the major online auctions, mostly looking for one or other older painting and finding several presumtive highlight bargains. Three attempts have failed so far. Two fine Swedish landscape painters, one late 19th century from close to where I live and the other a little later, would have cost around 400£ each if bidding had got on further. Last chance was close to a fabulous bargain and shameful to say it grues me still a week after I didn't buy it. It was an aquarel on paper of late 19th century by the once famous artist Fritz von Dardel, an immigrant from Swiss aristocracy who married a Lady from the very foremost family in the whole country, namely the Lewenhaupt, That one went for only about 60£! It was small size, 20x20 cm or so, but would have been very nice to have up, and there is no clue why it came so easy a bargain. Now to my question: how much would you value a thing like this? in comparison to say a rare book or some curiosity, would you find auctioneer paintings or antique things at surprisingly low price worth much more because of the sheer feeling? I think this kind of stuff is like a pleasant area to discover, like a calm contrast to all the boring politics and viruses and vaccinations pseudo-hype. I would love to collect some original art if I had spare cash. I spend too much on books.
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Post by Tomas on Nov 26, 2021 17:33:24 GMT
This is what made my day yesterday: The Irish item in a series of 15 countries! It´s by renowned Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd, the man who "invented" the Penrose Triangle (that was done in his late teens!) and then delevoped further even. Extraordinarily skilled in making his numerous so called impossible figures, often shown and well recognised for over half a century. An outstanding achievement with several works of similar bewilderment.
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Post by Séamus on Feb 6, 2022 12:07:47 GMT
As Elizabeth becomes the first British monarch to celebrate a platinum jubilee it might be remarked that popular labels can be remarkably artless. Victoria,like her descendant,also spent her decades on the throne making sure that she was still relevant enough to reign even if she did not rule. The present Queen has probably worked much harder at this (her father,due to world events,possibly worked even harder during his short reign than either of them.) And yet stylistically there'll always be a Victorian era,never a second Elizabethan (or third Georgian one.)
Changes in historical perception can be seen in the most famous classical painting of one today's feasts- The Martyrdom of the Franciscan Saints at Nagasaki (Tanzio daVarallo 1627, for the first beatification from the group). There seems to have been less interest than now in Paul Miki, notwithstanding the remarkable witness of a native Japanese Jesuit in such an early era of Christianity in the country.
It's not the drama in the foreground that seems to make the image so ethereal, rather the backdrop of men tied to crosses with a symmetry that somehow brings WWII death camps to mind, some already getting speared. And the murky to dark sky- even the mandatory heavenly beams are a ember-red in the reproductions I have. Jesuits and Franciscans were often on seperate poles of thought;in Nagasaki they all get slaughtered and the sky reflects this apocalypse. No point in turning on each other during apocalypse, something that can and should be carried away from meditation on this particular work.
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Feb 6, 2022 12:50:18 GMT
As Elizabeth becomes the first British monarch to celebrate a platinum jubilee it might be remarked that popular labels can be remarkably artless. Victoria,like her descendant,also spent her decades on the throne making sure that she was still relevant enough to reign even if she did not rule. The present Queen has probably worked much harder at this (her father,due to world events,possibly worked even harder during his short reign than either of them.) And yet stylistically there'll always be a Victorian era,never a second Elizabethan (or third Georgian one.) Changes in historical perception can be seen in the most famous classical painting of one today's feasts- The Martyrdom of the Franciscan Saints at Nagasaki (Tanzio daVarallo 1627, for the first beatification from the group). There seems to have been less interest than now in Paul Miki, notwithstanding the remarkable witness of a native Japanese Jesuit in such an early era of Christianity in the country. It's not the drama in the foreground that seems to make the image so ethereal, rather the backdrop of men tied to crosses with a symmetry that somehow brings WWII death camps to mind, some already getting speared. And the murky to dark sky- even the mandatory heavenly beams are a ember-red in the reproductions I have. Jesuits and Franciscans were often on seperate poles of thought;in Nagasaki they all get slaughtered and the sky reflects this apocalypse. No point in turning on each other during apocalypse, something that can and should be carried away from meditation on this particular work. I never saw it before but I just had a look. It's a powerful picture all right.
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Post by Séamus on Mar 25, 2022 12:04:02 GMT
"A thief has broken into the Basilica of St Nicholas in the southern Italian city of Bari, stealing a gold ring from a finger of a statue of the saint whose remains attract many Russian pilgrims. Video surveillance cameras showed a hooded and masked man breaking open a metal gate to gain entrance to the Basilica before dawn..." (original news source not cited by paper)
It's not the first time the Saint has been newsworthy enough to gatecrash Easter. I can remember a priest making mention of his feast on Good Friday,making a point that the Belgian St Nicholases distributing sweets in December are sometimes required to go sans Latin crosses of any kind (ie pectoral cross or decorating crozier/mitre) so as not to offend Islamic communities. The fact that the 'commons' in the traditional missal gives special prominence to Statuit,mass of martyrs and bishops,shows that the two things were considered synonymous. While it's still not any easy job in the Twenty-first Century,even for the modern-type, hopefully it's not just the plaster and stained glass bishops standing firm.
I recently became aware of Bartolomé Murillo's Saint Roderigo (1650). For a priest who grew up in a warring and divided family (some following Islam in pre-El Cid Spain) and who was eventually beheaded,the work seems gentle and romantic in the extreme, the palm-clutching saint frightfully innocent. But the image still speaks of heroic clergy,perhaps with domestic situations closer to 2022 than the 1600s. The elaborate vestments are the centre- art within art- with two apostles depicted on the chasuble. I remember being told once that a particular set of Roman vestments I was pulling out of a drawer were 'Spanish'. I see here that a pear-shaped cut was the particular Spanish style since Murillo's time at least.... Rodrigo of Córdoba lived centuries earlier,I'm not sure how good the artist was with his historicity,but fans of 'the plain' will be relieved that at the contrasting simple white alb with minimal lace.
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Post by Séamus on Apr 5, 2022 12:33:40 GMT
Modern tradition has made Isidore of Seville (feast- April 4) a patron of internet. Going by Murillo's 1655 depiction (apparently for Seville cathedral) it's hard to imagine somebody who's more attached to physical books; Isidore seems totally weighed down by his enormous gold cope and his heavy duty volumes. An irony here that the forms of him and his brother are more often seen these days outlined in the most scientifically streamlined of garments- the sports jersey (whether or not many SevilleFC fans find time to remember this....) For some reason older brother St Leander is painted in the same series in a much plainer getup by Bartolomé- the cope could easily be seen in the no-frills Vatican of 2022. Murillo either had extremely intimate knowledge of the differentiating tastes of two bishops who'd died a millennium before or had a desire to test his skill depicting various fabrics and decided that this skill should grace the cathedral.
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Post by Tomas on Apr 6, 2022 8:07:23 GMT
Modern tradition has made Isidore of Seville (feast- April 4) a patron of internet. Going by Murillo's 1655 depiction (apparently for Seville cathedral) it's hard to imagine somebody who's more attached to physical books; Isidore seems totally weighed down by his enormous gold cope and his heavy duty volumes. An irony here that the forms of him and his brother are more often seen these days outlined in the most scientifically streamlined of garments- the sports jersey (whether or not many SevilleFC fans find time to remember this....) For some reason older brother St Leander is painted in the same series in a much plainer getup by Bartolomé- the cope could easily be seen in the no-frills Vatican of 2022. Murillo either had extremely intimate knowledge of the differentiating tastes of two bishops who'd died a millennium before or had a desire to test his skill depicting various fabrics and decided that this skill should grace the cathedral. Interesting aspects! Master Murillo no doubt with many ideas behind him while composing the paintings.
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Post by Séamus on May 20, 2022 12:21:59 GMT
"A typical day meant getting up before dawn and with a 55 pound rucksack,walking anything from 3-12 miles to where the bonobos had spent the night. They would sit down and wait until the sun came up...other hardships included the sweat bees that formed clouds around their heads... thousands of termites that would invade any packs...honeybees that were attracted to the sweat...."
Reading a companion book this week to a BBC wildlife series (life story2012),it was interesting,after all going through all the masterful images and the ever-surprising information one never exhausts with it comes to animals,to read the final chapter which dealt with the human toll for the photography and film crews. There happened to be three saints celebrated by the Franciscan family this week who were poor, comparatively-uneducated lay-brothers,Paschal (1962 missal), Felix (Capuchins) and Crispin (a John Paul canonization). I'm not sure that anyone else would make a connection,but a thread of 'lesser celebrated men who do the hard miles' came to mind. Appropriately an announcement came from Rome this week removing obstacles for Rev.Brothers to govern mostly-clerical communities;I suspect today's unordained religious are more often St Celestine (celebrated yesterday also in the extraordinary form): making the 'great refusal' to something they feel uncalled to,than men who started life too far down the ladder as in days of old.
Discussing the woes of brilliant nature photographers/cameramen isn't unprecedented for us readers- Attenborough has highlighted the fourth-wall of nature film in his several memoirs- but this particular book's descriptions and images of digging a temporary camp out of a snow drift or filming a fish off a small Japanese island before a typhoon starts adds a new dimension or dimensions to masterpieces like the shot of an emerald-and-sapphire-coloured hummingbird drinking from a magenta orchid or the Okavango lioness gracefully pouncing through the creek at twilight.
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Post by Séamus on Aug 24, 2022 9:26:47 GMT
"The Horniman Museum in southeast London will hand back it's 72 Benin bronzes, held in Britain for more than a century,after a unanimous decision by trustees...the move is the first by a UK government-funded museum to say it will give back it's haul from Benin,which is now Edo state, Nigeria. And it raises questions about the future of objects held in other collections,not least the disputed Elgin Marbles at the British Museum" (international express recently)
Another reason for people to glue themselves to Vatican Museum artefacts. Perhaps an explanation why one of the figures in the new Frs Finucane memorial in Limerick appears to be clinging to a wall, possibly in fear of being sent to Biafra also?
Whatever one's thoughts on returning the amazing,if terrifying, sixteenth century war trophies to Africa,it does serve as a reminder of the responsibilities that we'd expect of governments,world empires not excepted;for me this was brought to mind recently by a modern icon of Emperor Karl Hapsburg I came across on a prayer card (Alexander Schelechow iconographer). The ethereal royal is flanked by two angels,both apparently in competition to crown him before the other. One seems to have the royal crown of St Stephen, the other holds the Crown of Thorns. Not a bad symbol of responsibilities, counterbalanced by the dignity of divine anointing for the role,in this case about a man born in an era that must have seemed apocalyptic. We hear so much of rights and freedoms in all corners of society today;a pity more don't meditate on the other side of the coin- the responsibilities that are inevitably part of rights of whatever sort.
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Post by Séamus on Nov 11, 2022 12:02:11 GMT
Pity about the eggs. Charles III has unveiled the first sculpture of his mother since her death. Significant, as death can make a subject more legendary. Significant, as, being on the facade of a cathedral, possibly making it the first image of Elizabeth that borders on being sacred art. At any rate- the artist did a good job at making her look imposing and dignified without hiding the great age that she died at.
I hadn't realised until his feast yesterday that the death of Andrew Avellino, perhaps a largely forgotten figure except for those who attend the traditional mass on November 10, was a popular episode for artists at one stage. And why not?- an elaborately decorated patriarchal figure collapsing during the full splendor of tridentine liturgy seems especially suited to religious art, from masterpieces like two painters named Cignaroli and Garbi who depicted Andrew in aesthetic swoon to simple prayer cards. His 88 years for the seventeenth century could well be comparable to the Queen's lifespan. Domenico Fiasella decided that Avellino should still be standing in his gold vestments, but curiously, in reproductive prints at least, the chalice veil and frontal are dark, even black; an artist of the era would hardly do this by mistake- it may be symbolic of both death and resurrection.
I found myself comparing these with a Thérèse prayer card I only came across this week, produced by Meath's Silverstream Priory a few years ago. The photo of St Thérèse posing as sacristan is common, but the beauty of nineteenth century black-and-white photography somehow stands out in the Silverstream print in a stunning way. Her face mesmerises. And how strange to see this nun who has a strange spiritual longing to be a missionary priest filling a ciborium, knowing now that she would become the youngest person named as a Doctor of the Church- an honour unheard on an official level of for unordained saints in her time.
Although his earthly career was more a more illustrious one than that of an average Carmelite, St Avellino too would well have experienced the pains of being an ageing priest; no need for reminder of how difficult life often was for the Little Flower during her short time as a nun. Looking at both faces, the portrait and the other-worldly gaze from the photo, light shines on the interior agonies of life: St Andrew died of a stroke as many octogenarians still do. Unexceptionable and 'Little' also.
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Post by Tomas on Dec 14, 2022 9:42:34 GMT
I am bidding on this one at an auction today. Main doubt has been aroused about the greenish colour of the sheep wool. Could it ever be seen this nuance in light rain? I don´t know what to make of this. The title of the painting is "Sheep hill at Gränna". Gränna is the name of a small town surrounded by pastures. Artist is David Wallin (1876-1957). The sheeps in the scenery are seen very small, near the middle a little to the left just down the hill top.
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