Documenta

Ivory Pomegranate

2012-01-30T11:26:00.028+05:00

The Ivory Pomegranate is a thumb-sized decorative object acquired by the Israel Museum. A Hebrew inscription is engraved around the shoulder of the thumb-size pomegranate that reads, "Holy to the priests, (belonging) to the Temple of [Yahwe]h."

Some researchers believe it adorned the High Priest sceptre within the Holy of Holies. They also consider it a genuine artifact proving the existence of Solomon's Temple.

The Ivory Pomegranate is a small ornamental bone object engraved with a short inscription in paleo-Hebrew. The inscription is inscribed in circular fashion along the shoulders of the pomegranate which is the shape of the fruit in blossom stage.

The ivory pomegranate is a priceless Semitic artifact from 13th century BCE and its inscription probably dates from the 8th century BCE.

The pomegranate was popular as a cultic object and was not unique to the worship of Yahweh.

The thumb-sized ivory pomegranate measuring 44 millimetres (1.7 in) in height, bears an ancient Hebrew inscription that reads, depending on the point chosen as the beginning in the circular inscription, "Belonging to the Temple [literally 'house'] of ---h, holy to the priests" or "Sacred donation for the priests of [or 'in'] the Temple [literally 'house'] of ---h".

Inscription on the ivory pomegranate

"[Belonging] to the Temple of [Yahwe]h, consecrated to the priests"

Inscribed Pomegranate from Solomon's Temple
Ivory, 8th century BCE
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

The thumb-sized pomegranate is believed to be the only existent relic from Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. Around the shoulder of the pomegranate there is a carefully incised inscription in early Hebrew characters, part of which is broken off, which reads: "qodes kohanim I-beyt [yahwe]h". "Sacred donation for the priests of (in) the House of [Yahwe]h." "House of Yahweh" most probably refers to the Temple in Jerusalem. The pomegranate was Solomon's favorite motif and decorated the capitals of the two freestanding columns at the entrance to the Temple in Jerusalem (1 Kings 7:21).

An Amazing Artifact. The tiny ivory pomegranate is an ancient relic and can be seen on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. If you ever visit the museum, just ask for the pomegranate. Everyone knows exactly where it is kept, under high tech surveillance. Postcards and small jewelry items of the pomegranate are available in the museum store. A little booklet accompanies the jewelry with the following inscription: "This piece of jewelry is an actual-size replica of an ivory pomegranate, dating to the 8th century BCE, probably a remnant from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, the only existing artifact from the First Temple known to us today. The ancient Hebrew inscription reads: Belonging to the Temple of (Yahveh) Holy to the Priests." (Discovery News, 2006).

References
André Lemaire, "Une inscription paleo-hebraique sur grenade en ivoire," Revue Biblique, Vol. 88, pp. 236-239.
_____. "Probable Head of Priestly Scepter from Solomon’s Temple Surfaces in Jerusalem," Biblical Archaeology Review, January-February 1984
Don D. Srail, Pomegranate or Almond Bud, 19.1.1997
Is This Inscription Fake?, Biblical Archaeology Review, September-October 2007
Yitzhak Roman, Text on a Pomegranate, Case no. 482/04, District Court, Jerusalem: Expert's Opinion, The Institute for Technology and Forensic Consulting Ltd., 10.12.2008
Leading Israeli Scientist Declares Pomegranate Inscription Authentic, Biblical Archaeology Review, 16 December 2008

Kuntillet Ajrud

2012-01-29T12:25:00.020+05:00

Kuntillet Ajrud is a 9th-8th century BCE site in the northeast part of the Sinai peninsula.[1] It is frequently described as a shrine, but this is not certain.[2]

The site was investigated in 1975-76. The fortress-like main building is divided into two rooms, one large and the other small, both with low benches. Both rooms contained various paintings and inscriptions on the walls and on two large water-jars ("pithoi"), one found in each room. The paintings on the pithoi show various animals, stylised trees, and human figures, some of which may represent gods. They appear to have been done over a fairly considerable period and by several different artists, and do not form coherent scenes. The iconography is entirely Syrian/Phoenician and lacks any connection to the Egyptian models commonly found in Palestinian art.[3]

Ceramic fragment
Kuntillet Ajrud, Negev, 9th century BCE
Motifs painted on a jar known as "Pithos A"

The inscriptions are in a mix of Phoenician and Hebrew script. The unique Hebrew inscriptions can be divided unto several types: inscriptions incised on pottery vessels before, or after, firing; inscriptions incised on the rims of stone bowls; ink inscriptions on wall plaster and, together with drawings, on large pottery vessels. All of these are unique in Iron Age Israel both in quantity and variety.[4] Many are religious in nature, invoking Yahweh, El and Baal, and two include the phrases "Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah" and "Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah."[5] There is general agreement that Yahweh is being invoked in connection with Samaria (capital of the kingdom of Israel) and Teman (in Edom); this suggests that Yahweh had a temple in Samaria, and raises a question over the relationship between Yahweh and Kaus, the national god of Edom.[6] The "Asherah" is most likely a cultic object, although the relationship of this object (a stylised tree perhaps) to Yahweh and to the goddess Asherah, consort of El, is unclear.[7]

J.A. Emerton, "New Light on Israelite Religion: The Implications of the Inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud," Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Berlin, 1982, vol. 94, no1, pp. 2-20: Kuntillet Ajrud, ca. 50 km au sud de Kadesh-barnea, carrefour de pistes caravanières du Sinaï septentrional. Importance théologique de deux inscriptions sur jarres qui y furent trouvées (cf Z. Meshel, 1979): YHWH smrn wlsrth et YHWH tmn wsrth. Meshel les date d'avant ou d'après 800 av. J.-C. et lit: "YHWH de Samarie et son Ashera" et "YHWH de Teman et son Ashera". L'A. discute la question de syntaxe: la règle "en hébreu biblique un nom propre ne peut être à l'état construit", pour laquelle l'expression YHWH Sevaot fait problème. Les inscriptions de Kuntillet Ajrud confortent la justesse de la traduction classique "YHWH des Armées". L'expression "YHWH de Samarie" vient d'un voyageur originaire de Samarie et évoque le culte de YHWH tel qu'il y était célébré. YHWH de Téman évoque la tradition de YHWH "venu des montagnes d'Edom". Quant à Ashera, dans ces inscriptions, elle est probablement le symbole en bois de la déesse de ce nom, dont l'association avec le culte de YHWH est attestée dans l'AT. Peut-être, dans la religion populaire, pouvait-elle être considérée comme la parêdre de YHWH.

La critique historique et les découvertes épigraphiques et archéologiques des dernières décennies convergent sur le fait qu’on ne peut, à l’époque de la royauté, parler de judaïsme pour décrire les systèmes religieux en Israël et en Juda. Les inscriptions de [...] Kuntillet Ajrud ont confirmé que Yahvé n’était pas un dieu célibataire, mais associé à la déesse Ashérah, dont le site de Kuntillet Ajrud fut peut-être l’un des sanctuaires, comme l’ont suggéré tout récemment Na’aman et Lissovsky de l’université de Tel Aviv.[8]

Notes
1. Robert Karl Gnuse, No Other Gods: Emergent Monotheism in Israel, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997, pp. 69-70
2. Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess, Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Press, 2000, pp. 108ff
3. Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel (Göttinnen, Götter und Gottessymbole, 1992), Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998, pp. 210ff
4. Ze'ev Meshel, Kuntillet Ajrud: An Iron Age Way-Side Religious Center in Sinai, The Shelvy White Leon Levy for Archaeological Publications, Harvard, 2006 (accessed 20.1.2012).
5. Anthony Bonanno, Archaeology and Fertility Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean, University of Malta, 1986, pp. 238ff
6. Keel and Uehlinger, p. 228
7. Ibid, pp. 232-33
8. Nadav Na’aman and Nurit Lissovsky, "Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, Sacred Trees and the Asherah," Tel Aviv, 35, 2008, pp. 186-208 (Thomas Römer, De nouvelles visions sur les récits bibliques des origines, CDF, Paris, 5.2.2009).

Further discussion
André Lemaire, Date et origine des inscriptions hebraïques et pheniciennes de Kuntillet Ajrud, 1984
Kathryn QannaYahu, Kuntillet Ajrud Inscriptions, Lebtahor, accessed 29.1.2012
Sects and Violence in the Ancient World, 2009-11

The Mosaic Experience: Arts and Letters

2012-01-28T15:23:00.105+05:00

Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon, Elah Valley (near Beit Shemesh), 11th century BCE

Solomon's Temple, Jerusalem, 957 BCE

Archaeologists have uncovered many remains of synagogues from over two thousand years ago, including several that were in use before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Synagogues securely dated to before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem include the Migdal Synagogue, the ancient synagogue at Gamla, the synagogue of Capernaum, the Herodium synagogue, the synagogue of Qumran, and the small synagogue at the top of Masada.

Kuntillet Ajrud ceramic motifs, fragment, Negev, 9th century BCE. Motifs painted on a jar known as "Pithos A."

Beit She'arim Village, North Galilee, 9th century BCE

Inscribed Pomegranate from Solomon's Temple, ivory, 8th century BCE. Israel Museum, Jerusalem. It bears the inscription Sacred to the Priest of the House of God (YHWH). It may well be an ornament on the High Priest sceptre within the Holy of Holies, and thus a genuine artifact proving the existence of Solomon's Temple.

Silver scroll fragment from Ketef Hinnom Tombs, Jerusalem, 7th century BCE. The two silver scrolls found present quotations from the Book of Numbers inscribed into the silver and written in ancient Hebrew characters. Apart from their significance for the actual knowledge of the development of the Hebrew alphabet, the scrolls preserve the earliest known citations of texts also found in the Hebrew Bible and are the earliest examples of confessional statements concerning Yahweh.

Hebrew manuscript. Dead Sea Scrolls, Qumran, 125 BCE. Parchment. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 at Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name. The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include the oldest known surviving copies of Biblical and extra-biblical documents and preserve evidence of great diversity in late Second Temple Judaism. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus. The manuscripts generally date between 150 BCE and 70 CE. The scrolls are traditionally identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, and include The Great Isaiah Scroll, The Temple Scroll, The War Scroll, The Community Rule Scroll, and The Commentary on the Habakkuk Scroll.

Delos Synagogue, Greece, 2nd century BCE

King David's mosaic, Marot Village, Galilee, 1st century BCE

Shekel of Israel
Inscription: "Jerusalem the Holy"
silver
First year of the Jewish Revolt against Rome, 66 CE

Jericho Synagogue, Wadi Qelt, 1st century BCE
Gamla Synagogue, Golan Heights, 1st century BCE

Korazim Synagogue, Galilee, 1st century CE [+]

Menorah motif, Ostia Antica Synagogue, Italy, 1st century CE

Sardis Synagogue, Turkey, 2nd century

Kfar Bar'am Synagogue, Galilee, 2nd-3rd century CE

Dura-Europos Synagogue frescoes, Syria, 244 CE
Wheel of Fortune mosaic, Hamat Tiberias Synagogue, 3rd century
Ein Guedi Synagogue mosaic, 3rd century
Susya Synagogue, Judea, 4th century CE
Menorah mosaic, Ma'on Village, Judea, 4th century
Lions of Judea mosaic, Hamat Gader Synagogue, Yarmouk river region, 4th century
Gaza Synagogue mosaic, 4th century

Tzippori: Menorah, lulav, and shofar

Menorah mosaic, Tzippori Synagogue, Upper Galilee, 5th century

The Binding of Isaac and Hebrew Wheel of Fortune mosaic, Beit Alpha Synagogue, Mt Gilboa, 6th century
Menorah mosaic, Maoz-Hayim Synagogue, Beit Shean, 6th century
Menorah mosaic, inscr. "Peace upon Israel," Shalom al Yisrael Synagogue, Jericho, Jordan Valley, 6th century

Katzrin Synagogue, Golan Heights, 6th century

Judæo-Persian Slichah (Jewish Penitential Prayer), written in Hebrew, ink on paper leaf, 8th century CE. Discovered in 1908 in the Dunhuang Mogao Caves of Gansu Province, China. Now held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (Dunhuang Manuscripts, Pelliot hébreu 1).

Khazar Warrior with Captive, gold relief, Atil, 850 CE

Aleppo Codex, Hebrew Bible, 930 [+]
Keter Aram Tzova

Shmuel ben Ya'akov, Leningrad Codex, Hebrew Bible, 1008 [+]

Chronology
Paleolithic (Old Stone) Age = 1,500,000-14,000 BCE
Epipaleolithic (Mesolithic, Middle Stone) Age = 14,000-8,000 BCE
Neolithic (New Stone) Age = 8,000-4,500 BCE
Chalcolithic (Copper Stone) Age = 4,500-3,200 BCE
Bronze Age = 3,200-1,200 BCE
Iron Age = 1,200-586 BCE (Biblical Period of the Judges/Israel/Judah)
Babylonian period = 586-539 BCE
Persian period = 539-332 BCE
Hellenistic period = 332-63 BCE
Roman period = 63 BCE-324 CE
Byzantine period = 324-640 CE

Assorted resources

List of Artifacts Significant to the Bible
Ivory Pomegranate
Hebrew manuscripts [+]
Oldest Synagogues in the Land of Israel
Oldest Synagogues in the World
Judaism in Art

Abel Pann, And Sarah Laughed, pastel, 1925

Comparisons
Manuscripts by area
Egyptian papyri
Mawangdui Silk Text, Chinese manuscript, 168 BCE

Abrahamic Nation

2012-01-26T09:49:00.032+05:00

Abrahamic religions are the monotheistic faiths trace their common origin to Abraham and recognize a spiritual tradition identified with him. They are one of the three major divisions in comparative religion, along with Indian religions (Dharmic) and East Asian religions (Taoic). As of the early twenty-first century, it was estimated that 54% of the world's population (3.8 billion people) considered themselves adherents of the Abrahamic religions, about 30% of other religions, and 16% of no religion.

The three major Abrahamic religions are, in chronological order of founding, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Judaism regards itself as the religion of the descendants of Jacob, a grandson of Abraham. It has a strictly unitary view of God, and the central holy book for almost all branches is the Tanakh (sometimes refered to as the Hebrew Bible), as elucidated in the oral law.
Christianity began as a sect of Judaism in the Mediterranean Basin of the 1st century CE and later became into a separate religion with distinctive beliefs and practices. Jesus is the central figure of Christianity, considered by almost all denominations to be divine, typically as one person of a Triune God. The Christian Bible is usually held to be the ultimate authority, alongside Sacred Tradition in some denominations such as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Islam arose in Arabia in the 7th century CE with a strictly unitary view of God. Muslims (adherents of Islam) typically hold the Qur'an to be the ultimate authority, as revealed and elucidated through the teachings and practices of a central, but not divine, prophet, Muhammad. Less well-known Abrahamic religions, originally offshoots of Shi'a Islam, include the Bahá'í Faith and Druze.

Ephraim Lilien, "Abraham," Die Bucher der Bible, 1908

The three main Abrahamic religions have certain similarities. All are monotheistic, and conceive God to be a transcendent Creator-figure and the source of moral law, and their sacred narratives feature many of the same figures, histories and places in each, although they often present them with different roles, perspectives and meanings. They also have many internal differences based on details of doctrine and practice. Christianity remains divided into three main branches (Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant), dozens of significant denominations, and even more smaller ones. Islam has two main branches (Sunni and Shi'a), each having a number of denominations. Judaism also has a small number of branches, of which the most significant are Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. At times the different religions—and often branches within the same religions—have had bitter conflicts with each other.

It has been suggested that the phrase, "Abrahamic religion", may simply mean that all these religions come from one spiritual source. Christians refer to Abraham as a "father in faith" (Romans 4). There is an Islamic religious term, Millat Ibrahim (The Nation of Abraham), indicating that Islam sees itself as having practices tied to the traditions of Abraham. In addition to Jewish direct birth descendancy from Abraham, adherents follow his practices and ideals as the first of the three spiritual "fathers", Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
All the major Abrahamic religions claim a direct lineage to Abraham.
Abraham is recorded in the Torah as the ancestor of the Israelites through his son Isaac, born to Sarah through a promise made in Genesis 17:16. All variants of Judaism through the early 20th century (prophetic, rabbinic, reform, and conservative) were founded by Israelite descendants.
The first part of the Christian Bible is the "Old Testament," which is a modified form of the Jewish Hebrew Bible, leading to the same ancestry claim as above.
It is the Islamic tradition that Muhammad, as an Arab, is descended from Abraham's son Ishmael. Jewish tradition also equates the descendants of Ishmael, "Ishmaelites", with Arabs, as the descendants of Isaac by Jacob named Israel are the "Israelites".
Other terms sometimes used include Abrahamic faiths, Abrahamic traditions, religions of Abraham, Abrahamic monotheistic religions, Semitic religions, Semitic monotheistic religions, and Semitic one god religions.
However, the term "Abrahamic faiths", while helpful, is also misleading. It conveys an unspecified historical and theological commonality that is problematic on closer examination. While there is commonality among the religions, in large measure their shared ancestry is peripheral to their respective foundational beliefs and thus conceals crucial differences. For example, the Christian and Islamic belief in the prophetic position of Jesus is not shared by Judaism; Christian beliefs of Incarnation, Trinity, and Jesus' Resurrection are accepted by nither Judaism nor Islam.

Something in Common: The Centrality of Jerusalem

A view of Jerusalem, not far from the Foundation Stone

Judaism. Jerusalem became Judaism's holiest city in 1005 BCE when David established it as the capital of Israel, and his son Solomon built the First Temple on Mount Moriah. Since the Hebrew Bible relates that Isaac's sacrifice took place there (on the Foundation Stone), Mount Moriah's importance for Jews pre-dates even these prominent events. Jews thrice daily pray in its direction, including in their prayers pleas for the restoration and the rebuilding of the Holy Temple (the Third Temple) on mount Moriah, close the Passover service with the wistful statement "Next year in built Jerusalem," and recall the city in the blessing at the end of each meal. Jerusalem has served as the only capital of all five Jewish states that have existed in Israel since 1400 BC (the United Kingdom of Israel, the Kingdom of Judah, Yehud Medinata, the Hasmonean Kingdom, and modern Israel). It has been majority Jewish since about 1852 and continues through today.
Christianity. Jerusalem was an early center of Christianity. The Pagan Romans under Emperor Vespasian, in order to end the First Jewish Revolt, used forces lead by Vespasian's son and heir to the throne, Titus to lay siege to Jerusalem, sack the city, and destroy the Second Temple in 70 AD (eventually building a shrine to Jupiter Capitolinus in its place). In 135 AD, under Hadrian, as a response to another Jewish revolt against Roman rule (the Third Jewish Revolt of Simon Bar Kochba), the Romans further expelled all Jews from the area, after three revolts in 70 years, to ensure another revolt was not forthcoming. This is when the area surrounding Jerusalem, until then called Roman Judaea, first was given the name "Palestine", or "Syria Palaestina". There has been a continuous Christian presence there since. William R. Kenan, Jr., professor of the history of Christianity at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, writes that from the middle of the 4th century to the Islamic conquest in the middle of the 7th century, the Roman province of Palestine was a Christian nation with Jerusalem its principal city. According to the Gospel, Jerusalem was the city Jesus was brought to as a child to be presented at the temple (Luke 2:22) and for the feast of the Passover (Luke 2:41). He preached and healed in Jerusalem, unceremoniously drove the money changers in disarray from the Temple there, held the Last Supper in an "upper room" (traditionally the Cenacle) there the night before he is said to have died on the cross, was arrested in Gethsemane. The six parts to Jesus' trial—three stages in a religious court and three stages before a Roman court—were all held in Jerusalem. His crucifixion at Golgotha, his burial nearby (traditionally the Church of the Holy Sepulchre), and his resurrection and ascension and prophecy to return all are said to have occurred or will occur there.
Islam. Jerusalem, the city of David and Christ, became a very holy place to Muslims, like Mecca and Medina. The Al-Aqsa mosque, which translates to "farthest mosque" in sura Al-Isra in the Qur'an, and its surroundings are addressed in the Qur'an as "The Holy Land". Later Muslim tradition as recorded in the ahadith identifies al-Aqsa with a mosque in Jerusalem; nothing in the Qur'an supplies this connection (nor a connection to the Dome of the Rock). The first Muslims did not pray toward Mecca, but toward Jerusalem: the qibla was switched to Mecca as part of a complete break with Judaism, when it became obvious that the Jews would not accept Muhammad as a prophet. Another reason for its significance is its connection with the Miʿrāj, where, according to Muslim tradition, Muhammad ascended through the seven heavens on a winged mule named Buraq, guided by the Archangel Gabriel, beginning from the Foundation Stone on the Temple Mount, in modern times under the Dome of the Rock.

Further discussion
Abraham
Aniconism
Christian Visual Imagery

Abraham smashes the idols, 17th century BCE

Christian Visual Imagery

2012-01-22T17:55:00.027+05:00

Some facts and considerations

Sacred Heart

What is the aim of the visual images in the Catholic religion? Are they some sort of idolatry? Don't they contradict the example of Abraham, who in the pagan Chaldea destroyed the idols his father fabricated? Do such images transgress the notions expressed in the Commandments? See Exodus 20:3-5 and Deuteronomy 5:7-9
Considering the traditional idea of Imitatio Christi, are the images used in the Catholic religion compatible at all with Jesus's own example? Moreover, did Jesus ever bow down to an idol?

Jesus was respectful of the Mosaic tradition: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God" (Exodus 20: 3-4 and Deuteronomy 5:7-8).

And the same concerns the Apostles, did they ever pray to images showing Jesus or the Virgin Mary?

Catholic imagery: Res católica in Museo de San Juan, Sacred Heart of Jesus, Virgin of Puy, Sacred Heart Virgins, Allegory of the Triumphant Church and Nocturnal Virgin.

Do the images of the Catholic church relate to idolatry? Yes? No? Why?

The pagan legacy: the beautiful as the good and the true

A nineteenth-century sentimentally-conceived Jesus. The image transmits tenderness but also a colonialist ideal that is both Eurocentric and racist.

Iconographic abuse: a fashionable phenomenon

Iconographic appropriation and abuse of Christian imagery: The Passion of the Christ is used by Gibson to promote sadomasochism in extremis; Buddy Christ is practically a cartoon character; Mary transformed into a disposable container; Santa Claus crucified under the Star of Bethlehem; Jesus smiles while showing a tattoo with a Latin cross that literally penetrates the heart of God the Father; Jesus as soccer trainer; the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Lamb of God decorating ordinary wrist watches.

"Buddy Christ" scene from Kevin Smith's film Dogma, 1999. Cardinal Glick: "Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now we all know how the majority and the media in this country view the Catholic church. They think of us as a passe, archaic institution. People find the Bible obtuse... even hokey. Now in an effort to disprove all that the church has appointed this year as a time of renewal... both of faith and of style. For example, the crucifix. While it has been a time honored symbol of our faith, Holy Mother Church has decided to retire this highly recognizable, yet wholly depressing image of our Lord crucified. Christ didn't come to Earth to give us the willies... He came to help us out. He was a booster. And it is with that take on our Lord in mind that we've come up with a new, more inspiring sigil. So it is with great pleasure that I present you with the first of many revamps the "Catholicism WOW!" campaign will unveil over the next year. I give you... The Buddy Christ. Now that's not the sanctioned term we're using for the symbol, just something we've been kicking around the office, but look at it. Doesn't it... pop? Buddy Christ..."

Pseudo-scientific speculation: adding salt to the wounds

Hypothetic reconstruction of Jesus' appearance, United Kingdom, BBC, 2001.[1] Unlike the nineteenth-century Euro-Jesus, this one is from the Middle East and his features recall those of a primitive man who escaped some a natural sciences museum.

"The exercise in reconstruction is pointless." -Catherine Bennett, The Guardian

For a discussion, see Giles Wilson, So What Colour was Jesus?, BBC News Online Magazine, 27.10.2004; Forensic Image, Rejesus, Faces of Jesus; and Mike Fillon, The Real Face of Jesus, Popular Mechanics, 7.12.2002.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Youth Jew portrayed as Christ, oil, 17th century. Inviting meditation, Rembrandt's painting suggests the triumph of spirituality over matter. The image is not supposed to be worshiped but contemplated.

Aniconism

2012-01-15T16:03:00.046+05:00

Unprecedented: Abraham and the Idols

Aniconism is the practice or belief in avoiding or shunning images of divine beings, prophets or other respected religious figures, or in different manifestations, any human beings or living creatures. The term aniconic may be used to describe the absence of graphic representations in a particular belief system, regardless of whether an injunction against them exists.

The Second Commandment: "You shall not make unto you any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5 You shall not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my Commandments." Exodus 20:4-6

Aniconism is a particular case of representation (the absence of images) and taboo (the prohibition of images). One of its aspects expresses the absence of images, while the other may contain an injunction conceived to regulate their absence. An avoidance and repugnance of representations is called iconophobia. When unformalized predispositions or clearly stated legislations are put in practice and enforced, leading to the removal and destruction of representations, the aniconism becomes iconoclasm. Aniconism relates also to censorship, which takes place after a representation was already produced, but before, or shorthly after, it is made public, and also involves less violence than iconoclasm. In common usage, "aniconism" is used to designate the absence of paintings and statues, "taboo" characterizes behaviours, "censorship" is applied to written materials and "iconoclasm" to the destruction of paintings and statues.

Aniconism is a gradual phenomenon, having appeared at various times in many cultures across the world and within the same culture during its history. It is usually restricted to specific circumstances of space, time, object or modality. The intensity of aniconism is characterized by periodicity.

The fundamental cause of aniconism is embedded in the problematic nature of representation itself. There is an unavoidable need to represent the world since this is how our cognition works. But what is the validity of a representation not perceptible to our biological senses of something outside their reach or immaterial--God, time, ultraviolet? Furthermore, how to present a general model by a specific occurrence? Everybody knows what a human looks like, but everyone will draw him or her in a different way. Because these are inherent and not transitory problems, they generate a perpetual search for solutions, making of aniconism a continuously fluctuating phenomenon.

Aniconism is best known in connection to Abrahamic religions. In monotheism, aniconism was shaped by specific theological considerations and historical contexts. It emerged as a corollary of seeing God's position as the ultimate power holder, and the need to defend this unique status against competing external and internal forces, such as pagan idols, critical humans, and mass society. Idolatry is a threat to uniqueness, and one way that prophets chose to fight it was through the prohibition of material representations. The same solution also worked against the pretension of humans to have the same power of creation as God (hence their banishment from the Heavens, the destruction of Babel, and the Second Commandment in the biblical texts, or the myth of the golem in Jewish literature).

Religious art and art with religious references make a substantial part of humanity's artistic production. As such, religious aniconism is in fact much about art. While not usually classified as aniconism, it occurs frequently in profane art, as a quantitative characteristic of amount of details present in objects. Extremes can range for example between the 18th century Rococo and the 20th century Minimalist art.

Working on various cultures, a group of modern scholars has gathered material showing that in some cases the idea of aniconism in religion may be an intellectual construction suiting specific intents and historical contexts.

In Africa, aniconism varies from culture to culture from elaborate masks and statues of humans and animals to their total absence. Yet, a common feature across the continent is that the "High God" is never given material shape. On the Germanic tribes, the Roman historian Tacitus writes that "They don't consider it mighty enough for the Heavens to depict Gods on walls or to display them in some human shape" (Publius Cornelius Tacitus, "9. Götterverehrung", Germania: De origine et situ Germanorum liber, Stuttgart: Reclam, 2000). But his observation is not a general rule: consider, for instance, Ardre image stones.

Abraham smashing the idols, 17th Century BCE

Abraham and the idols. According to Hebrew oral tradition and the Midrash (Midrash Bereishit 38:13),[2] when Abraham was still a young child, he realized that idol worship was nothing but foolishness. One day, when Abraham was asked to watch his father's idol store. Abraham would call to the passersby, "Who’ll buy my idols? They won’t help you and they can’t hurt you! Who’ll buy my idols?" And when people came in and wanted to buy idols, Abraham asked, "How old are you?" The person said, "Sixty". Abraham responded, "Isn't it pathetic that a man of sixty wants to bow down to a one-day-old idol?" Then the man felt ashamed and left. Later, Abraham took a hammer and smashed all the idols - except for the largest. When his father came back and saw the broken idols, he was appalled. "Who did this?" he cried. And Abraham replied calmly: "It was amazing, Dad, the idols all got into a fight and the biggest idol won!" Rabbi Shraga Simmons explains that Abraham's idea was to show his father how ridiculous was to ascribe power to such idols. Indeed, there was no way for his father to respond; deep down he knew that Abraham had tuned into a deeper truth.[3] Significantly, the account of Abraham and idols can also be found in the Qur'an 21:51-70.[4]

Questions
A. Was the significance of Abraham being an idol smasher to challenge a tradition? Which?
B. Was Abraham right in smashing the idols? Why?
C. Do you challenge traditions?
D. Are people willing to challenge their own traditions? Or, do they mostly complain about other people's traditions and think their own are fine?
E. In what ways do you question tradition and in what areas are you less likely to question tradition?

Notes
1. For a debate, see What's so terrible about idolatry?,
The purpose and meaning of the Second Commandment
2. Azamra
3. Abraham breaking idols
4. Islamic Awareness; see also the additional comments.
___________________________________________________

Aspectos do aniconismo identitário. Ivan Esperança Rocha, Imagem no judaísmo: aspectos do aniconismo identitário (Image in Judaism: Aspects of Indentity Aniconism), História, São Paulo, vol. 26, no. 1, 2007

A imagem tem recebido uma crescente atenção no âmbito das ciências sociais e humanas, particularmente no campo da historiografia, o que se depreende de inúmeros eventos e publicações nivelem âmbito nacional e internacional. As imagens, ou fontes visuais, começam a ser tratadas como uma importante evidência histórica, e igualadas em valor à literatura e documentos de arquivos.1 Em vez de seu valor afetivo e subjetivo que tinha caracterizado a Antiguidade e a Idade Média, buscam-se agora conhecimentos mais sistemáticos e consistentes sobre elas. Demonstra-se que os fatos sociais se refletem em mecanismos visuais.2
A cerâmica, manuscritos com pinturas, imagens soltas de propaganda política e religiosa, quadros, estátuas, fotografias ou simplesmente material visual ganham uma importância não mais apenas ligada às suas qualidades estéticas mas à sua capacidade de representar os imaginários sociais e de evidenciar as mentalidades coletivas.3 "No estudo das sociedades antigas, a iconografia, neste seu significado mais amplo de material visual, assume um papel de destaque, particularmente, quando não se tem a contrapartida da documentação escrita ou quando esta é lacônica", como se verifica na iconografia funerária ou templária do Egito.4
Por outro lado, na cultura judaica, bem próxima do Egito, no espaço e no tempo, o acesso a dados provenientes da iconografia é muito limitado.5
Os judeus consideraram sua religião e seu código religioso de comportamento um elemento essencial de sua identidade e de sua sobrevivência ante os inúmeros momentos de dispersão em que foi envolvido. Entre as leis do corpo normativo israelita se encontra uma proibição de produzir ou conservar imagens com o intuito de preservar uma idéia de monoteísmo, que iria de certa forma represar a arte israelita durante séculos. A proibição, inicialmente ligada à reprodução de ídolos estrangeiros, acaba se estendendo a outros tipos de representação iconográfica, particularmente ligada à figura humana – considera-se o homem criado à imagem de Deus, que vigorou, com uma certa intensidade, praticamente até as portas da Haskalah, o iluminismo judaico, iniciado em fins do século XVIII.
A normalização da proibição de imagens em Israel encontra-se no livro do Êxodo: "Não farás para ti imagem de escultura, nem semelhança alguma do que há em cima, nos céus, nem embaixo, na terra, nem nas águas debaixo da terra" (20,4). Esta proibição faz parte da legislação religiosa de Moisés e pode ser entendida, dentre outros textos, por meio de Isaías: "A quem havereis de comparar a Deus? Que semelhança podereis produzir dele?" (40,18).
Em um ambiente permeado por cultos idolátricos (Ex 20,5; 34,15, Sl 44,21, 1 Rs 11,8ss, 19,18, Jr 7,18, Is 10,10), os judeus querem se distinguir pela ausência de imagens de Javé. Assim, com raras exceções, com veremos mais adiante, fica proibida a produção de efígies da divindade israelita.6 Isso, no entanto, não vai banir a presença de imagens. Uma das estratégias nesse sentido será a utilizada por Salomão que passa a contratar artistas externos à comunidade israelita para a construção e embelezamento do Templo de Jerusalém, como é o caso de Hiram, um artista de Tiro que tinha grande habilidade no trabalho com bronze (1 Rs 7,13-14). Entende-se, assim, que a proibição não atingia os artistas estrangeiros e dessa maneira se pode justificar a presença de figuras de querubins e leões nos painéis do Templo (1 Rs 7,26).
Uma outra razão da presença de imagens entre os judeus envolvia o casamento dos reis israelitas com estrangeiras que traziam consigo seus cultos e seus deuses.7 De fato, as descobertas arqueológicas trouxeram à tona uma série de iconografias do período bíblico, como sinetes com figuras de animais, plantas e outros objetos e figuras em argila de nus femininos, estas muito comuns em Jerusalém.
Sinagogas do período próximo à destruição do Templo, em 70 d.C., possuem decorações com figuras geométricas e de plantas; entre os judeus que participaram da revolta de Bar-Kokhba contra os romanos, em 135 d.C., foram encontrados vasos decorados com faces humanas; mas para que se evitasse seu uso como objetos idolátricos os olhos foram apagados.8
No entanto, mesmo com relação à proibição da representação de Javé, existem exceções, como se verifica numa fortaleza, em Kuntillet 'Ajrud, na Península do Sinai, onde foram encontrados graffiti com imagens de Iahweh ao lado de sua Ashera.9

Fragmento de cerâmica
Kuntillet Ajrud, sul do Negev, séc. [IX-]VIII a.C.

Pode-se dizer que os judeus foram mais tolerantes com imagens que não tivessem relações com o culto. Com o declínio do politeísmo helênico-romano, muitas sinagogas começam a usar motivos da iconografia pagã, adaptando-as às suas necessidades, assim como cenas bíblicas como as da sinagoga de Dura-Europos nas proximidades do rio Eufrates.10
No século VII, com a conquista do Oriente pelo Islamismo anicônico, os judeus voltam a abandonar as imagens, adaptando-se à nova situação. As constantes dificuldades postas pelo segundo mandamento podem ser vislumbradas no manuscrito judaico ilustrado, chamado Haggadah da Cabeça de Ave. O texto narra a história do êxodo do Egito, onde todas as figuras humanas são representadas por cabeças de pássaros para evitar a proibição icônica.
A discussão sobre a questão da imagem do Antigo Testamento é retomada no Talmude, uma compilação e adaptação de leis e tradições judaicas, realizadas entre 200 a.C. e 500 d.C., que consistem em 63 tratados de assuntos legais, éticos e históricos. O judaísmo ortodoxo baseia suas leis no texto do Talmude. Tem entre seus tratados um específico sobre imagens e ídolos, o 'Abodah Zarah.
De um lado, este tratado expressa uma rígida oposição aos ídolos, proibindo não apenas sua fabricação, mas até mesmo olhar e pensar neles (Tosefta, Shabbath 17,1 et passim; Berakhot 12b). Os ídolos não deviam ser apenas quebrados, mas jogados no Mar Morto para que não pudessem ser mais vistos ('Abodah Zarah 3,3). A madeira de uma asherah não podia ser usada nem para aquecer-se (Pesahim, 25a). Para evitar qualquer contato com os idólatras, os judeus não podiam relacionar-se comercialmente com eles pelo menos três dias antes de suas festas cultuais ('Abodah Zarah 1,1). Ficava proibido caminhar sobre uma rua pavimentada com pedras que tinham sido utilizadas para construir o pedestal de um ídolo ('Abodah Zarah 50a). Aos sábados era proibido até mesmo ler o que estava escrito sob uma pintura ou estátua ('Abodah Zarah 149).
Por outro lado, encontramos no Talmude posições mais abertas com relação às imagens. Não se proíbe qualquer imagem, mas apenas aquelas que tenham um cunho cultual. Estátuas de reis, em um ambiente em que não são consideradas objeto de culto, não são proibidas ('Abodah Zarah 40a). Imagens para ornamentação são permitidas. Qualquer figura dos planetas é permitida, com exceção do sol e da lua (quase sempre representados com cunho cultual) ('Abodah Zarah 43b). Uma asherah é uma árvore sob a qual se pratica um culto e, portanto, proibida. Se, no entanto, existir um altar de pedras sob ela, a árvore pode ser utilizada livremente ('Abodah Zarah 48a).
A ambigüidade do tratamento dado às imagens começa a declinar com a Haskalah, um movimento entre judeus europeus do séc. XVIII, conhecido como o iluminismo judaico, calcado nos valores iluministas, que buscou promover maior integração com a sociedade européia, ampliando o espaço da educação secular e definindo os rumos de um movimento político pela emancipação judaica.11
O movimento encontrou inicialmente oposição entre os judeus ortodoxos por julgarem que a Haskalah contrariava os princípios do judaísmo tradicional, mas não deixou de ter adeptos entre eles. Uma das idéias contrapostas pela Haskalah é a do messianismo, como a espera de um gesto miraculoso em favor dos judeus; o exílio judaico também deixa de ser interpretado como uma vontade divina, mas como resultado de fatores históricos.12 Outra influência foi nas artes, com uma ampla revisão de proibições tradicionais, particularmente no que se refere à proibição de imagens.
Como reflexo desse movimento, nos séculos XIX e XX vimos o surgimento de grandes artistas judeus como Marc Chagall (1887-1985) com seus esplêndidos vitrais das doze tribos judaicas conservados na Sinagoga do Hospital Hadassa de Jerusalém, e Lasar Segall, um judeu lituano radicado no Brasil que transformou sua casa em museu com um acervo em torno de 2.500 obras.
Deve-se dizer, no entanto, que a Haskalah, do ponto de vista artístico, foi precedida pela ação de judeus, que apesar de não se envolverem com a pintura já tinham se dedicado a outros tipos de expressões artísticas, como a joalheria, cunhagem de moedas e medalhas, ourivesaria, gravação em madeira, cerâmica, caligrafia e ilustração de manuscritos hebraicos, dentre outras.13
Numa exposição realizada no Museu Judaico de Nova York, de 18 de novembro de 2001 a 17 de março de 2003, foi apresentada e discutida a arte desenvolvida durante o processo de aculturação judaica no século XIX, sendo apresentada como uma das conseqüências da Haskalah.
Por fim, os judeus, ao se perguntarem se suas antigas leis ainda têm algum valor na atualidade, particularmente, se a proibição de imagens como objeto de culto ainda tem algum valor para a sociedade moderna, encontram uma resposta nas palavras de uma exegeta judia, Nechama Leibowitz (1905-1997), para quem o segundo mandamento ainda continua válido, dado que objetos e bens de materiais, ou a própria ciência, são guindados a uma posição de culto no mundo moderno.14

Notas
1 BURKE, Peter. "O testemunho das imagens," Testemunho ocular: História e imagem, Bauru: Edusc, 2004, p.15
2 MENESES, Ulpiano T. Bezerra de. "Fontes visuais, cultura visual, História visual: balanço provisório, propostas cautelares," Revista Brasileira História, v. 23, n. 45, 2003, p. 11ss.
3 CHARTIER, R. Imagens, in: BURGUIÈRE, A., Dicionário das Ciências Históricas, trad. Jayme Salomão, Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1993, pp. 406-7
4 ROCHA, Ivan Esperança. Práticas e representações judaico-cristãs, Assis: FCL–Assis–Unesp Publicações, 2004, p. 29
5 LIVERANI, Mario. Antico Oriente: Storia, Società, Economia, Bari: Laterza, 2005, p.688-89
6 RAD, G. Eikôn von. In: Grande Lessico del Nuovo Testamento, ed. G. Kittel, Brescia: Paideia, 1967, v. 3, col. 143
7 EHRLICH, Car. Make Yourself No Graven Image: The Second Commandment and Judaism. In: Thirty Years of Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2004, pp. 254-71
8 YADIN, Yigael. Bar-Kokhba: The Rediscovery of the Legendary Hero of the Last Jewish Revolt against Imperial Rome, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971, p. 86-111 (Ehrlich, p. 261)
9 DEVER, William G. "Asherah, consort of Yahweh? New evidence from Kuntillet Ajrud," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 255, 1984, p. 21ss
10 KRAELING, Carl H. "The Excavations at Dura-Europos Final Report 8/1," The Synagogue, New Haven: Yale University, 1956 (Ehrlich, p. 262ss
11 ROSENTHAL, Herman Peter. "Haskalah," The Jewish Encyclopedia, New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901-1906, v. 8, p. 256-58
12 SHOENBERG, Shira. The Haskalah, Jewish Virtual Library (acesso 10.9.2006)
13 PASTERNAK, Velvel. Music and Art, Judaism.com (acesso 10.9.2006)
14 GROSSBARD, Sylvie. Shemot–Yitro, USY (acesso 3.11.2006).

St Paul: Root and Branches

2012-01-05T11:58:00.012+05:00

St Paul, Romans, 9: 1-5 "my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ"

Ibid., 11: 17-20 "if the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. [...] Do not be arrogant, but be afraid."

Ecclesia and Synagoga Reformulated

2011-11-26T13:02:00.000+05:00

Anti-Judaism in Feminist Religious Writings (Oxford UP, 2000). « Published in 1994, this book is dated but not outdated. It traces traces classic anti-Jewish stereotypes into feminist exegetical and theological writings.

Since Christianity began as a Jewish sect and had to differentiate itself from the Jewish mother faith, it incorporated an anti-Jewish myth which projected Jewish faith and people as the antithesis of Christian belief and values, blamed Jews for the death of Christ and made it into a scapegoat for various other evils. The anti-Jewish myth depicted Judaism as obsolete and a mere prologue of Christianity, and deliberately obscured the reality of Judaism as a vibrant and dynamic alternative to Christianity.
Feminist religious writings have inherited and at times intensified this anti-Jewish myth by portraying Jewish monotheism as the antithesis of women-friendly religion. Stereotypical representations depict Judaism as particularly patriarchal and oppressive to women. Some popular Christian feminist publications argue that Jesus liberated the women of the New Testament (who were Jewish) and was persecuted by the synagogue for his rejection of restrictive laws and rituals. Some Goddess theologians describe the monotheistic (male) God of Judaism as singularly responsible for the disappearance of peaceful matriarchal prehistoric Goddess cultures. Judaism is blamed for the origin of patriarchal religion and charged with persecuting Goddess worship and destroying polytheistic matriarchal religions. Such portrayals ignore the contributions of Jewish feminism and render the distinct perspective and contributions of Jewish women invisible. This book critically examines and disproves such arguments.

The art work on the cover of the book [above], as well as to the left, shows a popular anti-Jewish motif in Christian church art. The Crucified Christ [via The Living Cross] crowns the ecclesia who is sitting majestically on a lion while stabbing the synagoga who is riding a donkey with broken legs. Rosemary Radford Ruether aptly called anti-Judaism the "left hand of Christology." The "teaching of contempt" as Jules Isaac called anti-Judaism, is a poisonous Christian legacy that continues to inform traditional as well as progressive Christian theologies, including feminist, womanist, liberation, Asian and black theologies. » Katharina von Kellenbach (author).

Sculptures by Paula Mary Turnbull

Mary C. Boys, Has God Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-Understanding, New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press/Stimulus Books, 2000. « The many medieval depictions of Ecclesia triumphant and Synagoga defeated clearly haunt Mary Boys as symbols of all that has been — and continues to be — wrong in the relations between Jews and Christians. Her search for a corrective to this sinful understanding drives her new book, to the point that she accompanies the book with a commissioned artwork, a new depiction of Ecclesia and Synagoga where both stand tall as representations of their faith communities. An essay on the symbolism embedded in these new figures will have to be reserved for a different venue, but it must be noted here that rather than looking at defeated Synagoga in triumph, the new Ecclesia, while still standing in relationship to her sister (marked by their similar styles of dress and hair), walks with her sister in parity and friendship as they together move forward.
As I read Boys’ book, I felt not only that Synagoga was being given the opportunity to walk alongside her sister, but that she was being invited to look over her sister’s shoulder as well. While Boys has written her book as a Christian educator for a Christian audience, much of what she writes needs to be known by the Jewish community as well. [...] Is Boys’ book perfect? Any synthetic and accessible presentation of many complex fields of scholarly inquiry is bound to have some problems. Although Boys acknowledges many expert readers in her introduction, I still find myself with a list of minor quibbles about her portrayal of Judaism. [...] My only major "quibble" is more fundamental. While the synagogue became an increasingly important institution after the destruction of the Temple, Jews never designated their community by its name because it represents just a single facet of Jewish communal life. Instead, Jewish self-identification, from biblical times, has been as Israel, the name God gave our ancestor Jacob and the name of the land that Jacob’s descendents call home. Medieval theologians projected the Christian ideal of religious community embodied in Ecclesia onto her sister Synagoga, ignoring (or rejecting) precisely these familial/national and geographical elements of Jewish theological self-identification and leaving only the religious. Boys, with her sensitivity to the symbolic, has done so much to make the attitudes embodied in the medieval depictions repugnant to her readers. I would encourage her to take one more symbolic step: eliminate the name "Synagoga" and call Ecclesia’s sister "Israel." » Ruth Langer (SIDIC Review 33/3: 30-31).

"What commandment is the foremost of all?" Jesus answered, "The foremost is, 'HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD [Deuteronomy 6: 4]; AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH' [Matthew 22: 37]. "The second is this, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF' [Leviticus 19: 18]. There is no other commandment greater than these." Mark 12: 28-31

Les juifs dans l’art chrétien médiéval

2011-11-25T20:30:00.019+05:00

"Judei"

Nadia Darmon : Jean-François Faü, L’Image des Juifs dans l’art chrétien médiéval, Maisonneuve & Larose, 2005. L’art inspiré par les moines a livré au fil des siècles, des représentations allégoriques des Juifs, du Judaïsme, et de la Synagogue que l’on retrouve dans les églises, les cathédrales, les abbayes, les manuscrits, les ivoires, etc. Ces représentations de l’art médiéval mériteraient d’être mieux connues [... et] dans cet ouvrage Jean-François Faü restaure le sens donné à ces représentations que le sens commun a oublié.
[...] La représentation du Juif et du Judaïsme dans l’art chrétien subit des modifications au fur et à mesure que l’Eglise asseoit son pouvoir et étend son influence aux souverains européens. Les artistes du Moyen Age épousent le mode de pensée religieux inspiré par les clercs, et reflètent dans leur art une expressivité et un symbolisme propres à éduquer les esprits dans une vision christique des écritures. Il en fut de même de la vision christique du Judaïsme et des Juifs ; les représentations narratives utiliseront des thèmes majeurs selon le message et la pensée que l’Eglise voulait insuffler à toute la chrétienté. Elle intègre en son début la judéité des Pères de l’Eglise et la royauté de la Synagogue, elle exprime que les Juifs sont dans l’erreur et l’aveuglement et qu’ils sont lents à le reconnaître, elle placera les Juifs toujours en Enfer et les assimilera au démon et par voie de conséquence, à tous les vices de la société, puis exprimera sa répulsion…etc.. L’art médiéval portera le message antijudaïque de l’Eglise, et portera aussi sa part de responsabilité dans l’éducation des consciences occidentales, avec toutes ses conséquences funestes à l’égard des Juifs d’Europe.
L’art chrétien utilisera pour cela, le symbolisme et l’allégorie aujourd’hui difficile à reconnaître [...]. Jean-François Faü précise dans son ouvrage remarquable que les autres groupes communautaires comme les Morisques d’Aragon, les Cathares du Languedoc ou les Cagots du Béarn ne donnèrent pas lieu à des représentations dans l’art chrétien ; elles n’entraient pas dans la logique d’affirmation de l’Eglise et ne se référaient à aucun héritage antérieur au christianisme, ici en l’espèce…. « L’identité du « vrai Israël » était en jeu. »
1) Trois périodes distinguent l’esprit des représentations : A) La période Carolingienne, notamment sur des ivoires et manuscrits, B) Du X° au XII° siècle, dans l’art roman, C) La Renaissance, dans l’art gothique à partir du XIII° siècle.
A) De l’art Carolingien à l’art roman
1) Un héritage de Rome : Bien qu’une inscription de 139 av. èc. mentionnât l’expulsion des Juifs de Rome, sous l’accusation de prosélytisme, Rome comptera un siècle plus tard des milliers de Juifs [1] , esclaves affranchis ils auront le statut de Citoyens de l’ Empire, intègreront l’armée romaine, possèderont leurs synagogues [2] et leurs catacombes [3] . Ainsi, lorsque les armées romaines entrent en Gaule, elles comptent parmi leurs rangs de nombreux soldats, mercenaires et marchands juifs, tous Citoyens romains.
Sous les Mérovingiens et les Carolingiens dont les territoires sont désignés du nom de Septimanie, hors du territoire Wisigothique, il n’y a pas de volonté de mise à l’écart des Juifs ; les Juifs conservent leur statut qui leur confère une large autonomie judiciaire et religieuse ; ils peuvent posséder des terres et les cultiver, porter les armes, monter à cheval, ouvrir des échoppes sur la place publique, circuler et fréquenter les chrétiens et les employer. Les missi dominici font déplacer les jours de marchés du samedi à un autre jour. De leur côté, des chrétiens assistent volontiers aux offices à la Synagogue et un certain nombres se convertissent [4]. Jusqu’au début du XI° siècle, le judaïsme exerce plutôt une attirance et un intérêt marqué de la part des chrétiens ; les moines vont apprendre l’hébreu, les écritures et les commentaires, auprès des rabbins afin de pouvoir lire dans le texte, comprendre par les commentaires le sens des textes bibliques. Ainsi verrons- nous au XII° siècle, le Comte de Champagne interroger Rabbénou Tam le maître des Tossafistes et petit-fils de Rachi. Ainsi, avons-nous retrouvé à Oxford [5] un manuscrit hébreu de Rachi de Troyes, annoté en latin par un moine.
Cette autonomie fut fixée par le texte dit « Le Cartulaire pour les Juifs » de Charlemagne (814). Ses descendants comme Louis le Pieux (814-840) ou Charles le Chauve (843-877) maintiendront cette politique, malgré les fulminations d’Agobard [6], Evêque de Lyon (813-840) et plus tard d’Amolon [7] , Evêque de Paris.
Les témoignages de l’art Carolingien peu nombreux à être parvenus jusqu’à nous, « comportent peu de stigmatisation du Judaïsme.. » ce qui procèderait d’une acceptation naturelle du Judaïsme dans la société occidentale. « Les quartiers réservés, judeira ou ghetto, ne correspondent encore à aucun schéma urbain. » Juifs et Chrétiens se fréquentent et parlent la même langue.
2) Le Juif dans l’Art roman :
Jusqu’aux premières expulsions du XIII° siècle, Jean-François Faü mentionne la présence de 100 000 Juifs dans les limites du royaume de France, soit « 40 000 dans les villes, 25 000 dans les bourgs et 35 000 dans les campagnes. »

Ivoire Carolingien

Les Ivoires Carolingiens annoncent déjà les représentations du XII° et XIII° siècle, l’Eglise est représentée par un personnage imberbe portant un calice, ce qui signifie que l’Eglise assure la continuité du Salut à travers les sacrements et l’eucharistie. L’étendard figure la victoire du christ et de sa résurrection. Marie figure la première croyante par devers les apôtres restés dans le doute.
Mais rien dans l’art roman ne distingue encore un Juif d’un Chrétien, aucune caricature, aucun signe diffamatoire ou discriminatoire, sauf à le représenter tel qu’il apparaît dans la société, dans son habit de l’époque et dans la vie quotidienne ; soit portant par exemple le chapeau pointu ou conique qui lui était néanmoins imposé et qui le caractérisait notamment en Italie ou en Rhénanie à cette époque, mais pas encore dans le royaume de France.
« Les artistes romans ont essayé, et réussi, à réinventer la sculpture historiée au service de l’expression biblique. » Ce sont les moines qui étaient les inspirateurs de ces représentations, s’agissant des scènes bibliques datant du XI° et XII° siècle, les personnages sont habillés à la mode de l’époque. Les personnages Juifs de l’Ancien Testament ou indifféremment du Nouveau ne portent aucune caractéristique vestimentaire, ni de représentation infâmante liée à une catégorie de personnages.
Quelques unes des œuvres romanes « positives » mentionnées par Jean-François Faü :
Portail de l’abbatiale de Moissac, Tarn et Garonne,
St Pierre de Moissac : Jérémie au trumeau porte une longue barbe de prophète, et Isaïe.
Ste Marie de Souillac dans le Lot : Isaïe porte une barbe,
Eglise de Bagas (Gironde) : David est en pâtre, Goliath en cotte de mailles,
Abbatiale de Conques en Aveyron, Isaïe porte un phylactère,
Tympan de l’Abbatiale de Conques : la Jérusalem céleste à gauche du tympan, des vieillards barbus tiennent un rouleau de parchemin. [8].
Eglise de Saint-Zénon de Vérone en Italie, sur les portes de bronze, des scènes de l’Ancien Testament, Abraham…
Eglise de Freckenhorst en Westphalie en Allemagne : la Nativité avec St Joseph portant le chapeau conique caractéristique du XII° siècle sur les fonts baptismaux de l’Eglise.
Plaques émaillées de Nicolas de Verdun à Klosternenburg en Autriche (1180),

Daniel

Vitraux de 1130, dans la Cathédrale de Augsbourg, les trois prophètes Osée, Daniel, Jonas portent le chapeau des juifs.
A Berghausen, en Westphalie, une fresque représente Moïse porte la mitre devant les douze Anciens d’Israël, tous coiffés du chapeau conique.
Le manuscrit de Zwiefalten [9] montre avec la même scène, celle de la circoncision de Jésus par un rabbin coiffé du chapeau des juifs, la vierge Marie et Joseph ici n’ont pas d’auréoles.
Notons également la Cathédrale de Ulm : Les bustes en bois sculptés des prophètes et des matriarches et personnages féminins bibliques.
3) La représentation de la Synagogue :
L’étendard tenu par la Synagogue figure la royauté d’Israël et de Juda. C’est seulement au XIII° siècle que l’étendard sera remplacé par une lance souvent brisée marquant la perte de la royauté.
Le bandeau sur les yeux du personnage féminin d’apparence royale qui figure la Synagogue, évoquerait selon Jean-François Faü, « le passage des évangiles où St Paul parle du voile de Moïse, en l’interprétant comme une incapacité d’Israël à comprendre le message de ses propres écritures en référence au mystère du Christ : « Leur entendement s’est obscurci. Jusqu’à ce jour en effet, lorsqu’ils lisent l’Ancien Testament, ce même voile demeure. Il n’est point retiré, car c’est le Christ qui le fait disparaître. Oui jusqu’à ce jour, toutes les fois qu’on lit Moïse, un voile s’est posé sur leur cœur. C’est quand on se convertit au Seigneur que le voile est enlevé. » (2Co3, 14-16) (…) ».
Quelques représentations illustrent cette interprétation paulinienne comme celle d’un vitrail de l’Abbatiale de Saint Denis ; le Christ couronne d’un calice l’Eglise de sa main droite, et enlève le bandeau des yeux de la Synagogue portant un phylactère (symbole de la Loi), de sa main gauche.

Saint Denis

Ainsi, la Synagogue aura les yeux bandés, un étendard brisé, une posture qui tourne le dos ou détourne son regard de celui de l’Eglise, et parfois tiendra le porte éponge, substituée à Stéfaton.
Dans l’interprétation selon laquelle c’est le Nouveau Testament qui dévoile l’Ancien, l’art chrétien la figurera selon une idée de concordance des deux Testaments, laissant aux Juifs la possibilité d’accéder un jour futur au Nouveau. Nous sommes là dans la représentation positive de la « Concordia » de « l’Ecclesia et Synagoga » , posées à égalité, comme sur les enluminures de manuscrits et sur les ivoires de l’époque Carolingienne ; c’est le signe de l’espoir de voir la Synagogue reconnaître un jour son erreur.

Bibliothèque Municipale de Verdun

Le plus fréquemment, la représentation figure une Synagogue déchue et chassée par le Christ. On trouve également l’Ecclesia victorieuse debout sur le corps de la Synagoga [10] allongée et restant encore fière.
4) Avec le Concile de Latran (1215), la stigmatisation apparaît :
Notons que l’avarice représentée sur le Tympan de Sainte Foy de Conques (début du XII° siècle) n’est identifiable qu’à la bourse attaché à son cou, et placée en Enfer, mais non assimilée à une catégorie sociale particulière ou un groupe défini. En revanche dans la Cathédrale de Troyes, Le même vice est clairement identifié à un personnage qui porte la rouelle, donc Juif. Cette stigmatisation fait suite aux restrictions édictées par le Concile de Latran de 1215. La modification est majeure car elle annonce la diabolisation du Juif.
Le Décret du IV° Concile de Latran avalisé par le Pape Innocent III, fixe l’obligation de porter un signe distinctif, appliquée par des ordonnances royales : - La Rouelle en France - le Chapeau jaune en Allemagne - Les Tables de la Loi en Angleterre - « Ce texte visait à limiter la place des communautés juives et l’intervention des Juifs au sein de la Société (...). « A partir du XIII° siècle, l’axiome de l’antisémitisme médiéval va s’imposer : « vous ne pouvez plus vivre avec nous (...) si vous ne changez pas votre religion." [11]
Dès la première croisade (1096-1099), les communautés juives avaient été dévastées par des massacres et pogroms, par des vagues de rançonnage et de baptêmes forcés, par des bûchers ; ainsi les communautés de Mayence et Spire et bien d’autres qui furent anéanties…par les pieux croisés sur leur chemin vers Jérusalem …
Par ailleurs, Jean-François mentionne dans son ouvrage que : « L’introduction du Talmud de Babylone en Europe Occidentale avait été compris de l’Eglise catholique comme un instrument de combat et elle en fit une lecture totalement négative avant de chercher à le détruire. » (…) Le Manuel de l’Inquisiteur de Bernard Gui accuse le Talmud de blasphème à l’égard de Marie, dans lequel la virginité et l’origine filial du Christ est mise en doute. » Bûchers et autodafés brûleront des charretées de Talmud, notamment le « brûlement du Talmud », 1240, ordonné par Louis IX et suivi de l’expulsion des Juifs de Paris.
Les principaux édits d’expulsion : 1290, 1306, 1342, 1420, 1492 pour l’Espagne.
Il fallut rappeler par douze Conciles et neuf ordonnances royales, de 1215 à 1370, l’obligation du port de la Rouelle ou du signe distinctif et d’infamie à travers l’Europe, puisqu’il visait à marquer chaque Juif au même titre que les têtes de bétail. Soit que les Juifs tentaient de l’éviter en payant des dispenses, soit que des seigneurs éclairés ne l’appliquèrent pas (voir Henri II, Comte de Champagne). Cependant, là où elle fut observée scrupuleusement le fut bien dans le royaume de France ; Philippe le Bel y trouva une source de revenus, puisque la Rouelle était l’objet d’une vente à fermage annuel [12], mentionnée sur les livres des comptes d’où nous tirons l’information de leur application et de leur paiement. « Jean le Bon consentit à en modifier la couleur lors du rappel des communautés en 1361, elle devint alors rouge et blanche, perdant un peu de son caractère péjoratif. » En Catalogne, elle était rouge et jaune, aux couleurs du blason catalan.

Breviari d'amor

Jean-François Faü fait observer que les hérétiques étaient condamnés par les tribunaux à porter deux croix cousues sur le vêtement, en signe d’humiliation. Je fais observer à mon tour, que le signe distinctif fut ramené d’Orient par les croisés ; les musulmans imposèrent les premiers une marque cousue sur leur vêtement au Juifs et aux Chrétiens, marquant ainsi leur dhimmitude.
B) La représentation devient nettement négative dans une société sans Juifs :
« La Société chrétienne fixe au XIII° siècle le Juif comme l’archétype des maux que connaît le monde occidental à l’époque et le choisit pour assurer le rôle économique principalement que la Chrétienté refuse d’assumer par mépris, et le pouvoir temporel par incompétence. Dans ce processus d’expulsions successives, le Comtat Venaissin apparaît comme un refuge acceptable pour les Juifs du Languedoc et d’Espagne. L’Alsace et la Bourgogne pour les Juifs du Nord de la France qui sont accueillis sous conditions de paiement d’un péage par capitation. »

Saint Seurin, Bordeaux

1) La reine déchue devient une femme en haillon [13] ou en manteau noir : L’apparence royale de la Synagogue se modifie peu à peu, et devient une vieille femme en haillon , ou bien une femme en noire, une femme sans vêtements aussi qui s’arrache les cheveux [14] et plus tard une femme qui porte elle-même le porte-éponge de Stefaton, badigeonnant le corps du Christ de vinaigre. Le bandeau de tissu sera remplacé dans l’art gothique, par un serpent en référence au démon. [Eglise Saint Seurin de Bordeaux.]
2) L’aigle royal de St Jean : La représentation allégorique se poursuit et devient plus difficile à déceler pour le non initié ; ainsi, Marie représente toujours la première croyante et symbolise l’Eglise, quant à Longin le centurion romain, « le premier gentil à entrer dans l’Eglise ». Mais aussi surprenant que cela peut paraître, St Jean ou sa représentation sous la forme d’un aigle royal figurerait la Synagogue.

Antiphonaire de St Pierre

Jean-François Faü mentionne à cet égard, « une miniature dans l’antiphonaire de l’abbaye bénédictine Saint-Pierre de Salzbourg [15] qui nous montre, au pied de la croix, l’Eglise couronnée, élevant un calice, et la Synagogue voilée et se détournant du crucifié. Cette dernière tient à la main un joug, sans doute ici symbole de la Loi. Près de l’Eglise se tient Marie, près de la Synagogue, saint Jean ; faut-il penser avec Emile Mâle que la symbolique médiévale, qui fait de Marie le symbole de l’Eglise (…), va jusqu’à faire de Jean, le symbole de la Synagogue ? Malgré le récit évangélique où Jean laisse passer Pierre à l’entrée du tombeau vide au matin de la résurrection et le commentaire de saint Grégoire le Grand qui y voit le symbole de la Synagogue s’effaçant devant l’Eglise, on peut encore en douter [16]. » Sur le tympan du portail de l’abbatiale de Saint-Gilles dans le Gard, la synagogue qui perd sa couronne en forme de coupole du Temple de Jérusalem, est placée précisément derrière St Jean. Mais encore, Jean-François Faü nous fait découvrir une œuvre qui semble résumer toute la thématique du XII° siècle, « il s’agit d’une miniature de l’Hortus déliciarum d’Herrade de Landsberg (vers 1185) [17] qui représente la Crucifixion (…). La partie à droite montre l’Eglise, assise sur un animal fantastique dont les quatre têtes sont les symboles des Evangélistes ; couronnée, tenant haut l’étendard de la croix, elle recueille le sang de Jésus dans un calice ; en arrière, se trouvent le centurion romain, armé de sa lance, faisant allégeance au Christ, et la Vierge, nimbée, juste devant le bon larron dont le regard est tourné vers Jésus. En dessous, les élus ressuscitent dans une scène du Jugement dernier. Le côté gauche de la croix est centré sur la Synagogue que le texte dit « corrompue » : les yeux voilés, détournant son regard de Jésus, l’étendard traînant à terre, elle est montée sur un âne, [18] signe de son entêtement. Elle tient dans sa main droite le couteau de la circoncision et dans sa main gauche un écriteau qui porte « Et moi, je ne le connaissais pas » ; dans ses bras, un chevreau, symbole des sacrifices pratiqués au Temple et désormais abolis. En arrière, le porte éponge et Saint Jean se voilant la face, à côté du mauvais larron qui détourne son regard du Christ. Au pied de la croix se trouve la tombe d’Adam, un simple squelette. Au dessus des deux scènes, le voile du temple est déchiré en son milieu. Tout est dit dans un résumé théologique naïf mais tragiquement saisissant. »

Hortus déliciarum

J’ai cru pouvoir vérifier cette interprétation concernant Saint Jean, lorsque je visitai le Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud de Perpignan qui possède le Retable de la Loge de Mer (1480), qui représente un Moïse « cornu » et Adam, les prophètes d’un côté et les évangélistes de l’autre, on observe dans la partie supérieure gauche du retable, un aigle royal noir et auréolé dans un arrière fond lui-même obscur, faisant le pendant à un St Mathieu lumineux, muni d’un stylet. La note technique du retable mentionne bien qu’il s’agit de St Jean sous la forme de l’aigle, mais sa couleur noire sur fond noir renforce cette autre idée de figuration de la Synagogue ou du Judaïsme restée dans l’obscurité.
3) Représenter l’aveuglement ou l’abolition de l’Ancien Testament :
Le chevreau ou le bélier représentent les sacrifices du Temple de Jérusalem, abolis.
Les tables de la Loi représentées renversées comme à « Notre-Dame de Trèves »,
Près de la Synagogue, un Moïse « cornu » et un Aaron,
« L’attribut de la lance désigne la Synagogue (…) à partir de la première moitié du XIII° siècle. » Un motif populaire désignant le « déicide », mais aussi l’auteur cite Bernhard Blumenkranz qui le rapproche des accusations de profanations d’hosties. Rappelons que cet attribut dans l’art roman était utilisé par la personnification de Longin, le centurion romain, qui abrège les souffrances du Christ, ce motif bascule lorsque l’étendard de la Synagogue se brise et devient lance brisée ; il devient ensuite l’arme du crime et se transforme encore en arme de profanation …faut-il aller jusqu’à l’assimiler à un transfert de la scène de la lance qui transperce le Christ à celle de la représentation des accusations de meurtre rituel qui vont surgir à partir de 1144, et affliger les communautés juives de Norwich en Angleterre, de York et d’ailleurs ? Pur produit de l’imagination naïve des populations et perverties par des représentations conçues par des moines et des artistes chrétiens.
La Synagogue chevauche un âne, signe de son entêtement, sa couronne tombe de sa tête, un bandeau sur le visage, l’étendard est brisé, elle tient dans sa main droite la tête d’un bélier.[19]

Fribourg

En référence à « (...) saint Jean Chrysostome, le plus anti-juif des Pères grecs - la synagogue comme édifice fut dénoncée comme la demeure du diable lui-même. » Aussi, les représentations peu nombreuses existantes des édifices, reprennent ce thème dès le IX° siècle et le développent à souhait. [20]
Les porteurs de la Grappe de raisin (Nb 13, 23) ; symbole par excellence de la Terre d’Israël « où coule le lait et le miel », terre idéale et abondante pour le peuple Hébreu. « Les pères de l’Eglise ont vu dans cette grappe le corps de Jésus suspendu à la croix. Saint Augustin discerne dans les deux porteurs, les deux Testaments : le premier qui tourne le dos (...) symbolise le peuple juif ; » le second, fixe la grappe, « c’est l’image des païens qui se rallient au Christ. » Le reliquaire de la vraie croix de Tongres en Belgique, confirme cette allégorie puisque le premier porteur est coiffé du chapeau pointu.
L’évocation du prophète Zacharie, souvent porteur du candélabre à sept branches, et rappelant les huit visions selon lesquelles le christianisme y a vu l’annonce du roi messie.
La couleur jaune, « la couleur des méchants et des jaloux », qui distingue la toge portée par Judas de celles portées par les autres apôtres, sur le retable de Regensbourg visible au Musée d’art de Stuttgart.
C) L’art gothique :
1) Unité de style dans les sculptures du nord de l’Europe : Les œuvres dans les cathédrales d’Ile-de-France, de Champagne et des pays rhénans présentent à nouveau l’Eglise et la Synagogue en vis-à-vis, en deux femmes d’allure royale, aux attributs qui se différencient. Nommons Notre-Dame de Paris, la Cathédrale de Strasbourg…

Notre Dame de Paris

Attributs

Strasbourg

"Synagoga"

2) L’un des thèmes des plus meurtriers qui fut : le rapprochement du Juif et du démon, suite à une erreur de traduction ! A partir du XIV° siècle, le thème devient récurrent dans la Chrétienté et l’art s’en fait le relais. Jean-François Faü relève parmi les causes de cette association deux malentendus que l’art va aider à diffuser et à ancrer dans la conscience populaire : a) Le Moïse « cornu » : « (...) au livre de l’Exode (34, 29), il est écrit à propos de Moïse, « ils voyaient la peau de son visage rayonner ». Saint Jérôme, égaré par la racine hébraïque apparentée à geren , la corne, a confondu « rayonner » et « être cornu », et il a traduit dans ce qui allait devenir la vulgate latine : vdebant faciem Moysi esse cornutam. (« ils voyaient que le visage de Moïse avait des cornes. »)" [21] Tout récemment à Troyes, nous passions devant la « Maison Moïse » qui tient son nom d’un Moïse se tenant dans une niche d’angle de la Maison ; il est cornu. Choqués, la guide nous expliqua que c’était ainsi que les artistes matérialisaient la transfiguration de Moïse lors de son retour du Mont Sinaï. Nous lui répondîmes que c’est ainsi, que les Juifs furent assimilés au diable et furent l’objet de persécutions populaires. Il y a encore une vingtaine d’années, dans un petit village des Hautes Alpes, Le Chazelet, un brave paysan vint demander à un vacancier juif « à quelle heure de la nuit, les cornes apparaissaient-elles ? » b) Le Miracle de Théophile : -XIII° siècle- Très populaire, ce thème fut repris de nombreuses fois. Il s’agit d’un récit « esquisse de la légende de Faust ». « Théophile était vidame de l’évêque d’Adana, en Cilicie, il refusa d’abord la succession épiscopale puis voulut reconquérir cette dignité. A cette fin, il alla consulter un magicien juif, prêt à vendre son âme au diable pourvu qu’il lui obtienne ce qu’il désirait, ce qui fut fait. Torturé par le remords, il implora la Vierge Marie qui arracha le parchemin au démon et lui rendit son âme." [22] Ce récit est évoqué « au tympan de la porte du cloître et à l’extérieur, sur un relief du mur nord de l’abside, à Notre-Dame de Paris. On le trouve aussi à la cathédrale Saint-Jean de Lyon, dans les vitraux de Chartres, Laon, Beauvais, Le Mans, Auxerre, Clermont-Ferrand et Lincoln » c) « Le Breviari d’amore », (1288) œuvre du troubadour bittérois [23] Matfre Ermengaud dont un chapître s’intitule : « Histoire de l’aveuglement des Juifs au Nouveau Testament. A quel point le diable les tient, (…). » Le texte présente le diable comme un compagnon constant des Juifs. A l’aveuglement s’ajoute la surdité.

Breviari d'amor

L’art au XIII° siècle se fit le relais de cette croyance populaire de la collusion et complicité des deux figures, objets de répulsion absolue, notamment dans la littérature provençale qui utilisa le mot de synagoga pour désigner le lieu de réunion des sorcières. Apparaissent alors, des représentations de degrés plus vulgaires et infâmantes comme les oreilles de cochon à la place de cornes (non moins infâmantes), des gargouilles immondes comme celles accrochées à la corniche de la cathédrale de Colmar. Il y a confusion entre les termes du sabbat des sorciers, et du Shabbat jour sanctifié du repos chez les Juifs. Et encore aujourd’hui, combien sont nombreux ceux qui font la confusion, comme une trace laissée dans les consciences. d) Le Concile de Trèves (1310) et les prises de position de l’inquisiteur Nidder en 1337, reprennent tous ces thèmes et serviront largement dans toute l’Europe les stratégies de l’Inquisition ; la peste qui dévastera l’Europe de 1347 à 1350 fournira son prétexte, et achever le travail de séparation, de stigmatisation et de diabolisation des Juifs vis-à-vis de la population chrétienne. 3) Les motifs animaliers : Sans entrer dans les détails, des motifs animaliers figurent le Judaïsme, il faut y voir le symbolisme encore christique du choix des animaux, où le judaïsme doit apparaître comme lent, lourd et accroché à l’Ancienne Alliance révolue au regard du Christianisme, vivant dans l’obscurité, … Ainsi, trouvons-nous en bonne place, la chouette [24] ou le hibou, l’autruche, [25], la Hyène, [26], l’aspic et le basilic, ainsi que la tortue [27], et dans les pays germaniques, la truie (gargouilles de Colmar).

Erfurt

[1] « Sans doute des descendants des captifs Juifs réduits à l’esclavage, que l’armée de Pompée ramena de la guerre de Judée (63 av.èc), puis en 66-70 ap.èc, et 131-135 ap.èc) [2] Vestiges du 1er et II° siècle, à Rome et Ostie. [3] A Rome les catacombes juives sont visibles. [4] Conversion du Diacre Bodon, confesseur de Louis le Pieux - de Vecelin, chapelain du duc Konrad, cousin de l’Empereur Henri II, en 1005 - de Renaut, duc de Sens, en 1015 - [5] Du groupe des 26 manuscrits anglais, (N°6 Rachi). [6] Auteur de cinq Epîtres antijuives adressées à l’Empereur, en 824 et 828, virulents mais exempts d’accusations infâmes. Le plus virulent (Ad cumdem imperatorum de insolentia judaerum (827) valut à Agobart un exil royal à Nantua dans le Jura. [7] Auteur du « Liber contra judaeos » « Livre contre les Juifs » qu’il présenta au Concile de Paris en 845, il préfigure les stéréotypes de l’antijudaïsme médiéval assimilant les Juifs au démon, à un « peuple immonde et mauvais ». [8] Les évangélistes sont représentés imberbes, un livre à la main. Les Juifs sont barbus. [9] (Stuttgart, LB, Cod.hist. 2°415, f°19v et f°83v ; vers 1161) notes de JF Faü [10] Bibliothèque Municipale de Verdun (Meuse). [11] « L’Image des Juifs dans l’art chrétien médiéval » de Jean François Faü, éd. Maisonneuve et Larose. [12] « La Rouelle rapporta, dans la seule sénéchaussée du Rouergue, de un à dix deniers tournois d’argent par famille. » JF Faü, p 89. [13] Sur un Ivoire ( 1070-1080) provenant de l’Italie du Sud et conservé à Berlin (Berlin-Dahlem, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Inv. N° 589), l’Eglise d’un côté richement vêtue près de laquelle se trouve Longin le centurion romain qui perce de sa lance le corps du Christ, pour abréger ses souffrances, et la Synagogue en vieille femme en haillon chassée par un ange, près de laquelle se trouve Stefaton, le centurion porte-éponge qui donne à boire du vinaigre au Christ. [14] Sur deux reliefs en ivoire de la fin du XI° siècle, au Musée de Copenhague, Danemark [15] (Vienne, ÖN, Cod. Ser. Nova 2700, 300 ; vers 1160). Emile Mâle, « l’art religieux du XIII° siècle en France » [16] Emile Mâle, « l’art religieux du XIII° siècle en France », Paris 1923, op.cit, p 193-194. [17] BNF, f°150. [18] Egalement, sur le médaillon central de la Crucifixion avec Marie et Jean, à la Cathédrale de Fribourg-en-Brisgau. [19] Idem, Jean-François Faü, Description d’un des Médaillons autour du médaillon central de la Crucifixion avec Marie et Jean, à la Cathédrale de Fribourg-en-Brisgau. [20] « La première, qui date du début du IX° siècle, se trouve dans un manuscrit, provenant de la France (Trèves, Stadtbibliothek, ms.31, f° 7v) (..). Un ange garde l’entrée de l’Eglise, un démon celle de la Synagogue qui tire avec une corde des Juifs égarés sans signe distinctif. « L’image du Juif dans l’art chrétien médiéval », de JF Faü, éd. Maisonneuve et Larose. [21] « L’image du Juif dans l’art chrétien médiéval », de JF Faü, éd. Maisonneuve et Larose. [22] Idem, JF Faü, p72, 73. [23] De la ville de Béziers, Languedoc Roussillon. [24] « (...) pilier du transept nord de l’église Notre-Dame à Dijon, qui regarde en direction d’un des quartiers juifs de la ville. » JF Faü, p 79. [25] « (…) Sur un soubassement du portail central, cathédrale de Sens, l’autruche est montée par un petit bonhomme. » JF. Faü, p 81. [26] « Le Bestiaire » de Pierre de Beauvais assimile le judaïsme à « cet animal répugnant ».,.. symbole de luxure [27] « Dans l’art italien et savoyard de la fin du XIV° siècle. », JF Faü, P 84.

L'Église et la Synagogue

2011-11-24T21:08:00.000+05:00

Raphaël, Freddy. L'Église et la Synagogue, l'évolution du thème, ASIJA, Alsace-Lorraine (2010).

On assiste à une dégradation progressive de l'image de la Synagogue du début à la fin du Moyen Âge.

9e et 10e siècles. Ivoires messins. Les premières représentations de l'Église et la Synagogue sous la forme de deux personnages féminins allégoriques figurent, sur des crucifixions taillées dans des plaques d'ivoire à Metz, durant l'époque carolingienne. Sur ces ivoires, la Synagogue, vêtue comme l'Église et sans aucun signe d'infériorité, s'éloigne du Christ avec dignité, tenant droit son drapeau et relevant la tête. On ne décèle aucune marque d'hostilité. La signification est claire : le Christ est victorieux ; la mission de la Synagogue s'achève ; elle doit céder sa place à l'Église.

1185-1195. Hortus deliciarum. Aux 12e et 13e siècles, siècles des croisades, la prédication exalte les sentiments religieux. Elle met l'accent sur la Passion du Christ dont la responsabilité est imputée aux Juifs. Ils subissent persécutions et massacres. Dans les œuvres d'art, la défaite de la Synagogue devient un thème récurrent. Sur une miniature de l'Hortus deliciarum, ouvrage composé à la fin du 12e siècle par Herrade de Landsberg, l'Église couronnée, regardant le Christ, serrant d'une main le calice et de l'autre la hampe crucifère de son étendard, est montée sur un animal fabuleux, le tétramorphe, synthèse des quatre êtres évangéliques. En face d'elle, la Synagogue, assise sur un âne rétif, incline sa tête et la détourne ; elle est aveuglée par sa coiffe abaissée, elle tient dans ses mains un bouquetin et un couteau (symbole des anciens sacrifices ? ou de la circoncision ?) ; son drapeau traîne à terre.

1225-1235. La Synagogue et l'Église du double portail sud de la cathédrale de Strasbourg. La Synagogue aux yeux bandés est vaincue. Elle est découronnée ; sa lance porte-drapeau est plusieurs fois brisée ; les tables de la loi échappent de ses doigts ; comme la Synagogue de l'Hortus, elle baisse la tête et la détourne de l'Église victorieuse dressée en face d'elle, tenant le calice et la hampe crucifère de son étendard. Entre les deux portails se trouve une statue du roi Salomon. Le Pilier du Jugement dernier, dit Pilier des Anges, situé à l'intérieur du transept sud complète cet ensemble de sculptures dominé par l'idée de jugement.
On insiste souvent sur la beauté de la Synagogue, remarquable aussi pour d'autres œuvres de la même époque. Il s'agit, sans doute, d'une allusion au destin de la Synagogue nullement condamnée à jamais, mais élue de la fin des temps quand elle rejoindra le Christ.

1285. La Synagogue au serpent. Cinquante ans après les ouvrages du portail sud, d'autres statues de l'Église et de la Synagogue sont sculptées à la cathédrale de Strasbourg, cette fois au tympan du portail central de la façade occidentale. Ces figures, marquées par leurs illustres modèles du croisillon méridional, comportent toutefois, une différence notable : le bandeau est remplacé par un serpent enroulé autour de la tête de la Synagogue, afin de suggérer une origine diabolique à son aveuglement.

14e et 15e siècles. Bibles historiées. La diabolisation de la Synagogue ira en s'accentuant aux 14e et 15e siècles. Sur une miniature d'une Bible historiée du 15e siècle provenant de Haguenau, la Synagogue porte sur ses épaules un diable noir, velu, cornu et griffu, qui l'aveugle de ses mains. Ainsi perché, il peut aussi lui commander beaucoup de mauvaises actions. La Synagogue est devenue un agent de Satan…

Ecclesia und Synagoga

2011-11-23T17:48:00.003+05:00

Raddatz, Alfred. Ecclesia und Synagoga, Entstehung des Bildmotivs im Mittelalter (1978), Koordinierungsausschuss für christlich-jüdische Zusammenarbeit (6.10.2010).

Raddatz understands Christian art as a reflection of the relationship between Christians and Jews.

Emergence of the motif in the Middle Ages. Motif of Ecclesia and Synagoga (Church and Judaism), expressing opposition, mid-9th century, West Franks. Detestanda Judaeorum perfidia (on the unbelief of the Jews - Amulo of Lyons, Liber contra Judaeos, PL 116.141), ecclesiastical answer to the Jewish-friendly policies of the Carolingian Empire (especially Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald). Shown in ivory panels of the Metzer school, end of the 9th century: crucifixion with personification of Ecclesia, with the blood of the lateral wound filling the calyx; Synagogue. Such ivory panels adorned the cover of liturgical books, exhorting the faithful observance of the Church's rules regarding the Jews (prohibition of marriage, working for Jews, common meals between Christians and Jews). Agobard von Lyon, De insulentia Judaeorum, PL 104,74. Initially, the two personifications differ only by their position respect the cross. This changes from the 11 Century onwards, as Jews can be seen in Christian art with discriminarory marks.
E.g. Essen Sacramentary (1100) shows the obligatory Jewish hat.
flammula
two medallions on the crossbar of the Gunhildenkreuzes, c. 1075
3rd Of 11 V. Century - the synagogue, stripped to the waist on the ground, Christ turning your tympanum of the former abbey church of St. Gilles (before 1142)
Liber Floridus of Canon Lambert of St. Omer (c. 1120)
Christ vexillum
the initial Q in the homily of Bede of Verdun, Ecclesia with crown and flammula, stands triumphantly on Synagogue, lying on the ground, and stabs its cross-stick in the neck of the blind figure.10
Degradation of Synagogue continues. A snake covered her eyes, as in the sketchbook of the Petris de Funes (c. 1197),11 , or a tie - or almost bare, with a ram's [carnero] head in her hands - a sign of outdated Old Testament sacrifice as well as fornication (1250).12

Stricter confrontation. In representations from c. 1100, Synagoga is a murderer of Christ. Portable altar from Stavelot with the instruments of the Passion, c. 1150, lance and crown of thorns.
From the miniatures to the portals of the cathedral. St. Gilles. Notre Dame in Paris, Bamberg, Trier - the cabaret of the large sculpture. Strasbourg.15
But there were other voices. "To tolerate Jews among the Christian people. They are the witnesses of Jesus and will be saved in the end of days (Berthold of Regensburg).
Revelatio, unveiling of Synagogue (initial shows Sacramentary of Tours, 12th cent.
Representations of a tournament-like duel between Ecclesia and Synagogue with recognizable output, such as in the Tucher window of the Cathedral of Freiburg (1300)18 or a choir cheek in the Cathedral of Erfurt (1400-1410), lead on the last phase in the medieval development of the motif, the so-called "Living Cross" Crucifixion depictions, where from the four ends of the cross arms emanate. Giovanni da Bologna, S. Petrinio, Bologna (1421). Tetramorph. Goat. Pierced with a sword.

Developments since the Reformation. Reformation. Baroque. Historicism. Sun Laach, Sacrament Chapel of the Basilica of Maria, mosaics on gold ground, 1910-1912 - the Ecclesia, topped with flammula on the cross bar and the cup in the veiled rights as to the mercy seat, turns, while her opposite the synagogue with covered eyes and broken spear, the banner NOS legem Habemus ET SCD legem debit MORI (John 19:7).
Cathedral of Passau, 1953, J. Hensel.
Minster Mönchengladbach, Ambo Elmar Hillebrand, 1991.
Paul Weigmann, windows of the parish church of St. Barbara ship in Bonn-Ippendorf, 1995. In the middle of the diamond window are Martyria Ecclesia and Synagogue depicted. Ecclesia, frontal, wholly, looks out of the picture, a cross in his right hand, left hand on his chest down to, it appears to the left - as if questioning - with closed eyes approached the synagogue, with her right hand has a large Torah scroll, which it holds in the left-and thus points to the root.
See H. Heinemann, Die Glasfenster der katholischen Pfarrkirche St. Barbara in Bonn-Ippendorf, 1995.

TRADUCCION AUTOMATICA AL CASTELLANO (ha ser editada en el futuro).
Arte cristiano - un reflejo de la relación entre los cristianos y los judios
El motivo, Ecclesia y Sinagoga, "es llevar el contraste entre la expresión de la Iglesia y el judaísmo se produce en medio de la 9ª Siglo en los francos Occidental - "detestanda Judaeorum Perfidia" 1, para mostrar la incredulidad de los Judios - en la mano la respuesta eclesiástica que apunta a la política amistosa con los judíos en el Imperio carolingio, sobre todo Luis el Piadoso y Carlos el Kahlen. paneles es así, el marfil de los más jóvenes de la escuela Metzer desde el final de la 9. imágenes Jahrhunderts3 crucifixión que son la personificación de la Ecclesia derecho se convierte en el Cristo crucificado y la sangre de los campos de la herida lateral en el cáliz, mientras que salió de la sinagoga de su wegschreitet la cruz y se encuentra de espaldas. marfil Tal adornado la portada de los libros litúrgicos y el tema debe ser lo más exhortar a los clérigos, la fiel observancia de la Iglesia de reglas sobre cómo tratar con los Judios, el "nada claro" seien - tales como la prohibición del matrimonio, el trabajo con los Judios para comidas comunes de cristianos y los Judios en absoluto - para exigir que la política carolingia judía - principalmente por razones económicas - tácitamente se reemplaza hatte.
Arte cristiano - un reflejo de la relación entre los cristianos y los Judios
Difieren inicialmente, las dos personificaciones en las ilustraciones sólo por su posición en la cruz, y los cambios de este muy pronto, con los cambios críticos a la sinagoga betreffen. Typos de dominio, ya que, en general, desde el 11 de Siglo, Judios en el arte cristiano identificados se acurruca werden. Así que ahora aproximadamente a uno de los dos medallones en el travesaño de la Gunhildenkreuzes - creado en la 3 ª De 11 V. Siglo - la sinagoga, con el torso desnudo en el suelo, Cristo dando la espalda, apoyando la cabeza en la mano y se arrancaba los cabellos, mientras que en otros la Ecclesia, coronado con la barra transversal y flammula unido además, erscheint - se presenta en el tímpano de la antigua Iglesia de la Abadía de St. Gilles (antes de 1142) un ángel vagando por debajo de la cruz en la sinagoga que se tropieza y deja caer su corona de la cabeza, 9 es contrario sí, en Liber Floridus de Canon Lambert de St. Omer (c. 1120) de Cristo es la corona caído, su estandarte, rotas sus banderas lanza - - con la izquierda la sinagoga empujaron hacia las fauces abiertas del infierno, mientras con su mano derecha la copa de Ecclesia y en la inicial Q en la homilía de Beda de Verdún, Ecclesia de la con la corona taza de pie y flammula como triunfante en la sinagoga se muestra en el suelo - lo que es la barra de la carta - y se establece su barra transversal de los ciegos en el cuello, tales como el derecho a aclamando erhebt.
Sin embargo, la degradación de la sinagoga es más. No sólo ciega se presenta - una serpiente se cubrió los ojos, como en el cuaderno de bocetos de la Petris de Funes (c. 1197), o un vendaje - o desnudo casi, con una cabeza de carnero en sus manos - un signo de anticuados sacrificio del Antiguo Testamento, así como la fornicación de la así que en el dosel del altar de la anguila (segunda mitad del siglo 13.)
Más estrictas confrontación
Sinagoga y es - en las representaciones desde el principio de la 12ª Siglo. - Un asesino de Cristo. Ella empuja a ciegas, en lugar Stephatons sus Hasta en su costado y en el pecho del cordero, como el ábside de la iglesia a inclinarse Spentrup (c. 1200) muestra, mientras que ganar la Ecclesia su sangre se recoge en el cáliz tiene, porque en el altar portátil de Stavelot como triunfante sufrimiento herramientas Christi (mediados del siglo 12.) - tubo de la lanza y la corona de espinas - en el Händen y su representación en el Sacramentario de Essen (1100), con el sombrero judío obligatoria hace que la opinión del juez judía contemporánea.
Si estuviera disponible en los ejemplos anteriormente citados, más o menos íntima obras de arte, sólo un pequeño círculo de sofisticados y educados, es tan en el transcurso de la 12ª Siglo, el tema - como en St. Gilles - "publicado" - de la miniatura a los portales de las catedrales, como en Notre Dame, en París, Bamberg, Trier - desde pequeñas a la escultura de arte de gran tamaño. En Estrasburgo, por ejemplo, eran personificaciones del portal del hastial sur - la mano derecha de Ecclesia Synagoga a la izquierda - presentado originalmente como parte del juicio de Salomón como errores tipográficos de la Corte Mundial Christi.15
Pero había otras voces. "Para tolerar lo que zween Judios en el pueblo cristiano. El uno es que son testigos, que nuestro Señor fue gemartelt de ellos. Si un cristiano ve a un Judio que debe recordar con reverencia. "Oh," creo que es, "para que uno, que nuestro Señor Jesucristo fue gemartelt y sufrió por nuestros pecados?" Y gracias a Dios por su Martel, su pueblo cristiano, si usted ve esto. Nunca olvidaré su Martel, para que nunca se olvida nuestra. Pero debemos ser de los Judios que gemahnet mucho. Y por otra razón: ¿Cuánto de su sobrevivir al fin de Cristo, que antes del último día todos los cristianos a la gente ... ", dijo Bertold de Regensburg. revelatio finito Tal es, revelación, la sinagoga, una muestra inicial en el Misal de Tours (12 . ciento.). Aquí la forma de compensación hacia el prefacio del Sanctus "Vere Dignum est iustum et" el marco mandorlaförmigen de un busto de Cristo con la cruz nimbus, los derechos recogidos en el gesto del habla, que, desde la derecha, la Ecclesia con cáliz y la hostia en las manos veladas y salió de la velada, ricamente vestida sinagoga con las tablas de la costura izquierda extendida. Con la mano derecha apunta a la Ecclesia, mientras que la mano de Dios, el velo de la cabeza zieht.
Las representaciones de un duelo del torneo-como entre Ecclesia y la Sinagoga con salida reconocible, como por ejemplo en las ventanas Tucher de la catedral de Friburgo (en 1300) o la mejilla del coro en la catedral de Erfurt (1.400 a 1410), el plomo en la última fase en el desarrollo medieval de los motivos , el llamado. "Vivir Cruz, representaciones Crucifixión, que emanan de las cuatro esquinas de los brazos de cruz. A la de Giovanni da Bologna en San Petrinio en Bolonia (1421) se abre en el extremo superior de la barra vertical de las puertas del castillo celestial, más allá de la puerta a los pies de los bajos fondos. Ley de Cristo paseos enfoque Ecclesia a la Tetramorfos recibe el cáliz en su mano derecha herida y la sangre de una oblea, mientras que el brazo de la viga transversal cruz que corona. Frente a ella por su parte, el colapso de una cabra, en el cuerno de ella se considera, paseos en la sinagoga, con los ojos vendados y el pelo largo, suelto en la cruz y por el brazo de la viga transversal cruzar por aquí con la espada durchbohrt.
La evolución desde la Reforma
"Sin embargo, el gran cambio surge de la historia de la acción social de la Iglesia: la Reforma. La lucha de los católicos contra los protestantes y la lucha de los protestantes contra los papistas puede luchar tanto contra los Judios en el fondo "- como una corona de flores. Pero ni siquiera que no afecte a este cuadro. Aparte de algunos ejemplos variados en el Barroco, también participó en el tema del historicismo. Por lo tanto, la Capilla del Sacramento de la Basílica de María Laach muestra un mosaico propiciación sobre fondo de oro - fue construida en 1910-1912 - la Ecclesia, cubierto con flammula sobre la barra transversal y la copa en los derechos velada en cuanto a la silla de la misericordia, giros, mientras que su frente a la sinagoga con los ojos tapados y la lanza rota, la bandera de NOS legem Habemus ET SCD legem débito MORI (Juan 19:7) en la mano derecha también abwendet.
1953 en la catedral de Passau J. Hensel marido construyó un nuevo altar y entregado al obispo con motivo de sus Bodas de Oro del Cabildo de la Catedral como un regalo. Él está en el retablo de dos figuras de tamaño natural, la lapidación de dar Stephen. Externa izquierda Saúl, que despertar a la ropa de la Piedra, justo afuera, un espectador terminado fariseos, entre ellos, de rodillas Esteban, volvió la mirada hacia arriba a la Trinidad en la mandorla detrás de él erigir dos hombres, que lanzan piedras a él. "Entre el Steiniger y" Mandorla "son dos personajes en un espectáculo cruz flotando añade lo siguiente: Por debajo de la cifra reichgewandete de la Antigua Alianza, que rompe un palo, empujó a su izquierda un poco hacia un lado, la figura simbólica del Nuevo Testamento, San Stefan una . larga barra transversal y una palmera pasado " ¿Qué se entiende, H. Schnell crítica de sí mismo:" ... sabemos que los símbolos disponibles en muchas catedrales tan intensa ... "
En 1991 la catedral fue dada a un ser creado Mönchengladbach Elmar Hillebrand Ambo. La edición de este libro Ambos muestra la representación relieve en bronce de una crucifixión: Cristo en la cruz del árbol que crece de la tumba de Adán. La atención se centra en María y Juan, después de que María - mucho mayor - la Ecclesia, Cristo llega a la taza. Por otro lado, con los ojos vendados, dándole la espalda a la sinagoga - romper su lanza - como desesperada. Tenga en cuenta que la situación de los mencionados equivalente Edad Media a: Para el que hace la presentación del libro de la ayuda?
1995 Pablo Weigmann renovado cuatro ventanas laterales de la iglesia parroquial de Santa Bárbara del buque en Bonn-Ippendorf. En el centro del diamante ventana Ecclesia Martiria y la Sinagoga se muestran. Ecclesia, donde todo el frente, se ve fuera de la foto en su mano derecha una cruz, colocó su mano izquierda sobre el pecho, que se produce de izquierda - como si cuestionar - se acercó a la sinagoga con los ojos cerrados, con la mano derecha tiene un gran rollo de la Torá, que tiene en la izquierda-y por lo tanto apunta a la raíz, con la iglesia - un principio?

Otherness

2011-11-22T21:24:00.000+05:00

Ecclesiastical allegories of Christianity and Judaism

Although in the early Middle Ages ‘otherness’ had largely been defined in terms of language, custom, law, or religion, by the fourteenth century other features emerge as the basis of group identity, creating a seemingly insurmountable obstacles to assimilation and acculturation. These new constructions of ‘otherness’ may help explain the deteriorating status of Jewish and Muslim communities in Europe, which led to the eventual expulsion from most lands in Christendom of those who refused baptism. Even baptism, however, could not wash away this newly established sense of difference: in Spain after 1492 Moriscos and Conversos (i.e. recent Muslim and Jewish converts to Christianity) remained under suspicion and were subject to discrimination under a series of statutes relating to purity of blood, perhaps anticipating modern racial conceptions. While ‘otherness’ can be examined across a number of disciplines (such as history, philosophy, theology, canon law, literature, and art history), the experience of Jews remains paradigmatic (UTC).

Rowe: "Keeping Jews in their Place"

Nina Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century, Cambridge, 2010. In the thirteenth century, sculptures of Synagoga and Ecclesia – paired female personifications of the Synagogue defeated and the Church triumphant – became a favored motif on cathedral façades in France and Germany. Throughout the centuries leading up to this era, the Jews of northern Europe prospered financially and intellectually, a trend that ran counter to the long-standing Christian conception of Jews as relics of the pre-history of the Church. In The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City, Nina Rowe examines the sculptures as defining elements in the urban Jewish-Christian encounter. She locates the roots of the Synagoga-Ecclesia motif in antiquity and explores the theme’s public manifestations at the cathedrals of Reims, Bamberg, and Strasbourg, considering each example in relation to local politics and culture. Rowe sees the Synagoga-Ecclesia theme as a response to the Jewish-Christian interactions at the time, whereas previous studies have only addressed Christian conceptions of Jews or Judaism with no discussion of the ways the Jewish intellectual, economic, and social life might have impelled the Christian embrace of the theme.

Perhaps. Yet, Replacement Theology was definitely not vanilla:

Initial "Q," Homily of Bede of Verdun, 13th century

Resources
Théologie de la substitution
Teología de la Suplantación
Individuo y otredad

Marianne

2011-11-19T14:03:00.009+05:00

Marianne as Liberty

Marianne is one of the most prominent symbols of the French Republic. A national emblem of France, Marianne is, by extension, an allegory of Liberty and Reason. She represents France as a state and its values (as opposed to the "Gallic rooster" representing France as a nation and its history, land and culture). She is displayed in many places in France and holds a place of honour in town halls and law courts. In a bronze sculpture overlooking the Place de la Nation in Paris, she symbolises the "Triumph of the Republic". Her profile stands out on the official seal of the country, is engraved on French euro coins and appears on French postage stamps; it also was featured on the former franc currency.

Sculpture of Marianne

Iconography. The origins of Marianne are uncertain. In classical times it was common to represent abstract ideas by allegories. The tradition was also common during the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque. During the French Revolution, in 1789, many allegories of "Liberty" and "Reason" appeared. These two figures finally merged into one: a woman, shown either sitting or standing, and accompanied by various attributes such as the cockerel, the tricolor cockade, and the Phrygian cap. This woman typically symbolised Liberty, Reason, the Nation, the Homeland, and the civic virtues of the Republic. In September 1792, the National Convention decided by decree that the new seal of the state would represent a standing woman holding a spear with a Phrygian cap held aloft on top of it.
Why is it a woman and not a man who represents the Republic? Before the French Revolution, the Kingdom of France was embodied in masculine figures (e.g., those depicted in certain ceilings of Palace of Versailles). In the French language, Kingdom is a masculine noun (le Royaume), but the noun Republic is a feminine one (la République), and so are the French nouns for Liberty (la Liberté) and Reason (la Raison).
The use of Marianne was initially unofficial and very diverse. A female allegory of Liberty and of the Republic makes an appearance in Eugène Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People, painted in July 1830 in honour of the Three Glorious Days (July Revolution of 1830). Marianne was painted by artist Honoré Daumier as a mother nursing two children (1848), and sculpted by François Rude as an angry warrior voicing the Marseillaise on the Arc de Triomphe. She was subsequently both portrayed in republican iconography and caricatured by those against the Republic. Although both are common emblems of France, neither Marianne nor the Gallic rooster enjoys official status; the flag of France, as named and described in Article 2 of the French constitution, is the only official emblem. In any case, Marianne has become a most important symbol in France, where is always regarded as an allegory of the Republic.

République Française: Marianne

Erich Mendelsohn

2011-11-11T21:43:00.011+05:00

Erich Mendelsohn, Einstein Tower, ink sketch, 1919

Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953) was an architect known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s as well as for developing a remarkable kind of dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.

Mendelsohn is considered one of the most important German architects in the 20th century. His buildings were erected in Germany, the Soviet Union, Norway, England, Palestine and the USA. And with his very first buildings, the Einstein Tower in Potsdam, the hat factory in Luckenwalde and the Mosse Building in Berlin, he catapulted himself to the forefront of the avant-garde. He subsequently received numerous commissions to design department stores, commercial buildings, factories, private houses and to plan shop conversions.

Mendelsohn designed and built an astronomical observatory to experimentally confirm Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The building is known as the Einsteinturm (Einstein's Tower).

"Function is, of course, the primary element, but function without a sensual component is just construction... The functional dynamic is the postulate." Erich Mendelsohn

Online References
Einstein Tower + 1
Schocken Department Store Stuttgart + 1 + 2
Archinform: Petersdorff Department Store
Great Buildings Bio
Archiplanet
ArchitectureWeek Essay
The Compass Rose

New Objectivity • Neue Sachlichkeit

2011-10-15T19:33:00.024+05:00

The art of New Objectivity aims to provide us with a direct transcription of reality, works that function as the mirror of society and show it in all its ugliness, i.e., hypocrisy, misery, and brutality of fact.

Georg Scholz, Industriebauern | Industrial Farmers, 1920
Oil and collage on wood
Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal

Scholz's collage painting is a grotesquely grim portrayal of a peasant family’s Sunday meal. The parody is dominated by a self-righteous patriarch whose despicable child blows menacingly on a frog through a straw. In the window, a preacher approaches, a roasted turkey in his rotund stomach. As an illustrator for activist periodicals, Scholz gained the skills and perhaps the prescience to convey the bigotry, barbarism, and avarice of an actual family he had encountered in the countryside, probably to "conquer the aesthetic huckster through a new objectivity," as he proclaimed through his colleagues in Der Gegner (The Adversary).

Pamela Kort considers early modern German culture from a new angle: the comic grotesque, suggesting that a penchant for distorted, if not invented, bodies and beings that merge satire, horror and beauty in varying ratios is an essential ingredient in German modernism, especially in the Neue Sachlichkeit, or the New Objectivity, which sprang up in the Weimar Republic in the 1920s (The Grotesque and Its Relatives).

Despite its immense diversity, German modernism in the Weimar Republic remains united by a relentless scrutiny of the world.

Online Resources
Roberta Smith, Those Witty, Mocking Germans, The New York Times, 22.10.2004
MoMA: Georg Scholz, includes the lithographs Profiteering Farmer's Family (Wucherbauernfamilie), 1920; Newspaper Carrier (Zeitungsträger), 1921; and The Lords of the World (Die Herren der Welt), 1922. On the Newspaper Carrier lithograph: "Scholz pilloried Germany’s industrialists and moneyed elites in mordant caricatures such as this, made in the immediate postwar years. Gaunt and dejected, a father and son barely subsist by peddling newspapers, while a self-satisfied fat cat leisurely smokes a cigar in the backseat of his gleaming new automobile."
Head Study

The Roaring Twenties

2011-10-14T20:29:00.061+05:00

"Roaring Twenties" is a phrase used to describe a period of sustained economic prosperity in North America and Europe (principally Paris, London, and Berlin). The phrase refers to a period of social, cultural, and artistic dynamism. 'Normalcy' returned to politics in the wake of World War I, jazz music blossomed, the flapper redefined modern womanhood, Art Deco peaked, but the Wall Street Crash of 1929 punctuated the end of the era. As a period, the Roaring Twenties brought several inventions and discoveries of far-reaching importance, unprecedented industrial growth, accelerated consumer demand and aspirations, and significant changes in lifestyle and culture.

Dancing the Charleston
John Held, "Teaching old docs new tricks," Life Magazine, 1928

The Weimar Republic (1918-1933). Proclaimed on November 9, 1918, the Weimar Republic marked the first German experiment in democracy, producing a period of intense and uncensored intellectual and cultural productivity. Yet, filling the brief time slot between World War I and the rise of the Nazis, Weimar Germany was also characterized by social upheaval, crisis and hyperinflation (1919-1923), and general resentment for the losses of the war. The result was a short-lived era of extremes in which the rich lived in excess and the unemployed and poor increased daily.

Raoul Hausmann, ABCD (Self-Portrait), ink and collage, 1923-24
Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

Retaining the emotional intensity of German Expressionism, while advocating a return to realism and direct social criticism, artists such as Otto Dix and George Grosz captured their time and society with blunt honesty and a cynical insight that was often rooted in horrific personal experiences.

Otto Dix, Cardplayers, drypoint, 1920

Dix persistently depicts Germans as crippled. Resulting from Dix's nihilist vision, the expressionist characters that populate his paintings and prints do not entirely reflect the condition of the German population in the 1920s.

The artists associated with the Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity are identified as "verists" (Hartlaub). They opposed political impotence but without exemplifying any "return to order." Their form of realism distorted appearances to emphasize the ugly. They wanted to expose what they considered the ugliness of reality, so their art was raw, provocative, and harshly satirical.

Dix, Newborn Baby on Hands (Portrait of Ursus Dix), 1927
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Goldene Zwanziger (Golden Twenties), 1924-1929. Gustav Stresemann was Reichskanzler for 100 days in 1923, and served as foreign minister from 1923 to 1929, a period of relative stability for the Weimar Republic which is known in Germany as Goldene Zwanziger, "Golden Twenties". Prominent features of this period were a growing economy and a consequent decrease in civil unrest.
Once civil stability had been restored, Stresemann began stabilising the German currency, which promoted confidence in the German economy and helped the recovery that was so ardently needed for the German nation to keep up with their reparation repayments, while at the same time feeding and supplying the nation. Once the economic situation had stabilised, Stresemann could begin putting a permanent currency in place, called the Rentenmark (1924) which again contributed to the growing level of international confidence in the German economy.

Martin Wagner, Planned remodelling of Potsdamer and Leipziger Platz, Berlin, 1929

In order to help Germany meet her reparation obligations, the Dawes Plan was created in 1924. This was an agreement between American banks and the German government in which the American banks lent money to German banks with German assets as collateral to help it pay reparations. The German railways, the National Bank and many industries were therefore mortgaged as securities for the stable currency and the loans. Shortly after, the French and Germans agreed that the borders between their countries would not be changed by force, which meant that the Treaty of Versailles was being diluted by the signing countries. Other foreign achievements were the evacuation of the Ruhr in 1925 and the 1925 Treaty of Berlin, which reinforced the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 and improved relations between the Soviet Union and Germany. In 1926, Germany was admitted to the League of Nations as a permanent member, improving her international standing and giving her the ability to veto League of Nations legislation. However, this progress was funded by overseas loans, increasing the nation's debts, while overall trade increased and unemployment fell. Stresemann's reforms did not relieve the underlying weaknesses of Weimar but contributed to a stable democracy. The major weakness in constitutional terms was the inherent instability of the coalitions. The growing dependence on American finance was to prove dangerous and Germany was one of the worst hit nations in the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

Dancing and Jazz, Esplanade Hotel, Berlin 1926
Deutsches Bundesarchiv Bild 183-K0623-0502-001

There was an extraordinary cultural renaissance in Germany in the 1920s. During the worst phase of hyperinflation in 1923, clubs and bars were full of speculators spending their profits daily. The response of the intellectuals in Berlin was to condemn the excesses of capitalism and demand revolutionary changes on the cultural scenery. Influenced by the brief cultural explosion in the Soviet Union, German literature, music, theatre and cinema entered a phase of remarkable creativity. Innovative street theatre brought plays to the public, the cabaret scene and jazz bands became very popular. Modern young women were Americanised, wearing makeup, short hair, smoking and breaking with traditional mores. Euphoria surrounded the figure of Josephine Baker in Berlin, where she was considered an "erotic goddess" and in many ways admired and respected for providing the German public with "ultramodern sensations." New Objectivity found expression in the visual arts. The Bauhaus school new industrial prototypes, which led to functional design and modern architecture.

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus, Dessau, 1925
MHDE

Weimar Culture. It was the flourishing of the arts and sciences that happened during the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933, and this period is frequently cited as one of those with the highest level of intellectual production in human history. Germany was the country with the most advanced science, technology, literature, philosophy and art.
"Remarkable for the way it emerged from a catastrophe, more remarkable for the way it vanished into a still greater catastrophe, the world of Weimar represents modernism in its most vivid manifestation" (Marcus Bullock).

Gestalt and Theory of Perceptual Organization

Notable cultural figures in the Weimar Republic
Science. Albert Einstein, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg
Philosophy and Theory. Martin Heidegger, Martin Buber, Max Weber, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno
Gestalt Psychology. Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka
Literature. Bertolt Brecht, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann
Theater and Film. Max Reinhardt, Marlene Dietrich, Fritz Lang, Robert Wiene
Visual Arts. Otto Dix, George Gross, Max Beckmann, August Sander, John Heartfield, Paul Klee, Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst
Architecture. Erich Mendelsohn, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe

Online resources
Roaring Twenties
Economy
Einstein
Flapper
Art Deco
Weimar Republic
Post-Expressionism
New Objectivity
Hyperinflation
Einfühlung
Gestalt
Machine Aesthetic
Bauhaus
Additional resources

Jean Piaget

2011-10-13T11:52:00.024+05:00

(1896–1980), Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children.

"The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done—men who are creative, inventive, and discoverers. The second goal of education is to form minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered."

Illustrating Piaget's Ideas

Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do.

Play is the answer to how anything new comes about.

What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see.

To understand is to invent.

Related post

The Gestalt Program

The Gestalt and Its Researchers

2011-10-12T15:44:00.021+05:00

Gestalt Psychology: Central Premises
1. Holistic thinking. Übersummativität, i.e., "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" and transposability
2. The primacy of unitary analysis of phenomena, rather than analysis of stimuli
3. Experimental methodology, which had to be congruent with the type of event under investigation
4. Psychophysical isomorphism or psychological processes are clearly assigned to physical processes

Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Kurt Koffka (1886-1941), and Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) contributed to the creation of Gestalt psychology.

"I stand at the window and see a house, trees, sky. Theoretically I might say there were 327 brightnesses and nuances of colour. Do I have 327? No. I have sky, house, and trees." Max Wertheimer

Paul Klee. "Creative Credo," 1920, VII. Art is a simile of the Creation. Each work of art is an example, just as the terrestrial is an example of the cosmic.
The release of elements, their grouping into complex subdivisions, the dismemberment of the object and its reconstruction into a whole, the pictorial polyphony, the achievement of stability through an equilibrium of movement, all these are difficult questions of form, crucial for formal wisdom, but not yet art in the highest circle. In the highest circle an ultimate mystery lurks behind the mystery, and the wretched light of the intellect is of no avail. One may still speak reasonably of the salutary effects of art. We may say that fantasy, inspired by instinctual stimuli, creates illusory states which somehow encourage or stimulate us more than the familiar natural known supernatural states, that its symbols bring comfort to the mind, by making it realize that it is not confined to earthly potentialities, however great they may become in the future; that ethical gravity holds sway side by side with impish laughter at doctors and parsons.
But, in the long run, even enhanced reality proves inadequate.
Art plays an unknowing game with ultimate things, and yet achieves them!
Cheer up! Value such country outings, which let you have a new point of view for once as well as a change of air, and transport you to a world which, by diverting you, strengthens you for the inevitable returns to the greyness of the working day. More than that, they help you to slough off your earthly skin, to fancy for a moment thta you are God; to look forward to new holidays, when the soul goes to a banquet in order to nourish its starved nerves, and to fill its languishing blood vessels with new sap.
Let yourself be carried on the invigorating sea, on a broad river or an enchanting brook, such as that of the richly diversified, aphoristic graphic art.

Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) was a path-breaking psychologist of visual experience in the arts. He conducted some of the earliest experiments in the application of Gestalt theory in the perception of a work of art. Arnheim was born in an age when many remembered life without telephones and during his long and prodigiously productive scholarly life, he would witness the emergence of cinema, radio, and television. Arnheim was among the first theorists to write in significant ways about these new media of the twentieth century. A towering figure in the field of visual studies, he was a pioneer in the psychology of art and wrote seminal books on visual perception and artistic creativity. Arnheim has published more than a dozen books on art, architecture and film.

"All perceiving is also thinking" (Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, 1954). For thirty-five years his book Visual Thinking (1969) has been the standard for art educators and psychologists alike. In this groundbreaking work, Arnheim asserts that all thinking (not just thinking related to art) is basically perceptual in nature—and that the ancient dichotomy between seeing and thinking, between perceiving and reasoning, is false and misleading. Far from being a "lower" function, our perceptual response to the world is the basic means by which we structure events, and from which we derive ideas and therefore language. Although intended for the general reader, Visual Thinking is of immediate interest to the educator because of its practical consequences for the function of art in education and more broadly, in all fields of learning.

"Order is a necessary condition for anything the human mind is to understand. Arrangements such as the layout of a city or building, a set of tools, a display of merchandise, the verbal exposition of facts or ideas, or a painting or piece of music are called orderly when an observer or listener can grasp their overall structure and the ramification of the structure in some detail. Order makes it possible to focus on what is alike and what is different, what belongs together and what is segregated. When nothing superfluous is included and nothing indispensable left out, one can understand the interrelation of the whole and its parts, as well as the hierarchic scale of importance and power by which some structural features are dominant, other subordinate" (Arnheim, Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order, 1971).

Einstein on Crisis and Change

2011-10-11T18:55:00.004+05:00

Let's not pretend that things will change if we keep on doing the same things. A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, and to any nation.

For all crises bring progress. Creativity is born from anguish, just like day is born form night. It's in crisis that invention is born, as well as discoveries, and strategies. Whoever overcomes a crisis, overcomes himself, without being overcome. Whoever blames his failure on a crisis neglects his own talent, and is more respectful to problems than to solutions.

Incompetence is the true crisis. The greatest problem with people and nations is the laziness with which they attempt to find the solutions to their problems.

There is no challenge without a crisis. Without challenges, life becomes a routine, a slow agony. There is no merit without a crisis. It is in the crisis where we can show the very best in us. To speak about a crisis may promote it. Not to speak about it perpetuates conformism. Let us work hard instead.

Albert Einstein

„Einfühlung” • Empathy • Empatía

2011-08-29T23:33:00.107+05:00

What Is Empathy? A Definition: "The ability to understand another person’s circumstances, point of view, thoughts, and feelings. When experiencing empathy, you are able to understand someone else’s internal experiences" (Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault).

« How do I know that I know what I know – about you? This is clearly a question about epistemology, about knowledge. But it’s a special kind of knowledge, about others.
The ability to understand what another human being is thinking or feeling is most commonly known as empathy. The word empathy comes from the German [E]infühlung, which literally translates as “feeling into.” For thousands of years, empathy has attracted the attention of great thinkers in many fields of study » (Richard Lopez).

For isn't man is a tree of the field?
Cf. Deuteronomy 20:19 ; The Human Tree
Kim Graham, Man-Tree (Jotuntre), 2007

EMPATHY is the capacity of entering into, and so fully understanding (as if losing one's identity in) the spirit of a person, a work of art, etc. —Mariano Akerman

Mariano Akerman, Shape and Meaning: German Art, montage, 2010

“Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. [...] Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. [...] Two things awe me the most: the starry heavens above and the moral universe within.” —Albert Einstein.

Something in common

Awareness is not necessarily empathy: I was complaining because I had no shoes, until I saw somebody that had no feet. —Persian proverb

I am a man, nothing human is alien to me. —Terence
Kevin Christy, "You Remind Me of Me," NYT, 2008

"Most people are [...] strongly sensitive to rapport, to charm, to the social music in the person making the pitch" (Benedict Carey, You Remind Me of Me, The New York Times, 12.2.2008).

A cluster of illuminating definitions
• Daniel Batson: "A motivation oriented towards the other."
• D.M. Berger: "The capacity to put one's self in another's shoes."
• Jean Decety: "A sense of similarity in feelings experienced by the self and the other, without confusion between the two individuals."
• Nancy Eisenberg: "An affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another's emotional state or condition, and that is similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel."
• William Ickes: "A complex form of psychological inference in which observation, memory, knowledge, and reasoning are combined to yield insights into the thoughts and feelings of others."
• Heinz Kohut: "Empathy is the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person."
• Carl Rogers: "To perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the 'as if' condition. Thus, it means to sense the hurt or the pleasure of another as he senses it and to perceive the causes thereof as he perceives them, but without ever losing the recognition that it is as if I were hurt or pleased and so forth."
• Roy Schafer: "Empathy involves the inner experience of sharing in and comprehending the momentary psychological state of another person."
• Simon Baron-Cohen: "Empathy is about spontaneously and naturally tuning into the other person's thoughts and feelings, whatever these might be" (+).

Don Quijote y Sancho Panza sobre Clavileño el Alígero
Pintura de Manuel Monedero

La empatía (del griego antiguo εμπαθεια, formado εν, 'en el interior de', y πάθoς, 'sufrimiento, lo que se sufre'), también llamada inteligencia interpersonal (Howard Gardner: Teoría de las inteligencias múltiples) es la capacidad cognitiva de percibir la condición de otro individuo a partir de un sentimiento de participación emocional en la realidad que afecta a esa persona.

Anselm Kiefer, Shulamit, detalle, 1983

• "Siempre que alivies el dolor de otro ser humano, tu vida no será en vano"—Helen Keller.

• "El gran don de los seres humanos es el poder de la empatía"—Meryl Streep.

• "La empatía es la capacidad de pensar y sentir la vida interior de otra persona como si fuera la propia"—Heinz Kohut.

Mariano Akerman, Forma y Significado del Arte de Alemania, montaje, 2010

En otras palabras, empatía es ponerse en el lugar del otro pero teniendo presentes sus deseos, prejuicios, valores, motivaciones, recursos, habilidades, etc. Empatía implica comprender qué y cómo otra persona puede estar sintiendo en un momento dado, al considerar lo que ella tiene dentro de sí misma, e intentar sentirlo como propio. Para ello es necesario ser conscientes de todo lo que ha podido vivir una persona para llegar a sentir como siente, a actuar como actua, y a pensar como piensa (adaptado a partir de esta nota).

¿En su lugar no haría usted lo mismo?

Empatía es la capacidad de compenetrarse, de entender completamente la naturaleza y condición de una persona y percibir el mundo desde su punto de vista, tal como si uno fuese esa persona, pero sin llegar a perderse en ella. Lo mismo es aplicable a la obra de arte, cuando el espectador se compenetra con la misma y de un modo u otro comprende plenamente su razón de ser, ya que se ha puesto en el lugar de su creador, considerando de ser posible el punto de vista del mismo, las condiciones e incluso el contexto en el que la obra en cuestión ha sido realizada. Es etonces cuando se da la empatía. —Mariano Akerman

Vincent van Gogh, Casas en Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890

Käthe Kollwitz, Madre con mellizos, bronce, 1927-37

Wassily Kandinsky, Composición IV, 1911

René Magritte, El sabor de las lágrimas, 1948

Barbra Kruger, Pensando en ti, c. 1980

Francis Bacon, Autorretrato, 1973

Max Baur, Querubín, Stadtschloß de Potsdam, 1928-44
Deutches Bundesarchiv Bild 170-272

Paul Klee, Insula dulcamara | Isla agridulce, 1938

Mariano Akerman, L'essentiel est invisible, 2006

Akerman, De la importancia de lo auténtico, 1988

Akerman, Templo de Inclusión, 1987-88

¿No es acaso el hombre un árbol del campo?
Kim Graham, Árbol-Hombre (Jotuntre), 2007

Links
• Empathie
• The Swiss-German Project
• Creadores suizos y alemanes modernos

The Gestalt Program

Slideshare : Mariano Akerman

Hans Hartung

2011-08-26T14:27:00.029+05:00

Born in Leipzig, into an artistic family. He studied the work of painters such as Corinth and Nolde, and also learned the basis of French modern art. He studied in the Fine Arts Academies of Dresden and Munich. To prevent succumbing to provincialism, he left in 1927 his native country, and after a bicycle trip through Europe, he moved to Paris.
He lived with Anna-Eva Bergmann and established himself in the French town of Leucate and then in the Balearic Island of Minorca. His first exhibition was held in 1931 in Dresden and his last bonds with Germany were broken as he was rejected from Nazi Germany on account of being a "degenerate" whose work was influenced by that of Wassily Kandinsky. In 1935 when Hartung attempted to sell paintings while visiting Berlin, the police tried to arrest him. He was able to flee the country with the help of his friend Christian Zervos.
After returning to Paris in 1935 as a refugee his wife left him, causing him to become depressive. His friends tried to help him with his financial difficulties, but his paintings were becoming more abstract and did not sell well.
In December 1939, he became a member of the French Foreign Legion. He was closely followed by the Gestapo and arrested for seven months by the French police. After they learned he was a painter, he was put in a red cell in order to wear off his vision. After being released, Hartung rejoined the Legion to fight in North Africa. He earned French citizenship in 1945 and was also awarded the Croix de Guerre.
His work during this period is characterised by suspended areas of colour superimposed by calligraphic bunches of lines. Involving swirling and energetic linear motifs, Hartung’s mature style found an eager public after the war. A successful showing of his work in Paris (1947) was followed by exhibits elsewhere in Europe and in the United States, Japan, and Latin America. In 1960 he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Venice Biennale and an entire room of the French Pavilion was devoted to his work. Hartung had a decisive influence on the postwar generation of abstract painters in Europe. His later works became progressively calmer and more stable. Many of his works are titled by letters and numbers.

1951

1956

Hartung: "In my opinion the painting which is called abstract is none of the "isms" of which there have been so many lately, it is neither a "style" nor an "epoch" in art history, but merely a new means of expression, a different human language - one which is more direct than that of earlier painting" (Art Directory).

Hartung: "Before the blank canvas I feel the need to make a certain spot, a certain color, or a mark. The first marks lead to others. Colors lead to signs which in turn suggest marks whose roles might be to support or to contradict what already exists as much as to stabilize the painting. In any case, I act at first with complete liberty. It is the work, as it goes along, that limits my choices."

L158, 1968

Pintor alemán nacionalizado francés, conocido por sus obras abstractas de trazos caligráficos negros sobre fondo de colores. Nació en Leipzig en el seno de una familia de físicos. Su abuelo era también pintor autodidacta y compositor. Entre 1915 y 1926 estudió lenguas clásicas en el Dresden Gymnasium y filosofía e historia del arte en la universidad y en la Escuela de Bellas Artes de Leipzig. Más adelante ingresó en la Academia de Bellas Artes de Dresde. Durante el verano de 1926 viajó en bicicleta por Francia, Italia y España. En 1931 expuso por primera vez en Dresde. En 1937, en una exposición colectiva en el Jeu de Paume, París, conoció al gran escultor español Julio González, que habría de ejercer una profunda influencia en él. González le brindó todo tipo de ayuda y le animó a emprender su propio camino artístico. Durante el periodo prebélico Hartung se instaló en París para evitar el régimen nazi, y expuso en varias galerías. En 1938 participó en una exposición anti-nazi en la Galería New Burlington de Londres. En 1939, fue encarcelado en España y posteriormente se alistó en la Legión extranjera en el norte de África. En 1944 fue gravemente herido durante el sitio de Belfort y perdió una pierna. Después de la guerra se nacionalizó francés y en 1947 hizo una exposición individual importante en París. Desde el principio se mantuvo alejado del movimiento de la Bauhaus, al que consideraba como una mera moda pasajera. Sus pinturas, puramente abstractas, reflejan su opinión sobre la representación de la realidad: la expresión libre y pura debe trascender la realidad. La pincelada rápida constituyó una característica básica de su método de trabajo. La velocidad en el proceso creativo era, según sus propias palabras, "una necesidad espiritual". Recibió varios premios, entre los que se incluyen el Premio Guggenheim en 1956 y en 1960 el Gran Premio Internacional de la Bienal de Venecia (M.E.).

Pintores de Alemania
Creadores suizos y alemanes modernos

The Human Body in Modern Art

2011-08-07T10:33:00.015+05:00

Egon Schiele, Male Nude (Männlicher Akt), 1910
watercolor and charcoal on paper

Marcel Duchamp, Nu descendant un escalier n° 2, 1912
Nude descending a Staircase #2
oil on canvas, 147 × 89.2 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Pablo Picasso, Nude by the Sea, 1929

André Kertész, Distortion, photograph, Paris, 1933

Hans Bellmer, Doll, 1936
Painted aluminum on bronze base, 66 x 25.4 x 27.9 cm.
Zwirner & Wirth, New York

Jean Dubuffet, Will to Power, 1947

Alberto Giacometti, L’Homme qui marche II, bronze, 1960
Fondation Maegth, Saint-Paul de Vence
Walking Man | Man Striding

Henry Moore, Working Model for Reclining Figure: Festival, 1950

Louise Bourgeois, Janus fleuri, 1968
Bronze and golden patina, 25.7 x 31.8 x 21.3 cm

Francis Bacon, Seated Figure, 1989
Oil on canvas
The Estate of Francis Bacon, London

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt

2011-07-25T17:10:00.042+05:00

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736–1783) was a German-Austrian sculptor most famous for his "character heads", a collection of busts with faces contorted in extreme facial expressions.

Messerschmidt was a skillful Bavarian craftsman who was headed for a career at the Habsburg court in Vienna until he exhibited symptoms that denied him advancement and sent him deep inside himself to explore his own (and often extreme) emotional states, which he sculpted in marble, carved in alabaster or cast in lead alloy (1771-83). Around 1771, as his health apparently deteriorated, he started working on his "character heads", using himself as a model. He created a series of heads with grimacing faces. He produced the life-sized busts rapidly, 69 within a 13-year period. Collectively, Messerschmidt's "heads" display a range of emotions and, although they are not self-portraits, many resemble the artist.

He never intended to exhibit or sell them. Yet, he may have made them as physiognomic studies, perhaps inspired by experiments enacted by his friend, the controversial physician Franz Anton Mesmer. Messerschmidt probably also knew of Johann Caspar Lavater, who popularized "physiognomy"--the notion that human character is discernable by a person's physical appearance.

The Gentle Quiet Sleep

Apart from The Gentle Quiet Sleep, there is no classical ethos in Messerschmidt's sculptures, but an expressionist quality that introduces him as a lost soul of the European Enlightenment. The bust form can be reminiscent of the classical art of ancient Greece and Rome, the Messerschmidt's heads are idiosyncratic, capricious and self-centered. Moreover, the artist's facial expression is often ambivalent. Seemingly, Messerschmidt is a sculptor that falls somewhere between the Baroque and the Classicism, as his statues combine baroque expressive movement with classical clear forms and aggressive characterization with prosaic reproduction (M. Donner).

The Vexed Man is one of the series of 69 portrait busts or "character heads." The bust portrays a middle-aged man with a sour expression, which seems to fall somewhere between a grimace and a scowl. The most telling aspect may be the furrowed brow above squinting eyes and a scrunched nose. But natural cracks in the bust's alabaster surface seem to echo the topography of his skin, both softened by age yet hardened by the extreme expression. The man's receding hairline, wrinkles, and sagging jawline contrast with tensed cheek and neck muscles. Although the character seems to express irritation and annoyance, it is not certain whether Messerschmidt intended that interpretation, because he did not give the bust a title. A contemporary wrote that Messerschmidt told him that by making the character heads, he hoped to ward away spirits that invaded his mind (Getty Museum).

According to Jonathan Jones, Messerschmidt's work is "not so much the depiction of physiognomy as of the unfathomable self, alone and confounded, puzzled, grimly amused and fantastically assured of his own fascinating monstrosity." It repels curiosity even if commanding it. Messerschmidt, Jones states, exhibits himself as a freak, and laughs at medical or philosophical attempts to understand him.

Possibly, the character heads may be manifestations of madness. Yet, considering the artist's declared digestive problems, the may also have to do with constipation.

Indeed, it appears that for many years Messerschmidt had been suffering from an undiagnosed digestive complaint (now believed to be Crohn's disease), which caused him considerable discomfort. In order to focus his thoughts away from his condition, Messerschmidt devised a series of pinches he administered to his right lower rib. Observing the resulting facial expressions in a mirror, Messerschmidt then set about recording them in marble and bronze. His intention, he told Friedrich Nicolai in 1781, was to represent the "canonical grimaces" of the human face using himself as a template.

Animation by Edward Rose and Nick Reynolds

It is likely that Messerschmidt inteded to depict his physiological state and its facial response as he used bodily stimulation (Herb Ranharter).

With the Heads, with sometimes bizarrely grimacing facial features that express human emotions like fear, disgust, irritation, joy, pain, or sadness, Messerschmidt radicalized the genre of the portrait bust and at the end of his artistic career broke once and for all with traditional forms of depiction. The physiognomic search for emotions and a transparent inner being was, however, reduced to the absurd by seemingly arbitrary combinations of various forms of expression. Although the details of the movements of facial muscles are rendered realistically, many of them cannot in reality be reproduced simultaneously, and their effects are often exaggerated. The heads are, contrary to all experience of reality, symmetrically constructed; the forms of expression and movements of the heads are stylized by defining wrinkles and muscles. Likewise, the hair and eyebrows are not realistically depicted but instead follow the principles of ornament or drawing. Thus Messerschmidt abandoned a connection to reality, but in the process the expressive power of his art increased considerably (Städel Museum, Frankfurt).

Artists such as Francis Bacon have been inspired by Messerschmidt’s work.

Online resources
Digital Belvedere | Slovak National Gallery | Kuriositas
Nicolai, Friedrich. Description of a Journey through Germany and Switzerland in the Year 1781, trans. Herbert Ranharter, The Paris Review, 30.9.2010
Schmid, Theodor. Franz Xaver Messerschmidt's Heads, 2009
Eitner, Lorenz. The Grand Eccentrics, ed. Thomas Hess & John Ashbery, Collier Books, 1971 (cited by John Coulthart, "The Art of Messerschmidt," Feuilleton, 23.6.2006).
_____. The Grand Eccentrics (cited by Dennis Cooper, CD, 6.4.2011).
Jones, Jonathan. Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Guardian, 28.1.2011

• La joie de vivre: images of Messerschmidt's heads

Hurva Synagogue

2011-07-21T09:06:00.020+05:00

¿Kahn’s project versus Meltzer’s restoration?

"A painted horse is not a zebra," expressed once Louis I. Kahn. Were he alive today and regarding the new Hurva Synagogue, ¿would the celebrated American architect say those words once again if contemplating Nauhm Meltzer's restoration today?

Now that things have been clarified regarding certain misrepresentation y other historical aspects concerning the Hurva Synagogue, we may compare Kahn’s 1968 project with Meltzer’s 2003 restoration.

As it was presented in 1968, Kahn’s initial project had a great impact in Jerusalem, where many admired it and some were astonished because of its magnitude and symbolism.* The project was appreciated, but there were also objections. To build or not to build Kahn's Hurva that was the big question all along the 1970s. More than forty years were going to be necessary to have "the Ruin" restored, only in 2010.

Today the building has been completely restored, and if we considering Jerusalem’s difficult reality, then Meltzer has been responsible and sensitive in doing his job. Moreover, his restoration doesn’t diminish the great evocative character of Kahn’s design (developed 1968-1974). As it happens with Leonardo’s sketches showing temples that remained unbuilt, also Kahn’s Hurva Synagogue Project remains magnetic and powerful as a design.

It is perhaps of little use to make efforts in indicating which proposal is the best. The point is not some 'either this or that.' Besides, Kahn’s project and Meltzer’s restoration need to be contemplated each in its respective historical context. Clearly, each of the architects did the best he could and he did so under difficult conditions. Kahn envisioned what would have been an ideal synagogue; Meltzer was requested to build a real one, responding to communitarian needs.

It is noteworthy that when Kahn’s project was being developed the Hurva was itself literally in ruins and there were neither Great Synagogue of Jerusalem nor Israel Museum.

Unfolding extraordinary compositional creativity and symbolic daring, Kahn concieved in a single design what would have been a Great Synagogue of Jerusalem and Israel Museum at once. Kahn delineated a most important project, but one that if ever built would have needed to be dimensionally adjusted to the living conditions that characterize Jerusalem, otherwise would have entailed a major urban modification in the Old City.

The important principles that Kahn had considered along his career continue inspiring architects up to now. Especially his respectful approach to what he called "Beginnings" and the History of Architecture as such. Memory and poetry are fused in Kahn’s architectural configurations with vision and wisdom. And regarding the magnitude of the Hurva Synagoge Kahn projected, he probably would have adjusted it to the needs of the environment. For no other architect has ever been so interested in "what the building wants to be" as Kahn opportunely was. And, above all, Kahn’s Hurva would have had Monumentality.

The restored synagogue lacks of monumentality, yet it fits the always hypersensitive environment of Jerusalem. As Meltzer aptly notes, the old Hurva, with its neo-Byzantine typology, was a synagogue as there was no other in Jerusalem, not even in the whole Holy Land. That building even served as a model to other synagogues abroad (source).

Kahn’s design fused the achievements of Modern architecture with a poetical dimension that were not oblivious of the very origins of Hebrew architecture, which the Pennsylvania architect believed were in king Solomon’s Temple. It is probably because of all this that his Hurva Synagogue Project had become an architectural paradigm and keeps on being perceived as a prominent configuration. Besides, Kahn’s design is a remarkable example of inclusion (or what Robert Venturi used to call the "both-and" phenomenon).

Jerusalem is a city closely related to Tradition. With its Hurva Synagogue Project, Kahn had envisioned an architectural masterpiece, one somehow comparable to the Dome of the Rock. Jerusalem’s major Teddy Kollek opportunely expressed his satisfaction concerning Kahn’s project, yet he did not really encourage its construction.

The 21st-century followers of the 19th-century rabbis preferred to restore the synagogue, having it as their predecessors had built it in the past. No architecturally innovative temple has thus been built. They have just rebuilt “the Ruin” once again. The local needs, however, do not deprive Meltzer’s building of a certain global symbolism, although this is quite far from the one in Kahn’s proposal.

The building restored by Meltzer has modest dimensions and its decoration is austere. The architect from Jerusalem architect has proven to be sensitive about the history of the building and its environment. He did a subtle job.
Undoubtedly, Melter’s greatest achievement is to have finished with the insipid arch that during almost three decades served as a reminder of a ruined synagogue. And positive in this sense is the fact that the transitory arch erected in 1977 has finally been removed to give subsequently place to a built temple.

Kahn proposed and Meltzer reconstructed. Each in his own way has contributed to build Jerusalem. The History of Architecture is composed by facts, being these both projects and buildings. The history of the Hurva Synagogue is additionally significant in its own, and not only from an architectural viewpoint. Given the contrasting events which have marked its history and existence, the Hurva (as both concept and building) will always constitute a symbol of resonant significance.

_____
* "The Evocative Character of Louis Kahn's Hurva Synagogue Project, 1967-1974," in: The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art, ed. by Bianca Kühnel, 1998, pp. 245-53.

"Reinventing [?] Jerusalem"

2011-07-14T00:23:00.205+05:00

Simone Ricca, Reinventing Jerusalem, London: I.B.Tauris, 2007. According to the information provided by Google books online, this "fascinating" book is about "History."

But, unfortunately, it is not. And what one finds in it is a critical analysis on "politics of heritage conservation," well impregnated with ideologically-inspired interpretation.

Ricca presents some facts concerning Jerusalem, but keeps for himself those he prefers not to deal with. Then he proceeds to interpret the fragmentary piece of evidence he has chosen and, in the end, he provides one with an avalanche of farfetched criticism.

A British writer who had been working as a UNESCO employee, Ricca is somewhat economical with the truth. As a matter of fact his Reinventing Jerusalem is itself a reinvention of the history of Jerusalem in its own right.

Ricca's book includes misinterpretations, misspellings and misleading captions, such as the one visible in the first image, which reads "The ruins of the Hurva synagogue." This is inaccurate, for what the photograph shows is not only "the ruins of the Hurva synagogue," desecrated and blown up in 1948, but also one of its arches, reconstructed in 1977. Such ruins plus the reconstructed arch constitute from 1977 onwards a memorial site, and not merely "ruins." The photograph shows the 1977 arch functioning as a reminder of what once was a major synagogue of Jerusalem, a historical landmark. The 1977 arch was added to the ruins as a temporary solution and until the Hurva Synagogue would be build once again.

Ruins plus an arch is not a synagogue. Yet, Ricca describes them as "celebrative ruins" (p. 111).

How can a manifestation of destruction be a reason for celebration?

Whatever the answer, the fact is that in the well-known 1977 memorial combining a ruined synagogue and its reconstructed arch, Ricca discovers a fascinating source of inspiration, and even "new aesthetical values" (p. 224, n. 34).

Isn't his approach grotesque? And don't Ricca's ideas recall the ones expressed in 1975 by British painter Francis Bacon about being fascinated with the "kind of beauty" he had eventually found in some decomposing matter?

Discarded newspapers changing colour in the sunlight, bones and carcasses that have been in the sea or sun for a long time, gradually change into other things. There is a kind of beauty in that—a kind of magic (Bacon, "Remarks from a conversation with Peter Beard," Francis Bacon, New York: Metroplolitan Museum of Art, 1975, p. 16).

According to Ricca, those who had lost their sanctuary were supposed to be happy [and presumably even thankful] for having provided with a highly suggestive memorial, ruined for ages.

The ruined condition of Synagoga, a several-times-restored medieval sculpture (Cathedral of Rochester, United Kingdom), is no doubt more than compatible with Ricca's "celebrative ruins"

It comes as no surprise Ricca condemning in his book some words expressed against the temporary Hurva arch in the mid-1990s, then aptly described as "a lonely architectural sign standing as an insipid memorial for a nineteenth-century synagogue in ruins" (Reinventing Jerusalem, p. 111). Regardless of what Ricca may think about such words, the fact is that the solitary 1977 arch was a transitory solution, and by the mid-1990s, it became "an absolutely objectionable substitute" for a blown up temple (ibid; see also The Real and Ideal Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Art, ed. by Bianca Kühnel, 1998, pp. 245-53).

Ricca: "Beyond commemorating the destruction, the Hurva memorial allows the entire [...] community collectively to appropriate the site in an extremely powerful and profound manner, unrivaled by any architectural design. Indeed, the collective [...] memory can, tragically, superimpose, to the sight of yet another ruin, countless images of destroyed synagogues and pogroms" (Reinventing Jerusalem, p. 111; photo by C. Barnard)

« And Sarah laughed within. » Genesis 18:12

The Hurva Synagogue
Several synagogues were built and subsequently destroyed on the same site in Jerusalem.
1267 Original synagogue
1421 Document refers to the original synagogue
1585 Intentionally desecrated and destroyed
1700 The Rabbi Yehuda ha-Hasid Synagogue, built by his students and followers
1721 Intentionally desecrated and destroyed; nick-named "The Hurva"
1836 Rebuilding restarts thanks to Rabbi Abraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref
1864 The Bet Yaakob Synagogue, built by the disciples of Rabbi Eliyahi Ben Shlomo Zalman Kramer, the Vilna Gaon, is inaugurated as the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem
1948 Intentionally desecrated, burnt and blown up
1968-74 Louis I. Kahn develops the Hurva Synagogue Project (unbuilt)
1977 Arch is erected, marking a memorial site
2003-10 The Hurva Synagogue, built by Jerusalem architect Nahum Meltzer ("Mitzer" according to Ricca, p. 111).

Hurva Synagogue, Jerusalem, 1864-1948 (Yaacov Ben Dov)

1948-1967 In ruins

1977-2003 Memorial arch

1968-1974 Unbuilt project by Louis I. Kahn (Kent Larson, MIT)

2010 The Hurva Synagogue

The Hurva Synagogue was part of a neighborhood dating back to the eighteenth century. It was named after Rabbi Yehuda ha-Hassid, a mystic from Poland who began to build it, but died within days of his arrival in Jerusalem. The temple was burned down in 1721. Since then it became known as the "Hurva" (the Ruin). It was still called so even after it was rebuilt in 1864. The second rebuilding brought the temple to the height of twenty four meters. It was blown up by the Jordanian army in 1948. A single Hurva arch was rebuilt in 1977. After almost four decades of community and architectural discussions and successive plans that were put forward and dropped, the Hurva Synagogue was rebuilt in 2005 and rededicated in 2010. The new building follows closely the 1864, neo-Byzantine Hurva Synagogue, of which it is practically a replica.

In Reinventing Jerusalem, Ricca claims that the Old City's reconstruction did not preserve the past. This is idea is mistaken today: Meltzer's Hurva Synagogue, for instance, is a building which has been conceived precisely to preserve the past.

According to Jerusalem architect Nahum Meltzer,

The Hurva synagogue was destroyed just over half a century ago, and many details of the building have been preserved. These details are based on precise, constant measurements of the building, the surviving remnants, the large number of interior and exterior photographs that exist, and eyewitness reports both oral and written. These extensive details enable us to conceive a complete architectural restoration of the building and return it to its former state without making any assumptions. We know, with a great deal of certainty, the formation of the walls, the character of the portals, the dimensions of the dome and the technique used to lay it on the walls of the synagogue.
All these make the restoration concept legitimate, both scientifically and within the parameters of accepted ethical code used for restoration work, as expressed in the ninth paragraph of the Venice Convention. "The object of restoration is the preservation revelation of the monument's historical and aesthetic values, and is based on respect to the existent and correct, un-manipulated documentation which must end at the point where all conjecture begins" (A statement by Architect Nahum Meltzer).

In a 2007 article entitled A New Ruin Raising, published three years before Meltzer's reconstruction had been finished, Gavriel Rosenfeld noted, "The only certainty is that the future synagogue will be guilty of the sin of all reconstructions: that of falsifying the past. Once the Hurva is completely rebuilt, its dome will no doubt blend harmoniously into the Old City’s ancient skyline. It will do so, however, not as an authentic historic artifact but rather as a postmodern simulacrum. When the new synagogue is rededicated, some of the initial reactions will likely be critical. [...] Historic preservationists will complain about the fabrication of an architectural forgery."

In Reinventing Jerusalem, Ricca complains non stop.

However, as Rosenfeld wrote, "In the long run, [...] few will know or care that the restored Hurva is a copy of a copy," to finally recognize that "Our world is full of counterfeit buildings —think of Venice’s campanile on the Piazza San Marco, or Colonial Williamsburg— none of which seems to affect us in any adverse way."

Writing these ideas Rosenfeld was more or less right. The only thing one may not agree with Rosenfeld is his idea that "for those who value the opportunity to encounter the authentic traces of history, the Hurva’s restoration will hardly be a cause for celebration." In this, Rosenfeld was not totally right. Ricca may probably never celebrate Meltzer's reconstruction of the Hurva, nevertheless the Jerusalem architect's work is a fine restoration, which significantly includes "authentic traces of history," such as the structural remnants of the 1864 Bet Yaakob Synagogue, whose original yet fragmentary Jerusalem stone wall Meltzer has left visible in an architecturally honest restoration.

Interior view of the Hurva Synagogue, Jerusalem, May 2010. Architect Nahum Meltzer

Additional references
Sacred Destinations
Location

The History of the Hurva Synagogue
Rosenfeld, Gavriel. "A New Ruin Rising: The Hurva Synagogue’s Latest Incarnation," Forward, 9.11.2007
Yehuda Azoulay, "Rebuilding the Ruins," Sepharadic Legacy, September 2010, pp. 54-60, PDF
¿Kahn’s project versus Meltzer’s restoration?, 21.7.11
Commons
Photographs by William Hamblin. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Abel Pann, « And Sarah laughed within. » (Genesis 18:12), 1925
pastel, 40 x 42 cm. Private collection
Pann, The Palestine Weekly, January 1924: "I wish to picture the heroes of the Bible as human beings made of flesh and bone, beings in whose veins blood flows. I wish the characters of the Bible to be shown as possessing the passions of human beings just as they are pictured in the Book, with their virtues and vices, loves and hatreds, stories of tragedy and humour, poetry and prose." Moreover, "The task I have set myself involves a serious responsability. The enthusiasm which my work arouses in me is often clouded by painful doubts and questionings. For that same Book which has inspired many a genius to produce his masterpiece has proved to be beyond the reach of a far greater number of artists. A son of the race which produced this marvelous Book, I feel that I, better than some others, may be able to size its true spirit, and to communicate it to my fellow-men. But the absolute truth is with God alone" (Personal Statement). Abel Pann's youngest son was killed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

• También en español: Ricca y su publicada tergiversación

Vishnu Padmanabha

2011-07-10T15:15:00.028+05:00

by Mariano Akerman

The Padmanabhaswamy Temple Treasure. Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple which is located in the city of Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram), Kerala, south India is making headlines on account of the vast treasure found in its secret vaults devouted to Vishnu. The treasure is literally invaluable: the biggest discovered in India, and the biggest ever found in the world.

Vishnu Padmanabha, gold, 16th century
Padmanabhaswamy Temple, Trivandrum, Kerala, India

The main findings include a remarkable gold idol of Vishnu and a 30 kg golden anki. The pure gold idol of Vishnu is believed to be a replica of the one used in the temple. The golden idol of Padmanabhaswamy (with no less than 1000 precious stones) is valued to around Rupees 500 Crore. Another 5 kg gold idol of Krishna was also found and so were plenty of golden coins (some of which are believed to have been issued during the reign of Krishnadeva Raya in the 16th century CE.), in the temple in Kerala, precisely where the Maharaja comes every morning to pray.

Iconography

Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple is a famous Hindu temple dedicated to god Vishnu. It is maintained by the Travancore Royal Family and located inside the city of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala State, South India. The date of the temple is unknown, but the temple is mentioned in the writings of the Alvars (6th-9th centuries CE), and various renovations are thought to have taken place until the 18th century. The principal deity, Padmanabhaswamy, is Vishnu in the "Ananta-sayanam" posture. That is, Vishnu in the eternal sleep on the hooded serpent Ananta.

In Hinduism, the cosmic functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction are personified by the forms of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the maintainer or preserver, and Shiva the destroyer or transformer. Such deities compose "the Hindu triad" or "Great Trinity".

Vishnu is depicted as a four-armed male figure. The four arms indicate his all-powerful and all-pervasive nature. The physical existence of Vishnu is represented by the two arms in the front while the two arms at the back represent his presence in the spiritual world. The Upanishad titled Gopal Uttartapani describes the four arms of Vishnu.

In the Padmanabhaswamy Temple (Sree Padmanabhaswamy, Trivandrum), Vishnu can be seen in the traditional reclining posture (Anananthasayanam posture of eternal sleep).

Vishnu Padmanabha (Ananthapadmanabhan, Ananthashayanam), painting, three panels. Padmanabhaswamy Temple, Trivandrum

The main idol for worship at the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple is Vishnu lying on the snake Anantha. This avatar of Vishnu is called Ananthapadmanabhan and Vishnu's posture lying on the snake is popularly known as Ananthashayanam. Vishnu is the ultimate omnipresent reality, his nature ia all-pervasive. Anantha is an immortal, infinite snake.

As the gold statue of Vishnu in this posture is one of the biggest in India. Preserved in a special room, the idol cannot be fully seen. Thus three doors are needed. On such doors the divinity is depicted as well. Padmanabha (lotus-navel) is a traditional aspect of Vishnu, with a lotus issuing from his navel on which Brahma sits.

Poster

Four-armed, Padmanabha Vishnu, sculpture, Munneswaram Temple, Puttalam, Sri Lanka (Leon Meerson)

Vishnu Padmanabha, painting, 1780-90. The National Museum, New Delhi. Vishnu reclines on the coil of the great serpent Shesha, while the four-headed Brahma springs from his navel. Lakshmi, Vishnu's consort, caresses his feet with devotion.

Vishnu Padmanabha, painting, c. 1700-50. Banaras Hindu University. Eighteenth century Vaishnava painting decipting Vishnu, on the serpent Anant Shesha, with consort Lakshmi, caressing his feet; sage Markandeya pays his respects to Vishnu, while Brahma emerges in a lotus from Vishnu's navel.

The lotus flower (Padma) represents spiritual liberation, divine perfection, purity and the unfolding of spiritual consciousness within the individual. The lotus in Vishnu's hand symbolizes that god is the power and source from which the universe and the individual soul emerges. The lotus also introduces Vishnu as the embodiment of spiritual perfection and purity.

According to Hinduism, the Padmanabha is a lotus-naveled god and the one from whose navel sprang the lotus which contained Brahma, who created the universe.

Online resources
Hindu Deities
Le grand trésor hindou à Trivandrum
Vishnu en flor

Alberto Giacometti

2011-06-18T20:17:00.010+05:00

Only reality interests me.

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.

It is impossible to do a thing the way I see it because the closer I get the more differently I see.

When I see a head from a great distance, it ceases to be a sphere and becomes an extreme confusion falling down into the abyss.

The head is what matters. The rest of the body plays the part of antennae making life possible for people and life itself is inside the skull.

Once the object has been constructed, I have a tendency to discover in it, transformed and displaced, images, impressions, facts which have deeply moved me.

When I make my drawings... the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness.

It was never my intention to paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray.

In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist's obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.

Artistically, I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create.

I don't know if I work in order to do something, or in order to know why I can't do what I want to do.

Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working.

All I can do will only ever be a faint image of what I see and my success will always be less than my failure or perhaps equal to the failure.

Biography

Alberto Giacometti was born in Stampa on October 10, 1901 the first of Annetta and Giovanni's four children. Stampa is a village situated in a mountain region called Bergell, located between the Alpine passes of Maloja and Castasegna. Geographically turned towards Italy, it oriented itself towards the north because of the Protestantism of its inhabitants.
Originally from a modest family from central Italy, the Giacomettis were already rich when Alberto was born. His grandfather had married into a wealthy Bergell family. His father followed in the grandfather's footsteps and married the daughter of the richest family in the valley.
The Giacomettis were a dynamic family. Alberto's grandfather was a confectioner who emigrated first to Warsaw (Poland) and then to Bergamo (Italy), where he successfully run a coffee-house. He returned to Stampa as a rich man.
Alberto's father, Giovanni Giacometti, was already a successful neo-Impressionist painter when he was born. In 1908, he exhibited alongside Vincent van Gogh, Cuno Amiet and Hans Emmenegger at Zurich's Künstlerhaus. Incidentally, Alberto's godfather was Cuno Amiet, his brother Diego's godfather was the eminent Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler.
Giovanni Giacometti encouraged his son's artistic ambitions. Alberto finished his first all drawings in 1913 and his first plasticine sculpture the following year. In 1915, he enrolled in the Evangelic Academy in Schiers. His earliest surviving oil painting, dated 1915, shows that his style was entirely academic as well as his admiration for Cézanne.
In 1919, Alberto left the school in Schiers and moved to Geneva where he first studied at the Ecole des beaux-arts and then at the Ecole des arts industriels.
After travels to the Venice Biennale and Padua with his father and later alone to Rome and Florence in 1920 and 1921, Alberto, at the suggestion of his father, moved to Paris to study life drawing and sculpture with Antoine Bourdelle at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Giacometti later wrote about the limits of the academy: “I realized that my vision changed daily. Either I saw a volume or I saw the figure as a blob, or I saw a detail or I saw the whole. given that the models only posed for a very limited period, they left even before I had begun to capture anything at all.”
The young Giacometti suffered from homesickness. He spent a lot of time in 1922 in Stampa and only returned to Paris in autumn to study seriously, encouraged by his father who was wise enough to realize that his son had to remain in the capital of the arts of his time to become a great artist, something Giovanni Giacometti, despite his success, thought not to have achieved. In that period, influenced by Egyptian art, Alberto made numerous plaster sculptures of which only few have survived.
In 1925, Alberto exhibited his works of art for the first time at the Salon des Tuileries. He realized that it was impossible for him to create painting and sculptures exactly the way he saw them and that he had “to abandon the real.” For ten years, he created from memory “on the fringes of truth.”
In 1926, Alberto moved into the studio at no. 46 rue Hippolyte-Maindron in Paris, where he would work the rest of his life. The following year, his interest in Cubism and non-European indigenous art was reflected in his sculpture Femme cuillère. In 1928-29, he had regular exhibitions in Paris and became acquainted with André Breton and the Surrealists, André Masson, Hans Arp, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Joan Miró as well as the writers Jacques Prévert and Georges Bataille.
In the catalogue, Michiko Kono also describes what Alberto's family members did. Let's just mention that Diego and Alberto started to collaborate more closely together in 1929, with Diego assisting his brother. Diego put his ambitions as a painter on hold to concentrate instead on making armatures and learning the techniques of casting and patination. In tune with Surrealism, Alberto appreciated the unintentional and the imperfect offered by the self-taught Diego, while giving him at the same time precise instructions. Diego later worked for interior designers, including Jean-Michel Frank, for whom his younger sister Ottilia weaved textile items in Switzerland.
Alberto in the meantime followed his interests in Surrealism and was inspired by dreams, the workings of chance, political and sexual objects, as Michiko Kono points out and the works published in the catalogue document.
In 1932 followed Alberto's first solo exhibition at the Galerie Pierre Colle in Paris, with Pablo Picasso attending the vernissage. The same year, Giacometti participated in the Venice Biennale.
After his father's death in 1933, Alberto spent most of his time in Switzerland. He returned to Paris in December 1934 and, the following year, broke with the Surrealists. He turned to academic subjects including portraits, nudes, still lives, landscapes and interiors.
Alberto later said that each morning from 1935 to 1940, Diego sat for him as a model. Alberto could only see details but not his brother's head as a whole. Therefore, he made him go further and further away from him. The result were smaller and smaller sculptures. The more Alberto looked as his models, the less clearly he could see them. He became terrified of the disappearance of things.
In 1936, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City was the first art institution to buy one of Alberto's works of art (Le palais à 4 heures du matin, a Surrealist work made in 1932, oil and graphite on card, included in the catalogue and part of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti in Paris).
From 1942 to 1945, Alberto could not return to Nazi occupied Paris and stayed in neutral Switzerland. Diego remained alone in Paris and took care of Alberto's atelier and works. Nothing was destructed or confiscated.
In October 1943, Alberto met his future wife Annette Arm in Geneva. She followed him to Paris in 1946; they married in 1949.
In 1947, in preparation of his exhibition at the gallery of Pierre Matisse in New York, Alberto Giacometti entered a highly productive phase. Annette was his principal female model. He experiments with fragmentation. Jean-Paul Sartre, whom Alberto had met together with Simone Beauvoir in 1941, provides the introduction The search for the absolute to the catalogue of his 1948 exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery. It was Alberto's first solo exhibition since 1934.
According to biographer James Lord, the encounter between Giacometti and Sartre in 1941 and their regular subsequent meetings were fruitful for both artists. Sartre considered Giacometti's characteristic post-war sculptures - first exhibited in New York in 1948 - an expression of his Existentialism. In New York, Giacometti not only rose to fame, he also met the influential art critic David Sylvester and his later biographer James Lord. The latter later stressed the importance of the Phenomenology, which Alberto had studied in Geneva, for the new fragile sculptures.
As a crucial experience (Schlüsselerlebnis) for his new art, Alberto described a visit to a Paris cinema after the war, when he discerned just undefined black spots instead of a person. When he entered the Boulevard Montparnasse afterwards, his perception of the world, of the depth of space, things, colors and silence had changed. He began to see human heads in void, an emptiness, in the space surrounding them. The heads became immobile. The living seemed dead to him.
In 1949, London's Tate Gallery purchased his 1947-sculpture L'homme qui pointe (also documented in the catalogue of the Beyeler exhibition). Alberto's commercial success came with his second New York exhibition in November 1950, where all his large sculptures made in recent years were shown and sold. In addition, paintings and drawings were exhibited and sold too.
Alberto continued his modest lifestyle, whereas his wife Annette wanted to enjoy the fruits of his labor and bought a flat. This was the beginning of their slowly growing discord. He remained an artistic searcher who never found what he was looking for.
In 1951 followed Alberto's first solo exhibition at the Galerie Maeght in Paris. Francis Ponge devoted an essay to him in the Cahiers de l'art , illustrated with photographs by the Swiss Ernst Scheidegger. Giacometti's rugged facial features became a favorite motif of many leading photographers, including Robert Doisneau, Arnold Newman, Inge Morath, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Irving Penn.
The subsequent exhibitions are too many to be mentioned here. In 1956, a Japanese friend started to sit for Alberto all day. In the evenings, he painted him. “The better it went, the more he disappeared. on the day he left”, Alberto told him, “If I do another line, the picture will disappear altogether.”
In 1958, Alberto met the 22-year-old Caroline, who would pose for him from 1960 to 1965. From February 1959 to spring 1960, he devoted an entire year to a monumental sculpture outside the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City. Alberto has casts made of the sculptures for the project. They do not fulfill his expectations and he abandons the project altogether. He does however produce four large female figures, a monumental head and two walking men, which are released as independent sculptures.
In 1963, Alberto underwent a stomach cancer operation in Paris. He continues to work, exhibit, receive awards and accolades. While visiting the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York in 1965, he reportedly said that he would like to take up the monumental project again.
On January 11, 1966 suffering from a chronic bronchitis, Alberto Giacometti died from a heart attack at the Cantonal Hospital in Chur, Switzerland. He was buried at Bogonovo Cemetery where his parents lie too. In 1972, his surviving wife Annette left the rue Hippolyte-Maindron studio at the owner's request. The building no longer exists. Annette died in 1993 and was buried at the Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Her plan to entrust a foundation with her husband's estate, archives and the material she had collected for the catalogue raisonné came to fruition with the establishment of the Foundation Alberto and Annette Giacometti in 2003.
The catalogue with large scale reproductions: Giacometti, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2009, 224 pages, 194 photos.

BOLA SUSPENDIDA. La Bola suspendida (1931) es una escultura construida como una jaula abierta de barras de hierro en cuyo interior se encuentra una esfera con una hendidura y colgada de una cuerda que roza, con un vaivén, la arista afilada de una pieza semirrecostada en forma de media luna o de gajo de naranja. Existen dos versiones, una realizada en madera y otra en escayola.
Esta obra inaugura la incursión de Alberto Giacometti en el universo del objeto surrealista. Su descubrimiento causa un pequeño cataclismo en el seno de dicha corriente artística. Será André Bretón quien la descubrirá en la galería Pierre Loeb de París, y su posterior compra será la responsable de la amistad entre ambos. La obra llega en un momento de inflexión de la poética surrealista, que evoluciona desde la exploración del universo interior, en los años veinte (los sueños, la locura, las experiencias hipnóticas) hasta el descubrimiento del universo real o inventado de los objetos, hacia 1930. En uno de los primeros números de la revista El surrealismo al servicio de la Revolución, en 1931, Giacometti daba cuenta del magnetismo inquietante con que le hechizaban los objetos: “Todas las cosas… las que están cerca, y lejos, todas las que han pasado y las futuras, las que se mueven, mi amigas, cambian (se pasa junto a ellas, se apartan), otras se acerca, suben, descienden, patos en el agua, aquí y allá, en el espacio, suben y bajan…”
En el curso de los años 30, Giacometti insiste en el hecho de que la escultura que realizaba no tenían las huellas de su manipulación, ni de su impronta física ni de sus cálculos estéticos y formales. “Desde hace años”, escribe en 1933, “realizó solamente aquellas esculturas que se ofrecen a mi espíritu ya perfectamente terminadas”. “La realización es solo un trabajo material que, para mí, en todos los casos, no presenta ninguna dificultad. Es casi aburrido. Se tiene en la cabeza y se necesita verla realizada, pero la realización en sí misma es molesta. ¡Si se pudiera hacer realizar por otros sería todavía más satisfactorio! ”Es por eso que hablaba de sus obras como de “proyecciones” que quería ver realizadas pero que no quería fabricar él mismo.
Sin embargo, el aspecto más innovador es la puesta en juego del movimiento real en la obra plástica hasta entonces estática. Esto se debe al hecho de que la bola puede, efectivamente, hacerse oscilar como un péndulo, lo que determina una percepción del trabajo en su forma física concreta y objetiva y no como forma plástica. Según el propio autor: “A pesar de mis esfuerzos, en aquellos tiempos no conseguía realmente tolerar una escultura que se limitase a dar ilusión de movimiento (una pierna que avanza, un brazo levantado, una cabeza que mira de lado). El movimiento podía concebirlo solamente si era real y efectivo, es más, quería dar la sensación de poderlo provocar.” El movimiento es real, y por lo tanto el medio temporal en el que se inscribe es el tiempo real de la experiencia, despojado de todos los límites y, por definición, incompleto. Este recorrido del movimiento real y al mismo tiempo textual es una función del significado del surrealismo en cuanto que se instala simultáneamente en los márgenes del mundo y en su interior, comparte las condiciones temporales, pero se forma bajo la presión de una necesidad interior.
Al poner la bola y la medialuna en el volumen cúbico de una jaula, Giacometti puede jugar con sus dos registros espaciales. Produce así una ambivalencia: confina el objeto en el campo escénico restringido a la jaula, imprimiendo al mismo tiempo un movimiento real; lo inscribe en el espacio del mundo, separándolo de las cosas que lo circundan. La jaula le permite afirmar la particularidad de esta situación y transformar el conjunto en una especie de esfera de cristal impenetrable, fluctuante en el interior del mundo real. Parte del espacio real y al mismo tiempo se separa de él, la bola suspendida y la medialuna abren una fisura en la superficie continua de la realidad. Esta escultura captura una experiencia que hacemos, a veces, estando despiertos, experiencia de discontinuidad que se insinúa entre las diferentes partes del mundo. Esta obra tiene una poderosa capacidad de evocación erótica que se encierra en esa jaula de hierro, en la que el aliciente táctil y pendular es un elemento central, aunque inconsciente. Recluida en un armazón transparente, que acentúa la impresión de aislamiento, la puesta en marcha del objeto produce una violenta emoción que se asocia inmediatamente con la irritante sensación de un deseo incumplido, representando todas las frustraciones des dispositivo amoroso, aunque los elementos masculino y femenino son intercambiables. La descripción de Dalí era muy elocuente: “Una bola de madera horadada por un hueco femenino y suspendida por una fina cuerda de violín pende sobre una media luna cuya arista roza ligeramente la cavidad. El espectador se encuentra instintivamente empujado a hacer deslizar la bola sobre la arista; deslizamiento que, sin embargo, la largura de la cuerda no permite efectuar más que a medias”.

Online resources: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Post-WWII Figural Art: Dubuffet-Bacon

2011-06-11T19:12:00.058+05:00

"I believe, and in this I am in agreement with reputedly primitive civilizations, that painting, which is more concrete than the written word, is the richest instrument we have for communicating and elaborating thoughts." Dubuffet

Jean Dubuffet, Will to Power (Volonté de puissance), 1946. Oil with pebbles, sand, glass, and rope on canvas, 116.2 x 88.9 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Dubufet showed interest in Dr. Prinzhorn's collection of the art of the mentally ill, in children's art, in primitive art, and other forms of untutored art, such as "Art Brut" (Raw Art). Dubuffet had his own collection of raw art. He considered that art should communicate through the materials as much as the images. According to Dubuffet, the materials shape the object in the artwork and they are inseparable from its identity. Dubuffet's interest is in the moment when a thought begins to take shape, rather than the completed, unchanging thought; something similar to a dream state, when one experiences imagery and affect without translating them into specific meaning. He deliberately attacked on Western canons of beauty and held that art should not strive to please the eye but to address the soul, it thus doesn't need to be beautiful to do this. In fact, it shouldn't be beautiful.

Two women: one in academic style (Bouguereau, Baigneuse, 1890); the other conceived as "Art Brut" (Dubuffet, La Coiffeuse, 1950).

Dubuffet's earlier paintings are derived from daily or ordinary life events, rendered in a crudely childlike style and suggestive of the uncultivated person as well as of graffiti. Such paintings are characterized by a lack of perspective, distortion of forms, use of primary colors or conversely, the technique of scratching through a black surface to find something underneath.
One then begins to see his ongoing interest in the transformation of materials, such that textures in his paintings begin to become the painting, as figures seem to explode into the background field, even as the outline of the body remains intact. Many of Dubuffet's works of this type use a paste-like ground for the painting, which he made from sand, earth, fixatives, and pigment. Then he scratched into the surface to create the suggestion of drawing. Much later this becomes an obsessive interest in the interlocking and repetitive forms which eventually grow into sculpture and outdoor environments.

In 1959 the exhibition "New Images of Man," curated by Peter Selz, was entirely devoted to figural art. While European artists had begun to address the figure well before the date of this show, Selz claimed that the art in this show was united by an attitude toward life which he called "existential essentialism."
Existential essentialism focuses on the subjectivity of human beings and the sense that, in the end, people are not in control of their destiny. It thus carries an element of pessimism.
Common to the works exhibited was the rejection of abstraction. Their authors believed in a new expression of the human figure and were influenced by surrealist writer Georges Bataille and his notion of the unshaped. "The part of the thought which interests me is not the moment when the thought is crystallized into a formal idea but the stages which precede that crystallization" (Dubuffet).
If anything united the artists who participated in this show, it was the commitment to finding a "new image" of mankind, retaining the human figure in their art work but depicting a human figure which was not the descriptive representation of a person. The artworks were disturbing through the choice and treatment of materials, and also because they entailed "non-descriptive" representations of the human figure.
After decades of evasive abstraction, the rough and grotesque "new images of man" expressed a remarkable return of the repressed.

Francis Bacon, Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 1953, oil on canvas, 153 x 118 cm, Des Moines Art Center

Bacon was also included in this show although he appears to have little in common with an artist like Dubuffet. He should be seen as part of a context which is similar to that of Karel Appel, an artist associated with the CoBrA group (artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam), generally strongly influenced by Dubuffet's attitude toward materials and children's art. What the CoBrA artists shared was a search for a union of order and disorder, of horror and its rejection, of the redirection of modernism away from the assertion of utopia and toward the recognition of horror. Appel was committed to the figure although not all of the CoBrA artists were figurative. Unlike Appel, who quickly moved from painting to sculpture, Bacon remained entirely committed to a painterly tradition of art history. Unlike CoBrA, Bacon does not appear to have been influenced by a belief in the use of childhood "primitivism" as a model or inspiration. Bacon more deliberately turns to artists like Velazquez and Van Gogh, as well as movies by Russian filmmaker Eisenstein. He captures images from all periods of art and uses them to make his own paintings, paintings which often are heavily eroticized and violent in terms of their subject matter but not in terms of an unspoken contract with an artistic tradition. Bacon rejects abstraction because in his eyes, it communicates nothing but an aesthetic of the artist. His dominant and consistent subject is the human face and body, but generally shown in a large, non-environment space, often suggested by a glass or tubular box.

Bacon, Study of a Nude, 1953. Oil on canvas, 61 x 51 cm. Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, University of East Anglia, Norwich

Bacon may be the best representative of the idea of "existential essentialism" because of his goal of expressing the inner reality of the human being. He draws freely on references to art history, to photography, to film, using all of these as equal sources of knowledge about human nature, about the behaviors which people express toward one another, and using them as a type of image library which he feels free to adopt and derange. In that sense, he is like some of the abstract expressionists--de Kooning, in particular, who may be the closest artist to him in terms of his painterly and philosophical goals. But making that comparison does not help to explain the prevailing sense of Bacon's paintings of a human figure screaming into the void. In this sense, Bacon seems very different from de Kooning.

Bacon, Study for a Portrait, 1952. Oil and sand on canvas, 88 x 77 cm. Tate Gallery, London

Despite the many references which can be found in his paintings to other art, and despite some of the anguish his figures share with those of Picasso or Egon Schiele or Chaim Soutine, other artists who were committed to depicting extreme responses of the human body to psychological pain, those artists give us a more subjective and particular instance of human anguish than Bacon does. Bacon couples the psychological sordidness of his figures with a cold, objective glance that perversely acts to eliminate the artist’s subjective presence from these paintings and replaces it with the sense that these are bodies which are so consumed by the existential battle between terror and will that they dispassionately or neutrally proclaim the indivisibility or inseparability of psychic terror from physical existence and they proclaim that this is not the condition of a select few but of the entire human race.

Bacon, Lying Figure in a Mirror, 1971. Oil on canvas, 198.5 x 147.5 cm. Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao

In Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self (1992), Ernst van Alphen raises the question about narrative in Bacon’s paintings: Why do we think we see a narrative in Bacon’s paintings? Most of them are triptychs, a format which almost immediately suggests temporal continuity and the development of a story; they have human figures in them, generally in an environment which suggests a space of some sort, so we imagine some interaction between the people in the paintings and the space containing them; and the shapeless forms suggest a cinematic type of movement which once again implies that something has been happening and is changing. Yet, much of what Bacon does contradicts the existence of narrative.
If we begin with the issue of space, the figures are rendered in a coarse application of paint whereas the background is generally quite smooth and finished. The disparity of treatment works against reading the background as anything other than a field of color which generally locks the figure in place, either through the illusion of a cage or cell or through the bright colors which prevent recession. Bacon’s use of the triptych also denies the sense of spatial continuity; unlike traditional triptychs, each panel is generally framed separately, resulting in the suggestion that these are three separate paintings, joined for formal reasons, rather than narrative. Finally, the figures themselves never really assume an identity. We are not given recognizable bodies or faces, and even when two figures ore more are located in the space together, it is difficult to imagine that they are interacting, as opposed to sharing paint.

Bacon, Crucifixion, 1965. Oil on canvas, each panel 198 x 147.5 cm, Staatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, Munich

Bacon has said that he was interested in the narrative as a process, the act of telling the story, rather than the narrative as product: the completed story which has already been told. But Bacon’s bodies seem particularly non-existential as they refuse to engage in any interaction with the viewer. They are too incompletely rendered to be an “other” person; they are fragmented in a way that does not imply taking shape so much as losing identity and losing a sense of wholeness. Alphen suggests that these bodies are the interior mass of sensations, and if they are inner human spaces, then perhaps Bacon’s decision to render the background in a hard, flat surface which contrasts with the figures is a decision which enhances the sense that we are not looking at a person but an interior. This is a figure which is confined and isolated within its interiority; there is no exterior for us to engage. As viewers, then, we are faced with a figure but the figure has no coherent structure to it. Bacon’s figures and environment become one through the suggestion that the figure will absorb the space into itself. But it can only do this by giving up its boundaries and losing its selfhood. Alphen goes on to suggest that this loss of self is not, in the end, a frightening and despairing act because the loss of self implies a reconstruction of self. Since Bacon does not want to represent the story as a finished object, he can only represent this frightening sense of losing definition as a body. But if we follow Bacon’s logic, we can see the loss of boundaries as the beginning step in the creation of new ones.

Bacon, Study from the Human Body, 1981. Oil on canvas, 198 x 147.5 cm. Private collection

The retrospective for the twentieth century figurative painter Francis Bacon on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art shows Bacon’s belaboring exploration of the grotesque. He is fixated on both religious iconography such as in his paintings inspired by Velazquez, and malformed depictions of enigmatic carcasses.
Though Bacon seems to recycle the same sort of grotesque in his oeuvre to an extent that becomes exhausting there is something still powerful in his poetics of the grotesque. He reminds us of bygone times before the age of the laboratory and medicalization of illness when the temple was a site of ritual killings and sacrifice. As Yve Alain Bois remarks in his essay, “Base Materialism,” on Bataille and the photographer Eli Lotar: We live in an age where the slaughterhouse, just like the madman, is quarantined from everyday life. In his triptych series titled after the T.S. Eliot poem Sweeney Agonistes, Bacon depicts enigmatic fragmented lumps of life matter. The extreme upward tilt of the paintings draws the viewer into the painting, while having the contradictory effect of flattening the picture plane. In portraying such liminal figures that hover between life and death and inserting them between flat and deep space, one confronts the return of the repressed. That which is repressed and sublimated inevitably intrudes as the signified momentarily catches up to and disrupts the signifier. The horror in these works is in their representing the repression of violence. As Bois argues: “To show violence purely and simply would be a way of incorporating it; it is more effective to underscore how it is evacuated.”
Bacon’s painting Blood on Pavement similarly hovers between deep and flat space. The obscure blood stain is a trace of a violence and trauma that remains absent. The horror of Bacon’s imagery lies not in its portrayal of violence, but rather in its undefinability that places the viewer between the sublimation and intrusion of the trauma. It is a horror that remains truly other and resists incorporation and resolution in the quotidian. He reminds us that the comforting sanctity of our daily latte and other objects of commercial consumption is continually haunted by wars, sweatshops, and environmental devastation. Bacon does not naively revel in the violence of the status quo, but rather exposes the ways in which we sublimate and expunge the traces of violence in presenting objects which remain liminal and resist foreclosure. Scott S. Jackson

Bacon's Centenary Exhibition: New York Reviews

ONLINE RESOURCES
Jean Dubuffet
Francis Bacon
The Return of the Repressed
The Uncanny
Lo familiar vuelto inquietante

Vincent van Gogh

2011-06-11T15:10:00.012+05:00

Van Gogh (1853–1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, and died largely unknown, at the age of 37, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Little appreciated during his lifetime, his fame grew in the years after his death. Today, he is widely regarded as one of history's greatest painters and an important contributor to the foundations of modern art. Van Gogh did not begin painting until his late twenties, and most of his best-known works were produced during his final two years. He produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. Although he was little known during his lifetime, his work was a strong influence on the Modernist art that followed. Today many of his pieces—including his numerous self portraits, landscapes, portraits and sunflowers—are among the world's most recognizable and expensive works of art.
Vincent only sold one painting during his lifetime and Van Gogh had a very unhappy life, only became famous after his death.
In his final letter to Theo, Vincent admitted that as he did not have any children, he viewed his paintings as his progeny. Reflecting on this, the historian Simon Schama concluded that he "did have a child of course, Expressionism, and many, many heirs." Schama mentioned a wide number of artists who have adapted elements of Van Gogh's style, including Willem de Kooning, Howard Hodgkin and Jackson Pollock. The French Fauves, including Henri Matisse, extended both his use of color and freedom in applying it,[159] as did German Expressionists in the Die Brücke group. Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s and 1950s is seen as in part inspired from Van Gogh's broad, gestural brush strokes.

Painter on the Road to Tarascon (The Painter on His Way to Work), 1888. Oil on canvas, 48 × 44 cm. Formerly in Magdeburg Museum, destroyed by fire in WWII.

The artist walks to work, carrying his equipment. He is walking among green and yellow fields, with the open sky above him, and hills only visible in the distance. Meanwhile, the sun is high in the sky. The painting reflects the Van Gogh's optimism at the beginning of his stay in Arles, with an idyllic impression of his surroundings at this time.

In 1957, Francis Bacon (1909–1992) based a series of paintings on reproductions of Van Gogh's The Painter on the Road to Tarascon, the original of which was destroyed during World War II. Bacon was inspired by not only an image he described as "haunting", but also Van Gogh himself. Regarding Van Gogh as an alienated outsider, Bacon identified with him. Bacon was also fond of Van Gogh's theories on art and quoted some lines written from a letter to Theo, "Real painters do not paint things as they are... They paint them as they themselves feel them to be" (The Art Newspaper, 2009).

Wheat Field with cypresses, 1889. Oil on canvas, 73 × 92 cm. National Gallery, London

Cottages with Thatched Roofs, Auvers-sur-Oise, June 1890. Oil on canvas. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Online resources
Wikipedia
Commons

Of Purpose in 20th-Century Art

2011-06-10T16:28:00.040+05:00

Waiting for Godot?

Henri Matisse, Harmony in Red, 1908. Oil on canvas, 80 x 220 cm. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

"What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter — a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue." Matisse

ANYTHING GOES

In olden days a glimpse of stocking,
Was thought of as something shocking.
But now, God knows,
Anything goes.

Cole Porter

Marcel Duchamp, The Fountain, 1917. Readymade (urinal). Present whereabouts unknown

Pablo Picasso, The Charnel House, 1944-45. Oil and charcoal on canvas, 199.8 x 250.1 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York

"What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes if he's a painter, ears if he's a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he's a poet — or even, if he's a boxer, only some muscles? Quite the contrary, he is at the same time a political being constantly alert to the horrifying, passionate or pleasing events in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How is it possible to be uninterested in other men and by virtue of what cold nonchalance can you detach yourself from the life that they supply so copiously? No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy." Picasso

Alberto Giacometti, Walking Man, bronze

POST WAR ART IN EUROPE. World War II presented Europe with a major disaster and artists raged at the hypocrisy of society—it's willingness to destroy life in spite of pretensions to humanism and justice. The existentialist writer, Sartre expressed the core philosophy of post-war art movements in Europe: "Man is alone in the world in a metaphysical void... the individual is free to seek his own way." Angst over the brutality of war produced "an anti-aesthetic primitivism" (rather than the cool and absurdist expressions of Dadaists). The approach encouraged the concept of man's inner life as a valid subject, producing an intuitive style. The paintings of Dubuffet feature flat, grotesque figures which express his low regard for conventional standards of beauty and composition (Wheeler).

Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (right-hand panel detail), 1944-45. Tate Gallery, London

"Man now realizes that he is an accident and that he is an accident […] that he is a completely futile being, that he has to play out the game without reason. […] Painting has now become, or all art has now become, completely a game by which man distracts himself." Bacon

Co Westerik, Schoolmaster and Child (Schoolmeester met kind), Holland, 1961. Oil and tempera on canvas, 88,5 x 110 cm. Gemeentemuseum Den Haag

Quino (Joaquin Salvador Lavado), Untitled, ink on paper.

Danchev about Picasso

Robespierre

2011-06-07T20:20:00.014+05:00

Monólogo teatral de Mónica Ottino, presentado en el BAC de Buenos Aires y apreciado también desde ultramar.

"Robespierre es es una alusión teatral de la vida breve e intensa de un joven provinciano quien a partir de su formación como abogado logra ser elegido como miembro de los Estados

Generales antes del estallido de la Revolución Francesa. [Es un trabajo acerca de] Sus penosos antecedentes familiares, su pobreza, sus becas que, irónicamente, le concede el rey; La espiral de violencia, que alcanza a sus más próximos amigos y a él mismo, y una revolución que como el quería "ya no tenía vuelta", pese a los poderosos ejércitos imperiales y monárquicos que amenazan Francia. La "virtud" y la "verdad" [operan] como instrumentos peligrosos en este interesante y discutible personaje."

Maximilien Robespierre y la guillotina.

The Giving Tree

2011-05-29T20:17:00.023+05:00

by Shel Silverstein, United States, 1964

"And the boy loved the tree, very much."

Once there was a giving tree who loved a little boy.
And everyday the boy would come to play
Swinging from the branches, sleeping in the shade
Laughing all the summer’s hours away.
And so they love,
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.

But soon the boy grew older and one day he came and said,
"Can you give me some money, tree, to buy something I’ve found?"
"I have no money," said the tree, "Just apples, twigs and leaves."
"But you can take my apples, boy, and sell them in the town."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.

But soon again the boy came back and he said to the tree,
"I’m now a man and I must have a house that’s all my home."
"I can’t give you a house" he said, "The forest is my house."
"But you may cut my branches off and build yourself a home"
And so he did.
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.

And time went by and the boy came back with sadness in his eyes.
"My life has turned so cold," he says, "and I need sunny days."
"I’ve nothing but my trunk," he says, "But you can cut it down
And build yourself a boat and sail away."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.

And after years the boy came back, both of them were old.
"I really cannot help you if you ask for another gift."
"I wish that I could give you something. But I have nothing left to give you."
"I’m nothing but an old stump now," said the tree.
"I do not need very much now, just a quiet place to rest,"
The boy whispered, with a weary smile.
"Well", said the tree, "An old stump is still good for that."
"Come, boy", he said, "Sit down, sit down and rest a while."
And so he did and
Oh, the trees was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.

"I wish that I could give you something."

Churchill Films, 1973

¿No es acaso el árbol un hombre?

"Is this a sad tale? Well, it is sad in the same way that life is depressing. We are all needy, and, if we are lucky and any good, we grow old using others and getting used up. Tears fall in our lives like leaves from a tree. Our finitude is not something to be regretted or despised, however; it is what makes giving (and receiving) possible. The more you blame the boy, the more you have to fault human existence. The more you blame the tree, the more you have to fault the very idea of parenting. Should the tree's giving be contingent on the boy's gratitude? If it were, if fathers and mothers waited on reciprocity before caring for their young, then we would all be doomed." Ben Jackson, linking the story to the human condition and asserting that readers ought to identify with both the boy and the tree.

La Vita è Bella, 1997

Correspondence

Bauhaus

2011-05-22T09:43:00.041+05:00

1. Walter Gropius, Bauhaus Building, Dessau, Germany, 1925

Bauhaus, Germany, 1919-1933. One of the most influential schools of design. The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. In spite of its name, and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. Nonetheless it was founded with the idea of creating a total work of art in which all arts, including architecture would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus approach became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.

Bauhaus' teachers included Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Oskar Schlemmer, Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Breuer and Gunta Stölzl.

The pedagogical methods of Klee, Kandinsky and Itten had a major impact in the teaching of art and design all over the world throughout the twentieth century. Craft at the Bauhaus was greatly influenced by industrial design and machine aesthetics. There was an emphasis on converting craft to industry through the creation of prototypes for mass production. Bauhaus furniture was perhaps the most successful in this. The tubular chair designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925, for instance, is still in production today.

A most important task of the Bauhaus shool was to rescue all of the arts from the isolation in which each then found itself. "The complete building is the final aim of the visual arts. Their noblest function was once the decoration of buildings. They were inseparable parts of the great art of building. Today, they exist in isolation, from which they can be rescued only through the conscious, co-operative effort of all craftsmen." Gropius, Bauhaus Manifesto, 1919

The Bauhaus was at once school, workshop, studio and laboratory. "Creative freedom was the climate which permeated everything and was imparted to all masters and students. The intimate contact with the present, service to mankind and society, humanism, in a word, is what gave the Bauhaus its vital impulses" (Gropius).

Importantly, as Gropius puts it, "The Bauhaus believes the machine to be our modern medium of design and seeks to come to terms with it." He thus sought to forge a rare, new alliance between art and industry. When the Bauhaus was founded in Weimar in 1919, the artists were committed to re-examine the very basis of art that would, in turn, touch every aspect of life. It was one of the most significant experiments in art in the twentieth century. The Bauhaus movement emerged as architects and artists intended to rebuild war-torn Europe after WWI. The Bauhaus was not just an innovative training center but also a place of production and a chief focus of international debate.
The utopian spirit in post-war Germany gave rise to the belief that the artist could help to bring about new social conditions through the creation of new environments. Gropius wanted to remove the barrier between artists and craftsmen. He also wanted "to create the new building of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity."

The Bauhaus was opened in Weimar in 1919 but relocated to Dessau in 1925 after the leftwing Social Democratic Party, which had financed it, lost control of state schools to nationalists. Dessau was a middle-sized industrial city in central Germany. Here a purpose-designed building was made, a most ambitious project for Gropius, with workshops, a lecture room, a theatre, student accommodation and canteen facilities. The building was designed collaboratively with Gropius and his staff and students.

"The ultimate goal of the Bauhaus is the collective work of art in which no barriers exist between the structural and decorative arts. Artists and architects would work together towards the great goal of the building of the future." Gropius, Bauhaus Manifesto, 1919

History. In 1919 Walter Gropius was appointed to head a new institution called the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. The school was founded in a time when Germany's economy was collapsing and the unemployment rates where higher than ever.
In all of its fourteen years of existence the Bauhaus was not only an important art-, design-, and architecture school, for it was also a melting pot of the European modernistic ideas of reforming the epoch.
The Bauhaus would proceed from certain assumptions, including the idea that the new architecture was to be created for workers and that it was to reject all things that were bourgeois.
Dedicated to utopian collectivism, the Bauhaus produced theories calling for the use of concrete, steel, wood, stucco and glass. A building must have a flat roof and a sheer facade, with neither cornices nor eaves. As color was considered to be bourgeois, buildings were white, gray, beige, or black.
In 1924 the Bauhaus school had to move from Weimar to Dessau, since the school in Weimar was broken up by the parliament of the state. This brought the opportunity to build a new school complex (1925-6), designed by Walter Gropius.
Around 1925 mass housing became a great social issue and it was mostly solved by the Bauhaus. By 1932 no other country had built more housing for its working class than Germany. As most of the architects adhered to the principles of the Bauhaus, the result was a classical form of rational social housing with open floor plans, white walls, no drapes, and functional furniture. A new way of life stood out: free of history, improvising, creative, with solidarity, and without reservation or fondness for the present.
Walter Gropius left the school in 1928. He appointed Hannes Meyer to be headmaster. Meyer emphasized the social aspect of the work and promoted the development of affordable furniture, textiles, wallpaper and lamps for blue-collar workers. In 1930 Hannes Meyer was fired because of his increasingly communist political views.
The last headmaster of the Bauhaus was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The Bauhaus was closed by the
Nazis in 1933. Many of the former teachers and students of the Bauhaus migrated to the United States, where they were welcomed with open arms. Breuer and Gropius went to Harvard where Gropius was made head of the school of architecture at Harvard. Moholy-Nagy opened the New Bauhaus, which evolved into the Chicago Institute of Design, and Mies van der Rohe, was installed as dean of architecture at the Armour Institute in Chicago.

The Bauhaus history, the idealism and energy invested in it, makes it a most moving place and phenomenon. Rayner Banham describes the Bauhaus at Dessau as a "sacred site." He refers to more than the building itself: its solemn history, the altruism of so many individuals who taught and attended there, and the sum of outstanding artistic achievement in many fields of the arts that has made it an international institution of profound importance (Janet McKenzie).

Legacy. The Bauhaus has firmly established industrial design. It stripped away unuseful the decoration and left clean the lines of function, which was the primary concern, while removing the past was no more than a secondary consequence. The Bauhaus has become the symbol of modern design and it did achieve many of Gropius's goals. It left a legacy for visual communication programs, art and design schools to follow. Many of such schools still use the courses developed at the Bauhaus.

The Words of Walter Gropius

Bauhaus Manifesto and Program, 1919. The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a building! The decoration of buildings was once the noblest function of fine arts, and fine arts were indispensable to great architecture. Today they exist in complacent isolation, and can only be rescued by the conscious co-operation and collaboration of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must once again come to know and comprehend the composite character of a building, both as an entity and in terms of its various parts. Then their work will be filled with that true architectonic spirit which, as "salon art", it has lost.
The old art schools were unable to produce this unity; and how, indeed, should they have done so, since art cannot be taught? Schools must return to the workshop. The world of the pattern-designer and applied artist, consisting only of drawing and painting must become once again a world in which things are built. If the young person who rejoices in creative activity now begins his career as in the older days by learning a craft, then the unproductive "artist" will no longer be condemned to inadequate artistry, for his skills will be preserved for the crafts in which he can achieve great things.
Architects, painters, sculptors, we must all return to crafts! For there is no such thing as "professional art". There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in rare moments of inspiration which transcend the will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in handicrafts is essential to every artist. It is there that the original source of creativity lies.
Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future together. It will combine architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single form, and will one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.

"The Role of the Architect in Modern Society," address given at Columbia University, March 1961. The Bauhaus' novel method of education in design has been widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. The present generation is inclined to think of it as a rigid stylistic dogma of yesterday whose usefulness has come to an end because its ideological and technical premises are now outdated. This view confuses a method of approach with the practical results obtained by it at a particular period of its application. The Bauhaus was not concerned with the formulation of timebound, stylistic concepts, and its technical methods were not ends in themselves. It was created to show how a multitude of individuals, willing to work concertedly but without losing their identity, could evolve a kinship of expression in their response to the challenges of the day. Its aim was to give a basic demonstration of how to maintain unity in diversity, and it did this with the materials, techniques, and form concepts germane to its time. It was this method of approach that was revolutionary.

Bauhaus was founded by Walther Gropius in Weimar in the year 1919 as an art, design and architecture school. The goal of Bauhaus was to bring together art, handcrafts and architecture into one single synthesis of the arts. This guideline is rather strongly oriented on the arts and crafts movement – however, Bauhaus opened itself for new technological possibilities, so that the way to industrial design was smoothed. These artistic ambitions affected interpersonal relationships as well, so that no distinction was made any longer between the artist and the craftsman. Gropius’ goal was, "The final goal for all artistic activity is architecture! [...] Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all go back to handwork! [...] The artist is an intensification of the craftsman," which he proclaimed in the Bauhaus manifesto. This goal was also continued by his successors Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe after Bauhaus moved to Dessau and Berlin (which had to be done because of political reasons). Particularly under the leadership of van der Rohe, Bauhaus became an architectural school with a strong emphasis on the technical. Formally, Bauhaus stood for simple and clear lines. Under the influence of Moholy- Nagy, photography was also taken up into the Bauhaus program. In 1932, Bauhaus was forced to close; Mies van der Rohe opened it again briefly, but disbanded it shortly thereafter in 1933. Moholy- Nagy founded “the new Bauhaus” in Chicago in 1937. Important representatives of Bauhaus are Johannes Itten, Gerhard Marcks, Lyonel Feininger, Georg Muche, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers and László Moholy-Nagy. Related artists: Josef Albers, Willi Baumeister, Herbert Bayer, Max Bill, Heinrich Campendonk, Walter Dexel, Lyonel Feininger, Carl Grossberg, Albert Hennig, Auguste Herbin, Hannah Höch, Ida Kerkovius, Hans Reichel, Lothar Schreyer, Kurt Schwitters, and William Wauer (Art Directory).

The Words of Paul Klee

"Creative Credo," 1920, VII. Art is a simile of the Creation. Each work of art is an example, just as the terrestrial is an example of the cosmic.
The release of elements, their grouping into complex subdivisions, the dismemberment of the object and its reconstruction into a whole, the pictorial polyphony, the achievement of stability through an equilibrium of movement, all these are difficult questions of form, crucial for formal wisdom, but not yet art in the highest circle. In the highest circle an ultimate mystery lurks behind the mystery, and the wretched light of the intellect is of no avail. One may still speak reasonably of the salutary effects of art. We may say that fantasy, inspired by instinctual stimuli, creates illusory states which somehow encourage or stimulate us more than the familiar natural known supernatural states, that its symbols bring comfort to the mind, by making it realize that it is not confined to earthly potentialities, however great they may become in the future; that ethical gravity holds sway side by side with impish laughter at doctors and parsons.
But, in the long run, even enhanced reality proves inadequate.
Art plays an unknowing game with ultimate things, and yet achieves them!
Cheer up! Value such country outings, which let you have a new point of view for once as well as a change of air, and transport you to a world which, by diverting you, strengthens you for the inevitable returns to the greyness of the working day. More than that, they help you to slough off your earthly skin, to fancy for a moment thta you are God; to look forward to new holidays, when the soul goes to a banquet in order to nourish its starved nerves, and to fill its languishing blood vessels with new sap.
Let yourself be carried on the invigorating sea, on a broad river or an enchanting brook, such as that of the richly diversified, aphoristic graphic art.

Resources
Wikipedia
Bauhaus archiv
9090
Guardian
Studio International
White Design
Creadores suizos y alemanes

The Machine Age: Modern Architecture

2011-05-21T13:18:00.013+05:00

Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, Fagus Factory, Elfeld, Germany, 1911-13. The animated fluctuation in height, the change between horizontal structure and vertical rhythms, heavy closed volumes and light dissolved fabrics, are indicators of an approach that deliberately utilized contrasts while arriving at a harmony of opposites in a manner best expressed as a pictorial or visual structure created from the perspective of the railroad tracks (Annemarie Jaeggi, Fagus: Industrial Culture from Werkbund to Bauhaus, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000).

Machine Aesthetic. Architecture that suggests something machine-made, acknowledging industrialization and mass-production. It is inspaired by demands for honesty and truth in architecture, particularly in its structure.

Modern Design and Machine Aesthetic. Coupled with an influx of avant-garde art, the machine challenged design in a period of experimentation and invention. Electricity powered machines in the home, automobiles changed the shapes of cities and homes, radio and cinema redefined leisure, and telephones closed the distances between people.

The machine was valued for its service. Its aesthetic was promoted by those who saw a beauty in the machine--beauty in appearance and function. The machine aesthetic was assumed by all sorts of objects.

Gropius champions what he calls Rationalization, arguing that "the vagaries of mere architectural caprice" are to be replaced by "the dictates of structural logic."

In the rational normative, all design decisions are based on function and utility. Subjectivity, individualization, and the artist architect give way to objectivity and standardization.

Functionalism opposes Art Deco. The prevalent opinion is that an object's form and appearance should be determined by its purposes. Modern style becomes thus simple, practical, convenient, economic and sanitary.

Last but not least, Le Corbusier understands the house as "a machine for living in."

Hannah Arendt

2011-05-15T08:44:00.045+05:00

"This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes."

Hannah Arendt (Hanover, 1906 - New York, 1975) was one of the most influential historians and political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. Between 1937 and 1950, Arendt was a stateless person. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. She is best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). In addition to these two important works, Arendt published a number of influential essays on topics such as the nature of revolution, freedom, authority, tradition and the modern age. At the time of her death in 1975, she had completed the first two volumes of her last major philosophical work, The Life of the Mind, which examined the three fundamental faculties of the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging). Her studies are of great importance for the theory and analysis of totalitarianism and the nature and origins of political violence. In 1975 she was awarded the Sonning Prize by the Danish government for her contributions to European civilization.

The Origins of Totalitarianism. No book was more resonant or impressive in tracing the steps toward the distinctive twentieth-century tyrannies of Hitler and Stalin, or in measuring how grievously wounded Western civilization and the human status itself had become. She demonstrated how embedded racism was in Central and Western European societies by the end of the nineteenth century, and how imperialism experimented with the possibilities of unspeakable cruelty and mass murder. The third section of her book exposed the operations of "radical evil," arguing that the huge number of prisoners in the death camps marked a horrifying discontinuity in European history itself. Totalitarianism put into practice what had been imagined only in the medieval depictions of hell. In the 1950s, The Origins of Totalitarianism engendered much doubt, especially by drawing parallels between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia (despite their obvious ideological conflicts and their savage warfare from 1941 to 1945). The parallelism continues to stir skepticism in some readers, especially because of the unavailability and unfamiliarity of Russian sources when the book was researched and written. But Arendt's emphasis on the plight of the Jews amid the decline of Enlightenment ideals of human rights, and her insistence that the Third Reich was conducting two wars—one against the Allies, the other against the Jewish people—have become commonplaces of Jewish historiography. Much of her book is stunningly original, and virtually every paragraph is ablaze with insight. More than any other scholar, Arendt made meaningful and provocative the idea of "totalitarianism" as a new form of autocracy, springing from subterranean sources within Western society, but pushing to unprecedented extremes murderous fantasies of domination and revenge (Paula Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore, 1997).

Quotations

By its very nature the beautiful is isolated from everything else. From beauty no road leads to reality.

In order to go on living one must try to escape the death involved in perfectionism.

Nothing we use or hear or touch can be expressed in words that equal what is given by the senses.

Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless.

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.

Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act. The Human Condition

Exasperation with the threefold frustration of action —the unpredictability of its outcome, the irreversibility of the process, and the anonymity of its authors— is almost as old as recorded history. It has always been a great temptation, for men of action no less than for men of thought, to find a substitute for action in the hope that the realm of human affairs may escape the haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in a plurality of agents. Ibid.

Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.

Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

Arte: Hannah Arendt, Penser pasionnément (Pensar apasionadamente; Denken und Leidenschaft), by Jochen Kölsch

Por el agua suave en movimiento,
que vence a la dura piedra con el tiempo,
lo comprendes, los fuertes sucumben.
Bertold Brecht

Resources
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
European Graduate School
Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1958
Reflections of Violence

Art Deco

2011-05-12T21:17:00.004+05:00

Louis Hippolyte Boileau, Pomone Pavilion for Bon Marché, Paris 1925 Exhibition (Art Deco 1910-1939, ed. Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton and Chislaine Wood).

Art Deco. Sexy, modern, and unabashedly consumer-oriented, Art Deco was a new kind of style, flourishing at a time of rapid technological change and social upheaval. Lacking the philosophical basis of other European design movements, Deco borrowed motifs from numerous sources--Japan, Africa, ancient Egyptian and Mayan cultures, avant-garde European art--simply to create novel visual effects. This popular style encompasses industrial artifacts (the Hindenburg blimp, the Burlington Zephyr locomotive), as well as architecture, furniture, accessories, fashion, jewelry, typography and poster design. The Deco label may be appropriate to virtually any object that portrays the effects of technology or employs color, luxury materials or artificial light in striking ways. It does seem a stretch to include Man Ray's photographs, Sonia Delaunay's textiles and the movie King Kong in the Deco pantheon —Cathy Curtis

The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts) was a World's fair held in Paris, France from April to October 1925. Photographs. The term Art Deco was derived by shortening the words Arts Décoratifs in the title of this exposition.[1] Artistic creation in the années folles in France is marked by this event, when on this occasion many ideas of the international avant-garde in the fields of architecture and applied arts were brought together. This major event of the 20s was located between the esplanade of Les Invalides and the entrances of the Grand Palais and Petit Palais. It received 4,000 guests at the inauguration on April 28, and thousands of visitors each of the following days.

This exhibition generated the term Art Deco to describe designs in terms of a broad decoratively "modern" style, characterized by a streamlined classicism and facetted, crystalline structures, embellished with decorative references to sleek machinery, and recurrent motifs of stylized fountains,[2] gazelles,[3] lightning flashes, "Aztec" motifs and similar repertory, derived in part from Decorative Cubism.

The central body of exhibits seemed to present the fashionable products of the luxury market, a signal that, after the disasters of World War I, Paris still reigned supreme in the arts of design. At the same time, other examples such as the Esprit Nouveau pavilion and the Soviet pavilion were distinctly not decorative,[4] they contained furnishings and paintings but these works, including the pavilions, were spare and modern. The modern architecture of Le Corbusier and Konstantin Melnikov attracted both criticism and admiration for its lack of ornamentation. Criticism focused on the 'nakedness' of these structures,[5] compared to other pavilions at the exhibition, such as the Pavilion of the Collector by the ébéniste-decorator Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. These modernist works were integral projects of their own specific movements, and the term Art Deco is used elsewhere, and for other works at the exposition with more accuracy.

Le Corbusier's Esprit Nouveau pavilion attracted attention for reasons in addition to its modernism, such as his vast theoretical project that the pavilion embodied. L'Esprit Nouveau was the name of the Rive Gauche journal in which Le Corbusier first published excerpts of his book Vers une architecture,[6] and within this pavilion he exhibited his Plan Voisin for Paris. The Plan Voisin, named for aviation pioneer Gabriel Voisin,[4] was a series of identical 200 meter tall skyscrapers and lower rectangular apartments, that would replace a large section of central Paris in the Rive Droite.[7] Although this was never built, the pavilion was and represented a single modular apartment within the broader urban theoretical project.[8]

Soviet pavilion. Notable examples of Russian constructivism were the Alexander Rodchenko designed worker's club, and Konstantin Melnikov designed Soviet pavilion.[9] Vadim Meller was awarded a gold medal for his scenic design. Student work from Vkhutemas won several prizes,[10] and Melnikov's pavilion won the Grand Prix.[5]

Due to continued national tensions after the first world war, Germany was not invited. Austria however contributed Frederick Kiesler's City in Space exhibit to house the Viennese documentation, this exhibit was commissioned by Josef Hoffman.[10]

Polish graphic arts were also successfully represented. Tadeusz Gronowski won the Grand Prix in that category. Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen, still a student, won a silver medal for a chair design.[11]

Among the 15,000 exhibitors the sculptor and architect Ivan Meštrović was awarded a Grand Prix for The Racic Mausoleum in Cavtat.

References
1. Theodore Menten, The Art Deco Style in Household Objects, Architecture, Sculpture, Graphics, Jewelry, Courier Dover, 1972
2. René Lalique's crystal tower fountain was a prominent set-piece of the Exposition.
3. The Exposition poster, by Robert Bonfils, imitating the look of a woodblock print, featured a modern athletic nymph and a racing gazelle.
4. Harry Francis Mallgrave, Modern Architectural Theory: A Historical Survey, 1673-1968, Cambridge University Press, 2005, page 258, ISBN 0521793068
5. Catherine Cooke, Russian Avant-Garde: Theories of Art, Architecture, and the City, Academy Editions, 1995, Page 143.
6. Hanno-Walter Kruft, A History of Architectural Theory: From Vitruvius to the Present, Princeton Architectural Press, 1994, Page 397
7. Anthony Sutcliffe, Paris: An Architectural History, Yale University Press, 1993, Page 143
8. Christopher Green, Art in France, 1900-1940, Yale University Press, 2000
9. MoMA | exhibitions | Rodchenko | Worker's Club 1925
10. Penelope Curtis, Sculpture 1900-1945: After Rodin, Oxford University Press, 1999.
11. "Arne Jacobsen". Design Museum. Retrieved 2010-01-01.

El arte de agarrarse fuerte

2011-04-30T15:34:00.010+05:00

Pablo Suárez, Exclusión, resina poliéster, 1999

A lo largo de su trayectoria, Pablo Suárez utiliza [...] la pintura, la escultura y la instalación para mantener un diálogo incisivo y permanente con la realidad.
Uno de los rasgos peculiares de su obra es el uso de la cita y la parodia como estrategia artística. De esta forma, el realismo –atravesado por el humor y la ironía– es empleado en sus
propuestas como medio para abordar el mundo cotidiano.
Esta veracidad que aparece en sus obras le permite presentar temas en forma directa y con absoluta claridad para establecer un contacto inmediato con el público, y, en este sentido, podemos reconocer [en su obra] la influencia de [...] Antonio Berni.
Partiendo de la realidad como premisa, el artista exhibe [...] esculturas de personajes de barrios suburbanos ejecutadas con resina poliéster. Con este material obtiene una superficie pulcra y brillante que, por un lado, seduce la mirada y, por otro, contrasta con la crónica diaria y abrumadora de estos personajes.
En "Exclusión" (1999), el artista pone en evidencia las diversas realidades que conviven en [Argentina]. Un hombre aterrorizado y con los cabellos al viento se aferra a los barrotes de un
tren que avanza velozmente. Ésta es una escena que se vive diariamente en los trenes que unen la Capital con el Gran Buenos Aires. En una Argentina bajo un modelo neoliberal que simula estar creciendo al ritmo del mercado mundial, [... el protagonista de esta escultura] queda [literalmente] fuera de[l ...] sistema. Así, a la era de la globalización, que pretende borrar las diferencias, Pablo Suárez contrapone un arte cargado de sentido que alude a [...] condiciones humanas [expuestas en toda su vulnerabilidad] y [pone en] evidencia las fisuras de [la sociedad argentina de] esta época (INPI, 6.2.2011).

Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Grotteschi

2011-03-18T17:01:00.035+05:00

The Grotteschi, c. 1747; published in 1750. Set of four prints whose style and iconography join Piranesi’s imagination with the classicism of ancient Rome. The image takes us within the ancient ruins on an adventure to find forms long gone, now partially covered with shrubbery. We are on a visual excavation to uncover the hidden objects beneath. As we gaze across the image we see parts of statuary, satyrs, bones, vases and signs of the zodiac.
The revival of ancient Rome was a theme that fascinated Piranesi. One motif in ancient Roman decoration was the grotesque. Many of the images delineated in this scene are what we would call grotesques, for example the satyr in the mid left of the picture. Piranesi’s use of ancient Roman motifs educates and gives new life to an area that so intrigued him. Through Piranesi the classisicm of ancient Rome is reborn (D. Selinger).

The Triumphal Arch, detail from the Grotteschi, c. 1748

Created when Piranesi returned to Rome after a stay in Venice, where he is said to have worked briefly with Tiepolo, the four etchings of the Grotteschi series reflect Piranesi's encounter with the remarkable prints of the famous Venetian painter. The light, sketchy strokes of varying lengths found in some areas of the prints recall Tiepolo's technique, while the combination of skulls, vegetation, and crumbling ruins, as well as the ambiguity of the subject, are characteristics shared with Tiepolo's Scherzi and Capricci series. A few direct quotations from Tiepolo are seen in the Grotteschi—the smiling herm who appears in The Triumphal Arch has its source in one of Tiepolo's Scherzi. Whether Piranesi worked for Tiepolo or merely became acquainted with him, it appears likely that the older artist introduced Piranesi to the work of his favorite seventeenth-century printmakers. The skeletons in these prints recall certain etchings by Stefano della Bella, while Salvator Rosa—who also depicted piles of bones, ruins, and smoking urns—provides a model for the scribbled lines and webs of crosshatching that first appear in this series (Metropolitan Museum, New York).

Tomb of Nero (Tomba di Nerone, from the Grotteschi), c. 1747. Etching, engraving and drypoint, 39.6 x 54.7 cm. The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo

Piranesi's Grotteschi are architectural fantasies. A capriccio (pl. capricci, Eng. caprice) is an architectural fantasy that places together buildings, archaeological remains and other architectural elements in fictional, often fantastical combinations, with staffage of figures. Capriccio fits under the more general term of landscape painting and may also be used of other types of work with an element of fantasy. This genre was developed by Marco Ricci and its best-known proponent was the painter Giovanni Paolo Pannini. The style was extended in the 1740s by Canaletto in the Vedute ideale (panoramas) and Piranesi in his Grotteschi, both etched. The Capricci, an influential series of etchings by Gianbattista Tiepolo (c. 1730, published in 1743), reduce the architectural elements to chunks of classical statuary and ruins, among which small groups made up of a cast of exotic and elegant figures of soldiers, philosophers and beautiful young people who go about their enigmatic business. No individual titles help to explain these works, where mood and style are everything. A later series by Tiepolo is called Scherzi di fantasia (Fantastic Sketches). The son of this artist, Domenico Tiepolo, was among those who imitated this type of imagery, using often the term "Capriccio" in titles.

Giovanni Battista Piranesi: The Grotteschi, 1720 to 1750
by Francesco Nevola
The suite of etchings called by Piranesi the Grotteschi, published in 1750 in the compilation volume Opere Varie, have for more than two-hundred and fifty years eluded interpretation. Long recognised by scholars as being ‘touched by the artist’s tragic imagination', more recent ‘attempts to reduce the Grotteschi collectively or individually, to a specific, hermetic philosophical system have met with little success…’ In this volume these four magnificent prints are viewed as pivotal works in Piranesi’s early output and a comprehensive narrative interpretation of their meaning is proposed adopting an approach, analogous to that applied by Wilton-Ely to explain the iconography of the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta, or that used by Gavuzzo-Stewart in her clear penetration of the Carceri. This study which follows step-by-step Piranesi’s youthful artistic and intellectual endeavours between the Venice of Scalfarotto and Tiepolo and the Rome of Gian Battista Nolli, Giovanni Gaetano Bottari and the enlightened Corsini court proposes the Grotteschi as both testament and culmination of his first decade’s experiences. For Piranesi the years up to 1750 were particularly fecund: they are marked by apprenticeships in Venice and Rome, by economic difficulties, by successes and failures, and incessant travels in search of vocational fulfilment. In following these important years we are able to trace how they contribute to Piranesi’s rapid intellectual development and to his evolution of an original, vital, graphic idiom that finds its first mature expression in the Grotteschi universally recognised as the artist’s most ‘venetian’ works. Considered through the viewing filter of the paragone the Grotteschi are presented as Piranesi’s expression of direct rivalry with the great etching masters of the past: from Mantegna, Durer and Rembrandt to Salvator Rosa, Castiglione, della Bella and Tiepolo, as well as his bid to establish his own place among their revered ranks. These works also represent the culmination and conclusion of a series of experiments, protracted over the course of a decade, in which Piranesi appears to have attempted to develop the picturesque capriccio of ruins into a type of image capable of bearing specific meaning, thereby giving visual form to his idea of ‘ruine parlanti’. In conclusion, following a close reading of the visual and textual sources that inform Piranesi’s Grotteschi, the impact of these etchings is assessed on the artist’s work of the 1760s, in particular on his only built edifice, the church of the Knights of Malta, Santa Maria del Priorato, which is the culmination of a second phase of intense creativity in the artist’s career.

The Triumphal Arch. Densely filled with arcane imagery, this print reflects the obscure literary allusions and poetic riddles devised by the esoteric society of the Arcadians in Rome, to which Piranesi belonged.

Piranesi, I Grotteschi: Capricci, c. 1747

Capriccio 1, known as The Skeletons

Capriccio 2

Capriccio 3

Capriccio 4

PIRANESI, "Troppo pittore… per essere incisore."
by Francesco Nevola
Roma: Ugo Bozzi, 2010. Italian text. Expanded version of 2009 English edition.
In his biography of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) J.G. Legrand records the etcher Giuseppe Vasi's assessment of his Venetian pupil: 'Vous être trop peintre, mon ami, pour être graveur' - 'You are too much a painter, my friend, to be an etcher.' Recent studies of Piranesi have not explored the full implications of this statement. Vasi clearly refers to his knowledge of Piranesi's career as a painter prior to his apprenticeship as an etcher, referring to it as a hindrance in this purpose. No evidence remains today of any paintings Piranesi might have made, however his biographer Legrand refers that Piranesi studied with Piazzetta, Canaletto and Tiepolo and that he also painted in the manner of Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione and the Bamboccianti. This assertion suggests that a diverse but substantial body of paintings by the young Piranesi, although now lost without trace, once existed. The present work, spans the earliest years of Piranesi's career from his birth in 1720 through to the issue of his first works in a mature technique, the Grotteschi, published in the compilation volume Opere Varie of 1750. In the first part of the present study the chronology of this period is reviewed in detail, taking into consideration the various possible apprenticeships undertaken by Piranesi during these early years, assessing the significance of his contacts among the artists, connoisseurs and aristocrats with whom he had associations in Venice and Rome and documenting his rapid intellectual and artistic development during these tumultuous years spent between the lagoon city and the Eternal City. In the second part of this study the influence of painters and etchers of Piranesi's generation and earlier generations is examined in detail, particularly in relation to his production of ruin capricci - a small but important body of work in Piranesi's output which find their final culmination in his four masterful etchings the Grotteschi. Here points of comparison are drawn from among the greatest exponents of etching from Mantegna and Durer to Rembrandt, Castiglione and Salvator Rosa as well as to contemporary painters such as G.B. Tiepolo and G.P. Panini. The influence on the young Piranesi of artists such as these, is seen not only as part of his auto-didactic approach to the improvement of his own style, but as a means to rival directly and claim his own place among such luminaries' revered ranks. In this context a selection of Piranesi's early etched vedute are also compared directly with the works of earlier masters such as G.B. Falda and A. Specchi as well as his peers Canaletto and Bellotto alongside whom there is a substantial possibility that he worked. The third part of the present volume concerns interpretation. In view of the early eighteenth century taste for rovinismo in prints, paintings and architectural follies to complete landscaped gardens and Piranesi's rapidly increasing wealth of archaeological knowledge, the ruin capricci of his first published volume Prima Parte di Architettura e Prospettiva of 1743, are considered as direct expressions of his concept of 'parlanti ruine' or speaking ruins. Through the introduction of didactic captions, it is suggested that Piranesi transformed these early prints into 'readable' images, thereby introducing to his works evidence of the potent polemical content that would first distinguish his works from those of his peers and later become an integral feature of his productions. In this context, the Grotteschi, the meaning of which has eluded scholars since their first appearance in 1750, are considered as the culmination of this early development of polemical images and for the first time presented as representing a single coherent text based narrative expressing the ancient's creation myth. An elegiac subject entirely in keeping with Piranesi's objectives as an architect-archaeologist, etcher-publisher driven to renew contemporary taste in light of the surviving achievements of antiquity. A role that over the course of his brief fifty-eight years of life Piranesi was to successfully fill becoming the unrivalled father of Neo-classicism.

Piranesi, Plan of a Large and Magnificent College Building, from Opere Varie di Archittetura, Prospettive, Grotteschi, Antichità, 1750

Resources Online
Piranesi as Designer
Calcografica
Non solo arte
Wikicommons

Such a Noise!

2011-03-08T14:31:00.015+05:00

The art manifesto has been a recurrent feature associated with the avant-garde in Modernism. Art manifestos are mostly extreme in their rhetoric and intended for shock value to achieve a revolutionary effect. They often address wider issues, such as the political system. Typical themes are the need for revolution, freedom of expression and the implied or overtly stated superiority of the writers over the status quo.
Being a type of "communication made to the whole world" (Tristan Tzara), the manifesto gives a means of expressing, publicising and recording ideas for the artist or art group—even if only one or two people write the words, it is mostly still attributed to the group name.
Manifestos typically consist of a number of statements, which are numbered or in bullet points and which do not necessarily follow logically from one to the next.
The manifesto was initially a political document of state. The declaration of war in 1914 for instance was embodied in a document titled "Manifesto". This background is extremely important when assessing the positioning and impact of the manifesto as adopted by its early artistic users, who were challenging art and society.
The first art manifesto of the 20th century was introduced with the Futurists in Italy in 1909. The period up to World War II created what are still the best known manifestos.
Although it might be assumed that an art manifesto's primary purpose is to communicate the aesthetics of the group issuing it, this turns out not to be the case, nor is it an art form in its own right. The norm involves a hybrid form that combines a theatrical performance with political declamation.[1] Artists have not restricted themselves to their own genre, although they have often used their skills in the presentation of the text through graphics and type faces, resulting in a combination of "art, publicity, criticism, and advertising."[2]

Philippo Tommaso Marinetti, "Futurist Manifesto", Le Figaro, Paris, 1909.[3]
We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.
Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls.
Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to the sea.
Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared beneath our windows.
"Come, my friends!" I said. "Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness."
We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel — a guillotine knife — which threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. "Smell," I exclaimed, "smell is good enough for wild beasts!"
And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.
And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!
We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.
Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.
"Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!"
As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself — vlan! — head over heels in a ditch.
Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!
As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.
We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.
Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
2.The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
3. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
4. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
5. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
6. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
7. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
8. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
9. We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
10. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
11. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.
It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.
Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?
What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?
To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?
Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition.
For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists!
Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!
The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.
But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter's night in the depths of the country in a sad hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures.
They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.
The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love, courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath.
Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!
Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence affirms: "We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors," it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head!
Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!

Notes
1. Martin Puchner: "A substantial part of avant-garde art, guided by the genre of the manifesto, was not meant to be contemplated in private ... its screeching voice upsets our close-reading sensibilities" ("Screeching Voices: Avant-Garde Manifestos in the Cabaret," in European Avant-Garde: New Perspectives, ed. Dietrich Scheunemann, Amsterdam and Atlanta, 2000).
2. Stephen B. Petersen: "As public declarations of intention, printed manifestos offered a critical outlet for artists' ideas in the 20th century, serving as both rhetorical and visual statements of position in the art world and in society. As a genre, manifestos involve text, graphic design, and the rhetorical presentation of artistic ideas in a social context, thereby intersecting with art, publicity, criticism, and advertising" ("Looking at Artists' Manifestos, 1945–1965," Penn Humanities Forum, 2005-6).
3. Original text in French; English tranlation by James Joll (University of Michigan).

Loos, Ornament and Crime, 1908

2011-03-07T15:16:00.029+05:00

Ornament&Crime

Loos, a vigorous denouncer of ornament and the great cultural moralist in the history of European architecture and design was a revolutionary against the revolutionaries. With his assault on Viennese arts and crafts and his conflict with bourgeois morality, he managed to offend a whole country. He launched his controversial views in 1897 through a series of published essays, which addressed the excesses of traditional Viennese design, particularly as exercised by the Jugendstil movement (Vienna Secession, led by Olbrich and Hoffmann). These theories culminated in 1908 with the publication of a short essay entitled "Ornament and Crime." To Loos, the lack of ornament on architecture was a sign of spiritual strength, an aesthetic beauty that only those who lived on a higher level of culture would appreciate. According to him, "The urge to ornament oneself and everything within reach is the ancestor of pictorial art. It is the baby talk of painting... the evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects."

Joseph Rykwert, Adolf Loos: The New Vision, Studio International, vol. 186, # 957, 1973

Adolf Loos (1870-1933) was not the finest architect of the century. But amongst twentieth-century architects, he was probably the only one (with the possible exception of Le Corbusier) to be a major writer.

His family was unremarkable, though his background was a strong influence. He was the son of a prosperous craftsman: a monumental mason who had been very conscious of the dignity of his trade. He had practised this trade of his and lived in Brno, on the border of the Czech and German-speaking Habsburg lands. Adolf Loos was born there in 1870; he was therefore 48 when the Habsburg Empire fell. He died in 1933, the year of the Nazi rise to power, a deaf, broken man in spite of his relatively young age. His writings were marked by the feeling their titles summed up: Ins Leere Gesprochen and Trotzdem (Spoken into the Void, and Nonetheless). The sense of contradiction is inherent from the outset. Loos had been – surely more than his father even – aware of the nobility and worth of the paternal calling. But his father had died when Loos was just over ten years old, and his veneration for his father's memory contrasted sharply with his distaste for his mother's ways, her drudging insistence on security and achievement. The army, the art-school and finally the American journey liberated him, severed the family ties and formulated his resolve to become an architect. Already, when he was a student at the Dresden Gewerbeschule, he showed his mettle. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he rejected the servitude of the fraternities and the brand of a duelling scar that went with it. It was not only his distaste for the philistine ways of most of his student contemporaries, but also a fastidious care for personal propriety and integrity which motivated him. And his civil courage was already firm.

The fastidiousness was already in evidence when he first went to do his military service in Vienna. Leather and silver objects of high quality became his passion. The designers of that time regarded surface as a free field for the ornamental inventor. Curves, lines, inlays of varied materials covered all available plane surfaces. Instinctively, Loos already sought the smooth, the barely chamfered or edged. A passion for smooth and precious surfaces was an instinctive preference – which, as I will try to show, he later rationalized. His period at arts-and-crafts schools had left him with an interest in ornament – as he recognizes in one or two autobiographical pieces; but when he returned to Austria, his taste had been cleared by the sharp, clear Anglo-Saxon air he had breathed. And he rejoiced that the sensible Viennese bourgeoisie had rejected the fancy ornament which had become so popular in Germany and France. He was, of course, a mythomane. His idea that ‘the American kitchen never smells of onion, that the American woman can prepare the most exquisite meal in a quarter of an hour; she twitters like a bird and always smiles ...’ could not be the product of much direct experience; in spite of the visits to Philadelphia cousins, his stay in America seems to have been taken up with nights washing-up in restaurants, living in the YMCA and poor lodgings, some journalism and occasional recourse to the breadline. But those three years in the United States did form Loos's view of what he was about decisively. He was to be an architect, and in that sense a builder like his father. But he was also to bring to Vienna the inestimable gift of western culture; his little magazine (of which only two numbers appeared) Das Andere (The Other) had as its subtitle ‘a paper for the introduction of Western culture to Austria’. This Western culture had a curious physiognomy. Its structure could not be described; it was made up of surface details, which together gave the outline of a fabled and highly desirable state of affairs. Look at the matters with which Das Andere dealt: clothes, manners, table manners in particular; begging; sexual mores among the very young; the overdecoration of Wagner's Tristan in the Vienna Opera; the ill manners of the very great (the Emperor Wilhelm II is named); street decorations for state visits and so on.

All the time, the manners of the Anglo-Saxon countries are assumed as a model, as a standard of reference. The right way to do things is the way they are done at the heart of civilization, and that was either in London or in New York. By comparison with their ways, Austrian manners are found wanting at every point.

Much attention is paid, for instance, to the lack of spoons for the salt-cellars of Viennese restaurants. And, sometimes, this insistence is taken to extreme lengths: Loos rediscovers the aubergine, familiar in Europe since the sixteenth century, as the American egg-plant; and arranges to have American-type aubergine fritters served daily for a week in a named vegetarian restaurant in the hope of inspiring Viennese housewives and restaurateurs into emulation.

It may all seem very remote from Loos's central business of architecture. And yet for him it was not. Whenever he worked, he was always almost obsessively interested in how a building would be occupied. His great hostility to the Secession, the group of anti-academic Viennese artists who were the Austrian branch of Art Nouveau, turned on this point also. Art Nouveau architects and designers thought that a new style could be created for their own time in terms of an ornamental vocabulary, which would have no relation to historical ornament, but would be drawn entirely and directly from nature. Some went even further. They thought that this ornamental surface could be applied not only to walls, windows, floors, and pieces of furniture, but also to clothes and even to jewellery in a scientific fashion, so as to stimulate or reflect emotional states.

In some ways, this attitude to ornament had its source in the psychology (and later the aesthetics) of empathy, a teaching still not wholly dispensable, according to which we ‘read’ our state of being into the objects which surround us, and in a particularly heightened form when these objects present the pressing claim to our attention which works of art inevitably do. While this idea stimulated the particular researches of certain designers such as Henry van de Velde, for whom Loos reserves his most withering scorn, the notion of style which can be summed up in terms of its ornamental patterns is an idea formulated — among others — by the great German historian and architect, Gottfried Semper. Clothing, he believed, was the primary stimulus for all figuration. Clothing understood not only as protection, but also as the adorning of the human body. Semper was perhaps the first to consider tattooing among the arts of mankind.

Tattooing obviously fascinated Loos. In the most famous of his essays, the one on ornament and crime, he holds the Papuan up as an example of man who has not evolved to the moral and civilized circumstances of modern man, and who will therefore kill and consume his enemies without committing a crime. Had a modern — meaning a Western man — done the same thing, he would either be considered a criminal or a degenerate. By the same token, the Papuan may tattoo his skin, his boat, his oar or anything he may lay his hands on ... He is no criminal. But a modern man who tattos himself is either a criminal or a degenerate. Tattooed men who are not imprisoned are either latent criminals or degenerate aristocrats. If a tattooed man dies free, this is because he has died prematurely, before committing his murder.

Horror vacui is the origin of all figuration. ‘All art is erotic’. But man has evolved. And Loos proposes the axiom that the evolution of culture is equivalent to the entfernen of ornament from everyday things. Writing this essay as he did in 1908, it was easy to dismiss the elaborate confections of Van de Velde and Otto Eckmann, or even Joseph Olbrich, as worthless. Art Nouveau was already a thing of the past. Loos's contempt for their efforts had proved justified, while art schools, ministries and professional bodies were still intent on the study of ornament. But even in Loos's triumph, there is an element of inconsistency. His shoes, he admits, are covered with ornaments. English-style brogues, one must suppose. Loos imagines offering his shoemaker a premium price for the shoes: a quarter more than usual, and the delight of the shoemaker at having such an extremely appreciative client. But were he to ask the shoemaker to make the shoes quite smooth, without any ornament, he would topple his shoemaker from the heaven he had raised him to by his offer into the deepest hell.

The creation of ornament is the shoemaker's pleasure. And that, Loos thinks, is what makes it acceptable. ‘I can put up with ornament on my own body even, if it is a witness to the pleasure of my fellow-man’. Brogue shoes, Balkan Kelims, all that is tolerable, even welcome. But, says Loos, I preach to patricians. And patricians are those who — unlike his shoemaker — go after a day's work to relax listening to Tristram or to Beethoven. And a man who goes to listen to the ninth symphony and then sits down to draw a carpet pattern is either a confidence trickster or a degenerate.

The particular hate for the ornamental patterns of the Art Nouveau designers had a further motivation. Loos wrote the moral tale of the Poor Rich Man, who had his house, which he had hitherto inhabited so peacefully and contentedly, made into a work of art, since he had become discontented living without art. And the architect had designed every detail of the Rich Man's home, covered every surface with elaborate ornament; he anticipated everything, even the pattern on the Rich Man's slippers. The day came when the Poor Rich Man's family offered him birthday presents, which they had bought at the most approved arts-and-crafts establishments. The architect, summoned to find correct places for them in his composition, was furious that a client had dared to accept presents about which he, the architect, had not been consulted. For the house was altogether finished, as was his client: he was complete. The Poor Rich Man was written in 1900, at the height of the Art Nouveau phase. Loos's was then an unpopular, minority view among the cultivated; he seemed to take up cudgels for the philistines who still preferred their saddlework and their silver smooth and unadorned. By 1908, the year in which Ornament and Crime appeared, the climate of opinion had changed. Even the Viennese leaders of the Secession, like Joseph Olbrich, were working in a sober, ornament caste-shorn classical manner. Olbrich's last houses (he died in 1910) and Hoffmann's buildings — such as his pavilion at the Werkbund Exhibition of 1914 — align them with the more 'progressive' among the German architects: with Peter Behrens, Bruno Paul, Hermann Muthesius, Heinrich Tessenov.

But the ‘shorn’ classicism which they practised was not for Loos. They were the architects of — at that time at any rate — a confident bourgeoisie, which seemed to believe that the problems of Germany (and by extension of the rest of the world) would be solved in a reasonable way. That the Werkbund ideals of educated taste and good design would favour the expanding markets; and that all these good things would be fostered by the improving of art education on the English arts-and-crafts-school model.

The architects who held such ideas appealed to an architecture of reason for their precedent. The architecture of the age of reason, of the age of taste. Classicism, the brand of classicism which had evolved in Germany and Austria in the wake of the French masters, and culminated in the work of Schinkel, was the favoured model. But the apparently arbitrary slavery of neo-classical architects to an historical past was rejected. A model, yes, but to emulate, not to copy. Ornament, in any case, was considered something abstract; the ideas of the 80s and 90s, the notion that ornament and line could convey a mood or even a message, were alien to them. To Behrens as to Hoffmann, ornament was a modenature which might accentuate the play of light over the surface, at the most an anodyne echo of a generalized melancholy for the past, a garnish for the essential geometrics which — so it seemed to them — reason had always dictated.

Loos, like many of the architects of the pre-1914 period, was self-consciously modern. I have already noted this. And he had other things in common with them. His generous, if sometimes misguided, enthusiasm for all things English, for instance. But he was untouched by the generalized Werkbund optimism. It was not through the reformation of untutored mechanics in art schools, however excellent, that good design would be achieved throughout society. In so far as good design was available, it was those very rude mechanics, the saddler, the silversmith, the upholsterer, even the plumber — but above all the tailor and the shoemaker — who already provided a repertory of excellent objects for everyday use. This was the early intuition of the perfection, of the superiority, of unadorned objects, as they had come from the ‘unspoilt’ craftsman's hands. Loos remained consistent in this: if you look through his interiors, whether private or commercial (he never designed a public building) you will find that he never used ‘modern’ designed furniture. His preference was for English style, for Chippendale or Hepplewhite chairs; or else the cheaper canework. Occasionally he uses the standard Thonet chairs in bentwood, familiar from cheap cafes all over Europe. The armchairs are the usual cosy, sub-Biedermeier upholstery, even including the occasional Chesterfield. The floors were, for preference, covered with Oriental rugs.

I suppose that is why there are so few photographs of the house which Loos designed for the most famous of his clients, Tristan Tzara, in the Avenue Junot, on Montmartre. To the street the house would have shown — had the projected top storey been built — a great white square set over a rubble stone base. The base contained the garage and fuel store, as well as the main entrance on the ground floor, and the main windows of a flat for letting above. This flat was entered from behind the building. The main apartment consisted of hall and kitchen looking through the windows which overhung the string course, more important rooms in the huge niche, about half the height of the square and a third of its width, which cut sharply into the great white surface, a negative of the shape which he would later perfect in the Muller home at Brno. It was set in the middle, so that a swathe of white, a third of the square's width, went round it on three sides.

The inner complexity of the plan was a topical Loosian solution for a difficult site. The complexity had its wit, as did the strangely highly-abstracted anthropomorphism of the facade, or the use of the commonplace Parisian industrial detailing in the lower floors, the shape of the lower niche, again the inversion of his favourite English bay-window. It is a configuration not unlike Le Corbusier's exactly contemporary villa at Garches for Leo Stein: a blank facade, sparsely pierced to the street, and an open, glazed frame towards the terraces and gardens at the back. But Loos's complexity always remains hard, the spaces are never moulded, never the plastic, shaped interiors which Corbusier made them.

Repeatedly Loos asserted that the architect's business is with the immeuble, the craftsman's with the meuble. The architect saw to the inert volume, to the walls and ceilings and floors, to the fixed details such as chimneys and fireplaces (beaten copper was one of Loos's favourite materials). And here his haptic reading of buildings was most important.

Wherever he could, Loos used semi-precious materials on walls and ceilings: metal plaques, leather, veined marbles or highly veneered woods, even facing built-in pieces of furniture. But unlike his contemporaries, Loos never used these materials as pieces to be framed, but always as integral, continuous surfaces, always as plain as possible, always displaying their proper texture: almost as if they were a kind of ornament, an ornament which showed the pleasure providence took in making them, as the more obvious type of ornament would display the pleasure experienced by his fellow-men.

Curious then, this feeling for the decorative effect of figuring in the arch-enemy of all ornament. Even more curious is his persistent use of the classical columns and mouldings. The crassest of these was his project for the Chicago Tribune, an unplaced competition project; it was an extraordinary scheme which consisted of a vast Doric column, (the shaft alone 21 storeys high) on a high parallelepiped base. To Loos, however, the project seemed wholly serious. The building was to be a pure classic form, classic and therefore outside the reach of fashion, so that it would fulfil the programme of the competition promoters to 'erect the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world'.

A naughty extravaganza you might say. Of course. But Loos was convinced, secure enough, to allow himself that also. He had imagined a way of life in the house. The felicities of the plan all exult in the way the house was to be occupied, to be lived in. And does everything to ennoble it formally by a quiet unassertive wit. It is at this scale that Loos was at his happiest. The private houses are his masterpieces: they, the bars, the clothes shops, all buildings on a small scale, for the greater dimensions of public urban building he could not quite master. Though perhaps this is not entirely fair to him. In 1920 he was appointed chief architect for the Siedlungen of the post-abdication, the newly Republican Vienna. It was the nearest he came to giving positive expression to the western civilization he spoke of in architecture. But he was consumed by one or two detailed ideas which he never fully worked out: the terrace house with weight-bearing party-walls, and light construction cross-wall (what he called ‘the house with one wall’); the use of stepped terraces, so that the roof of one house could serve as garden to the next; the provision of access at every other floor, so that the terrace became in fact an immeuble villa, to adapt Corbusier's phrase. But his appointment did not and could not last. Only one of his Siedlungen was actually built, only partly following his plans before he retired, disappointed and embittered, to Paris. It is too easy to say that it was fated, that he should have remained the architect of the individual villa. Although all his projects for great public buildings show him at his worst, the low income housing absorbed his ingenious talent, drew the egalitarian and the moralist in him to a full engagement.

However, although the failure was primarily political, there is in the projects a kind of naivete, a concentration on the passage from one material to another, the lack of a sense of urban context for them, the absence for want of a better word, of a sense of structure. After all, the pleasures of his architecture are the pleasures of touch. And yet he was dimly aware of a mystery beyond, a mystery which he could not quite name. ‘All art is erotic’, he had written in Ornament and Crime. The erotic element in art had to be sublimated, however. The man who scrawls explicit erotic signs on walls is, again, a criminal or a degenerate, like all tattooers of surface. And yet, ornament cannot be dismissed altogether, for in the end the business of architecture is evocative. In attempting to get closer to this idea, he fell into a strange figure. ‘When, in a wood we come on a mound, six foot long, three foot wide, heaped up into a pyramid with a spade, then we become serious and something says inside us: someone lies buried here. That is architecture’.

Obsessionally almost (and in his later years ever more despairingly), Loos followed the ideal of an architecture which could communicate; communicate about this perfect way of life which seemed to him realized in the Anglo-Saxon lands, in his paradise. He never attempted a systematic view, a coherent theory of architecture, or of anything else for that matter. He was obsessed with immediate sensations as ingredients of a perfect way of life. The quality of smell and of touch, the juxtaposition of textures, the passage of an inhabitant from one volume to another, all these he observed with a sharp and loving eye.

Beyond this, and more gropingly, he sought for an architecture which could communicate and reconcile man to his fate. Though again it was not man in general with whom he concerned himself, but the same inhabitant of his buildings whose senses he wanted to stimulate and soothe. And beyond him, the passer-by: every building of his is not a maze which traps a way of life, but a presence which communicates with its inanimate neighbours.

It is these two passions which make him so fascinating a figure: since he tried to capture and celebrate things which his contemporaries had taken for granted, and were discarding in the name of progress. And which — now that they are lost — we miss in a way our fathers, his contemporaries, would never have imagined.

Ornament Returns. Exactly 100 years after Adolf Loos wrote Ornament and Crime, a manifesto that effectively relegated ornament in architecture to the peripheries of the discourse, "Re-sampling Ornament" takes a first step towards tracing its re-emergence. For decades the language of architectural ornament has remained largely unspoken, but for a few memorable post-modern architectural experiments. Yet from Owen Jones 'Grammar of Ornament' to John Ruskin, Gottfried Semper, Louis Sullivan and William Hogarth – and contemporaries such as Kent Bloomer, a rich vocabulary of opposing and often contradictory theories exists to be readapted, re-sampled, and once again applied at the heart of architectural practice.
Oliver Domeisen's research at his unit at London’s Architectural Association into the history and contemporary application of ornament in architecture has made it possible to embellish and enrich a mutual selection of new architectural projects with terminology drawn from many dictionaries; allowing for associations and groupings that can identify vital traces of ornament in current practice and at the same time rethink its boundaries, creating a new context within which contemporary projects can be redefined and rethought.
Whilst the ideological rigor of Modernism once rejected the supposed decadence and wastefulness associated with the mass production of ornament, it is undeniable that over the past 10 years entirely new construction and manufacturing processes have made the return of ornament economically viable. 3D computer modelling can now steer mass-customisation processes from CNC milling to laser cutting.
Ornament is the home of metamorphosis uniting and transforming conflicting worldly elements. It is an image of combination and a spectacle of transformation. Ornament is a method to subsume almost anything into the architectural idiom: human bodies, plants, militaria, microscopic patterns, fantastical beasts – it is the realm of monsters and hybrids. Ornament is transgressive. It sits comfortably between realism and abstraction, antiquity and modernity, mechanical objectivity and artistic subjectivity, convention and expression, and the real and the ideal.
Crucial to a new reading of ornament in architecture is its enduring relationship to nature. “Re-sampling Ornament” reasserts the right to enjoy the intelligent conceptual play with beauty and to rediscover sensuality in current manifestations of ornament in architecture. According to the architectural historian Kent Bloomer, there are malleable and erotic 'Bio-Keys' that span cultures and histories, as though there were some deeply rooted genetic code of ornament. Ruskin's "Curves of Temperance and Intemperance" sought the geometry of virtue in ornament, one that William Hogarth traces with scientific exactitude in the curvature of bones and the lines of a woman's pelvis. Today, computer-aided design can bring forth organic forms in architecture as well as stretching artifice to its extremes.

In our age of conspicuous consumption, brand culture also becomes a welcome resource for the architecture of ornament in all its opulence. The icons of our age are perhaps the logos that define the corporate world that surrounds us; the manufacturers of desire. The architects featured as defining new styles and languages to accommodate this iconography are distinguished by the elegance with which they resolve the dilemma of representation in unique ways – uniting ornament with a pertinent commentary on contemporary visual culture.
“Re-sampling Ornament” reinstates ornament in contemporary architecture with an abundance of new conceptual and aesthetic possibilities. Ornament operates trans-historically and trans-culturally. It is constant dynamic movement and expansion. Ornament is not truth – it is mimesis, material transubstantiation, deception, artifice, pleasure and beauty that render utility acceptable (SAM-Basel, 2008).

Johannes Esaias Nilson (1721-1788), Neues Caffehaus (New Coffee House), colored copper engraving, Augsburg, Germany, 1756.