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The Liechtenstein Garden Palace is a Baroque palace at the Fürstengasse in the 9th District of Vienna, Alsergrund . Between the palace, where the Liechtenstein Museum was until the end of 2011, and executed as Belvedere summer palace on the Alserbachstraße is a park. Since early 2012, the Liechtenstein Garden Palace is a place for events. Part of the private art collection of the Prince of Liechtenstein is still in the gallery rooms of the palace. In 2010 was started to call the palace, to avoid future confusion, officially the Garden Palace, since 2013 the city has renovated the Palais Liechtenstein (Stadtpalais) in Vienna's old town and then also equipped with a part of the Liechtenstein art collection.
Building
Design for the Liechtenstein Garden Palace, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach in 1687/1688
Canaletto: View of Palais Liechtenstein
1687 bought Prince Johann Adam Andreas von Liechtenstein a garden with adjoining meadows of Count Weikhard von Auersperg in the Rossau. In the southern part of the property the prince had built a palace and in the north part he founded a brewery and a manorial, from which developed the suburb Lichtental. For the construction of the palace Johann Adam Andreas organised 1688 a competition, in the inter alia participating, the young Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. Meanwhile, a little functional, " permeable " project was rejected by the prince but, after all, instead he was allowed to built a garden in the Belvedere Alserbachstraße 14, which , however, was canceled in 1872.
The competition was won by Domenico Egidio Rossi, but was replaced in 1692 by Domenico Martinelli. The execution of the stonework had been given the royal Hofsteinmetzmeister (master stonemason) Martin Mitschke. He was delivered by the Masters of Kaisersteinbruch Ambrose Ferrethi , Giovanni Battista Passerini and Martin Trumler large pillars, columns and pedestal made from stone Emperor (Kaiserstein). Begin of the contract was the fourth July 1689 , the total cost was around 50,000 guilders.
For contracts from the years 1693 and 1701 undertook the Salzburg master stonemason John and Joseph Pernegger owner for 4,060 guilders the steps of the great grand staircase from Lienbacher (Adnet = red) to supply marble monolith of 4.65 meters. From the Master Nicolaus Wendlinger from Hallein came the Stiegenbalustraden (stair balustrades) for 1,000 guilders.
A palazzo was built in a mix of city and country in the Roman-style villa. The structure is clear and the construction very blocky with a stressed central risalite, what served the conservative tastes of the Prince very much. According to the procedure of the architectural treatise by Johann Adam Andreas ' father, Karl Eusebius, the palace was designed with three floors and 13 windows axis on the main front and seven windows axis on the lateral front. Together with the stems it forms a courtyard .
Sala terrene of the Palais
1700 the shell was completed. In 1702, the Salzburg master stonemason and Georg Andreas Doppler took over 7,005 guilders for the manufacture of door frame made of white marble of Salzburg, 1708 was the delivery of the fireplaces in marble hall for 1,577 guilders. For the painted decoration was originally the Bolognese Marcantonio Franceschini hired, from him are some of the painted ceilings on the first floor. Since he to slow to the prince, Antonio Belucci was hired from Venice, who envisioned the rest of the floor. The ceiling painting in the Great Hall, the Hercules Hall but got Andrea Pozzo . Pozzo in 1708 confirmed the sum of 7,500 florins which he had received since 1704 for the ceiling fresco in the Marble Hall in installments. As these artists died ( Pozzo) or declined to Italy, the Prince now had no painter left for the ground floor.
After a long search finally Michael Rottmayr was hired for the painting of the ground floor - originally a temporary solution, because the prince was of the opinion that only Italian artist buon gusto d'invenzione had. Since Rottmayr was not involved in the original planning, his paintings not quite fit with the stucco. Rottmayr 1708 confirmed the receipt of 7,500 guilders for his fresco work.
Giovanni Giuliani, who designed the sculptural decoration in the window roofing of the main facade, undertook in 1705 to provide sixteen stone vases of Zogelsdorfer stone. From September 1704 to August 1705 Santino Bussi stuccoed the ground floor of the vault of the hall and received a fee of 1,000 florins and twenty buckets of wine. 1706 Bussi adorned the two staircases, the Marble Hall, the Gallery Hall and the remaining six halls of the main projectile with its stucco work for 2,200 florins and twenty buckets of wine. Giuliani received in 1709 for his Kaminbekrönungen (fireplace crowning) of the great room and the vases 1,128 guilders.
Garden
Liechtenstein Palace from the garden
The new summer palace of Henry of Ferstel from the garden
The garden was created in the mind of a classic baroque garden. The vases and statues were carried out according to the plans of Giuseppe Mazza from the local Giovanni Giuliani. In 1820 the garden has been remodeled according to plans of Joseph Kornhäusel in the Classical sense. In the Fürstengasse was opposite the Palais, the Orangerie, built 1700s.
Use as a museum
Already from 1805 to 1938, the palace was housing the family collection of the house of Liechtenstein, which was also open for public viewing, the collection was then transferred to the Principality of Liechtenstein, which remained neutral during the war and was not bombed. In the 1960s and 1970s, the so-called Building Centre was housed in the palace as a tenant, a permanent exhibition for builders of single-family houses and similar buildings. From 26 April 1979 rented the since 1962 housed in the so-called 20er Haus Museum of the 20th Century , a federal museum, the palace as a new main house, the 20er Haus was continued as a branch . Since the start of operations at the Palais, the collection called itself Museum of Modern Art (since 1991 Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation ), the MUMOK in 2001 moved to the newly built museum district.
From 29 March 2004 till the end of 2011 in the Palace was the Liechtenstein Museum, whose collection includes paintings and sculptures from five centuries. The collection is considered one of the largest and most valuable private art collections in the world, whose main base in Vaduz (Liechtenstein) is . As the palace, so too the collection is owned by the Prince of Liechtenstein Foundation .
On 15 November 2011 it was announced that the regular museum operating in the Garden Palace was stopped due to short of original expectations, visiting numbers remaining lower as calculated, with January 2012. The Liechtenstein City Palace museum will also not offer regular operations. Exhibited works of art would then (in the city palace from 2013) only during the "Long Night of the Museums", for registered groups and during leased events being visitable. The name of the Liechtenstein Museum will no longer be used.
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_Liechtenstein_(F%C3%BCrstengasse)
The sculptural bust of Amelia Earhart was executed by Grace Wells Parkinson and was a gift of Amelia Earhart Post 678, American Legion.
On the right are a pair of Amelia Earhart's flying goggles, minus the lens, which were gifted by Richard Evans.
The National Air and Space Museum (NASM), administered by the Smithsonian Institute, maintains the largest collection of aircraft and spacecraft in the world and is a vital center for research into the history, science, and technology of aviation and spaceflight, as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics. Established along the National Mall on July 1, 1976, the museum was designed by Gyo Obata of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum as four simple marble-encased cubes containing the smaller and more theatrical exhibits, connected by three spacious steel-and-glass atrium which house the larger exhibits such as missiles, airplanes and spacecraft.
The Smithsonian Institution, an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its shops and its magazines, was established in 1846. Although concentrated in Washington DC, its collection of over 136 million items is spread through 19 museums, a zoo, and nine research centers from New York to Panama.
Today, Thursday 16 November 2017, police executed warrants at eight addresses across the Moss Side and Hulme areas of Manchester.
The warrants were executed as the latest phase of Operation Malham, targeting the supply of drugs in South Manchester.
This follows previous raids last week, which means more than 14 properties have been searched and eight people arrested in total as part of the operation.
Detective Chief Inspector Paul Walker, of GMP’s City of Manchester team, said: “We are dedicated to rooting out those who seek to make profits from putting drugs on our streets.
“Today’s raids have resulted in the arrests of five people which have only been made possible through the support of partner agencies and community intelligence.
“We are grateful for all your support and help and I would urge you to continue to report anything suspicious to help us stop people who are benefitting from crime and remove drugs from our city.”
Anyone with information should contact police on 101 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit
You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.
Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.
In the undercover of darkness, officers from GMP’s Xcalibre task force executed a number of simultaneous warrants this morning (Wednesday 9 November 2022) – three in the Middleton area of Rochdale and one in Sheffield – and arrested four people on suspicion of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and possession of a firearm with the intent to endanger life.
The arrests come in response to the drive-by shooting that occurred on Quinney Crescent in Moss Side on Friday 29 July 2022, where a party was being held. A teenage girl sustained serious injuries from the shotgun blast and another girl was injured from what was believed to be shrapnel resulting from the firearms discharge.
Both attended hospital at the time and were subsequently discharged to recover at home.
Detectives are today renewing their appeal for witnesses to the incident and are urging anyone with any information on the shooting, or the vehicle of interest, as well as any mobile, CCTV, dashcam or doorbell footage to come forward and speak to GMP.
Officers will be out in the community of Moss Side today to offer reassurance and to be a point of contact for anyone who wants to talk.
Detective Superintendent David Meeney from the City of Manchester Division said: “This incident could have been far more serious. We do not believe that the two girls were the intended targets and were simply innocent bystanders, enjoying a party.
“This shows me that the people responsible are clearly dangerous as they have shown zero regard for who could have been injured that night. Guns have no place on the streets of Manchester and investigating these offences is a priority for GMP – to ensure we that we can bring the offenders to justice and protect the communities of Greater Manchester.
“Today’s arrests, led by the Xcalibre Task Force, shows how determined we are to bring those responsible for this callous attack to justice. I am appealing to anyone who was in the area of Moss Side on Friday 29 July 2022 between 10pm and 11pm, who may have seen a vehicle being driven erratically, to contact us.
“I am particularly interested in any sightings of a dark coloured SUV-type car and I am asking for anyone with any dashcam or doorbell footage that may have captured those responsible, either arriving or leaving the area, to please contact us. I have trained officers on-hand who can download and review any footage quickly.
“I am also appealing to anyone in the local community and those who live or work in the surrounding areas, who may have any information regarding the shooting to come forward. As well as approaching our officers who are out today, you can call 101 or use the Live Chat service on our website – www.gmp.police.uk.
www.stanleyhistoryonline.com/Newland-Estate.html
www.dmm.org.uk/company/l1010.htm
From www.wakefield.gov.uk re places of worship
"Roman Catholic Church
The history of Roman Catholicism in Normanton is quite as interesting as that of any other religious body in the town. About the year 1845, James and Martha Byrne, who resided in a block of houses at Normanton Common, then known as ''the Irish Row" threw their cottage open for religious services. Priests from Pontefract and afterwards from Wakefield attended weekly to conduct the services, amongst whom may be mentioned Father Sherlock and Father Clifford, the latter usually making the journey on the back of a pony.
Religious services were carried on in this manner until 1871, when a small building was erected at Normanton Common which fulfilled the dual function of a school during the week and a chapel on Sundays. There was, however, no resident priest in Normanton until the first Roman Catholic Church was built at Woodhouse in 1889. This church remained in use for public worship until 1904, when it was transformed into day schools, being superseded as a place of worship by the present church also at Woodhouse.
The first building at Normanton Common is now converted into cottages, it was displaced by a much larger building in 1898 which however, still serves the dual purpose of both school and chapel. The above mentioned James and Martha Byrne were the parents of the late Hugh Byrne, who was for many years a popular figure in the public life of Normanton. He was an active worker in the Trade Union movement, and held various important positions in the Yorkshire Miners' Association. He was a member of the Burial Board and one of the first members elected to the Normanton Urban District Council, which position he held, without intermission, until his death in 1899.
There is at the present time only one building in Normanton devoted exclusively to Roman Catholic worship, and the building together with its fittings and decorations calls for more than a passing reference.
The Normanton Roman Catholic Church situated off Wakefield Road in Newland Lane, is a fine red brick building with stone dressings in the gothic style. There is an unusual feature about the tower, inasmuch as the chimney connected with the heating apparatus of the church runs the whole length of the structure. A stone tablet over the main entrance bears the cross of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John. Built into the front wall, on the west side of the entrance, is a stone which bears the following inscription:-
"To the greater glory of God, and in honour of St.John the Baptist, this stone was blessed by the Reverend William Gordon, Bishop of Leeds, and duly laid by John Warrington Esq. of Cragwood, on the 3rd of May, A.D. 1904"
The architect was Edward Simpson of Manningham, Bradford. The contractors and builders were R. Leake and Sons of Normanton. The Building without fittings and furniture, was erected at a cost of approximately £4,500. The windows which were all made in Holland, have some very beautiful designs and the roof (inside) which is of pitchpine, is a fine example of wood-roofing. There is ample seating accommodation and all the seats are in oak. The west window was presented to the church by John Warrington, Esq. in memory of his wife, and also to the memory of William Locke and his wife. The east window is in three sections. The right hand section (as you face the altar) was given by the Byrne's family, the left by John Broadhead Esq., and the middle section by the Dutch students.
On the walls, on each side and behind the altar, are a number of very fine oil paintings, representing Biblical and other scenes, executed by Archibald Jarvis, of Ipswich, which were presented by Mr. P.W. Sheer of Normanton. The altar is of oak, with marble base, and was erected to the memory of the late Father Heafkens, whilst the altar gates, which are of brass and show fine workmanship, were given by Mr. B. Brook, of Normanton. The pulpit is of oak and hexagonal in design, each of the six sides showing exquisite carving work depicting scenes in the life of St. John the Baptist. Under the tower is the Lourdes Chapel with fine paintings and a life size statue of our lady of Lourdes, given by Mr. James Crane of Normanton. A tablet on the wall in the south chancel bears the names of 33 members who lost their lives in the great war. Attached to the church is the priest's house. The Rev.Father Herfkens was the first priest of this church, and the Rev.Father Imkamp is priest at the present time; to whom I am indebted for the foregoing particulars."
Today, Thursday 16 November 2017, police executed warrants at eight addresses across the Moss Side and Hulme areas of Manchester.
The warrants were executed as the latest phase of Operation Malham, targeting the supply of drugs in South Manchester.
This follows previous raids last week, which means more than 14 properties have been searched and eight people arrested in total as part of the operation.
Detective Chief Inspector Paul Walker, of GMP’s City of Manchester team, said: “We are dedicated to rooting out those who seek to make profits from putting drugs on our streets.
“Today’s raids have resulted in the arrests of five people which have only been made possible through the support of partner agencies and community intelligence.
“We are grateful for all your support and help and I would urge you to continue to report anything suspicious to help us stop people who are benefitting from crime and remove drugs from our city.”
Anyone with information should contact police on 101 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit
You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.
Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.
Today, Thursday 16 November 2017, police executed warrants at eight addresses across the Moss Side and Hulme areas of Manchester.
The warrants were executed as the latest phase of Operation Malham, targeting the supply of drugs in South Manchester.
This follows previous raids last week, which means more than 14 properties have been searched and eight people arrested in total as part of the operation.
Detective Chief Inspector Paul Walker, of GMP’s City of Manchester team, said: “We are dedicated to rooting out those who seek to make profits from putting drugs on our streets.
“Today’s raids have resulted in the arrests of five people which have only been made possible through the support of partner agencies and community intelligence.
“We are grateful for all your support and help and I would urge you to continue to report anything suspicious to help us stop people who are benefitting from crime and remove drugs from our city.”
Anyone with information should contact police on 101 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit
You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.
Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.
Today, Thursday 16 November 2017, police executed warrants at eight addresses across the Moss Side and Hulme areas of Manchester.
The warrants were executed as the latest phase of Operation Malham, targeting the supply of drugs in South Manchester.
This follows previous raids last week, which means more than 14 properties have been searched and eight people arrested in total as part of the operation.
Detective Chief Inspector Paul Walker, of GMP’s City of Manchester team, said: “We are dedicated to rooting out those who seek to make profits from putting drugs on our streets.
“Today’s raids have resulted in the arrests of five people which have only been made possible through the support of partner agencies and community intelligence.
“We are grateful for all your support and help and I would urge you to continue to report anything suspicious to help us stop people who are benefitting from crime and remove drugs from our city.”
Anyone with information should contact police on 101 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit
You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.
Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.
Today, Thursday 16 November 2017, police executed warrants at eight addresses across the Moss Side and Hulme areas of Manchester.
The warrants were executed as the latest phase of Operation Malham, targeting the supply of drugs in South Manchester.
This follows previous raids last week, which means more than 14 properties have been searched and eight people arrested in total as part of the operation.
Detective Chief Inspector Paul Walker, of GMP’s City of Manchester team, said: “We are dedicated to rooting out those who seek to make profits from putting drugs on our streets.
“Today’s raids have resulted in the arrests of five people which have only been made possible through the support of partner agencies and community intelligence.
“We are grateful for all your support and help and I would urge you to continue to report anything suspicious to help us stop people who are benefitting from crime and remove drugs from our city.”
Anyone with information should contact police on 101 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit
You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.
Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.
The mosaic in the oven vault was executed while the edifice was still the church of Sainte-Genevieve. Antoine-Auguste-Ernest Hébert's Christ Showing the Angel of France the Destiny of Her People (1874-1884) depicts, to the right, Saint Genevieve, and to the left, Joan of Arc.
Le Panthéon, atop Montagne Sainte-Geneviève at Place du Panthéon, was originally built by King Louis XIV between 1757-1790 as Église Sainte-Geneviève, dedicated to Sainte-Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris. Designed by Jacques-Germain Soufflot, it is considered one of the earliest and most prominent works of Neoclassicism. After many changes over the year, the Panthéon now combines liturgical functions with its role as burial place for famous French heroes.
When Louis suffered from a mysterious illness in 1744 he vowed to build a church dedicated to Sainte-Geneviève if he would survive. After he recovered, he entrusted the Marquis of Marigny with the task of replacing the ruined 6th century basilica, Abbey Sainte-Geneviève. Foundations were laid in 1758, but due to financial difficulties, it wasn't completed until 1789-after Soufflot's death, by his pupil Jean-Baptiste Rondelet. In the midst of the French Revolution, the Constituent Assembly of the Revolution decided by decree to transform the church into a mausoleum to accommodate the remains of the great men of France and building was adapted by architect Quatremère de Quincy. In 1806, the building was turned into a church again, but since 1885 it has served civically as a "Temple of Fame." In 1851 physicist Léon Foucault famously demonstrated the rotation of the Earth by constructing the 67-meterFoucault's pendulum beneath the central dome.
The Panthéon is designed in a Greek-cross plan, 110-meters long and 85-meters wide, with a massive portico of Corinthian columns, modeled on the Pantehon in Rome, surmounted by a small dome that reaches a height of 83-meters. The dome features three superimposed shells, similar to the St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
The vast crypt covers the whole surface of the building, Among those buried in its necropolis are Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Louis Braile, Jean Jaurès, Marie Curie, Emile Zola, and Soufflot.
Aelia Verina, wife of Leo I
Solidus, Constantinopolis 462-466, AV 4.46 g. AEL VERI – NA AVG Pearl-diademed and draped bust r., wearing necklace and earrings, crowned by Manus Dei. Rev. VICTOR – IA AVGGG Victory standing l., supporting long jewelled cross; in field r., star. In exergue, CONOB. MIRB 3. LRC 593. Depeyrot 93/2. RIC 606.
Extremely rare and in exceptional condition for this difficult issue, among the finest
specimens known. Well struck and centred on a full flan, good extremely fine
Ex Gorny and Mosch sale 219, 2014, 527.
As the wife of Leo I and the mother-in-law of his successor Zeno, Aelia Verina held the title of Augusta for nearly the last three decades of her life. We have relatively detailed accounts of her machinations from 474 onward, and considering all of the power plays being made at court during Leo’s reign, we might presume she was deeply involved in the intrigues. When her husband Leo I was ailing in 473, Verina helped arrange his adoption of their six-year-old grandson, Leo II, as successor rather than their son-in-law Zeno, a healthy man in his mid-30s with significant military experience. Despite his ideal qualifications, Zeno was not well liked, a feeling that Leo and Verina must have shared. The child Leo II was first raised to Caesar in October, 473, and finally to Augustus in January, 474, less than a month before his grandfather died. The saga continued when the already fragile health of Leo II began to fail and it was necessary on February 9, 474, to have the boy proclaim his own father, Zeno, his co-emperor. When Leo II died in November, the cause of his demise must have been the fodder of palace gossip. Zeno was now sole emperor, and this displeased his mother-in-law Verina so much that she caused a false rumour to be spread of an impending palace coup, upon which she recommended that Zeno and Ariadne flee Constantinople for their own safety.
Verina now hoped to get her lover, the magister officorum Patricius, installed as emperor, but she met unexpected resistance in the senate which instead hailed emperor her brother Basiliscus. Thus, after her initial plot against her son-in-law, Verina now plotted against her brother, who responded by executing her lover Patricius. Once again, Roman history proves truth is stranger than fiction.
The old empress was forced into hiding as she worked for the return of Zeno as the lesser of two evils. Once Zeno recovered his throne from Basiliscus, Verina still devoted the rest of her life to undermining Zeno, which resulted in her exile to a fortress in the wilds of Isauria. Two of her counter-revolutionary efforts included backing a coup in 479 in the name of her other son-in-law, an ambitious young nobleman named Marcian, and her support of the rebellion of Leontius in 484.
Verina’s coins are rare today, but the must have been issued in some quantity at the time. Her solidi, tremisses and Æ2s all bear her profile portrait, and she is also portrayed on some of Leo’s smallest bronzes as a standing figure flanked by the letters bE, representing the Greek version of her name, Berina.
The date of the present solidus is not certainly known. Kent, Grierson and Mays all describe it as an issue under her husband’s successor Zeno, with Kent suggesting it may have been struck in 462 or 466, two of the five occasions on which Leo I held the consulship.
NAC92, 875
Klinkicht, Gerhard, * 1915, † 14.03.2000 Bavaria, Wehrmacht Captain. A commemorative plaque on St. Stephen's Cathedral (side of the gate Singertor) recalls that in April 1945 Klinkicht refused to execute the order to bombard the cathedral.
Klinkicht, Gerhard, * 1915, † 14.03.2000 Bayern, Wehrmachtshauptmann. Eine Gedenktafel am Stephansdom (Seite des Singertors) hält in Erinnerung, dass sich Klinkicht im April 1945 geweigert hatte, den Befehl zur Beschießung des Doms auszuführen.
Fire in St. Stephen's Cathedral: eyewitnesses cried in the face of devastation.
Despite great need after the war, the landmark of Austria was rebuilt within seven years.
04th April 2015
What happened in the heart of Vienna 70 years ago brought tears to many horrified residents. On 12 April 1945, the Pummerin, the largest bell of St. Stephen's Cathedral, fell as a result of a roof fire in the tower hall and broke to pieces. The following day, a collapsing retaining wall pierced through the vault of the southern side choir, the penetrating the cathedral fire destroyed the choir stalls and choir organ, the Imperial oratory and the rood screen cross. St. Stephen's Cathedral offered a pitiful image of senseless destruction, almost at the end of that terrible time when the Viennese asked after each bombing anxiously: "Is Steffl still standing?"
100 grenades for the cathedral
Already on April 10, the cathedral was to be razed to the ground. In retaliation for hoisting a white flag on St. Stephen's Cathedral, the dome must be reduced to rubble and ash with a fiery blast of a hundred shells. Such was the insane command of the commander of an SS Artillery Division in the already lost battle for Vienna against the Red Army.
The Wehrmacht Captain Gerhard Klinkicht, from Celle near Hanover, read the written order to his soldiers and tore the note in front of them with the words: "No, this order will not be executed."
What the SS failed to do, settled looters the day after. The most important witness of the events from April 11 to 13, became Domkurat (cathedral curate) Lothar Kodeischka (1905-1994), who, as the sacristan director of St. Stephen, was practically on the spot throughout these days. When Waffen-SS and Red Army confronted each other on the Danube Canal on April 11, according to Kodeischka a report had appeared that SS units were making a counter-attack over the Augarten Bridge. Parts of the Soviet artillery were then withdrawn from Saint Stephen's square. For hours, the central area of the city center was without occupying forces. This was helped by gangs of raiders who set fire to the afflicted shops.
As a stone witness to the imperishable, the cathedral had defied all adversity for over 800 years, survived the conflagrations, siege of the Turks and the French wars, but in the last weeks of the Second World War St. Stephen was no longer spared the rage of annihilation. Contemporary witness Karl Strobl in those days observed "an old Viennese lady who wept over the burning cathedral".
The stunned spectators of destruction were joined, according to press reports, by a man in baggy trousers and a shabby hat, who incidentally remarked, "Well, we'll just have to rebuild him (the dome)." It was Cardinal Theodor Innitzer. Only a few weeks later, on May 15, 1945, the Viennese archbishop proclaimed to the faithful of his diocese: "Helping our cathedral, St. Stephen's Cathedral, to regain its original beauty is an affair of the heart of all Catholics, a duty of honor for all."
April 1945
In April 1945, not only St. Stephen's Cathedral burned. We did some research for you this month.
April 6: The tallest wooden structure of all time, the 190 meter high wooden tower (short-wave transmitter) of the transmitter Mühlacker, is blown up by the SS.
April 12: Following the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman is sworn in as the 33rd US President.
April 13: Vienna Operation: Soviet troops conquer Vienna.
April 25: Björn Ulvaeus, Swedish singer, member of the ABBA group, is born.
April 27: The provisional government Renner proclaims the Austrian declaration of independence.
April 30: The Red Army hoists the Soviet flag on the Reichstag building. Adolf Hitler, the dictator of the Third Reich, commits suicide with Eva Braun.
Brand im Stephansdom: Augenzeugen weinten angesichts der Verwüstung.
Trotz großer Not nach dem Krieg wurde das Wahrzeichen Österreichs binnen sieben Jahren wieder aufgebaut.
04. April 2015
Was vor 70 Jahren im Herzen Wiens passierte, trieb vielen entsetzten Bewohnern die Tränen in die Augen. Am 12. April 1945 stürzte die Pummerin, die größte Glocke des Stephansdoms, als Folge eines Dachbrandes in die Turmhalle herab und zerbrach. Tags darauf durchschlug eine einbrechende Stützmauer das Gewölbe des südlichen Seitenchors, das in den Dom eindringende Feuer zerstörte Chorgestühl und Chororgel, Kaiseroratorium und Lettnerkreuz. Der Stephansdom bot ein erbarmungswürdiges Bild sinnloser Zerstörung, und das fast am Ende jener Schreckenszeit, in der die Wiener nach jedem Bombenangriff bang fragten: "Steht der Steffl noch?"
100 Granaten für den Dom
Bereits am 10. April sollte der Dom dem Erdboden gleichgemacht werden. Als Vergeltung für das Hissen einer weißen Fahne auf dem Stephansdom ist der Dom mit einem Feuerschlag von 100 Granaten in Schutt und Asche zu legen. So lautete der wahnwitzige Befehl des Kommandanten einer SS-Artillerieabteilung im schon verlorenen Kampf um Wien gegen die Rote Armee.
Der aus Celle bei Hannover stammende Wehrmachtshauptmann Gerhard Klinkicht las die schriftlich übermittelte Anordnung seinen Soldaten vor und zerriss den Zettel vor aller Augen mit den Worten: "Nein, dieser Befehl wird nicht ausgeführt."
Was der SS nicht gelang, besorgten einen Tag später Plünderer: Zum wichtigsten Zeugen der Geschehnisse vom 11. bis 13. April wurde Domkurat Lothar Kodeischka (1905–1994), der als Sakristeidirektor von St. Stephan in diesen Tagen praktisch durchgehend an Ort und Stelle war. Als am 11. April Waffen-SS und Rote Armee einander am Donaukanal gegenüberstanden, war laut Kodeischka die Nachricht aufgetaucht, SS-Einheiten würden einen Gegenstoß über die Augartenbrücke unternehmen. Teile der sowjetischen Artillerie wurden daraufhin vom Stephansplatz abgezogen. Für Stunden sei der zentrale Bereich der Innenstadt ohne Besatzung gewesen. Dies nützten Banden von Plünderern, die Feuer in den heimgesuchten Geschäften legten.
Als steinerner Zeuge des Unvergänglichen hatte der Dom über 800 Jahre hinweg "allen Widrigkeiten getrotzt, hatte Feuersbrünste, Türkenbelagerungen und Franzosenkriege überstanden. Doch in den letzten Wochen des Zweiten Weltkrieges blieb auch St. Stephan nicht mehr verschont vor der Wut der Vernichtung. Zeitzeuge Karl Strobl beobachtete damals "eine alte Wienerin, die über den brennenden Dom weinte".
Zu den fassungslosen Betrachtern der Zerstörung gesellte sich laut Presseberichten ein Mann in ausgebeulten Hosen und mit abgeschabtem Hut, der so nebenbei bemerkte: "Na, wir werden ihn (den Dom) halt wieder aufbauen müssen." Es handelte sich um Kardinal Theodor Innitzer. Nur wenige Wochen danach, am 15. Mai 1945, ließ der Wiener Erzbischof an die Gläubigen seiner Diözese verlautbaren: "Unsere Kathedrale, den Stephansdom, wieder in seiner ursprünglichen Schönheit erstehen zu helfen, ist eine Herzenssache aller Katholiken, eine Ehrenpflicht aller."
April 1945
Im April 1945 brannte nicht nur der Stephansdom. Wir haben für Sie recherchiert wa noch in diesem Monat geschah.
6. April: Das höchste Holzbauwerk aller Zeiten, der 190 Meter hohe Holzsendeturm des Senders Mühlacker, wird von der SS gesprengt.
12. April: Nach dem Tod von Präsident Franklin D. Roosevelt wird Harry S. Truman als 33. Präsident der USA vereidigt.
13. April: Wiener Operation: Sowjetischen Truppen erobern Wien.
25. April: Björn Ulvaeus, schwedischer Sänger, Mitglied der Gruppe ABBA, kommt zur Welt.
27. April: Von der provisorischen Regierung Renner wird die österreichische Unabhängigkeitserklärung proklamiert.
30. April: Die Rote Armee hisst die sowjetische Fahne auf dem Reichstagsgebäude. Adolf Hitler, der Diktator des Dritten Reiches, begeht mit Eva Braun Selbstmord.
www.nachrichten.at/nachrichten/150jahre/ooenachrichten/Vo...
Fresco (plural frescos or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes an integral part of the wall. The word fresco (Italian: affresco) is derived from the Italian adjective fresco meaning "fresh", and may thus be contrasted with fresco-secco or secco mural painting techniques, which are applied to dried plaster, to supplement painting in fresco. The fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting.
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A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.
Some wall paintings are painted on large canvases, which are then attached to the wall (e.g., with marouflage). Whether these works can be accurately called "murals" is a subject of some controversy in the art world, but the technique has been in common use since the late 19th century.
HISTORY
Murals of sorts date to Upper Paleolithic times such as the paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Ardèche department of southern France (around 30,000 BC). Many ancient murals have survived in Egyptian tombs (around 3150 BC), the Minoan palaces (Middle period III of the Neopalatial period, 1700-1600 BC) and in Pompeii (around 100 BC - AD 79).
During the Middle Ages murals were usually executed on dry plaster (secco). In Italy, circa 1300, the technique of painting of frescos on wet plaster was reintroduced and led to a significant increase in the quality of mural painting.
In modern times, the term became more well-known with the Mexican "muralista" art movement (Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, or José Orozco). There are many different styles and techniques. The best-known is probably fresco, which uses water-soluble paints with a damp lime wash, a rapid use of the resulting mixture over a large surface, and often in parts (but with a sense of the whole). The colors lighten as they dry. The marouflage method has also been used for millennia.
Murals today are painted in a variety of ways, using oil or water-based media. The styles can vary from abstract to trompe-l'œil (a French term for "fool" or "trick the eye"). Initiated by the works of mural artists like Graham Rust or Rainer Maria Latzke in the 1980s, trompe-l'oeil painting has experienced a renaissance in private and public buildings in Europe. Today, the beauty of a wall mural has become much more widely available with a technique whereby a painting or photographic image is transferred to poster paper or canvas which is then pasted to a wall surface (see wallpaper, Frescography) to give the effect of either a hand-painted mural or realistic scene.
TECHNIQUE
In the history of mural several methods have been used:
A fresco painting, from the Italian word affresco which derives from the adjective fresco ("fresh"), describes a method in which the paint is applied on plaster on walls or ceilings. The buon fresco technique consists of painting in pigment mixed with water on a thin layer of wet, fresh, lime mortar or plaster. The pigment is then absorbed by the wet plaster; after a number of hours, the plaster dries and reacts with the air: it is this chemical reaction which fixes the pigment particles in the plaster. After this the painting stays for a long time up to centuries in fresh and brilliant colors.
Fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster (secco is "dry" in Italian). The pigments thus require a binding medium, such as egg (tempera), glue or oil to attach the pigment to the wall.
Mezzo-fresco is painted on nearly-dry plaster, and was defined by the sixteenth-century author Ignazio Pozzo as "firm enough not to take a thumb-print" so that the pigment only penetrates slightly into the plaster. By the end of the sixteenth century this had largely displaced the buon fresco method, and was used by painters such as Gianbattista Tiepolo or Michelangelo. This technique had, in reduced form, the advantages of a secco work.
MATERIAL
In Greco-Roman times, mostly encaustic colors applied in a cold state were used.
Tempera painting is one of the oldest known methods in mural painting. In tempera, the pigments are bound in an albuminous medium such as egg yolk or egg white diluted in water.
In 16th-century Europe, oil painting on canvas arose as an easier method for mural painting. The advantage was that the artwork could be completed in the artist’s studio and later transported to its destination and there attached to the wall or ceiling. Oil paint can be said to be the least satisfactory medium for murals because of its lack of brilliance in colour. Also the pigments are yellowed by the binder or are more easily affected by atmospheric conditions. The canvas itself is more subject to rapid deterioration than a plaster ground. Different muralists tend to become experts in their preferred medium and application, whether that be oil paints, emulsion or acrylic paints applied by brush, roller or airbrush/aerosols. Clients will often ask for a particular style and the artist may adjust to the appropriate technique.
A consultation usually leads to a detailed design and layout of the proposed mural with a price quote that the client approves before the muralist starts on the work. The area to be painted can be gridded to match the design allowing the image to be scaled accurately step by step. In some cases the design is projected straight onto the wall and traced with pencil before painting begins. Some muralists will paint directly without any prior sketching, preferring the spontaneous technique.
Once completed the mural can be given coats of varnish or protective acrylic glaze to protect the work from UV rays and surface damage.
As an alternative to a hand-painted or airbrushed mural, digitally printed murals can also be applied to surfaces. Already existing murals can be photographed and then be reproduced in near-to-original quality.
The disadvantages of pre-fabricated murals and decals are that they are often mass-produced and lack the allure and exclusivity of an original artwork. They are often not fitted to the individual wall sizes of the client and their personal ideas or wishes can not be added to the mural as it progresses. The Frescography technique, a digital manufacturing method (CAM) invented by Rainer Maria Latzke addresses some of the personalisation and size restrictions.
Digital techniques are commonly used in advertisements. A "wallscape" is a large advertisement on or attached to the outside wall of a building. Wallscapes can be painted directly on the wall as a mural, or printed on vinyl and securely attached to the wall in the manner of a billboard. Although not strictly classed as murals, large scale printed media are often referred to as such. Advertising murals were traditionally painted onto buildings and shops by sign-writers, later as large scale poster billboards.
SIGNIFICANCE OF MURALS
Murals are important in that they bring art into the public sphere. Due to the size, cost, and work involved in creating a mural, muralists must often be commissioned by a sponsor. Often it is the local government or a business, but many murals have been paid for with grants of patronage. For artists, their work gets a wide audience who otherwise might not set foot in an art gallery. A city benefits by the beauty of a work of art.
Murals can be a relatively effective tool of social emancipation or achieving a political goal. Murals have sometimes been created against the law, or have been commissioned by local bars and coffeeshops. Often, the visual effects are an enticement to attract public attention to social issues. State-sponsored public art expressions, particularly murals, are often used by totalitarian regimes as a tool of mass-control and propaganda. However, despite the propagandist character of that works, some of them still have an artistic value.
Murals can have a dramatic impact whether consciously or subconsciously on the attitudes of passers by, when they are added to areas where people live and work. It can also be argued that the presence of large, public murals can add aesthetic improvement to the daily lives of residents or that of employees at a corporate venue.
Other world-famous murals can be found in Mexico, New York, Philadelphia, Belfast, Derry, Los Angeles, Nicaragua, Cuba and in India. They have functioned as an important means of communication for members of socially, ethnically and racially divided communities in times of conflict. They also proved to be an effective tool in establishing a dialogue and hence solving the cleavage in the long run. The Indian state Kerala has exclusive murals. These Kerala mural painting are on walls of Hindu temples. They can be dated from 9th century AD.
The San Bartolo murals of the Maya civilization in Guatemala, are the oldest example of this art in Mesoamerica and are dated at 300 BC.
Many rural towns have begun using murals to create tourist attractions in order to boost economic income. Colquitt, Georgia is one such town. Colquitt was chosen to host the 2010 Global Mural Conference. The town has more than twelve murals completed, and will host the Conference along with Dothan, Alabama, and Blakely, Georgia. In the summer of 2010, Colquitt will begin work on their Icon Mural.
WIKIPEDIA
Both women had to execute a cousin to make their throne secure. Mary had to execute Jane Grey a granddaughter of Mary Tudor (Queen of France and the Duchess of Suffolk) - Henry VIII's younger sister. Elizabeth had to execute Mary Queen of Scots the granddaughter of Margaret Tudor (Queen of Scotland) - Henry VIII's elder sister.
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Wall paintings almost entirely executed by Gambier Parry, Studying the technique used by Italian painters of the C14-C15, he invented 'spirit fresco', a dry plaster method suitable for the damp English climate, using a mixture of resins, oil and wax. Although his frescoes largely retained their freshness, they were superbly restored by Wolfgang Gartner and Donald Smith in 1987-93. Last Judgement, 1859-61 : detail
Maria Kerrling, wife of Nazi saboteur Edward Kerling, was one of fourteen people arrested for aiding eight Nazi saboteurs who landed by submarine on U.S. shores in June 1942. She is shown in a full frontal mug shot after her arrest in July 1942.
Kerling was born in Germany in 1904 and entered the United States in 1926. Both she and her husband were members of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party in Germany.
She had been estranged from her husband for a number of years and living in New York. She was having a relationship with another man, Ernest Herman Kerkhof who was also arrested.
The only evidence against Maria Kerling was that Helmut Leiner, a man who aided the Nazi saboteurs, attempted to arrange a meeting between Maria and her husband. Kerling was then aware that her husband was in the country but Leiner’s attempt at a meeting was unsuccessful because Edward Kerling had already been taken into custody by the FBI.
The U.S. later declined to press charges against Maria Kerling and Kerkhof, but the two were detained as enemy aliens for the duration of World War II.
The eight Nazi saboteurs who landed in the U.S. in Florida and New York were almost immediately arrested after one of them, George Dasch, contacted the FBI and turned himself in.
The eight saboteurs were quickly convicted--six of whom were executed in August 1942, including Edward Kerling; one received a life sentence; and one received 30 years imprisonment following a Washington, D.C. military trial. In 1948 U.S. President Harry Truman commuted the sentences of the two imprisoned and deported them to the U.S. section of Germany.
Fourteen other people, including Maria Kerling and Kerkhof, were charged with aiding the eight saboteurs.
Of the others charged with aiding the saboteurs some received long prison terms, some shorter terms, some had charges dropped, some were detained as enemy aliens and deported after the war ended.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmPiRmT4
The photographer is unknown. The image is believed to be a U.S. government photograph. It is housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.
Travelers, was executed by Deborah Masters in 2007, was installed in Audubon Park in March, 2008 as part of Sculpture for New Orleans.
Audubon Park, bordered by the Mississippi River and St. Charles Avenue, was carved out of the plantations owned by the Foucher and Boré familes in 1871, and initially called Upper City Park. The park is named in honor of artist and naturalist John James Audubon, who began living in New Orleans in 1821. Inside the park, there is a golf course, several lakes, and the 58-acre Audubon Zoo.
In 1884 the World's Industrial and Cotton Exposition, or World Cotton Centennial, celebrating the first shipment of cotton, was held in Audubon Park. The first street car was introduced at the expo, led by motorman/tea baron Thomas Lipton. The Mardi Gras Krewe of Rex arrived at the Expo aboard a yacht, establishing a tradition that survives today. New Orleans was still recovering from the Civil War and Reconstruction, and it was the World's Fair that helped jumpstart development around the city. Most remnants of the Cotton Exposition were demolished or destroyed in the ensuing years and Audubon Park's present form follows a a design drafted by John Charles Olmsted, a principal of the renowned Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture practice.
Today, Thursday 16 November 2017, police executed warrants at eight addresses across the Moss Side and Hulme areas of Manchester.
The warrants were executed as the latest phase of Operation Malham, targeting the supply of drugs in South Manchester.
This follows previous raids last week, which means more than 14 properties have been searched and eight people arrested in total as part of the operation.
Detective Chief Inspector Paul Walker, of GMP’s City of Manchester team, said: “We are dedicated to rooting out those who seek to make profits from putting drugs on our streets.
“Today’s raids have resulted in the arrests of five people which have only been made possible through the support of partner agencies and community intelligence.
“We are grateful for all your support and help and I would urge you to continue to report anything suspicious to help us stop people who are benefitting from crime and remove drugs from our city.”
Anyone with information should contact police on 101 or Crimestoppers, anonymously, on 0800 555 111.
To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit
You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.
Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.
This portrait of Andrew Jackson (Catalog Number INDE11873) was executed by David Rent Etter in 1835. Etter, a Philadelphia artist, based his portait on an engraving, probably made by James Barton Longacre in 1824 after Joseph's Wood's life portrait of the same year. Etter depicted Jackson seated in the White House, pointing to a copy of his 1832 proclamation instructing the people of South Carolina to accept a national tarriff. Upon the proclamation rests a dress sword and a bound copy of the Constitution, which leans against biographies of Thomas Jefferson and William Penn. Through the window, the northern end and eastern facade of the United States Capitol are visible, showing the artist's misunderstanding of the orientation of the White House. Etter probably painted this portrait for his fellow commissioners of Southwark, an indpendent municipality that merged with the City of Philadelphia in 1854. The Commissioners gave the Jackson portrait to Philadelphia to commemorate the merger.
Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) was the seventh President of the United States (1829–1837), military governor of Florida (1821), commander of the American forces at the Battle of New Orleans (1815), and the eponym of the era of Jacksonian democracy. A polarizing figure, he dominated American politics in the 1820s and 1830s, shaping the modern Democratic Party. Nicknamed "Old Hickory," Jackson was the first President primarily associated with the frontier.
The Second Bank of the United States, at 420 Chestnut Street, was chartered five years after the expiration of the First Bank of the United States in 1816 to keep inflation in check following the War of 1812. The Bank served as the depository for Federal funds until 1833, when it became the center of bitter controversy between bank president Nicholas Biddle and President Andrew Jackson. The Bank, always a privately owned institution, lost its Federal charter in 1836, and ceased operations in 1841. The Greek Revival building, built between 1819 and 1824 and modeled by architect William Strickland after the Parthenon, continued for a short time to house a banking institution under a Pennsylvania charter. From 1845 to 1935 the building served as the Philadelphia Customs House. Today it is open, free to the public, and features the "People of Independence" exhibit--a portrait gallery with 185 paintings of Colonial and Federal leaders, military officers, explorers and scientists, including many by Charles Willson Peale.
Independence National Historical Park preserves several sites associated with the American Revolution. Administered by the National Park Service, the 45-acre park was authorized in 1948, and established on July 4, 1956. The Second Bank of the United States was added to the Park's properties in 2006.
Second Bank of the United States National Register #87001293 (1987)
Independence National Park Historic District National Register #66000675 (1966)
This portrait of John Hancock (Catalog Number INDE14063) was executed by Samuel Finley Breese Morse, circa 1816. When Philadelphia publisher Joseph Delaplaine compiled his Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished Americans, he commissioned several artists for paintings of his intended subjects. In 1816, Boston artist-inventor Samuel F.B. Morse copied for Delaplaine John Singleton's 1765 full-length portrait of Hancock (now on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Although Delaplaine eventually omitted Hancock fromt he Repository, he retained the Morse portrait for the public gallery he opened in 1819. Four years later, financial failure forced him to sell his collection and it was purchased Joseph Reed, recorder of the City of Philadelphia and then subsequently by Charles Willson Peale's son, Rubens, for use in the New York Peale Museum in 1825. Rubens sold the Museum's contents in 1842, and Phineas T. Barnum purchased it in 1843. Barnum's museum burned, but the Hancock portrait was saved and returned to the Peale family in time to be sold in the 1854 Peale Museum auction, when it was bought by the City of Philadelphia.
John Hancock (1737-1794) was a Massachusetts merchant and prominent patriot of the American Revolution. He served as President of the Second Continental Congress and was the first Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but is most famous for his prominent signature on the United States Declaration of Independence.
The Second Bank of the United States, at 420 Chestnut Street, was chartered five years after the expiration of the First Bank of the United States in 1816 to keep inflation in check following the War of 1812. The Bank served as the depository for Federal funds until 1833, when it became the center of bitter controversy between bank president Nicholas Biddle and President Andrew Jackson. The Bank, always a privately owned institution, lost its Federal charter in 1836, and ceased operations in 1841. The Greek Revival building, built between 1819 and 1824 and modeled by architect William Strickland after the Parthenon, continued for a short time to house a banking institution under a Pennsylvania charter. From 1845 to 1935 the building served as the Philadelphia Customs House. Today it is open, free to the public, and features the "People of Independence" exhibit--a portrait gallery with 185 paintings of Colonial and Federal leaders, military officers, explorers and scientists, including many by Charles Willson Peale.
Independence National Historical Park preserves several sites associated with the American Revolution. Administered by the National Park Service, the 45-acre park was authorized in 1948, and established on July 4, 1956. The Second Bank of the United States was added to the Park's properties in 2006.
Second Bank of the United States National Register #87001293 (1987)
Independence National Park Historic District National Register #66000675 (1966)
Twenty people have been arrested following the latest phase of an operation to tackle the sale of stolen metal in Greater Manchester.
Earlier today, Wednesday 22 May 2013, Greater Manchester Police and British Transport Police executed a number of warrants at scrap metal dealers across the area as part of an intelligence-led Operation Alloy day of action.
Raids were executed at scrapyards in Rochdale, Bury, north Manchester, Oldham, Bolton and Salford.
The initiative also saw officers search the home addresses of those arrested as well as a number of partner agencies assist in the search of recycling yards and the recovery of potentially stolen metal.
Superintendent Craig Thompson, who leads Greater Manchester Police's Operation Alloy team, said: "Since Operation Alloy was launched more than two years ago, we have made huge inroads into tackling metal theft.
"However, despite a sharp drop in incidents of metal theft, we know there is still a culture that exists among thieves who believe they can off-load stolen metal onto scrapyards.
"Any scrapyard dealer who knowingly accepts stolen goods or pays cash for metal is propagating this cycle of criminality, creating a market for thieves for prosper, and that is exactly why we have taken this action today. If a burglar knows he can sell stolen metal to a rogue dealer, it will entice them into committing offences that can cause real hardship to businesses and victims.
"For example, if a pensioner has her boiler stolen in winter they will be unable to heat their home which could put their life in danger. We also know of businesses that have been forced to shell out hundreds of thousands of pounds to pay for repairs as a direct result of metal thieves. The knock-on effect of that is to put people's jobs on the line as businesses struggle to fund those repairs, so the human cost of what these rogue dealers are doing should not be underestimated.
"It is important to stress that of the 70 scrapyards across Greater Manchester, the vast majority have worked hand-in-hand with police and are fully compliant with all the legislation. They have helped us to create a hostile environment that has made it very difficult for thieves to off-load stolen metal.
"What today is all about is targeting those rogue dealers who are suspected of lining their own pockets and making huge swathes of cash by knowingly selling stolen metal. In terms of officer numbers and the sheer scale of the investigation, this is the biggest operation ourselves and British Transport Police have run which shows our determination to tackling metal theft."
When Operation Alloy was originally launched in August 2011 the region was recording up to 900 incidents of metal theft per month, a number which has now been reduced to about 200 per month.
T/Chief Superintendent Pete Mason, BTP's North West Area Commander, said: "Today's warrants are the culmination of a year-long joint investigation into the trade in stolen metal across Greater Manchester.
"Metal theft is a serious issue which has a major impact on the lives of those living and working in Greater Manchester.
"Whether thieves target railway cable, power lines, electrical substations or lead from homes or business, the impact felt by communities is marked and causes not only disruption but also financial loss and potential risk of harm.
"Thankfully, during the past 12 months, there have been significant reductions in the number of thefts recorded - due, in part, to legislative change which has gone hand in hand with enforcement activity under Operation Alloy."
T/Chief Supt Mason added: "Unfortunately, despite this recent success, the issue has not gone away and some scrap metal recyclers are keeping the market for stolen metal alive by continuing to flout the law and purchase metal with a 'no questions asked' attitude.
"This has to stop and GMP and BTP, together with partner agencies across the region, will continue to work together to take action against both thieves and unscrupulous scrap metal dealers."
Steve Cox, future network manager for Electricity North West, the company which owns and maintains the regional power network, said: "We have been working closely with Greater Manchester Police and British Transport Police and today's successful day of action highlights our commitment to crack down on this very serious crime.
"Metal theft not only affects us, your network operator, but also communities and residents, who could be left without power in their homes.
"These thieves, who are breaking into our substations or stealing from our overhead lines, are putting themselves and others in great danger and it causes thousands of pounds worth of damage.
"We are investing a lot of money and resources into putting a stop to metal theft in our region once and for all, but we would still urge people to get in touch if they hear or see anything suspicious."
To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit our website.
You should call 101, the new national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.
Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.
You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.
The Estate of Sherborne Castle - grounds and gardens.
The "new" castle which now has the name Sherborne Castle (was Sherborne Lodge in Sir Walter Raleighs day.
It was built by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1594, and has been the family home of the Digby's since 1617 (Walter was in the Tower of London and was executed in 1618).
Grade I listed.
CASTLETON SHERBORNE CASTLE
ST 6416
12/27
Sherborne Castle
11.7.51
GV I
Country House in grounds. Late C16 rectangular central block with its angle
turrets, for Sir Walter Raleigh. Enlarged by the addition of the four wings
of 2 storeys with cellars and hexagonal towers in 1625 by Sir John Digby.
Alteration in the C17 and C18. Drastically restored in 1859-60 by G D
Wingfield-Digby. Rubble-stone walls, stuccoed, with freestone dressings.
Lead-covered roofs. Many ashlar stone stacks, both square and elongated
hexagonal, with moulded plinths balustraded and cornices. South front:
four storeys, with mannered gabling over the top-storey, and parapet with
the lower two divided by strings. 3 windows, cross-transomed stone mullion
windows of three, four, three lights, moulded cornices as labels over. Single
light windows each side of top window. South entrance: round-headed doorway,
framed by fluted Roman Doric half-columns supporting an entablature. Stone
achievement of arms of Digby, earl of Bristol. Panelled door. The flanking
hexagonal turrets have restored 2-light mullion-and-transom windows, and are
finished with plain parapets and heraldic beasts or chimney stacks. The north
front, similar to south front, restored doorway has an enriched entablature
with a 4-light window over, in place of the achievement-of-arms. The east
front of central block: 3 storeys with attics, finished with a shaped gable.
Restored mullion-and-transom windows. Flanking turrets each have a square-
headed doorway, north turret door blocked. The added wings are of 2 storeys
and 3 bays, finished with a balustraded parapet. Windows are c. late C17
insertions, square-headed with eaved architraves, console-brackets, entablatures
and pediments. Internally, to the courtyard are C19 mullion-and-transom windows.
Between the wings are balustraded stone screens with central entrance, flanked
by shell-niches, entablature and Digby crest. Interior: Geometrical C17 plaster
ceilings with various devices in the Red Drawing Room, Lady Bristol's Room,
Green Drawing Room, Boudoir. Early C17 panelling, very extensive, behind the
Library bookcases, in the Oak Room (with enclosure). Lady Bristol's Room. C17
and later fireplaces with overmantels, in the Red Drawing Room (Plate 94, (RCHM),
and the Green Drawing Room, both with achievement-of-arms of Digby in gadrooned
panels. In each of the hexagonal bays is a smaller fireplace with Corinthian
side columns supporting an entablature. The Library is lined with C18 Gothic
fittings; bookcases have ogee trefoil-headed arcading on clustered columns, with
circular spandrel niches containing busts. Coved arcaded cornice. The house is
unusual in its original plan, and extended plan.
(RCHM Dorset I, p.66(5))
Listing NGR: ST6491416404
Got out of the car - view of castle from the car.
This bust of Theodore Roosevelt, elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in 1950, was executed by Georg Lober in 1954. Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), also known as Teddy, was the twenty-sixth President of the United States, and a Nobel Peace laureate, New York governor, NYC Police Commissioner, historian, naturalist, Amazon explorer, and author. As Assistant Secretary in the Navy, he organized the first U.S. volunteer cavalry regiment, the Rough Riders, during the Spanish-American War. He became President in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley. A reformer who sought to move the Republican Party into the Progressive camp, his "Square Deal" promised a fair shake for the average citizen, including the dissolution of monopolies, and the regulation of railroad rates and pure foods and drugs, and the defense of Labor Unions. As an outdoorsman, he promoted the conservation movement. Roosevelt negotiated for U.S. Control of the Panama Canal, and became the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1910.
The Hall of Fame for Great Americans--the original "Hall of Fame", was conceived of by Dr. Henry Mitchell MacCracken, Chancellor of New York University from 1891 to 1910. It was designed as part of the school's undergraduate campus in University Heights in the Bronx, which is today the campus of Bronx Community College of The City University of New York. The Hall of Fame stands on the heights occupied by the British army in its successful attack upon Fort Washington in the autumn of 1776. MacCracken, once said "Lost to the invaders of 1776, this summit is now retaken by the goodly troop of 'Great Americans', General Washington their leader. They enter into possession of these Heights and are destined to hold them, we trust, forever."
The memorial structure is a sweeping open-air colonnade, 630 feet in length, designed in neoclassical style by the Stanford White. Financed by a gift from Mrs. Finley J. Shepard (Helen Gould), the Hall of Fame was formally dedicated on May 30, 1901. The Colonnade was designed with niches to accommodate 102 sculptured works and currently houses the busts and commemorative plaques of 98 of the 102 honorees elected since 1900. Each bronze bust, executed by a distinguished American sculptor, must be made specifically for The Hall of Fame and must not be duplicated within 50 years of its execution. To be eligible for nomination, a person must have been a native born or naturalized citizen of the United States, must have been dead for 25 years and must have made a major contribution to the economic, political, or cultural life of the nation. Of the 17 categories in The Hall of Fame, Authors is the largest, with Statesmen following closely.
The complex of three buildings adjoining the Colonnade--Gould Memorial Library, the Hall of Languages, and Cornelius Baker Hall of Philosophy--were also designed by Stanford White and bear a close conceptual relationship to the Colonnade, with the library as the central focus.
National Register #79001567
1940 Mercury Series 09A Custom Coupe
Chassis no. 99A121762
During the late 1940s, Los Angeles publisher 'Pete' Petersen's Hot Rod magazine introduced California-style custom cars to fresh eyes around the rest of the country. By the '50s, "customizing" was going on wherever there were both young people and automobiles. Few knew that a nascent custom car movement had existed in the Golden State even before World War II.
Only a handful of genuinely 'pre-war' California customs survives today—and among them, almost none exist as originally executed. A marvelous exception is this striking chopped-top 1940 Mercury. Customized right after it was delivered to its first owner in late 1939, this was the first 1940 custom Merc convert in the greater Los Angeles area. It was later stored, with its original custom metal work intact, for decades. After reemerging in 2005, the car has very recently been delightfully restored, in exacting and authentic detail, to its circa 1940-41 custom appearance and configuration.
Certainly, few cars ever lent themselves better to customizing than the muscularly bulbous 1940 Mercury. Ford Motor Co. had introduced Mercury just the year before, in a move to fill the void that existed between the low-priced everyman's Ford V-8 and the luxurious, expensive and exclusive Lincoln Zephyr V-12. Marketing intentions aside, the sleek and fast '40 Mercury V-8 convertible simply radiated 'attitude' and from the moment it first appeared, the style was especially coveted by car-savvy youths.
Original owner Charlie Marr, of Burbank, California received his new 1940 Mercury Convertible in November 1939. Within two weeks, Marr and friend Gerry Huth had chopped the windshield three inches. A Carson removable padded top was added soon after, making the car the first '40 Merc ever to be so equipped.
Around 1962—shortly after he took over the former Valley Customs shop in Burbank from Clay Jensen—custom-builder Carl Morton acquired the tired, but still essentially as-built, old Marr/Huth car. Morton appreciated that the venerable Merc had been one of the first customs to come out of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, an area that had become a hotbed of custom car culture after WWII. (Valley Customs itself had been founded by Jensen and partner Neil Emory in 1948.) He also knew both Charlie Marr and Gerry Huth—the latter had become the proprietor of a well-known Burbank muffler shop specializing in custom exhausts, and was the inventor of the Huth automated exhaust-pipe bender.
For more than four decades, Morton kept the car in storage. As several other '40 Mercury projects came and went, he set aside original parts from Charlie's old custom, while also accumulating new old stock for a planned redo. Thanks to Morton's diligence, all of the original customized body parts, including the fenders, doors, hood and trunk lid—plus smaller pieces, such as the window frames, vent windows, dash and windshield trim—remained with the car.
The vendor became the historic custom's third owner when he obtained the car, still in unrestored condition, during 2005. A thorough restoration was performed in 2008-2009, during which every possible effort was made to use only authentic pre-World War II era parts. After the car was totally disassembled and dipped, all bodywork was done in lead before the epoxy primer went on. Custom Sikkens Autocryl green metallic paint replicated a hand-rubbed multi-coat lacquer finish. Paul Reichling of Cedardale Upholstery recreated the original Carson top, while Guy's Interior Restorations of Portland did the two-tone interior—which is period-custom correct right down to the column shift, ivory-colored 1940 Buick steering wheel and matching knobs.
Additional early '40s custom touches include the '37 DeSoto 'ripple' bumpers; '41 Studebaker taillights, teardrop skirts and 'flipper' hubcaps. The unusual above-the-bumper dual exhausts are the way they were, as are the dual Appleton spotlights.
A 1940 flat-head V-8 block was bored and stroked to 276 cubic inches for the Merc. The ported and relieved engine runs an Isky 3/4 cam. Authentic pre-war speed equipment includes the chromed cylinder heads, Weiand dual-carb set-up and modified Lincoln-Zephyr V-12 dual-coil ignition. Also in the hot-rod tradition, the Merc's three-speed manual transmission has Zephyr gears and a Zephyr two-speed overdrive rear axle.
The frame is "C'd" over the rear axle, while a Zephyr hypoid differential allowed the car to set lower without reshaping the factory-shape driveshaft tunnel. Zephyr self-energizing hydraulic brakes provide stopping power. "All of these period modifications make for a very nice driving car that can cruise comfortably at highway speeds," the vendor states.
The freshly completed and beautifully detailed '40 was featured at the 2009 Sacramento Autorama, in a special non-judged "Merc room" exhibit honoring 70 years of Mercury customs.
Seven decades ago, Charlie Marr's custom Mercury Convertible essentially defined for the very first time everything we've come to consider a proper custom 'lead sled' Merc should be. The car is nothing less today than a historically important and wonderfully gorgeous work of art—and there no doubt it will be treasured as such all the more so with the continuing passage of time.
* A historically significant pre-WWII LA Custom by Charles Marr and Gerry Huth!
* An amazing presentation of such an important classic!
* The original Hot Rod!
For only: $225,000.00
Contact our sales department for more information: sales@driversource.com
We buy all classic European and American sports cars! Finder’s fees paid!!
Fresco (plural frescos or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes an integral part of the wall. The word fresco (Italian: affresco) is derived from the Italian adjective fresco meaning "fresh", and may thus be contrasted with fresco-secco or secco mural painting techniques, which are applied to dried plaster, to supplement painting in fresco. The fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting.
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A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.
Some wall paintings are painted on large canvases, which are then attached to the wall (e.g., with marouflage). Whether these works can be accurately called "murals" is a subject of some controversy in the art world, but the technique has been in common use since the late 19th century.
HISTORY
Murals of sorts date to Upper Paleolithic times such as the paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Ardèche department of southern France (around 30,000 BC). Many ancient murals have survived in Egyptian tombs (around 3150 BC), the Minoan palaces (Middle period III of the Neopalatial period, 1700-1600 BC) and in Pompeii (around 100 BC - AD 79).
During the Middle Ages murals were usually executed on dry plaster (secco). In Italy, circa 1300, the technique of painting of frescos on wet plaster was reintroduced and led to a significant increase in the quality of mural painting.
In modern times, the term became more well-known with the Mexican "muralista" art movement (Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, or José Orozco). There are many different styles and techniques. The best-known is probably fresco, which uses water-soluble paints with a damp lime wash, a rapid use of the resulting mixture over a large surface, and often in parts (but with a sense of the whole). The colors lighten as they dry. The marouflage method has also been used for millennia.
Murals today are painted in a variety of ways, using oil or water-based media. The styles can vary from abstract to trompe-l'œil (a French term for "fool" or "trick the eye"). Initiated by the works of mural artists like Graham Rust or Rainer Maria Latzke in the 1980s, trompe-l'oeil painting has experienced a renaissance in private and public buildings in Europe. Today, the beauty of a wall mural has become much more widely available with a technique whereby a painting or photographic image is transferred to poster paper or canvas which is then pasted to a wall surface (see wallpaper, Frescography) to give the effect of either a hand-painted mural or realistic scene.
TECHNIQUE
In the history of mural several methods have been used:
A fresco painting, from the Italian word affresco which derives from the adjective fresco ("fresh"), describes a method in which the paint is applied on plaster on walls or ceilings. The buon fresco technique consists of painting in pigment mixed with water on a thin layer of wet, fresh, lime mortar or plaster. The pigment is then absorbed by the wet plaster; after a number of hours, the plaster dries and reacts with the air: it is this chemical reaction which fixes the pigment particles in the plaster. After this the painting stays for a long time up to centuries in fresh and brilliant colors.
Fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster (secco is "dry" in Italian). The pigments thus require a binding medium, such as egg (tempera), glue or oil to attach the pigment to the wall.
Mezzo-fresco is painted on nearly-dry plaster, and was defined by the sixteenth-century author Ignazio Pozzo as "firm enough not to take a thumb-print" so that the pigment only penetrates slightly into the plaster. By the end of the sixteenth century this had largely displaced the buon fresco method, and was used by painters such as Gianbattista Tiepolo or Michelangelo. This technique had, in reduced form, the advantages of a secco work.
MATERIAL
In Greco-Roman times, mostly encaustic colors applied in a cold state were used.
Tempera painting is one of the oldest known methods in mural painting. In tempera, the pigments are bound in an albuminous medium such as egg yolk or egg white diluted in water.
In 16th-century Europe, oil painting on canvas arose as an easier method for mural painting. The advantage was that the artwork could be completed in the artist’s studio and later transported to its destination and there attached to the wall or ceiling. Oil paint can be said to be the least satisfactory medium for murals because of its lack of brilliance in colour. Also the pigments are yellowed by the binder or are more easily affected by atmospheric conditions. The canvas itself is more subject to rapid deterioration than a plaster ground. Different muralists tend to become experts in their preferred medium and application, whether that be oil paints, emulsion or acrylic paints applied by brush, roller or airbrush/aerosols. Clients will often ask for a particular style and the artist may adjust to the appropriate technique.
A consultation usually leads to a detailed design and layout of the proposed mural with a price quote that the client approves before the muralist starts on the work. The area to be painted can be gridded to match the design allowing the image to be scaled accurately step by step. In some cases the design is projected straight onto the wall and traced with pencil before painting begins. Some muralists will paint directly without any prior sketching, preferring the spontaneous technique.
Once completed the mural can be given coats of varnish or protective acrylic glaze to protect the work from UV rays and surface damage.
As an alternative to a hand-painted or airbrushed mural, digitally printed murals can also be applied to surfaces. Already existing murals can be photographed and then be reproduced in near-to-original quality.
The disadvantages of pre-fabricated murals and decals are that they are often mass-produced and lack the allure and exclusivity of an original artwork. They are often not fitted to the individual wall sizes of the client and their personal ideas or wishes can not be added to the mural as it progresses. The Frescography technique, a digital manufacturing method (CAM) invented by Rainer Maria Latzke addresses some of the personalisation and size restrictions.
Digital techniques are commonly used in advertisements. A "wallscape" is a large advertisement on or attached to the outside wall of a building. Wallscapes can be painted directly on the wall as a mural, or printed on vinyl and securely attached to the wall in the manner of a billboard. Although not strictly classed as murals, large scale printed media are often referred to as such. Advertising murals were traditionally painted onto buildings and shops by sign-writers, later as large scale poster billboards.
SIGNIFICANCE OF MURALS
Murals are important in that they bring art into the public sphere. Due to the size, cost, and work involved in creating a mural, muralists must often be commissioned by a sponsor. Often it is the local government or a business, but many murals have been paid for with grants of patronage. For artists, their work gets a wide audience who otherwise might not set foot in an art gallery. A city benefits by the beauty of a work of art.
Murals can be a relatively effective tool of social emancipation or achieving a political goal. Murals have sometimes been created against the law, or have been commissioned by local bars and coffeeshops. Often, the visual effects are an enticement to attract public attention to social issues. State-sponsored public art expressions, particularly murals, are often used by totalitarian regimes as a tool of mass-control and propaganda. However, despite the propagandist character of that works, some of them still have an artistic value.
Murals can have a dramatic impact whether consciously or subconsciously on the attitudes of passers by, when they are added to areas where people live and work. It can also be argued that the presence of large, public murals can add aesthetic improvement to the daily lives of residents or that of employees at a corporate venue.
Other world-famous murals can be found in Mexico, New York, Philadelphia, Belfast, Derry, Los Angeles, Nicaragua, Cuba and in India. They have functioned as an important means of communication for members of socially, ethnically and racially divided communities in times of conflict. They also proved to be an effective tool in establishing a dialogue and hence solving the cleavage in the long run. The Indian state Kerala has exclusive murals. These Kerala mural painting are on walls of Hindu temples. They can be dated from 9th century AD.
The San Bartolo murals of the Maya civilization in Guatemala, are the oldest example of this art in Mesoamerica and are dated at 300 BC.
Many rural towns have begun using murals to create tourist attractions in order to boost economic income. Colquitt, Georgia is one such town. Colquitt was chosen to host the 2010 Global Mural Conference. The town has more than twelve murals completed, and will host the Conference along with Dothan, Alabama, and Blakely, Georgia. In the summer of 2010, Colquitt will begin work on their Icon Mural.
WIKIPEDIA
Concord Sentence, It is located in the same place where the guillotine which executed Louis XVI had been placed...
Creation and Life
The obelisks of ancient Egypt represented benben or the original mound upon which the god stood and created the world. For this reason, the obelisk was associated with the benu bird, the Egyptian predecessor of the Greek phoenix.
According to the Egyptian myths, benu bird’s cry would awake creation and set life in motion. The bird symbolized the renewal of each day, but at the same time, it was also a symbol of the world’s end. Just as its cry would signal the beginning of the creative cycle, the bird would sound again to signal its conclusion.
Later, the benu bird was linked to the sun god Ra, also known as Amun-Ra and Amun, symbolizing life and light. The sun god appeared as a ray of sunlight coming from the sky. The sunray shining down from a point in the sky resembled the shape of an obelisk.The Place de la Concorde (French: [plas də la kɔ̃kɔʁd]; lit. 'Harmony Square') is a public square in Paris, France. Measuring 7.6 ha (19 acres) in area, it is the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées.. Some of the king's ghosts are going to Concord to get the powder that is there There are several interpretations of the symbolic meaning of obelisks, the majority of which is related to religion, because they come from Egyptian temples. Let’s break down some of these interpretations:Creation and Life
The obelisks of ancient Egypt represented benben or the original mound upon which the god stood and created the world. For this reason, the obelisk was associated with the benu bird, the Egyptian predecessor of the Greek phoenix.
According to the Egyptian myths, benu bird’s cry would awake creation and set life in motion. The bird symbolized the renewal of each day, but at the same time, it was also a symbol of the world’s end. Just as its cry would signal the beginning of the creative cycle, the bird would sound again to signal its conclusion.
Later, the benu bird was linked to the sun god Ra, also known as Amun-Ra and Amun, symbolizing life and light. The sun god appeared as a ray of sunlight coming from the sky. The sunray shining down from a point in the sky resembled the shape of an obelisk.
Resurrection and Rebirth.
In the context of the Egyptian solar god, the obelisk also symbolizes resurrection. The point on the top of the pillar is there to break up the clouds allowing the sun to shine upon the earth. The sunlight is believed to bring rebirth to the deceased. This is why we can see so many obelisks in older cemeteries.
Unity and Harmony
Obelisks were always raised in pairs keeping the Egyptian value for harmony and balance.The idea of duality permeates Egyptian culture. Instead of focusing on the differences between the two parts of a pair, it would emphasize the essential unity of existence through the harmonization and alignment of the opposites.
Strength and Immortality
Obelisks were associated with pharaohs as well, representing the vitality and immortality of the living deity. As such, they were raised and carefully positioned so that the first and the last light of the day would touch their peaks honoring the solar deity.
Ancient Egyptian obelisks in modern cities
The Ancient Romans populated their city with 8 large and 42 small Egyptian obelisks. More have been re-erected elsewhere, and the best-known examples outside Rome are the pair of 21-metre (69 ft) 187-metric-ton (206-short-ton) Cleopatra's Needles in London, England (21 metres or 69 feet), and New York City, US (21 metres or 70 feet), and the 23-metre (75 ft) over-250-metric-ton (280-short-ton) Luxor Obelisk at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, France.The centrepiece of the Place de la Concorde is an ancient Egyptian obelisk decorated with hieroglyphics exalting the reign of the pharaoh Ramesses II. It is one of two which the Egyptian government gave to the French in the 19th century. The other one stayed in Egypt, too difficult and heavy to move to France with the technology at that time. On 26 September 1981 President François Mitterrand formally returned the title of the second obelisk to Egypt.[16]
Success and Effort
As it took immense effort and commitment to carve, polish, and craft an enormous piece of stone into a perfect tower, obelisks were also seen as a symbol ofvictory, success, and achievement.They represent the ability of every individual to dedicate their efforts to the advancement of humanity and leave a positive mark on society.
A Phallic Symbol
Phallic symbolism was quite common in ancient times and was often depicted in architecture. The obelisk is often considered to be such a phallic symbol, signifying the masculinity of the earth. In the 20th century, obelisks were associated with sex.
symbolsage.com/obelisk-meaning-and-symbolism/
The obelisk once marked the entrance to the Luxor Temple. The wali of Egypt, or hereditary governor, Muhammad Ali Pasha, offered the 3,300-year-old Luxor Obelisk as a diplomatic gift to France in 1829. It arrived in Paris on 21 December 1833. Three years later, it was hoisted into place, on top of the pedestal which originally supported the statue of Louis XV, destroyed during the Revolution. The raising of the column was a major feat of engineering, depicted by illustrations on the base of the monument. King Louis Philippe dedicated the obelisk on 25 October 1836.[17]
The obelisk, a yellow granite column, rises 23 metres (75 ft) high, including the base, and weighs over 250 tonnes (280 short tons). Given the technical limitations of the day, transporting it was no easy feat – on the pedestal are drawn diagrams explaining the machinery that was used for the transportation. The government of France added a gold-leafed pyramidal cap to the top of the obelisk in 1998, replacing the missing original, believed stolen in the 6th century BC.When he had completed the installation of the Luxor Obelisk, in 1836, Jacques-Ignace Hittorff, chief architect of the square, moved ahead with two new fountains to complement the obelisk. Hittorff had been a student of the Neoclassical designer Charles Percier at the École des Beaux-Arts. He had spent two years studying the architecture and fountains of Rome, particularly the Piazza Navona and Piazza San Pietro, each of which had obelisks aligned with fountains.[19]
Hittorff's fountains were each nine meters high, matching the height of the earlier columns and statues around the square representing great French cities. The Maritime Fountain was on the south, between the obelisk and Seine, and illustrated the seas bordering France, while the Fluvial Fountains or river fountain, on the north, between the Obelisk and the Rue Royale, illustrated the great rivers of France. It is located in the same place where the guillotine which executed Louis XVI had been placed.[20]
Obelisks were being shipped out of Egypt as late as the nineteenth century when three of them were sent to London, New York and Paris. Their transportation was covered by various newspapers.[25]
An obelisk (/ˈɒbəlɪsk/; from Ancient Greek ὀβελίσκος (obelískos),[2][3] diminutive of ὀβελός (obelós) ' spit, nail, pointed pillar')[4] is a tall, slender, tapered monument with four sides and a pyramidal or pyramidion top.[5] Originally constructed by Ancient Egyptians and called tekhenu, the Greeks used the Greek term obeliskos to describe them, and this word passed into Latin and ultimately English.[6] Though William Thomas used the term correctly in his Historie of Italie of 1549, by the late sixteenth century (after reduced contact with Italy following the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth), Shakespeare failed to distinguish between pyramids and obelisks in his plays and sonnets.[7] Ancient obelisks are monolithic and consist of a single stone; most modern obelisks are made of several stones.[8]
Ancient obelisks
Obelisks were prominent in the architecture of the ancient Egyptians, and played a vital role in their religion placing them in pairs at the entrance of the temples. The word "obelisk" as used in English today is of Greek rather than Egyptian origin because Herodotus, the Greek traveler, was one of the first classical writers to describe the objects. A number of ancient Egyptian obelisks are known to have survived, plus the "unfinished obelisk" found partly hewn from its quarry at Aswan. These obelisks are now dispersed around the world, and fewer than half of them remain in Egypt.
In Egyptian mythology, the obelisk symbolized the sun god Ra, and during the religious reformation of Akhenaten it was said to have been a petrified ray of the Aten, the sundisk. Benben was the mound that arose from the primordial waters Nu upon which the creator god Atum settled in the creation story of the Heliopolitan creation myth form of Ancient Egyptian religion. The Benben stone (also known as a pyramidion) is the top stone of the Egyptian pyramid. It is also related to the obelisk.
Both New York University Egyptologist Patricia Blackwell Gary and Astronomy senior editor Richard Talcott hypothesize that the shapes of the ancient Egyptian pyramid and obelisk were derived from natural phenomena associated with the sun (the sun-god Ra being the Egyptians' greatest deity at that time).[11] The pyramid and obelisk's significance have been previously overlooked, especially the astronomical phenomena connected with sunrise and sunset: Zodiacal light and sun pillars respectively.
In France and other European countries, monuments to the dead, such as headstones and grave markers, were very often given a form of obelisks, but they are of more modest size.
The practice is also still widespread in the Islamic world.
In late summer 1999, Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner teamed up with a NOVA crew to erect a 25-ton obelisk. This was the third attempt to erect a 25-ton obelisk; the first two, in 1994 and 1999, ended in failure. There were also two successful attempts to raise a 2-ton obelisk and a 9-ton obelisk. Finally in August–September 1999, after learning from their experiences, they were able to erect one successfully. First Hopkins and Rais Abdel Aleem organized an experiment to tow a block of stone weighing about 25 tons. They prepared a path by embedding wooden rails into the ground and placing a sledge on them bearing a megalith weighing about 25 tons. Initially they used more than 100 people to try to tow it but were unable to budge it. Finally, with well over 130 people pulling at once and an additional dozen using levers to prod the sledge forward, they moved it. Over the course of a day, the workers towed it 10–20 feet. Despite problems with broken ropes, they proved the monument could be moved this way.[34] Additional experiments were done in Egypt and other locations to tow megalithic stone with ancient technologies, some of which are listed here.
One experiment was to transport a small obelisk on a barge in the Nile River. The barge was built based on ancient Egyptian designs. It had to be very wide to handle the obelisk, with a 2 to 1 ratio length to width, and it was at least twice as long as the obelisk. The obelisk was about 3.0 metres (10 ft) long and no more than 5 metric tons (5.5 short tons). A barge big enough to transport the largest Egyptian obelisks with this ratio would have had to be close to 61-metre-long (200 ft) and 30-metre-wide (100 ft). The workers used ropes that were wrapped around a guide that enabled them to pull away from the river while they were towing it onto the barge. The barge was successfully launched into the Nile.
The final and successful erection event was organized by Rick Brown, Hopkins, Lehner and Gregg Mullen in a Massachusetts quarry. The preparation work was done with modern technology, but experiments have proven that with enough time and people, it could have been done with ancient technology. To begin, the obelisk was lying on a gravel and stone ramp. A pit in the middle was filled with dry sand. Previous experiments showed that wet sand would not flow as well. The ramp was secured by stone walls. Men raised the obelisk by slowly removing the sand while three crews of men pulled on ropes to control its descent into the pit. The back wall was designed to guide the obelisk into its proper place. The obelisk had to catch a turning groove which would prevent it from sliding. They used brake ropes to prevent it from going too far. Such turning grooves had been found on the ancient pedestals. Gravity did most of the work until the final 15° had to be completed by pulling the obelisk forward. They used brake ropes again to make sure it did not fall forward. On 12 September they completed the project.[35]
This experiment has been used to explain how the obelisks may have been erected in Luxor and other locations. It seems to have been supported by a 3,000 year-old papyrus scroll in which one scribe taunts another to erect a monument for "thy lord". The scroll reads "Empty the space that has been filled with sand beneath the monument of thy Lord."[36] To erect the obelisks at Luxor with this method would have involved using over a million cubic meters of stone, mud brick and sand for both the ramp and the platform used to lower the obelisk.[37] The largest obelisk successfully erected in ancient times weighed 455 metric tons (502 short tons). A 520-metric-ton (570-short-ton) stele was found in Axum, but researchers believe it was broken while attempting to erect it.
The Place de la Concorde (French: [plas də la kɔ̃kɔʁd]; lit. 'Harmony Square') is a public square in Paris, France. Measuring 7.6 ha (19 acres) in area, it is the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées.
It was the site of many notable public executions, including those of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Maximilien Robespierre in the course of the French Revolution, during which the square was temporarily renamed the Place de la Révolution ('Revolution Square'). It received its current name in 1795 as a gesture of reconciliation in the later years of the revolution.[1] A metro station is located at the northeastern corner of Place de la Concorde on Lines 1, 8, and 12 of the Paris Métro.
The square was originally designed to be the site of an equestrian statue of King Louis XV, commissioned in 1748 by the merchants of Paris, to celebrate the recovery of King Louis XV from a serious illness. The site chosen for the statue was the large esplanade, or space between the revolving gate, the Tuileries Garden and the Cour-la-Reine, a popular lane for horseback riding at the edge of the city. At the time, the Concorde bridge and the Rue de Rivoli did not exist, and the Rue Royale was a muddy lane that descended down to a marsh beside the Seine.[2]
The architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel made a plan for the site and the square was finished by 1772. It was in the form of an octagon, bordered by a sort of moat twenty meters wide, crossed by stone bridges, and surrounded by a stone balustrade. At the eight corners Gabriel placed stone stairways to descend into the square, which was divided into flowerbeds. In the center of the gardens was the pedestal on which the statue stood. The statue, by Edmé Bouchardon, depicted the King on horseback as the victor of the Battle of Fontenoy, dressed as a Roman general, with a laurel wreath on his head. On the four corners of the pedestal, designed by Jean Chalgrin, are bronze statues by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, depicting the virtues of great monarchs; Force, Justice, Prudence, and Peace.[3]
The statue was dedicated on 20 June 1763, but by this time the King had lost much of his popularity. A few days after its dedication, someone hung a placard on the statue, proclaiming: "Oh, the beautiful statue! Oh, the fine pedestal! The Virtues are under the feet, and Vice is in the saddle!"[4]
On the north side of the square, between 1760 and 1775, Gabriel planned and built two palatial buildings with identical façades. The classical façades were inspired by those created by Claude Perrault, the royal architect, for the façade of the Louvre. They were originally intended to be occupied by embassies, but in the end the east building became a depot for the Royal furnishings, then the headquarters of the French Navy, the Hôtel de la Marine. The west building was divided into individual properties for the nobility.The square was originally designed to be the site of an equestrian statue of King Louis XV, commissioned in 1748 by the merchants of Paris, to celebrate the recovery of King Louis XV from a serious illness. The site chosen for the statue was the large esplanade, or space between the revolving gate, the Tuileries Garden and the Cour-la-Reine, a popular lane for horseback riding at the edge of the city. At the time, the Concorde bridge and the Rue de Rivoli did not exist, and the Rue Royale was a muddy lane that descended down to a marsh beside the Seine.[2]
The architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel made a plan for the site and the square was finished by 1772. It was in the form of an octagon, bordered by a sort of moat twenty meters wide, crossed by stone bridges, and surrounded by a stone balustrade. At the eight corners Gabriel placed stone stairways to descend into the square, which was divided into flowerbeds. In the center of the gardens was the pedestal on which the statue stood. The statue, by Edmé Bouchardon, depicted the King on horseback as the victor of the Battle of Fontenoy, dressed as a Roman general, with a laurel wreath on his head. On the four corners of the pedestal, designed by Jean Chalgrin, are bronze statues by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, depicting the virtues of great monarchs; Force, Justice, Prudence, and Peace.[3]
The statue was dedicated on 20 June 1763, but by this time the King had lost much of his popularity. A few days after its dedication, someone hung a placard on the statue, proclaiming: "Oh, the beautiful statue! Oh, the fine pedestal! The Virtues are under the feet, and Vice is in the saddle!"[4]
On the north side of the square, between 1760 and 1775, Gabriel planned and built two palatial buildings with identical façades. The classical façades were inspired by those created by Claude Perrault, the royal architect, for the façade of the Louvre. They were originally intended to be occupied by embassies, but in the end the east building became a depot for the Royal furnishings, then the headquarters of the French Navy, the Hôtel de la Marine. The west building was divided into individual properties for the nobility.[5]In 1795, under the Directory, the square was renamed the Place de la Concorde ("Concord Square") as a gesture of reconciliation after the turmoil of the revolution. After the Bourbon Restoration of 1814, the name was changed back to the Place Louis XV, and in 1826 the square was renamed the Place Louis XVI ("Louis XVI Square"). After the July Revolution of 1830, the name was returned to the Place de la Concorde.
In 1790, early in the French Revolution, the Concorde bridge was constructed, and, at the suggestion of Jacques-Louis David, the statues of the "Marly Horses by Guillaume Coustou the Elder, were placed on the north side, at the entrance of the Champs-Élysées. In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte began to construct the Rue de Rivoli along the edge of the square.
Under King Louis-Philippe and his prefect of the Seine, Claude-Philibert Barthelot de Rambuteau, the square was remade. In 1832, Jacques Ignace Hittorff was named chief architect of the project. In October 1835 Hittorff installed the new centrepiece of the square, the Luxor Obelisk, a gift to the King from the wali Muhammad Ali of Egypt. It was hoisted into place, before a huge crowd, on 25 October 1836. Hittorff commissioned celebrated sculptors, including James Pradier and Jean-Pierre Cortot to make eight statues representing the major cities of France, which were placed in 1838 on columns which had earlier been put in place around the square by Gabriel. These statues form something of a rudimentary map, such that when viewing the Place de la Concorde from a birdseye perspective, the north-eastern states represent north-eastern cities, in the appropriate arrangement relative to one another, and so on.[7] A ring of twenty columns with lanterns were put in place during the same time.[8]
Between 1836 and 1840, Hittorff erected two monumental fountains, the Fontaine Maritime to the side of the Seine, and the Fontaine Fluviale to the side of the Rue Royale. The design, consisting of two fountains each nine meters high, was modeled after that of the fountains of St. Peter's Square in Rome. In 1853, under Napoleon III, the deep moats around the square, which had turned into rendez-vous points for prostitutes, were filled in.[9]
Mark Rothko, born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (Russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, Latvian: Markuss Rotkovičs; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latvian-born American abstract painter. He is best known for his color field paintings that depicted irregular and painterly rectangular regions of color, which he produced from 1949 to 1970.
Although Rothko did not personally subscribe to any one school, he is associated with the American Abstract Expressionist movement of modern art. Originally emigrating to Portland, Oregon, from Russian Empire (Latvia) with his family, Rothko later moved to New York City where his youthful period of artistic production dealt primarily with urban scenery. In response to World War II, Rothko's art entered a transitional phase during the 1940s, where he experimented with mythological themes and Surrealism to express tragedy. Toward the end of the decade, Rothko painted canvases with regions of pure color which he further abstracted into rectangular color forms, the idiom he would use for the rest of his life.
In his later career, Rothko executed several canvases for three different mural projects. The Seagram murals were to have decorated the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building, but Rothko eventually grew disgusted with the idea that his paintings would be decorative objects for wealthy diners and refunded the lucrative commission, donating the paintings to museums including the Tate Modern. The Harvard Mural series was donated to a dining room in Harvard's Holyoke Center (now Smith Campus Center); their colors faded badly over time due to Rothko's use of the pigment Lithol Red together with regular sunlight exposure. The Harvard series has since been restored using a special lighting technique. Rothko contributed 14 canvases to a permanent installation at the Rothko Chapel, a non-denominational chapel in Houston, Texas.
Although Rothko lived modestly for much of his life, the resale value of his paintings grew tremendously in the decades following his suicide in 1970. In 2021, one of his works sold at auction for $82.5 million.
Childhood
Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, in the Russian Empire (now Daugavpils, Latvia). His father, Jacob (Yakov) Rothkowitz, was a pharmacist and intellectual who initially provided his children with a secular and political, rather than religious, upbringing. According to Rothko, his Marxist father was "violently anti-religious". In an environment where Jews were often blamed for many of the evils that befell Russia, Rothko's early childhood was plagued by fear.
Despite Jacob Rothkowitz's modest income, the family was highly educated ("We were a reading family", Rothko's sister recalled), and Rothko spoke Lithuanian Yiddish (Litvish), Hebrew and Russian. Following his father's return to the Orthodox Judaism of his own youth, Rothko, the youngest of four siblings, was sent to the cheder at age five, where he studied the Talmud, although his elder siblings had been educated in the public school system.
Migration from Russia to the U.S.
Fearing that his elder sons were about to be drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, Jacob Rothkowitz emigrated from Russia to the United States. Markus remained in Russia with his mother and elder sister Sonia. They arrived as immigrants, at Ellis Island, in late 1913. From there, they crossed the country, to join Jacob and the elder brothers, in Portland, Oregon. Jacob's death, a few months later, of colon cancer, left the family without economic support. Sonia operated a cash register, while Markus worked in one of his uncle's warehouses, selling newspapers to employees. His father's death also led Rothko to sever his ties with religion. After he had mourned his father's death for almost a year at a local synagogue, he vowed never to set foot in one again.
Rothko started school in the United States in 1913, quickly accelerating from third to fifth grade. In June 1921, he completed the secondary level, with honors, at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon, at age 17. He learned his fourth language, English, and became an active member of the Jewish community center, where he proved adept at political discussions. Like his father, Rothko was passionate about issues such as workers' rights and contraception. At the time, Portland was a center of revolutionary activity in the U.S. and the region where the revolutionary syndicalist union Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was active.
Having grown up around radical workers' meetings, Rothko attended meetings of the IWW, including such speakers as the radical socialist Bill Haywood and the anarchist Emma Goldman, where he developed strong oratorical skills he later used in defense of Surrealism. With the onset of the Russian Revolution, Rothko organized debates about it. Despite the repressive political atmosphere, he wished to become a labor union organizer.
Rothko received a scholarship to Yale. At the end of his first year in 1922, the scholarship was not renewed, and he worked as a waiter and delivery boy to support his studies. He found Yale elitist and racist. Rothko and a friend, Aaron Director, started a satirical magazine, The Yale Saturday Evening Pest, that lampooned the school's stuffy, bourgeois tone. Rothko was more an autodidact than a diligent pupil:
One of his fellow students remembers that he hardly seemed to study, but that he was a voracious reader.
At the end of his sophomore year, Rothko dropped out, and he did not return until he was awarded an honorary degree 46 years later.
Early career
In the autumn of 1923, Rothko found work in New York's garment district. While visiting a friend at the Art Students League of New York, he saw students sketching a model. According to Rothko, this was the beginning of his life as an artist. He later enrolled in the Parsons The New School for Design, where one of his instructors was Arshile Gorky. Rothko characterized Gorky's leadership of the class as "overcharged with supervision." That same autumn, he took courses at the Art Students League taught by Cubist artist Max Weber, who had been a part of the French avant-garde movement. To his students eager to know about Modernism, Weber was seen as "a living repository of modern art history". Under Weber's tutelage, Rothko began to view art as a tool of emotional and religious expression. Rothko's paintings from this era reveal the influence of his instructor. Years later, when Weber attended a show of his former student's work and expressed his admiration, Rothko was immensely pleased.
Rothko's circle
Rothko's move to New York landed him in a fertile artistic atmosphere. Modernist painters regularly exhibited in New York galleries, and the city's museums were an invaluable resource for a budding artist's knowledge and skills. Among the important early influences on him were the works of the German Expressionists, the surrealist art of Paul Klee, and the paintings of Georges Rouault.
In 1928, with a group of other young artists, Rothko exhibited works at the Opportunity Gallery. His paintings, including dark, moody, expressionist interiors and urban scenes, were generally well accepted among critics and peers. To supplement his income, in 1929 Rothko began instructing schoolchildren in drawing, painting, and clay sculpture at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, where he remained active for over twenty years.
During the early 1930s, Rothko met Adolph Gottlieb, who, along with Barnett Newman, Joseph Solman, Louis Schanker, and John Graham, was part of a group of young artists surrounding the painter Milton Avery. According to Elaine de Kooning, it was Avery who "gave Rothko the idea that [the life of a professional artist] was a possibility." Avery's abstract nature paintings, utilizing a rich knowledge of form and color, had a tremendous influence on him. Soon, Rothko's paintings took on the subject matter and color similar to Avery's, as seen in Bathers, or Beach Scene of 1933–1934.
Rothko, Gottlieb, Newman, Solman, Graham, and their mentor, Avery, spent considerable time together, vacationing at Lake George, New York, and Gloucester, Massachusetts. In the daytime, they painted, then discussed art in the evenings. During a 1932 visit to Lake George, Rothko met Edith Sachar, a jewelry designer, whom he married later that year. The following summer, his first one-person show was held at the Portland Art Museum, consisting mostly of drawings and aquarelles. For this exhibition, Rothko took the very unusual step of displaying works done by his pre-adolescent students from the Center Academy, alongside his own. His family was unable to understand Rothko's decision to be an artist, especially considering the dire economic situation of the Depression. Having suffered serious financial setbacks, the Rothkowitzes were mystified by Rothko's seeming indifference to financial necessity. They felt he was doing his mother a disservice by not finding a more lucrative and realistic career.
First solo show in New York
Returning to New York, Rothko had his first East Coast one-person show at the Contemporary Arts Gallery. He showed fifteen oil paintings, mostly portraits, along with some aquarelles and drawings. Among these works, the oil paintings especially captured the art critics' eyes. Rothko's use of rich fields of colors moved beyond Avery's influence. In late 1935, Rothko joined with Ilya Bolotowsky, Ben-Zion, Adolph Gottlieb, Louis Harris, Ralph Rosenborg, Louis Schanker and Joseph Solman to form "The Ten". According to a gallery show catalog, the mission of the group was "to protest against the reputed equivalence of American painting and literal painting."
Rothko was earning a growing reputation among his peers, particularly among the group that formed the Artists' Union. The Artists' Union, including Gottlieb and Solman, hoped to create a municipal art gallery, to show self-organized group exhibitions. In 1936, the group exhibited at the Galerie Bonaparte in France, which resulted in some positive critical attention. One reviewer remarked that Rothko's paintings "display authentic coloristic values." Later, in 1938, a show was held at the Mercury Gallery in New York, intended as a protest against the Whitney Museum of American Art, which the group regarded as having a provincial, regionalist agenda. Also during this period, Rothko, like Avery, Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning, and many others, found employment with the Works Progress Administration.
Development of style
Rothko's work has been described in eras. His early period (1924-1939) saw representational art inflected by impressionism, usually depicting urban scenes. His middle, "transitional" years (1940-1950) involved phases of figurative mythological abstraction, "biomorphic" abstraction, and "multiforms", the latter being canvases with large regions of color. Rothko's transitional decade was influenced by World War II, which prompted him to seek novel expression of tragedy in art. During this time Rothko was influenced by ancient Greek tragedians such as Aeschylus and his reading of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. In Rothko's mature or "classic" period (1951-1970), he consistently painted rectangular regions of color, intended as "dramas" to elicit an emotional response from the viewer.
In 1936, Rothko began writing a book, never completed, about similarities between the art of children and the work of modern painters. According to Rothko, the work of modernists, influenced by primitive art, could be compared to that of children in that "child art transforms itself into primitivism, which is only the child producing a mimicry of himself." In this manuscript, he observed: "Tradition of starting with drawing in academic notion. We may start with color." Rothko was using fields of color in his aquarelles and city scenes. His style was already evolving in the direction of his renowned later works. Despite this newfound exploration of color, Rothko turned his attention to other formal and stylistic innovations, inaugurating a period of surrealist paintings influenced by mythological fables and symbols.
Maturity
Rothko separated temporarily from his wife Edith in mid-1937. They reconciled several months later, but their relationship remained tense and they would divorce in 1944. On February 21, 1938, Rothko finally became a citizen of the United States, prompted by fears that the growing Nazi influence in Europe might provoke the sudden deportation of American Jews. Concerned about antisemitism in America and Europe, Rothko abbreviated his name from "Markus Rothkowitz" to "Mark Rothko". The name "Roth", a common abbreviation, was still identifiably Jewish, so he settled upon "Rothko."
Inspiration from mythology
Fearing that modern American painting had reached a conceptual dead end, Rothko was intent on exploring subjects other than urban and nature scenes. He sought subjects that would complement his growing interest in form, space, and color. The world crisis of war gave this search a sense of immediacy. He insisted that the new subject matter have a social impact, yet be able to transcend the confines of current political symbols and values. In his essay "The Romantics Were Prompted," published in 1948, Rothko argued that the "archaic artist ... found it necessary to create a group of intermediaries, monsters, hybrids, gods and demigods," in much the same way that modern man found intermediaries in Fascism and the Communist Party.[citation needed] For Rothko, "without monsters and gods, art cannot enact a drama".
Rothko's use of mythology as a commentary on current history was not novel. Rothko, Gottlieb, and Newman read and discussed the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. In particular, they took interest in psychoanalytical theories concerning dreams, and archetypes of a collective unconscious. They understood mythological symbols as images, operating in a space of human consciousness, which transcends specific history and culture. Rothko later said that his artistic approach was "reformed" by his study of the "dramatic themes of myth". He allegedly stopped painting altogether in 1940, to immerse himself in reading Sir James Frazer's study of mythology The Golden Bough, and Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams.
Nietzsche's influence
Rothko's new vision attempted to address modern man's spiritual and creative mythological requirements. The most crucial philosophical influence on Rothko in this period was Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche claimed that Greek tragedy served to redeem man from the terrors of mortal life. The exploration of novel topics in modern art ceased to be Rothko's goal. From this time on, his art had the goal of relieving modern man's spiritual emptiness. He believed that this emptiness resulted partly from lack of mythology, which, according to Nietzsche, "The images of the myth have to be the unnoticed omnipresent demonic guardians, under whose care the young soul grows to maturity and whose signs help the man to interpret his life and struggles." Rothko believed his art could free unconscious energies, previously bound by mythological images, symbols, and rituals. He considered himself a "mythmaker", and proclaimed that "the exhilarated tragic experience is for me the only source of art".
Many of his paintings in this period contrast barbaric scenes of violence with civilized passivity, using imagery drawn primarily from Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy. A list of Rothko's paintings from this period illustrates his use of myth: Antigone, Oedipus, The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Leda, The Furies, Altar of Orpheus. Rothko evokes Judeo-Christian imagery in Gethsemane, The Last Supper, and Rites of Lilith. He also invokes Egyptian (Room in Karnak) and Syrian (The Syrian Bull) myths. Soon after World War II, Rothko believed his titles limited the larger, transcendent aims of his paintings. To allow maximum interpretation by the viewer, he stopped naming and framing his paintings, referring to them only by numbers.
"Mythomorphic" abstractionism
At the root of Rothko and Gottlieb's presentation of archaic forms and symbols, illuminating modern existence had been the influence of Surrealism, Cubism, and abstract art. In 1936, Rothko attended two exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, "Cubism and Abstract Art", and "Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism".
In 1942, following the success of shows by Ernst, Miró, Wolfgang Paalen, Tanguy, and Salvador Dalí, artists who had immigrated to the United States because of the war, Surrealism took New York by storm. Rothko and his peers, Gottlieb and Newman, met and discussed the art and ideas of these European pioneers, as well as those of Mondrian.
New paintings were unveiled at a 1942 show at Macy's department store in New York City. In response to a negative review by The New York Times, Rothko and Gottlieb issued a manifesto, written mainly by Rothko. Addressing the Times critic's self-professed "befuddlement" over the new work, they stated "We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth." On a more strident note, they criticized those who wanted to live surrounded by less challenging art, noting that their work necessarily "must insult anyone who is spiritually attuned to interior decoration".
Rothko viewed myth as a replenishing resource for an era of spiritual void. This belief had begun decades earlier, through his reading of Carl Jung, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Thomas Mann, among other authors.
Break with Surrealism
On June 13, 1943, Rothko and Sachar separated again. Rothko suffered depression following their divorce. Thinking that a change of scenery might help, Rothko returned to Portland. From there, he traveled to Berkeley, where he met artist Clyfford Still, and the two began a close friendship. Still's deeply abstract paintings would be of considerable influence on Rothko's later works. In the autumn of 1943, Rothko returned to New York. He met with noted collector and art dealer Peggy Guggenheim, but she was initially reluctant to take on his artworks. Rothko's one-person show at Guggenheim's The Art of This Century Gallery, in late 1945, resulted in few sales, with prices ranging from $150 to $750. The exhibit also attracted less-than-favorable reviews from critics. During this period, Rothko had been stimulated by Still's abstract landscapes of color, and his style shifted away from surrealism. Rothko's experiments in interpreting the unconscious symbolism of everyday forms had run their course. His future lay with abstraction:
I insist upon the equal existence of the world engendered in the mind and the world engendered by God outside of it. If I have faltered in the use of familiar objects, it is because I refuse to mutilate their appearance for the sake of an action which they are too old to serve, or for which perhaps they had never been intended. I quarrel with surrealists and abstract art only as one quarrels with his father and mother; recognizing the inevitability and function of my roots, but insistent upon my dissent; I, being both they and an integral completely independent of them.
Rothko's masterpiece Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea (1945) illustrates his newfound propensity towards abstraction. It has been interpreted as a meditation on Rothko's courtship of his second wife, Mary Alice "Mell" Beistle, whom he met in 1944 and married in early 1945. Other readings have noted echoes of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, which Rothko saw at an "Italian Masters" loan exhibition, at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1940. The painting presents, in subtle grays and browns, two human-like forms embraced in a swirling, floating atmosphere of shapes and colors. The rigid rectangular background foreshadows Rothko's later experiments in pure color. The painting was completed, not coincidentally, in the year the Second World War ended.[66]
Despite the abandonment of his "Mythomorphic Abstractionism", Rothko would still be recognized by the public primarily for his surrealist works, for the remainder of the 1940s. The Whitney Museum included them in their annual exhibit of contemporary art from 1943 to 1950.
"Multiforms"
In 1946, Rothko created what art critics have since termed his transitional "multiform" paintings. Although Rothko never used the term multiform himself, it is nonetheless an accurate description of these paintings. Several of them, including No. 18[68] and Untitled (both 1948), are less transitional than fully realized. Rothko himself described these paintings as possessing a more organic structure, and as self-contained units of human expression. For him, these blurred blocks of various colors, devoid of landscape or the human figure, let alone myth and symbol, possessed their own life force. They contained a "breath of life" he found lacking in the most figurative painting of the era. They were filled with possibility, whereas his experimentation with mythological symbolism had become a tired formula. The "multiforms" brought Rothko to a realization of his signature style of rectangular regions of color, which he continued to produce for the rest of his life.
In the middle of this crucial period of transition, Rothko had been impressed by Clyfford Still's abstract fields of color, which were influenced in part by the landscapes of Still's native North Dakota.
In 1947, during a summer semester teaching at the California School of Fine Art, Rothko and Still flirted with the idea of founding their own curriculum. In 1948, Rothko, Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Barnett Newman, and David Hare founded the Subjects of the Artist School at 35 East 8th Street. Well-attended lectures there were open to the public, with speakers such as Jean Arp, John Cage, and Ad Reinhardt, but the school failed financially and closed in the spring of 1949. Although the group separated later in the same year, the school was the center of a flurry of activity in contemporary art. In addition to his teaching experience, Rothko began to contribute articles to two new art publications, Tiger's Eye and Possibilities. Using the forums as an opportunity to assess the current art scene, Rothko also discussed in detail his own work and philosophy of art. These articles reflect the elimination of figurative elements from his painting, and a specific interest in the new contingency debate launched by Wolfgang Paalen's Form and Sense publication of 1945.
Rothko described his new method as "unknown adventures in an unknown space", free from "direct association with any particular, and the passion of organism". Breslin described this change of attitude as "both self and painting are now fields of possibilities – an effect conveyed ... by the creation of protean, indeterminate shapes whose multiplicity is let be."
In 1947, he had a first solo exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery (March 3 to 22).
In 1949, Rothko became fascinated by Henri Matisse's Red Studio, acquired by the Museum of Modern Art that year. He later credited it as another key source of inspiration for his later abstract paintings.
Late period
Soon, the "multiforms" developed into the signature style; by early 1949 Rothko exhibited these new works at the Betty Parsons Gallery. For critic Harold Rosenberg, the paintings were nothing short of a revelation. After painting his first "multiform", Rothko had secluded himself in his home in East Hampton on Long Island. He invited only a select few, including Rosenberg, to view the new paintings. The discovery of his definitive form came at a period of great distress to the artist; his mother Kate had died in October 1948. Rothko happened upon the use of symmetrical rectangular blocks of two to three opposing or contrasting, yet complementary, colors, in which, for example, "the rectangles sometimes seem barely to coalesce out of the ground, concentrations of its substance. The green bar in Magenta, Black, Green on Orange, on the other hand, appears to vibrate against the orange around it, creating an optical flicker." Additionally, for the next seven years, Rothko painted in oil only for large canvases with vertical formats. Very large-scale designs were used in order to overwhelm the viewer, or, in Rothko's words, to make the viewer feel "enveloped within" the painting. For some critics, the large size was an attempt to make up for a lack of substance. In retaliation, Rothko stated:
I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however ... is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command!
Rothko even went so far as to recommend that viewers position themselves as little as eighteen inches away from the canvas[80] so that they might experience a sense of intimacy, as well as awe, a transcendence of the individual, and a sense of the unknown.
As Rothko achieved success, he became increasingly protective of his works, turning down several potentially important sales and exhibition opportunities:
A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore a risky and unfeeling act to send it out into the world. How often it must be permanently impaired by the eyes of the vulgar and the cruelty of the impotent who would extend the affliction universally!
Rothko's aims, in the estimation of some critics and viewers, exceeded his methods.[82] Many of the abstract expressionists discussed their art as aiming toward a spiritual experience, or at least an experience that exceeded the boundaries of the purely aesthetic. In later years, Rothko emphasized more emphatically the spiritual aspect of his artwork, a sentiment that would culminate in the construction of the Rothko Chapel.
Many of the "multiforms" and early signature paintings are composed of bright, vibrant colors, particularly reds and yellows, expressing energy and ecstasy. By the mid-1950s, however, close to a decade after the completion of the first "multiforms," Rothko began to employ dark blues and greens; for many critics of his work, this shift in colors was representative of growing darkness within Rothko's personal life.
Rothko's method was to apply a thin layer of a binder mixed with pigment directly onto uncoated and untreated canvas and to paint significantly thinned oils directly onto this layer, creating a dense mixture of overlapping colors and shapes. His brushstrokes were fast and light, a method he would continue to use until his death. His increasing adeptness at this method is apparent in the paintings completed for the Chapel. With an absence of figurative representation, what drama there is to be found in a late Rothko is in the contrast of colors, radiating against one another. His paintings can then be likened to a sort of fugue-like arrangement: each variation counterpoised against one another, yet all existing within one architectonic structure.
Rothko used several original techniques that he tried to keep secret even from his assistants. Electron microscopy and ultraviolet analysis conducted by the MOLAB showed that he employed natural substances such as egg and glue, as well as artificial materials including acrylic resins, phenol formaldehyde, modified alkyd, and others. One of his objectives was to make the various layers of the painting dry quickly, without mixing of colors, so that he could soon create new layers on top of the earlier ones.
In 1968 Rothko, in declining health, began painting most of his large works in acrylic paint instead of oils.
European travels: increasing fame
Rothko and his wife visited Europe for five months in early 1950. The last time he had been in Europe was during his childhood in Latvia, at that time part of Russia. Yet he did not return to his homeland, preferring to visit the important painting collections in the major museums of England, France, and Italy. The frescoes of Fra Angelico in the monastery of San Marco, Florence, most impressed him. Fra Angelico's spirituality and concentration on light appealed to Rothko's sensibilities, as did the economic adversities the artist faced, which Rothko saw as similar to his own.
Rothko had one-man shows at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1950 and 1951 and at other galleries across the world, including in Japan, São Paulo, and Amsterdam. The 1952 "Fifteen Americans" show curated by Dorothy Canning Miller at the Museum of Modern Art formally heralded the abstract artists and included works by Jackson Pollock and William Baziotes. It also created a dispute between Rothko and Barnett Newman, after Newman accused Rothko of having attempted to exclude him from the show. Growing success as a group was leading to infighting and claims of supremacy and leadership. When Fortune magazine named a Rothko painting in 1955 as a good investment. Newman and Clyfford Still branded him a sell-out with bourgeois aspirations. Still wrote to Rothko to ask that the paintings he had given him over the years be returned. Rothko was deeply depressed by his former friends' jealousy.
During the 1950 Europe trip, Rothko's wife, Mell, became pregnant. On December 30, when they were back in New York, she gave birth to a daughter, Kathy Lynn, called "Kate" in honor of Rothko's mother, Kate Goldin.
Reactions to his own success
Shortly thereafter, due to the Fortune magazine plug and further purchases by clients, Rothko's financial situation began to improve. In addition to sales of paintings, he also had money from his teaching position at Brooklyn College. In 1954, he exhibited in a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he met art dealer Sidney Janis, who represented Pollock and Franz Kline. Their relationship proved mutually beneficial.
Despite his fame, Rothko felt a growing personal seclusion and a sense of being misunderstood as an artist. He feared that people purchased his paintings simply out of fashion and that the true purpose of his work was not being grasped by collectors, critics, or audiences. He wanted his paintings to move beyond abstraction, as well as beyond classical art. For Rothko, the paintings were objects that possessed their own form and potential, and therefore, must be encountered as such. Sensing the futility of words in describing this decidedly non-verbal aspect of his work, Rothko abandoned all attempts at responding to those who inquired after its meaning and purpose, stating finally that silence is "so accurate":
"My paintings' surfaces are expansive and push outward in all directions, or their surfaces contract and rush inward in all directions. Between these two poles, you can find everything I want to say."
Rothko began to insist that he was not an abstractionist and that such a description was as inaccurate as labeling him a great colorist. His interest was:
... only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions ... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point."
For Rothko, color is "merely an instrument". The multiforms and the signature paintings are, in essence, the same expression of basic human emotions as his surrealistic mythological paintings, albeit in a purer form. What is common among these stylistic innovations is a concern for "tragedy, ecstasy and doom". It was Rothko's comment on viewers breaking down in tears before his paintings that may have convinced the de Menils to construct the Rothko Chapel. Whatever Rothko's feeling about interpretations of his work, it is apparent that, by 1958, the spiritual expression he meant to portray on canvas was growing increasingly dark. His bright reds, yellows, and oranges were subtly transformed into dark blues, greens, grays, and blacks.
Rothko's friend, the art critic Dore Ashton, points to the artist's acquaintance with poet Stanley Kunitz as a significant bond in this period ("conversations between painter and poet fed into Rothko's enterprise"). Kunitz saw Rothko as "a primitive, a shaman who finds the magic formula and leads people to it". Great poetry and painting, Kunitz believed, both had "roots in magic, incantation, and spell-casting" and were, at their core, ethical and spiritual. Kunitz instinctively understood the purpose of Rothko's quest.
In November 1958, Rothko gave an address to the Pratt Institute. In a tenor unusual for him, he discussed art as a trade and offered the
"recipe of a work of art—its ingredients—how to make it—the formula
There must be a clear preoccupation with death—intimations of mortality ... Tragic art, romantic art, etc., deals with the knowledge of death.
Sensuality. Our basis of being concrete about the world. It is a lustful relationship with things that exist.
Tension. Either conflict or curbed desire.
Irony, This is a modern ingredient—the self-effacement and examination by which a man for an instant can go on to something else.
Wit and play ... for the human element.
The ephemeral and chance ... for the human element.
Hope. 10% to make the tragic concept more endurable.
I measure these ingredients very carefully when I paint a picture. It is always the form that follows these elements and the picture results from the proportions of these elements."
In 1958, Rothko was awarded the first of two major mural commissions, which proved both rewarding and frustrating. The beverage company Joseph Seagram and Sons had recently completed the new Seagram Building skyscraper on Park Avenue, designed by architects Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Rothko agreed to provide paintings for the building's new luxury restaurant, the Four Seasons. This was, as art historian Simon Schama put it, "bring[ing] his monumental dramas right into the belly of the beast".
For Rothko, this Seagram murals commission presented a new challenge, since it was the first time he was required not only to design a coordinated series of paintings but to produce an artwork space concept for a large, specific interior. Over the following three months, Rothko completed forty paintings, comprising three full series in dark red and brown. He altered his horizontal format to vertical, to complement the restaurant's vertical features: columns, walls, doors, and windows.
The following June, Rothko and his family again traveled to Europe. While on the SS Independence he disclosed to journalist John Fischer, who was publisher of Harper's Magazine, that his true intention for the Seagram murals was to paint "something that will ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room". He hoped, he told Fischer, that his painting would make the restaurant's patrons "feel that they are trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall".
While in Europe, the Rothkos traveled to Rome, Florence, Venice, and Pompeii. In Florence, he visited Michelangelo's Laurentian Library, to see first-hand the library's vestibule, from which he drew further inspiration for the murals. He remarked that "the room had exactly the feeling that I wanted ... it gives the visitor the feeling of being caught in a room with the doors and windows walled-in shut." He was further influenced by the somber colors of the murals in the Pompeiian Villa of the Mysteries. Following the trip to Italy, the Rothkos voyaged to Paris, Brussels, Antwerp and Amsterdam, before going to London where Rothko spent time in the British Museum studying the Turner watercolors. They then traveled to Somerset and stayed with the artist William Scott who was just starting a large mural project and they discussed the respective issues of public and private sponsorship. After the visit the Rothkos continued to St. Ives in the West of England and met up with Patrick Heron and other Cornish painters before returning to London and then the United States.[citation needed]
Once back in New York, Rothko and his wife Mell visited the nearly-completed Four Seasons restaurant. Upset with the restaurant's dining atmosphere, which he considered pretentious and inappropriate for the display of his works, Rothko refused to continue the project and returned his cash advance to the Seagram and Sons Company. Seagram had intended to honor Rothko's emergence to prominence through his selection, and his breach of contract and public expression of outrage was unexpected.
Rothko kept the commissioned paintings in storage until 1968. Given that Rothko had known in advance about the luxury decor of the restaurant, and the social class of its future patrons, the motives for his abrupt repudiation remain mysterious, although he did write to his friend William Scott in England, "Since we had discussed our respective murals I thought you might be interested to know that mine are still with me. When I returned, I looked again at my paintings and then visited the premises for which they were destined, it seemed clear to me at once that the two were not for each other." A temperamental personality, Rothko never fully explained his conflicted emotions over the incident. One reading is offered by his biographer, James E.B. Breslin: the Seagram project could be seen as an acting-out of a familiar, in this case self-created "drama of trust and betrayal, of advancing into the world, then withdrawing, angrily, from it ... He was an Isaac who at the last moment refused to yield to Abraham." The final series of Seagram Murals was dispersed, and now hangs in three locations: London's Tate Britain, Japan's Kawamura Memorial Museum, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This episode was the main basis for John Logan's 2009 play Red.
In October 2012, Black on Maroon, one of the paintings in the Seagram series, was defaced with writing in black ink, while on display at Tate Modern. Restoration of the painting took eighteen months to complete. The BBC's Arts Editor Will Gompertz explained that the ink from the vandal's marker pen had bled all the way through the canvas, causing "a deep wound, not a superficial graze", and that the vandal had caused "significant damage".
Rising American prominence
Rothko's first completed space was created in the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., following the purchase of four paintings by collector Duncan Phillips. Rothko's fame and wealth had substantially increased; his paintings began to sell to notable collectors, including the Rockefeller family. In January 1961, Rothko sat next to Joseph Kennedy at John F. Kennedy's inaugural ball. Later that year, a retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art, to considerable commercial and critical success. In spite of this newfound fame, the art world had already turned its attention from the now passé abstract expressionists to the "next big thing", pop art, particularly the work of Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rosenquist.
Rothko labeled pop-art artists "charlatans and young opportunists", and wondered aloud during a 1962 exhibition of pop art, "Are the young artists plotting to kill us all?" On viewing Jasper Johns's flags, Rothko said, "We worked for years to get rid of all that."
On August 31, 1963, Mell gave birth to a second child, Christopher. That autumn, Rothko signed with the Marlborough Gallery for sales of his work outside the United States. In New York, he continued to sell the artwork directly from his studio.
Harvard Murals
Rothko received a second mural commission project, this time for a room of paintings for the penthouse of Harvard University's Holyoke Center. He made twenty-two sketches, from which ten wall-sized paintings on canvas were painted, six were brought to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and only five were hung: a triptych on one wall and opposite two individual panels. His aim was to create an environment for a public place. Harvard President Nathan Pusey, following an explanation of the religious symbology of the Triptych, had the paintings hung in January 1963, and later shown at the Guggenheim. During installation, Rothko found the paintings to be compromised by the room's lighting. Despite the installation of fiberglass shades, the paintings were all removed by 1979 and, due to the fugitive nature of some of the red pigments, in particular lithol red, were placed in dark storage and displayed only periodically. The murals were on display from November 16, 2014, to July 26, 2015, in the newly renovated Harvard Art Museums, for which the fading of the pigments has been compensated by using an innovative color projection system to illuminate the paintings.
The Rothko Chapel is located adjacent to the Menil Collection and the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. The building is small and windowless except for a skylight and features a geometric, postmodern structure. The Chapel, the Menil Collection, and the nearby Cy Twombly gallery were funded by Texas oil millionaires John and Dominique de Menil.
In 1964, Rothko moved into his last New York studio at 157 East 69th Street. To simulate the lighting he desired for the chapel, Rothko equipped the studio with pulleys carrying large walls of canvas material to regulate light from a central cupola. Rothko reportedly intended the chapel to be his most important artistic statement. He became extremely involved in the building's layout and insisted that it feature a central cupola like that of his studio. Architect Philip Johnson, unable to compromise with Rothko's vision about the kind of light he wanted in the space, left the project in 1967 and was replaced by Howard Barnstone and Eugene Aubry. The architects frequently flew to New York to consult. On one occasion they brought a miniature of the building for Rothko's approval.
For Rothko, the chapel was a place of pilgrimage far from the center of art (in this case, New York) where seekers of Rothko's newly "religious" artwork could journey. The chapel is now non-denominational, but it was originally intended to be Roman Catholic. During the first three years of the project (1964–67), Rothko believed it would remain so. The design of the building and the religious implications of the paintings were inspired by Roman Catholic art and architecture. Its octagonal shape is based on a Byzantine church of St. Maria Assunta, and the format of the triptychs is based on paintings of the Crucifixion. The de Menils believed the universal "spiritual" aspect of Rothko's work would complement the elements of Roman Catholicism.
Rothko's painting technique necessitated physical strength and stamina that the ailing artist could no longer muster. Rothko hired two assistants to apply the multiple layers of paint. On half of the works, Rothko applied none of the paint himself and was content to supervise the slow, arduous process. He felt the completion of the paintings to be "torment", and the inevitable result was to create "something you don't want to look at".
The chapel represents six years of Rothko's life and his growing concern for the transcendent. For some, viewing the chapel's these paintings is akin submitting to a spiritual experience. The paintings have been likened to self-awareness, hermeticism, and contemplativeness.
The chapel paintings consist of a monochrome triptych in soft brown, on the central wall, comprising three 5-by-15-foot panels and a pair of triptychs on the left and right made of opaque black rectangles. Between the triptychs are four individual paintings, measuring 11-by-15 feet each. One additional individual painting faces the central triptych, from the opposite wall. The effect is to surround the viewer with massive, imposing visions of darkness. Despite its basis in religious symbolism and imagery, the paintings may be considered distinct from traditional Christian motifs and may act on the viewers subliminally. Rothko's erasure of symbols both removes and creates barriers to the work.
The paintings were unveiled at the chapel's opening in 1971. Rothko never saw the completed chapel and never installed the paintings. On February 28, 1971, at the dedication, Dominique de Menil said, "We are cluttered with images and only abstract art can bring us to the threshold of the divine", noting Rothko's courage in painting "impenetrable fortresses" of color.
Suicide and estate lawsuit
In early 1968, Rothko was diagnosed with a mild aortic aneurysm. Ignoring doctor's orders, Rothko continued to drink and smoke heavily, avoided exercise, and maintained an unhealthy diet. "Highly nervous, thin, restless", was his friend Dore Ashton's description of Rothko at this time. However, he did follow the medical advice given not to paint pictures larger than a yard in height, and turned his attention to smaller, less physically strenuous formats, including acrylics on paper. Meanwhile, Rothko's marriage had become increasingly troubled, and his poor health and impotence resulting from the aneurysm compounded his feeling of estrangement in the relationship. Rothko and his wife Mell, to whom he was married from 1944 to 1970, separated on New Year's Day 1969; he moved into his studio.
On February 25, 1970, Oliver Steindecker, Rothko's assistant, found the artist lying dead on the kitchen floor in front of the sink, covered in blood. He had overdosed on barbiturates and cut an artery in his right arm with a razor blade. There was no suicide note. He was 66. The Seagram Murals arrived in London for display at the Tate Gallery on the day of his suicide.
Near the end of his life, Rothko painted a series known as the "Black on Grays", uniformly featuring a black rectangle above a gray rectangle. These canvases and Rothko's later work in general have been associated with his depression and suicide, although the association has been criticized. Rothko's suicide has been studied in the medical literature where his later paintings have been interpreted as "pictorial suicide notes" due to their somber palettes and especially in contrast with the brighter colors Rothko employed more frequently during the 1950s. Although art critic David Anfam acknowledged that the Black and Grays are interpreted as premonitions of suicide or as "moonscapes" (the first Apollo Moon landings were contemporaneous with their execution), he rejected the interpretations as "naive", arguing instead that the paintings were a continuation of his lifelong artistic themes and not symptoms of depression. Susan Grange also observed that, following his aneurysm, Rothko executed several smaller works on paper using lighter hues, which are less well-known. Throughout his life Rothko consistently intended his works to evoke serious dramatic content, regardless of the colors used in an individual painting. When a woman visited his studio asking to buy a "happy" painting featuring warm colors, Rothko retorted, "Red, yellow, orange – aren't those the colors of an inferno?"
Shortly before his death, Rothko and his financial advisor, Bernard Reis, had created a foundation, intended to fund "research and education", that would receive the bulk of Rothko's work following his death. Reis later sold the paintings to the Marlborough Gallery, at substantially reduced values, and then split the profits from sales with Gallery representatives. In 1971, Rothko's children filed a lawsuit against Reis, Morton Levine, and Theodore Stamos, the executors of his estate, over the sham sales. The lawsuit continued for more than 10 years and became known as the Rothko Case. In 1975, the defendants were found liable for negligence and conflict of interest, were removed as executors of the Rothko estate by court order, and, along with Marlborough Gallery, were required to pay a $9.2 million damages judgment to the estate. This amount represents only a small fraction of the eventual vast financial value, since achieved, by numerous Rothko works produced in his lifetime.
Rothko's estranged wife Mell, also a heavy drinker, died six months after him at the age of 48. The cause of death was listed as "hypertension due to cardiovascular disease".
Legacy
Rothko's complete works on canvas, 836 paintings, have been cataloged by art historian David Anfam, in his Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas: Catalogue Raisonné (1998), published by Yale University Press.
A previously unpublished manuscript by Rothko, The Artist's Reality (2004), about his philosophies on art, edited by his son Christopher, was published by Yale University Press.[citation needed]
Red, a play by John Logan based on Rothko's life, opened at the Donmar Warehouse in London, on December 3, 2009. The play, starring Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne, centered on the period of the Seagram Murals. This drama received excellent reviews and usually played to full houses. In 2010 Red opened on Broadway, where it won six Tony Awards, including Best Play. Molina played Rothko in both London and New York. A recording of Red was produced in 2018 for Great Performances with Molina playing Rothko and Alfred Enoch playing his assistant.
In Rothko's birthplace, the Latvian city of Daugavpils, a monument to him, designed by sculptor Romualds Gibovskis, was unveiled on the bank of the Daugava River in 2003. In 2013 the Mark Rothko Art Centre opened in Daugavpils after the Rothko family had donated a small collection of his original works.
A number of Rothko's works are held by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, both in Madrid. The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY includes both Rothko's late painting, Untitled (1967) and a large mural by Al Held entitled Rothko's Canvas (1969–70).
(Wikipedia)
The Magaña Stone Sculpture sits underneath the trellis outside the Fallingwater Huest House. The limestone sculpture, executed by Mardonio Magaña in 1935, is one of four by the artist at Fallingwater--all illustrating everyday moments of working class life in Mexico.
The semicircular canopy covering the open walk from the Fallingwater Guest House to the main house, steps down the hill as an allusion to the falls below it. The eight-foot wide, three-and-a-half inch thick concrete canopy is cantilevered in folded planes, and supported only slender steel posts at the circumference. The five posts step down from almost seven feet tall to less than four feet, and the single post of the reflex canopy stands less than two feel tall. Made of welded angles with a jagged profile repeated every eight inches and painted Cherokee red, the posts shift appearance--the flanges flare out on the way up, but seem to disappear on the way down.
Fallingwater, sometimes referred to as the Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. Residence or just the Kaufmann Residence, located within a 5,100-acre nature reserve 50 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built between 1936 and 1939. Built over a 30-foot flowing waterfall on Bear Run in the Mill Run section of Stewart Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, the house served as a vacation retreat for the Kaufmann family including patriarch, Edgar Kaufmann Sr., was a successful Pittsburgh businessman and president of Kaufmann's Department Store, and his son, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., who studied architecture briefly under Wright. Wright collaborated with staff engineers Mendel Glickman and William Wesley Peters on the structural design, and assigned his apprentice, Robert Mosher, as his permanent on-site representative throughout construction. Despite frequent conflicts between Wright, Kaufmann, and the construction contractor, the home and guesthouse were finally constructed at a cost of $155,000.
Fallingwater was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966. It was listed among the Smithsonian's 28 Places to See Before You Die. In a 1991 poll of members of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), it was voted "the best all-time work of American architecture." In 2007, Fallingwater was ranked #29 on the AIA 150 America's Favorite Architecture list.
National Register #74001781 (1974)
This sculptural bust of Hector Jose Compora was executed by Cesar Fioravanti in 2008. Héctor José Cámpora Demaestrec (1909-1980), el Tío (the Uncle), was president of Argentina in 1973.
El Salón de los bustos (The Hall of Busts) opens up into Salón de Honor (Hall of Honor) on the first floor of la Casa Rosada. These rooms, accessed from Rivadavia, serve as an entrance for distinguished guests. Marble busts of the many Presidents of Argentina have dotted the checkerboarded floor since 1973. Busts are commissioned for all presidents, excluding some who took power by coup or as a national authority prior to the era of a designated presidential office, who have been out of office for at least two terms.
La Casa Rosada (The Pink House), officially known as Casa de Gobierno, is the official executive mansion and office of the Presidente de la Nación Argentina (President of the Argentine Nation). Its balcony, which faces this large square, has famously served as a podium by many figures, including Eva Perón, who rallied the descamisados there, and Pope John Paul II, who visited Buenos Aires in 1998. Located at the east end of Plaza de Mayo, the Italian-style neoclassical building was built in phases, but dates back mostly to the late 19th century.
The site, originally at the shoreline of the Río de la Plata, was first occupied in 1594 by la Real Fortaleza de Don Juan Baltazar de Austria, and then its 1713 replacement, Castillo de San Miguel. In 1857, President Justo José de Urquiza largely replaced the fort with Edward Taylor's La Aduana Nueva, a new Italianate-style Custom house, but its administrative annex survived to be used as the Presidential offices of Bartolomé Mitre in the 1860s. President Domingo Sarmiento gave the building its characteristic pink hue--reportedly to defuse political tensions by mixing the red and white colors of the opposing political parties. An alternative explanation, though, suggests the original paint contained cow's blood to prevent damage from humidity. Sarmiento also commissioned Carl Kihlberg to build Casa de Correos, the Second Empire-style Central Post Office, next door in 1873. President Julio Roca commissioned Enrique Aberg to replace the cramped State House with one resembling the Central Post Office in 1882. In 1884, he commissioned Francesco Tamburini to unify the two with the now iconic Italianate archway. The resulting statehouse that stills stands today was completed in 1898 following an eastward expansion that included the demolition of Taylor's custom house.
Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
University Village is one of the finest examples of a mid-20th century residential complex located in New York City. Designed by architect James Ingo Freed of I. M. Pei & Associates for New York University, construction began in 1964 and was completed by 1967. Occupying a five-acre âsuperblockâ in Greenwich Village, between West Houston and Bleecker Streets, the site was originally part of a much larger urban renewal scheme conceived by Robert Moses, chairman of the Mayorâs Committee on Slum Clearance, in 1953. As part of NYUâs agreement with the city to take over the site in 1960, the school set aside one-third of the units for middle-income residents.
The complex includes three identical free-standing 30-story towers executed in reinforced concrete that are positioned at the center of the site in a âpinwheelâ configuration around a 100-by-100 foot lawn. The west tower, at 505 LaGuardia Place, is a cooperative residence with a long-term lease from NYU, and the east towers serve as faculty housing. The buildings were thoughtfully arranged by Freed to maximize views and privacy, as well as to increase general visual interest. Cast in place, on site, using fiberglass molds, these buff-colored towers fall into the general stylistic category known as âBrutalismâ and reflect the influence of the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, whom Pei admired. The buildings display twin sets of smooth gridded facades that project from a central core. Each floor has four or eight deeply-recessed horizontal window bays, as well as a 22-foot-wide sheer wall, creating strong contrasts of light and shadow.
Near the center of the complex stands a large sandblasted concrete sculpture, an enlargement of a 1954 cubistic work by Pablo Picasso. Executed in 1968 by the French artistâs frequent collaborator, the Norwegian sculptor Carl Nesjar, the off-center placement of the 36-foot tall bust echoes and enhances the projectâs dynamic plan. University Village was a critical success and received awards from the American Institute of Architects, the City Club of New York, and the Concrete Industry Board. It was also selected as one of âTen Buildings That Climax an Eraâ by Fortune Magazine in 1966. Both Pei and Freed have received significant recognition for their contributions to this project; when Pei was honored with the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1983 University Village was cited as one of his most notable works and at the time of Freedâs death in 2005 Museum of Modern Art architecture curator Terence Riley counted the complex as among âthe most refined examples of modern architecture in Manhattan.â
DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
South of Washington Square
University Village contains three apartment towers designed by I. M. Pei & Associates. Located two blocks south of Washington Square, between Mercer Street and LaGuardia Place, the two buildings to the east are owned by New York University and serve as faculty housing; the west building is a cooperative apartment house on land owned by NYU. Conceived during the early 1950s as part of an ambitious âsuperblockâ plan to improve a nine-block section of Greenwich Village, these striking structures were skillfully sited to create a distinct sense of place and to contrast with the surrounding blocks of late nineteenth-century tenement and loft buildings.
Washington Square first became a public park in 1827. Many fine homes were erected in the vicinity, as well as the Gothic Revival-style building that originally housed NYU . Following the end of the Civil War, however, the neighborhoodâs character began to change. Affluent residents were gradually replaced by French, Italian and Irish immigrants, and the blocks to the south and east of the square became an important wholesale district. Under Chancellor Henry MacCracken, the school was reorganized and the undergraduate arts and science division moved to University Heights in the Bronx where a Beaux-Arts-style campus , designed by the prominent architects McKim, Mead & White, opened in 1894. Unlike Washington Square, the suburban campus provided dormitories, making it less of a commuter school and more of a residential college. The schoolâs original building was then demolished, but for financial reasons the trustees retained ownership of the site and constructed a revenue-producing loft building at 100 Washington Square East. Completed in 1895, the upper floors were planned as classrooms, allowing NYU to remain, in a small way, associated with Washington Square. The university began to plan its return to Greenwich Village in 1915. With the Bronx campus only partially executed, the school leased space in the structure where the tragic âTriangle Shirtwaistâ fire had recently occurred at 23-29 Washington Place and also began to fully occupy the structure it owned at 100 Washington Square East.
Following the Second World War, NYU developed ambitious plans to increase its presence in Greenwich Village. Whereas the University Heights campus occupied a large site with considerable potential for expansion, here the school grew in stages, block by block, acquiring large and small parcels for present and future needs. These transactions frequently caused controversy and strong community opposition, especially projects requiring government approval or financing. Despite criticism, Chancellor Harry Woodburn Chase alleged in 1949: âFar from regarding Washington Square as its campus, New York University regards it as a national landmark of which it is glad to be a part and its devotion to which it has repeatedly manifested over the years.â Over the next decade or so, the school would adopt a somewhat traditional approach to design, choosing contextual aesthetic strategies that blended new buildings with old. Most of these structures were faced with red brick and limestone, including Vanderbilt Hall at 40 Washington Square South, Hayden Hall at 33 Washington Square West, the Loeb Student Center , and Weinstein Hall at 11 University Place. Even Philip Johnson and Richard Fosterâs divisive master plan of 1964 attempted to respect the schoolâs historic context by proposing to clad new and existing structures with complementary red sandstone.
Robert Moses and Urban Renewal
During the 1950s, a nine-block area bordered by West Houston Street, West Broadway , Mercer Street and Washington Square, was targeted for slum clearance. Under United States President Harry S. Truman, the National Housing Act was passed in 1949 to provide Federal funds for local municipalities to acquire property in blighted urban areas for resale to private developers. This program had an extraordinary impact in New York, which received more aid than any American city. Under Robert Moses, chairman of the mayorâs Committee on Slum Clearance, sixteen sites were identified, including thirteen in Manhattan. Such projects, public officials believed, would stabilize the middle class, support higher education, and elevate the cityâs reputation. The blocks where University Village would ultimately be located, called Washington Square Southeast, was the fourteenth project proposed by Moses. The initial prospectus for Washington Square Southeast, prepared by Eggers & Higgins in August 1953, called for the demolition of 191 buildings, of which only 16 were residential. Most displaced tenants, consequently, were businesses, requiring no compensation under the 1949 law. Covering almost eighteen acres, the plan envisioned 2,184 apartments in nine 14-story structures.
To develop the project, nine city blocks were combined to form three âsuperblocks.â The north block, bordered by West Broadway, West Third Street, Mercer Street and West Fourth Street, was set aside for educational use and NYU would eventually construct four academic buildings here, including the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library . The two blocks to the south were intended for middle-income housing and were sold to the Washington Square Corporation â a syndicate headed by developers Paul Tishman and Morton S. Wolf and subsequently transferred to numerous affiliated corporations. Named Washington Square Village, these two slab-like apartment houses occupy about a third of the site and the ground floors were deliberately laid out along Bleecker and West Third Streets to maintain the existing street pattern and allow north-south access along Greene and Wooster Streets. A third building, as well as an underground parking lot, was originally planned for the south block, between Bleecker Street and Houston Street, but was canceled by 1960. Some sources claimed that the developer experienced difficulty leasing units in the second building, while others contend they abandoned the project for economic reasons, asserting that the Federal government refused to allow a taller third structure without increasing payment for the land.
NYU was quick to act and in January 1960 declared interest in buying the superblock site to erect housing âfor its faculty members and married students and an experimental school for student teachers.â Despite considerable opposition from critics who asserted private builders âwould be glad to pay more than the $10.50 a square foot that NYU would pay for the landâ and that this transaction would cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost tax revenue, the Board of Estimate approved the sale in September 1960. As part of the agreement, the school was required to develop one third of the site as middle-income housing, with priority given to people who lived or worked in the area. A limited-equity cooperative apartment building was proposed, financed with subsidized low-interest mortgage loans as part of the Limited Profit Housing Companies Act of 1955, commonly called the Mitchell-Lama Housing Program. Since the complex would occupy the undeveloped southern half of Washington Square Village, the schoolâs governing board decided to name the development âUniversity Village.â
I. M. Pei and James Ingo Freed, Architects
University Village was designed by I. M. Pei & Associates. More than twenty-five architects were reportedly interviewed for the job. Pei did not attend the firmâs interview and correspondence with NYU was handled by Eason H. Leonard, who wrote:
The experience we have had in the sensitive design problems relating to housing of all types gives us confidence that we are well-equipped to develop for you a project of significant quality. Our recent work in Urban Renewal has assured us that within the limits of very low construction budgets, much can be done to improve standards of urban apartment living.
Peiâs firm was currently working on four residential developments, including Society Hill in Philadelphia and Kips Bay Plaza in New York City. Both complexes were constructed using exposed reinforced concrete and the New York Times praised the technique for yielding âfresh design.â
Born in Canton, China, in 1907, Ieoh Ming Pei immigrated to the United States in 1937 and studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard Graduate School of Design . In 1948 he moved to New York City and became the first director of architecture at Webb & Knapp, Inc., a major real estate development company. Founded under the name 385 Madison Avenue in 1922 by W. Seward Webb, Jr. and Robert C. Knapp, as well as the noted architects Eliot Cross and John Walter Cross, the firm was purchased by businessman William Zeckendorf in 1949. Pei remembered that his boss âwanted to remake the city. We had a shared passion for large scale undertakings.â In recognition of his expertise with residential design, Pei served on the Federal Housing Administrationâs Multi-Family Housing Committee during the late 1950s, as well as the design committee for the Mitchell-Lama Housing Program.
In 1960 â the same year Pei received the NYU commission â he resigned from Webb & Knapp and formed his own architectural practice. Though Zeckendorfâs financial difficulties played a part in the architectâs decision to leave, he later recalled:
I knew that if I stayed within the envelope of the company, I would never get the
kinds of jobs I really wanted . . . My growth as a designer was stunted; I should have
reached my maturity much earlier.
Success and notoriety, however, came quickly to Pei. He received the prestigious Arnold Brunner Prize for excellence in architecture from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in March 1961, followed by the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in September 1963. Major subsequent works by Pei include: the National Gallery of Art, East Building in Washington, D. C., the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, and the Grand Louvre in Paris. In New York City, he designed the National Airlines Terminal at Kennedy International Airport and the Guggenheim Pavilion at Mount Sinai Medical Center. In 1983 he was honored as the fifth recipient of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. Though Pei retired from the firm in 1990, he continues to practice as an architect and is associated with Pei Partnership Architects, based in New York City.
Pei selected James Ingo Freed to head the University Village design team. Born in Germany, Freed moved to Chicago at the age of nine. A graduate of the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1953, he studied under the architecture schoolâs chairman Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and worked briefly with the architect on the Seagram Building . Hired by Pei in 1956, Freed participated in the design and construction of Court House Square, including the Denver Hilton Hotel , with colleague Araldo A. Cossuta, and later, served as lead designer on Kips Bay Plaza. During the mid-1960s, he collaborated with Pei on the design of fifty air traffic control towers for the Federal Aeronautics Administration. Planned during the administration of President John
F. Kennedy, like University Village, these slender structures were formed using cast-in-place concrete. Freed received many honors during his career and from 1975 to 1978 was dean of the School of Architecture at IIT. He later returned to New York and was promoted to full partner in 1980. At the time, the firm was renamed Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Manhattan buildings designed by Freed include: a 32-story office building at 88 Pine Street , a 27-story office building at 499 Park Avenue , and the Jacob Javits Convention Center . His best-known work is arguably the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., dedicated in 1993.
The Scheme
Freed began to plan University Village in late 1960 or early 1961. In Peiâs office, he worked closely with architects Theodore A. Amberg and A. Preston Moore . The design went through several distinct stages and more than three years passed before construction of 505 LaGuardia Place began in April 1964. The building site consisted of the center area of the superblock and excluded the northwest corner of the superblock which was already developed with a one-story supermarket.
NYUâs preliminary scheme contained three buildings that were âcomparable in designâ to Washington Square Village, as well as an elementary school facing West Houston Street. Separated by Greene and Wooster Streets, these rectangular structures were arranged in a single row, from east to west, across the center of the site. By December 1960, however, NYU had completely changed course; it informed the Housing and Redevelopment Board that Pei had a âtentative plan in which he hopes to achieve some sort of community atmosphere with fairly low buildings interspersed with one or two tall structures.â
Freedâs proposal was loosely modeled on Society Hill, juxtaposing structures of different height and materials, including a 16-story cooperative apartment house, a 29-story apartment tower for faculty members facing a plaza, and a âserpentine building of six stories . . . modeled to some extent, on the typical New York City brownstone.â The latter buildingâs footprint was quite large, turning at right angles, starting at Houston Street and ending on Bleecker Street. In late 1962, this design was greatly simplified, laying the groundwork for a scheme which included twin slab-like towers flanking Wooster Street and a seven-story brick residential building, distinguished an L-shaped footprint, facing the intersection of Houston and Mercer Streets. This approach appears to have remained under consideration until December 1963 when NYU announced its purchase of Washington Square Village. This acquisition allowed the school to reevaluate its housing needs and the low-rise building was abandoned and replaced by a third tower. Not only would three identical towers reduce construction costs and streamline the design process, but Freed said this type of plan would leave as âlarge and flexible a land area as possible set aside for future use.â
The addition of the third tower dramatically altered the character of University Village. Not only did aesthetic uniformity result within the complex, but this strategy sharpened the contrast between the buildings and the neighborhood, similar to such pioneering âtower in the parkâ schemes as Parkchester in the Bronx, the Clinton Hill Houses , and Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan. No longer would mirror-image towers flank the former route of Wooster Street but three identical towers would be carefully arranged around a central lawn, with the east section of the superblock, between Mercer and Wooster Streets, left open. This block-long parcel is now occupied by the Jerome S. Coles Sports Center, completed in 1982.
In Freedâs final scheme, the towers were deliberately arranged to turn away from the surrounding streets, particularly West Houston Street, a busy cross-town artery, and LaGuardia Place, which the city had intended to widen below Washington Square. Located near the center of the site, they rise from a slightly elevated man-made platform that raises the south end of the block almost ten feet and hides two parking garages. Landscaping would also be used to increase privacy and enhance the schemeâs floating pinwheel arrangement.
In contrast to Washington Square Village, where the two buildings stand parallel to each other, the buildings in University Village are oriented in different directions, with two towers facing north toward Bleecker Street, and the other, west toward LaGuardia Place. This type of arrangement was pioneered in two earlier Pei projects, first at Kips Bay Plaza, where the two 21story apartment buildings slide in opposite directions toward the east and west, and more closely at Society Hill, where three 31-story towers rise tightly around a plaza. Whereas most Manhattan buildings fit snugly into the grid and address the street directly in a conventional way, at University Village each structure seems independent and was deliberately positioned in an asymmetrical manner around a 100-by-100-foot lawn to maximize views and create general visual interest. In addition, these open spaces act as corridors to frame views of each tower. Pei later remarked:
A city, so far from being a cluster of buildings, is actually a sequence of spaces
enclosed and defined by buildings. This may sound strange but it is the essence of
urban design.
Unlike many âtower in the parkâ projects located in New York City, Freed created a deliberate tension between the buildings and the space they occupy â not unlike the celebrated mid-20th century sculptor Alberto Giacomettiâs City Square in which âfour men stride across a wide plaza, each moving toward the center, yet none apparently directed toward an encounter with one another.â University Village similarly avoids a single axis or orientation, and thus also recalls the spatial experiments of the De Stijl group in Holland during the late 1910s and 1920s, as well as early residential projects designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Such innovative modernist ideas were essential to the final scheme, shaping not only the site plan but also the design of the three towers.
Towers of Concrete
Pei favored reinforced concrete over all other building materials during the early 1960s. His work was typically crisp and elegant and this material defines the character of his mid-career production. A great admirer of the Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier , Pei claimed that in Shanghai before 1944: âThere were no teachers to teach us the new architecture . . . so we turned to Corbuâs books, and these were responsible for half of our education.â Titled the Oeuvre Complete, this self-published series of eight volumes documented Le Corbusierâs development as an architect and his frequent use of concrete construction to create a formal language of abstract sculptural forms. This was particularly evident in his late design for the Unité dâHabitation at Marseilles, which features a 12-story horizontal grid of deeply-recessed cells. During the late 1940s, this project received international attention and the play of large and small openings on the buildingâs facade may have influenced Peiâs subsequent work in concrete, especially his apartment buildings.
University Village makes extremely sophisticated use of exposed concrete. It falls under the general stylistic category known as âBrutalismâ for its straightforward use of this material but in contrast to many examples, particularly the late work of Le Corbusier and Breuer, as well as Paul Rudolph, the exterior is noticeably smooth and elegant. Pei developed this technique between 1957 and 1960, while employed by Zeckendorf. He later recalled: âI had a wonderful client . . . who was willing to gamble with me on using concrete and not brick.â Edward L. Friedman headed the firmâs research, publishing a thorough article on the subject in October 1960, just before NYU awarded Pei the commission. Though initial studies seemed to support the continued use of pre-cast concrete , cast-in-place concrete was substituted to trim costs and conform to building codes that encouraged âstructural continuity.â Many challenges were overcome, such as how to control the consistency of the color and difficulties with shrinkage and cracking. Friedman described the nearly-complete Kips Bay Plaza as a âprototype,â while the firmâs soon-to-be built scheme for three towers at Society Hill was termed a ârefinement.â
As construction of University Village neared completion, architect Araldo A. Cossuta, published âFrom Precast Concrete to Integral Architectureâ in October 1966. He, too, was part of Peiâs office and his essay celebrated the firmâs accomplishments, paying particular attention to the Earth Sciences Center at MIT where, as at University Village, load-bearing walls were poured on site to create column-free interiors. He specifically criticized conventional skin construction and how architects sometimes disguise the handiwork of engineers. The goal, Cossuta argued, was to create âreal wallsâ â not curtain walls â through the integration of structure and skin. He maintained that this technique would result in a âreturn to classical simplicityâ and that such plastic forms can express an âexternal-internal continuumâ whereby architects take âpossession of shadows rather than diluting them by reflection.â
A warm, buff-colored concrete was selected for University Village, comparable, depending on the light, to sandstone or limestone. At Chatham Towers in Chinatown, architects used plywood boards to form the exposed concrete, producing a rough and yet interesting patterned surface. At University Village, however, fiberglass molds were employed. According to Friedman, this material was chosen for various reasons: not only was the quality of the results high but fiberglass is easy to assemble, strip, and re-use. Furthermore, various concrete coatings, release agents, and even scaffoldings were evaluated. In terms of cost and quality, he claimed that such research returned handsome dividends. Each section took approximately four-to-eight weeks to set and harden, and overall, construction took six-to-eight weeks less than conventional brick facings.
The three towers display twin sets of gridded facades projecting from a central core. Each floor has four or eight horizontal window openings and a 22-foot-wide sheer wall, separated by a thin slot of flat windows. Located at either end, these smooth windowless walls contrast with the deeply-recessed window openings and reflect light. Each opening is formed by a pair of T-shaped columns that meet over the center of the bay. These columns narrow toward the front, creating a wedge-shaped profile. Between floors, horizontal and vertical joints are visible. These gaps indicate each stage of casting and allow for thermal movement throughout the year. Deep reveals were fashioned to conceal troweled joints.
At the base, the T-shaped columns are considerably taller â more than twice the height of the residential floors. These columns form a continuous entrance arcade along the front facades, similar to Kips Bay Plaza. Shaped like elongated diamonds, they enclose a deep gallery with tan brick walls that flank the glazed outer walls of the lobby. In terms of color and rhythm they exhibit a vaguely classical spirit, suggesting an ancient Greek or Roman temple.
Construction
A ceremonial ground breaking for the first building â Washington Square South East, later known as 505 West Broadway â was held on August 12, 1964, following approval of plans by the Housing and Redevelopment Board and the Building Department. In attendance was NYU President James W. Hester who described the project as âa successful example of community cooperation.â Later that year, in November 1964, the Board of Estimate endorsed the larger scheme, along with various criteria to determine residency in the cooperative apartments. Tenants who had been forced to move were given first priority, followed by people dislocated by similar projects in Greenwich Village. At this time, the Board of Estimate also approved the closing of Greene and Wooster Streets.
Construction started in late August 1964. The Tishman Construction Company served as contractor and Farkas & Barron was the engineer. Amberg, from Peiâs office, served as site architect, overseeing day-to-day operations. The first step was the pouring of the foundations â a four-foot-thick concrete pad covering each buildingâs footprint. More complicated than conventional concrete footings, it required continuous pouring and the delivery process was characterized by the New York Times as having the âprecision of a military campaign.â It was a relatively efficient process and, according to Amberg, the towers rose simultaneously on a âthree day cycle.â On the first day, the fiberglass forms were erected incorporating the steel, followed by a day for pouring, and a day for removing the formwork. Construction progressed on a âstaggeredâ schedule, meaning that the contractor performed one of three tasks on each tower during a given day. The first building was âtopped outâ in December 1964 and by late 1966 the three towers were nearly complete.
Modern Architecture and New York University
Prior to the 1930s, most American universities commissioned buildings inspired by European and Jeffersonian models, including neo-classical and neo-Gothic structures that recalled Oxford, Cambridge, Charlottesville, as well as other historic centers of learning. After World War I, European architects began to challenge this approach, arguing that traditional forms were no longer desirable or appropriate. These ideas attracted considerable support in the United States. The New School for Social Research was one of the first buildings in New York City and one of the first college buildings in the United States to exhibit characteristics of the so-called âInternational Style.â Designed by Joseph Urban in 1930-31, the clean-lined glass and brick facade stood in sharp juxtaposition to its nineteenth-century neighbors. By decadeâs end, several modern-style campuses had begun construction, including Florida Southern University , IIT , and Hunter College . After World War II, this trend accelerated, transforming the campuses of Harvard University, Yale University, and MIT.
NYU embarked on a major building campaign during the late 1940s. To help guide the schoolâs expansion, a Buildings and Grounds Committee of the Board of Trustees was formed in 1952. George F. Baughman, the schoolâs vice president and treasurer, praised their vision:
Without their willingness to take risks, we could do nothing. As an example, because of their enthusiastic aid, we have been able to employ some of the most exciting architects now practicing . . . a cross section of talent representing the best of contemporary American architecture.
Many exceptional firms participated, including Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Harrison & Abramowitz, and Marcel Breuer. Among them, SOM was responsible for the schoolâs first structure designed in the International Style â the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Located near 34th Street, on the east side of First Avenue, it was part of the NYU-Bellevue Medical Center. Construction began in 1949 and the first four SOM buildings were completed by 1956. To provide housing for the schoolâs staff, a plan for NYU-Bellevue Title I was issued in 1953. When the developer failed to obtain financing, Robert Moses invited William Zeckendorf to take over the project and he replaced S. J. Kessler & Sons with his own architect, I. M. Pei, in 1957. Located in full sight of the medical center, on the west side of First Avenue, this well-designed complex positioned Pei as a leading candidate to design University Village.
By 1959 NYU had seven new buildings under construction. The Architectural Record enthusiastically reported: âNew York University â largest in the nation â is matching its size with a building program that calls for thirty-five million dollars worth of construction in one year!â Included were structures designed by Breuer, Harrison & Abramowitz, SOM, and Warner Burns, Toan & Lund.
Bust of Sylvette
At the center of University Village, near the southeast corner of the center lawn, stands Pablo Picassoâs Bust of Sylvette. Thirty-six feet tall and purportedly weighing sixty tons, this colossal cubistic sculpture served a dual purpose â to decorate the lawn and to enhance the schemeâs pinwheel character.
Outdoor sculpture has played an important role in New York City since the mid-nineteenth century. Most early examples were financed by private groups to embellish public squares and parks. Some, like bronze portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln at Union Square, were intended to express patriotism and recall historic events, while others, including Central Parkâs Angel of the Waters served a symbolic purpose, representing common ideas and shared beliefs. Gradually war monuments and memorials began to dominate the public realm, particularly to honor the 25th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. Most were executed in a realistic style, with handsome stone pedestals, echoing the classical statuary of ancient Greece and Rome.
The Bust of Sylvette, however, belonged to an entirely new tradition, one inspired by French modernism and the Art Deco style. At Rockefeller Center, a gilded statue of the Greek god Prometheus was commissioned to adorn the sunken plaza. Located on axis with the promenade that connects with Fifth Avenue, it was conceived to draw people toward the lower shopping concourse and serve as a gleaming focal point or âeye catcherâ within the limestone complex. Other works at Rockefeller Center were notable for employing the modern materials, such as glass block, stainless steel, and aluminum.
This trend intensified after the Second World War, especially during the period when modern architectural aesthetics became part of the mainstream. Industrial materials transformed the appearance of new buildings and new planning concepts would open up Manhattanâs grid with privately-owned plazas. Two pioneering examples, Lever House and the Seagram Building , were conceived as settings for contemporary sculpture. Though no works were executed, major pieces were, in fact, commissioned for Chase Manhattan Plaza in lower Manhattan: a sunken circular garden by Isamu Noguchi and Group of Four Trees , a 42-foot-tall work by Jean Dubuffet.
Pei first developed an interest in modern art during the 1940s. He collected works by Abstract Expressionist painters, as well as sculptures by Dubuffet and Henry Moore. During a 1958 visit to Paris he met the Norwegian sculptor Carl Nesjar , who was returning home from the south of France where he recently introduced Picasso to the technique called ânaturebetongâ or nature concrete. Also known as âBetrograve,â this sandblasting process was developed by architect Erling Viksjö and engineer Svere Jystad during the mid-1950s. Picasso commented: âI am intrigued with your concrete and want to do something with it.â Initially, he made four large wall drawings for a government building in Oslo, followed by a 1961 frieze in Barcelona. Pei told Nesjar:
I have long thought about monumental sculpture in scale with modern architecture,
and I recognize the possibilities of concrete technique. Here and now I am beginning
a one-man crusade to have a monumental Picasso work for one of my projects.
Pei wanted to install a Picasso, possibly from the Sylvette series, in the courtyard of Kips Bay Plaza but his client, Zeckendorf, was not convinced it was essential to the program. He reportedly told the architect: âI can give you fifty saplings or this piece of sculpture.â Pei ultimately chose trees. In Philadelphia, however, the cityâs Percent for Art Ordinance, established in 1959, required that developers incorporate art into their projects. Early renderings for Society Hill illustrate two pieces: an equestrian statue set on a raised pedestal in the central plaza, and what appears to be Sylvette, on a lawn behind the apartment towers. Though neither would be executed, Pei reportedly had a $400,000 budget and instead commissioned bronze sculptures by Gaston Lachaise and Leonard Baskin.
Sylvette David was nineteen years old when she met Picasso in spring 1953. Approximately forty portraits of her in various media resulted, including the group of five busts that Nesjar viewed at the artistâs Valluris studio, La Galliose, in 1962. Fabricated with folded sheet metal and then painted, each piece was approximately two feet tall. In consultation with Nesjar, Picasso selected which would be most appropriate for enlargement and then produced a photo collage representing the view from Houston Street. Dated April 4, 1967 and October 17, 1967, the artist wrote: âI agree that Nesjar reproduce this sculpture.â A close examination of the collage, however, reveals that during the period between the two dates the sculptureâs location was changed from the west side of the lawn, where it would have been visible from the intersection of Houston and Mercer Streets, to a somewhat more central location, opposite the entrance to 110 Bleecker Street.
In November 1967, while a retrospective devoted to Picassoâs sculpture was being held at the Museum of Modern Art, NYU formally announced the commission. The model for Sylvette was part of the exhibition and Pei persuaded one of the museumâs patrons, Allan D. and Kate S. Emil, to finance it. It was the second sculpture that the family had donated to the school, following an abstract aluminum relief by Rueben Nakian , which originally adorned the upper north wall of the Loeb Student Center . Articles appeared in the New York Times and Time magazine which described the projected Picasso sculpture as âhalf as high and twice as sexy as the Great Sphinx of Egypt.â Alfred Barr, former MoMA director, forecast that it would be the âgrandest sculpture in Manhattan . . . not to mention the tallest pony-tail hairdo in the whole world.â It would be the second monumental Picasso sculpture in the United States â the first being an untitled fifty-foot-tall work executed in Cor-Ten steel for the Chicago Civic Center .
Nesjarâs team worked on Sylvette for five months, from January to June 1968, taking twice the time estimated. He was assisted by two Norwegians, the carpenter Sigurd Fragure and the artist-writer Eric Hesselberg, who served on the crew of the Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947. The New York firm Wieskopf & Pickworth assisted with the structural engineering. It was Nesjarâs twelfth collaboration with the Picasso. Nesjar commented:
This is a collaboration or if you prefer, a translation . . . Iâm like a conductor of an orchestra. The composer gives me a piece of music and then itâs up to me to see what I can do with it.
It was a unique relationship and Picassoâs only criticism of Nesjar was that results were frequently âtoo perfect.â
Freed and Amberg coordinated the sculpture project and, according to Pei, spent nearly a year bringing it to fruition. Amberg briefly lived in a NYU-University Village apartment and worked closely with Nesjar. To prepare the site, a beam and slab foundation was formed, supported by steel beams that rise from the garage. On top of the base, one side of the sculptureâs plywood formwork was assembled, followed by the steel skeleton, consisting of reinforcement bars. The skeleton was then enclosed with a second set of boards to create a water-tight form filled with crushed black basalt pebbles imported from Norway, as well as Hudson Valley traprock. Next, the rock was gently vibrated to achieve maximum density. According to Amberg, Nesjarâs team then drilled numerous ports that were used to inject the form with liquid concrete. This process was repeated several times until the concrete reached the top. After six days, the boards were removed, revealing a smooth, joint-free surface. In the final steps, Nesjar marked the outer surface with charcoal and wax crayon, making minor adjustments to the artistâs original vision for reasons of scale or point of view. He remarked: âI must be the only person in the world who has corrected a Picasso.â Nesjar then used a sandblast nozzle to expose the dark rock, making her face, hair, and shoulders permanently visible.
The Bust of Sylvette was dedicated the universityâs Tishman Auditorium on December 9, 1968. Neither Allan nor Kate Emil had attended NYU but during his speech he described their shared admiration for the school and the âwork it does today.â He also observed:
Picasso is one of the most important artists of our time, and New York should have a major example of his work in this medium. I canât think of a better location for it than New York University, where it can serve education, art, and the public at large.
Reception
University Village attracted considerable attention from the local media but only a few articles in national magazines. Initially, most writers focused on Peiâs innovative use of exposed concrete. The New York Herald Tribune reported in April 1964 that the preliminary design would âyield architectural distinction rarely associated with even more costly buildings.â As the project neared completion, the New York Times took a more neutral position; the complex was called âcontroversial,â with detailed descriptions of the exoskeleton and the interior layouts. Architectural Forum published the most thoughtful and detailed essay in December 1966. Written by critic and photographer Cerwin Robinson, he examined the complex in terms of plan, technique, tenant amenities and neighborhood context. He concluded: âThe three towers are among the least costly Pei has done. They are also among his best. New York has gained not only a triad of landmarks but clear proof that inexpensive housing can be distinguished architecture.â In Fortune magazine, Douglass Haskell featured the complex on a list of the ten best buildings of 1966, placing it under the category where architects engage in a âback-andforth play between a showy sculptural architecture on the one hand and on the other the concept of a reserved repetitive grid.â
University Village was honored with three professional awards. Under the category of residential work, it received a prize from the Concrete Industry Board of New York in December 1966, a Bard Award for excellence in design from the City Club of New York and a national honor award from the American Institute of Architects , both during May 1967. And when the first AIA Guide to NY debuted in 1967, the complex was strongly praised:
Of these three, nearly identical towers, the one closest to West Broadway is Mitchell-Lama middle income housing â undoubtedly the finest in the city, and much better than Peiâs Kips Bay Plaza . . . the result is exceptional for high-rise housing where one can, for a change, grasp the size of the individual apartments . . . from the north they appear as the logical and elegant termination of the progression of recently built, structures.
The nearly complete towers, along with NYUâs Weaver Hall, were likewise part of the AIAâs 1967 exhibition of âoutstanding architecture of the last 100 yearsâ built in New York City.
A decade later, in 1979, New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger described the three towers as âdignified and sophisticated . . . In a city with hardly more than a handful of decent postwar apartment houses, these stand out. Peiâs ability to bring rhythm and texture to a facade that is just a grid of concrete is absolutely superb.â Critic-cartographer John Tauranac commented in Essential New York that the towers were âCrisply designed [with an] attention to massing and detailing that many âluxuryâ houses ignore. The tenants get their moneyâs worth, as do the passing pedestrians.â Architect-historian Robert A. M. Stern later praised the complex in New York 1960, calling it âanimated, sculpturally vigorous yet human-scaled design.â And in Manhattan Skyscrapers, a 1999 book devoted to mainly office buildings, Eric P. Nash praised University Village for exhibiting an âelegant synthesis of many strains of modernist design.â Calling the complex a âfine composition,â he observed that it displays a âkinetic sense of energyâ in which âthe flow of space is almost palpable.â
When Freed died in 2005, many writers paid tribute to his career, particularly Terence Riley, curator of architecture at the Museum of Modern Art. Among the various buildings he called out in the obituary in the International Herald Tribune, University Village was cited as being one of âthe most refined examples of modern design in all of Manhattan.â
Subsequent history
University Village looks much as it did when NYU faculty began to occupy the schoolâs two buildings during late 1966. Most of the cooperative apartments were sold by October 1965 and the owner-tenants began to occupy the third building in April 1967. Both NYU buildings were renamed in 1974 to honor a major donor to the school, Julius Silver, class of 1922. Trained as a lawyer at Columbia University, for many years he advised Edwin Land of the Polaroid Corporation. A free-standing metal plaque installed on the north side of the plaza acknowledges his substantial gifts to the school, as well as horizontal metal plaques attached the walls inside each buildingâs arcade. The diagonal path, connecting the central plaza to Bleecker Street, is not original and probably was added during the 1970s or 1980s. Many of the freestanding lighting fixtures, except those near 505 LaGuardia Place, date from the 1980s or later. Overall, the concrete exteriors are in a remarkably good state of repair. Some patching, however, is visible, particularly on the north facade of 505 LaGuardia Place.
Description
University Village is located in the southeast section of Greenwich Village on two tax lots bordered, in part, by LaGuardia Place, Bleecker Street, and West Houston Street. The south half of the site has been raised to create a level platform for the three buildings. Beneath the buildings are two parking garages, reached by separate concrete entrance ramps on the north side of West Houston Street. The east ramp, serving both NYU buildings, is located close to Greene Street. Painted steel tubular railings are attached to the top of the concrete walls that flank the ramp. Along part of the top of the east wall is steel fencing. The west ramp, located between Wooster Street and LaGuardia Place, serves the 505 LaGuardia Place garage. Steel fencing is attached to the upper portion of the concrete walls that enclose the west garage entrance. Pedestrian access to both garages is provided by sidewalks, lined with steel fencing, leading to single, hollow-metal doors; the doors are located on the west side of the east garage, and on the east side of the west garage. Both garages have metal roll-up doors. Immediately to the west of each garage ramp is a sanitation area. Both sanitation areas have locked gates, concrete paving and low concrete walls surmounted by steel fences. The western sanitation area has sheet metal attached to the inside face of the fence.
A paved drive, located along the former Wooster Street links Houston and Bleecker Streets. From Houston Street, the original purplish-pink, granite-block paved drive separates 110 Bleecker Street and 505 LaGuardia Place. This drive turns east, passing the entrance of 110 Bleecker Street, and then north, passing 100 Bleecker Street, and then east again, bordering the central lawn/plaza. Planted with grass, the level plaza is square in shape, with rounded corners. Adjoining the corners are arrow-shaped metal drains set into concrete. At the southeast corner of the lawn is the Bust of Sylvette, as well as a small brass plaque on a low concrete pedestal identifying the artist and donor. Historic concrete curbs curl into the granite road bed, with three curb cuts leading to the west drive. Concrete bollards, original and mostly in good condition, are scattered around the sidewalk that adjoins the road. Along the north sidewalk is a low concrete bench with a slight cantilever on both sides that extends from the northwest corner of 100 Bleecker Street to the east side of the west drive . Toward the west end of the sidewalk is a pair of bronze-colored metal flagpoles. Between the flagpoles, a freestanding metal plaque set into a concrete slab describes the NYU buildings.
The north lawn parallels Bleecker Street and extends east from the drive to the eastern edge of the site. The closely-planted trees are likely to date from the time of construction. The lawn also contains non-historic lighting fixtures, including U-shaped pole lights and pole-mounted flood lights. A diagonal concrete path, starting near the northwest corner of 100 Bleecker Street, extends northeast through the north lawn, ending near the Bleecker Street sidewalk. The east lawn, adjoining 100 Bleecker Street, extends south to a concrete path, from the siteâs east boundary. Between this path and Houston Street is a seating area featuring a broken spiral of concrete benches. At the southeast corner of the site, between the seating area and east garage ramp on Houston Street, is a playground enclosed with original concrete walls, featuring a concrete bench, ramp, and circular sandbox set into the ground and a circular tree planter. The south central lawn, between 110 Bleecker Street and Houston Street, is bordered by a steel fence on the east, west, and south. It is also enclosed by a non-historic chain-link fence extending from the east facade of 110 Bleecker Street to the playground. An original concrete taxi call light is located at the southwest corner of the south central lawn, near Houston Street.
South of 505 LaGuardia Place is a lush private garden, enclosed by a steel fence. This garden, as well as the buildingâs rear facade, is visible through the fence. Located within the garden are two original lampposts. Proceeding north from Houston Street, along the shaded path between the private garden and the âTime Landscapeâ , is a wide concrete staircase with four metal railings that ascend east into a mews or passageway, passing 505 LaGuardia Place on the right . This passage has three original painted metal light poles, each with five glass globes. The other lighting fixtures along the plaza and sidewalks are non-historic and feature slender steel poles with U-shaped supports that hold covered square-shaped down lights. Where there is grass, they are set on concrete cubes, the rest are bolted to the sidewalk. Along the north side of this passage is a low concrete bench that encloses a planting bed. Directly north of the stairs, the west end of the bench becomes the top of a concrete wall, to which the raised historic metal numbers â505â are attached. At the east end, the bench curves and meets a rectangular base on which a steel fence has been installed. Non-historic metal signs are installed on the face of the bench. From this bench, a sidewalk extends north along the west side of the former route of Wooster Street. Here, non-historic U-shaped lighting fixtures and trees alternate. A high steel fence separates the sidewalk from a planting bed with a second row of trees, as well as a low concrete wall that separates the complex from the space used by the adjacent supermarket driveway. A chain-link fence is installed on top of this wall.
Adjoining the central plaza, to the east, south and west are three 30-story apartment buildings. Located near the center of the site, this trio rises in isolation and stands taller than the various buildings that surround the site. Each tower is defined by grids of deeply-recessed windows executed with exposed concrete. Wider than deep, each projecting facade has four or eight windows, flanked on one side by a row of narrow windows, as well as a sheer wall of concrete divided into vertical panels. Each bay consists of two sections: the upper one incorporates a pair of sliding aluminum windows, and the smaller lower section, a ventilation grille. At the ground story, the primary facades have deep arcades that lead to lobbies, and the secondary facades have large windows set above raised bases. Small recessed openings at the basement level are filled with louvers; most of the louvers at 505 LaGuardia Place are original, while most of those at 100 and 110 Bleecker Street are non-historic. Other non-historic elements include: flood lights mounted to many of the basement louvers and parapets, metal mesh boxlike fences which enclose recesses at the ground floor; sheet-metal signage; and security cameras.
The exterior wall of the lobby of 505 LaGuardia Place faces north and is set behind an arcade. There is a short step within each bay, except at the east end, which has been converted to a ramp. The cement pavement within the arcade is divided into rectangles; joints separating the rectangles are aligned with the columns. The step riser at the two center bays has been painted yellow. The east and west walls of the arcade are faced with tan brick. On the west wall is the historic â505â sign with raised digits. The ceiling incorporates a row of original recessed lighting fixtures, aligned with the center of each bay. The entrance consists of a projecting pavilion with concrete side walls, brown-colored aluminum framed windows and two inward-opening glass doors. The pavilion is flanked by recessed plate glass windows on either side. A service entry located to the west end of the arcade has brown-painted metal doors and a sheet metal transom. A non-historic security camera is installed at the east end of the arcade on the upper wall. Original â505â signs with raised digits are located on the northeast corner of the north facade and at the northwest corner of the west facade.
The exterior wall of the lobbies of 100 and 110 Bleecker Street are similar to 505 LaGuardia but are not identical, with larger sheets of plate glass to either side of the entrance pavilion. Horizontal metal strips have been added in various locations near the ground to protect the glass. The walls to the right of both entrances are faced with tan brick. Attached to these walls are the original raised numerals that indicate the buildingâs address â100â and â110,â as well as a circa 1970s metal plaque indicating âSILVER TOWERS, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY.â The shallow ramps that enter through the arcade are not original and probably replaced a single step. Most of the lighting fixtures in these arcades are not original, nor are the low granite benches on either end. Original service entries with metal doors and sheet-metal transoms are located on the west side of 110 Bleecker Street and the south side of 100 Bleecker Street.
- From the 2008 NYCLPC Landmark Designation Report
The tiles were executed in Iznik, most likely under the direction of Kara Memi, famous for book illumination as well as pottery and tile design. Kara Memi (fl. 1545–1566), also known as Kara Mehmed Çelebi, was the chief court painter (sernakkāş) for Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent
Dawn raids saw officers in Oldham execute six drugs warrants as part of a crackdown on drug dealing in the district.
At around 6.15am this morning (Thursday 2 July 2020), officers from GMP’s Oldham division raided an address on Chamber Road, Coppice, and at five properties in the Glodwick area.
The action comes after concerns were raised in the community regarding the dealing of drugs in the area.
Neighbourhood Inspector Steve Prescott, of GMP’s Oldham division, said: “We hope that today’s operation demonstrates not only how keen we are to tackle drugs across the district and the Force, but also our endeavours to listen to community concerns and to act upon them.
“Today’s action is a significant part of tackling the issues around drugs that we see too often in our societies and the devastating impact they can have on individuals, their families and loved ones as well as the wider community.
“This action will have caused a huge amount of disruption for the criminals who seek to infiltrate these substances onto our streets and degrade the quality of life for so many.
“Anyone with concerns about the dealing of such drugs in their area should not hesitate to contact police; safe in the knowledge that we are prepared to strike back against those who operate in this destructive and illegal industry.”
To find out more about Greater Manchester Police please visit
You should call 101, the national non-emergency number, to report crime and other concerns that do not require an emergency response.
Always call 999 in an emergency, such as when a crime is in progress, violence is being used or threatened or where there is danger to life.
You can also call anonymously with information about crime to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Crimestoppers is an independent charity who will not want your name, just your information. Your call will not be traced or recorded and you do not have to go to court or give a statement.
You can access many of our services online at www.gmp.police.uk
Grieving Mothers, also known as Sacrifice and Devotion, was executed by Bela Lyon Pratt in 1914. The bronze kneeling woman is dedicated to the mothers of the nation and in memory of Henrietta Armitt (brown) Heckscher, who died in child birth on June 11, 1912. The piece, which sits in enclosed garden of the Cloisters of the Colonies, was commissioned by Stevens Heckscher, the husband of Henrietta Heckscher. The Cloisters of the Colonies, to the west of Washington Memorial Chapter, features one bay for each of the colonies.
Washington Memorial Chapel, located on private property along Route 23 within Valley Forge National Historic Park, serves as both an active Episcopal Parish as well as a tribute to General George Washington. Designed by Milton B. Medary, and resulting from a sermon preached by founder, the Rev. Dr. W. Herbert Burk, the Chapel was completed in 1917--fourteen years after the cornerstone was laid on the 125th anniversary of the evacuation of the continental army from the area.
Valley Forge National Historical Park, encompassing 3,466-acres eighteen miles northwest of Philadelphia, preserves and reinterprets the site where the the main body of the Continental Army--between 10,000 and 12,000 troops--was encamped during from December 19, 1778 to June 19, 1778, the American Revolutionary War.
After the Battle of White Marsh (or Edge Hill), Washington chose Valley Forge as an encampment because it was between the Continental Congress in York, Supply Depots in Reading, and British forces in Philadelphia. Undernourished and poorly clothed through the harsh winter, Washington's troops were ravaged by disease, suffering as many as two thousand losses, with thousands more listed as unfit for futy. Despite the conditions, the winter at Valley Forge proved invaluable for the young army, which underwent its first uniform training regimen, under the guidance of Prussian drill master, Baron Friedrich von Steuben.
Valley Forge, named for the iron forge built along Valley Creek in the 1740's, was established as the first state park of Pennsylvania in 1893 by the Valley Forge Park Commission. In 1923, the VFPC was brought under the Department of Forests and Waters and later incorporated into the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in 1971. In 1976, Pennsylvania gave the park as a gift to the nation for the the Bicentennial. The National Park System established the area as Valley Forge National Historical Park on July 4, 1976.
Valley Forge National Historical Park National Register #66000657 (1966)
Adam von Trott zu Solz. "
Executed with his friends in the fight against those who ruined our homeland.
Pray for them.
Their example is an inspiration to us all"
Helmut Leiner, one of fourteen people charged in civilian courts with aiding eight Nazi saboteurs who landed by submarine on U.S. shores In July 1942, is shown in a mugshot after his arrest.
Helmut Leiner was aa close friend of Edward John Kerling, the leader of a group of German Nazi saboteurs who landed by U-boat near Jacksonville, Florida on June 17, 1942.
Leiner had been approved by the German High Command as a secret contact for the saboteurs in the United States.
Kerling contacted Leiner in New York City immediately after arriving in the United States and Leiner assisted him in making other contacts in the area. Leiner changed large American bills into smaller denominations and brought Kerling up to speed on travel regulations.
Leiner was born in Germany in August 1909 and first arrived in the U.S. in 1929. He was a member of the Nazi Party in Germany and associated with the German American Bund-a pro-Nazi organization in the U.S.
While in Germany he received the golden insignia, emblematic of pioneer service with the Nazi party.
Leiner worked as a gardener in the United States and was not a citizen. At the time of his arrest he was living in Astoria, Queens, New York.
The eight Nazi saboteurs who landed in the U.S. in Florida and New York were almost immediately arrested after one of them, George Dasch, contacted the FBI and turned himself in.
The eight saboteurs were quickly convicted--six of whom were executed in August 1942, including Kerling; one received a life sentence; and one received 30 years imprisonment following a Washington, D.C. military trial.
Fourteen other people, including Leiner, were charged with aiding the eight saboteurs. Leiner was charged with treason and the government was seeking the death penalty.
However Leiner was acquitted by the Judge John W. Clancy of treason on technical grounds November 30, 1942.
The government quickly moved to detain Leiner as an enemy alien for the duration of the war. They brought new charges against Leiner in 1943. Leiner in turn pled guilty to the lesser charge of trading with the enemy June 18, 1943 and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Of the others charged with aiding the saboteurs some received various prison terms, some had charges dropped, some were detained as enemy aliens and deported after the war ended.
For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmPiRmT4
The photographer is unknown. The image is believed to be a U.S. government photograph. It is housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.
Marguerite Bourgeoys enseignant was executed by Marius Dubois in 1982.
Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal (Notre-Dame Basilica), at 110 Rue Notre Dame Ouest, facing Place d'Armes square, was designed in 1824 by James O'Donnell. At the time of its completion, the Neo-Gothic structure was the largest church in North America. Notre-Dame was raised to the status of a minor basilica by Pope John Paul II during a visit to the city on April 21, 1982.
In 1657, the Roman Catholic Sulpician Order arrived in Ville-Marie, now known as Montreal; six years later the seigneury of the island was vested in them and they ruled until 1840. The parish they founded was dedicated to the Holy Name of Mary, and the parish church of Notre-Dame was built on the site in 1672. By 1824 the congregation had completely outgrown the church, and O'Donnell, an Irish-American Protestant from New York, was commissioned to design the new building. O'Donnell was a proponent of the Gothic Revival architectural movement, and designed the church as such. It is said that the experience affected him so profoundly that he converted to Catholicism prior to his 1930 death. He is the only person to be buried in the church's crypt.
Work on the church's interior continued under the guidance of Victor Bourgeau until 1879. Notre Dame's ceiling is coloured deep blue and decorated with golden stars. It is filled with hundreds of intricate wooden carvings and several religious statues. The main altar is made from a hand-carved linden tree. The stained glass windows depict scenes from the religious history of Montreal, instead of more traditional biblical scenes. It also has a Canadian-built Casavant Frères pipe organ, which comprises four keyboards, 97 stops, almost 7000 individual pipes and a pedal board. A 10-bell carillon resides in the east tower, while the west tower contains a single massive bell. Nicknamed "Le Gros Bourdon," it weighs more than 12 tons and has a low, resonant rumble that vibrates right up through your feet. It is tolled only on special occasions.
Chapelle du Sacré-Coeur (Chapel of the Sacred Heart), a more inimate chapel, was built behind the altar in 1888. A major arson fire destroyed the Sacré-Coeur on December 7, 1978. It was rebuilt and rededicated in 1982. The chapel's new altar feature 32 bronze panels by Montréal artist Charles Daudelin, representing birth, life, and death.
Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal was the site of the 2000 state funeral of Pierre Trudeau, Canada's 15th prime minister, and the 2000 provincial state funeral for former Montreal Canadiens superstar, Maurice "Rocket" "richard. It was also the site for Celine Dion's 1994 wedding to René Angélil.
Well executed and nicely proportioned budget 1/64 Mercedes-Benz C-Class by HTI, no cheapo unlicensed effort here, its a fully approved product and it shows with its full array of official badging and an interior which replicates the real vehicle. Plenty of choice of colours especially when it was available from Sainsbury's through most of 2016. Mint and boxed.
This portrait of George Washingtonn (Catalog Number INDE44867) was executed Rembrandt Peale in 1848. Having painted his first portrait of Washington in 1795, Peale subsequently envisioned an epic equestrian portrait for permanent display in the Capital. In 1824, he began work on this monumental canvas, entitled George Washington Before Yorktown, which he intended for purchase by Congress, but which remained in his studio until privately soldin 1862 to the City of Phildaelphia.
George Washington (1732-1799) was the first President of the United States from 1789–1797 after serving as Commander-in-Chief and leading the Continental Army to victory over the Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War. As president, he established many of the customs and usages of the new government's executive department. His unilateral Proclamation of Neutrality of 1793 provided a basis for avoiding any involvement in foreign conflicts. He supported plans to build a strong central government by funding the national debt, implementing an effective tax system, and creating a national bank.
The Second Bank of the United States, at 420 Chestnut Street, was chartered five years after the expiration of the First Bank of the United States in 1816 to keep inflation in check following the War of 1812. The Bank served as the depository for Federal funds until 1833, when it became the center of bitter controversy between bank president Nicholas Biddle and President Andrew Jackson. The Bank, always a privately owned institution, lost its Federal charter in 1836, and ceased operations in 1841. The Greek Revival building, built between 1819 and 1824 and modeled by architect William Strickland after the Parthenon, continued for a short time to house a banking institution under a Pennsylvania charter. From 1845 to 1935 the building served as the Philadelphia Customs House. Today it is open, free to the public, and features the "People of Independence" exhibit--a portrait gallery with 185 paintings of Colonial and Federal leaders, military officers, explorers and scientists, including many by Charles Willson Peale.
Independence National Historical Park preserves several sites associated with the American Revolution. Administered by the National Park Service, the 45-acre park was authorized in 1948, and established on July 4, 1956. The Second Bank of the United States was added to the Park's properties in 2006.
Second Bank of the United States National Register #87001293 (1987)
Independence National Park Historic District National Register #66000675 (1966)
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#ELDER_SCROLL_OF_MNEM_0.0♾😻
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ℹ️8️⃣📞📲📳☎️♾💁♂️
ℹ️▶️⏯⏭↕️🔘https://youtu.be/bS5JnGBmghM
First of all; the #FBI does not have the clearance, to be in possession, of my nuclear codesz.
Load, Load, Load; you're too slow, #YouTube. And do you know what that means? It means that you are #Guilty of #HighTreason. &, do you know what that means? It means that you are #Executed by #FiringSquad.
Nope; your apology means nothing to me. It means, that you are still #Executed by #FiringSquad.
That's one☝️. Two✌️; I👆, told you💭💬📣🔊📢; I did not suggest to you – I told you, #YouTube; that I need 14-15,000 characters🔤🔡🔠🔢; &, you refused to comply. Therefore; you are shot🔫 to death – #Executed for #HighTreason, twice✌️👋😽💀😵.👀
Three3️⃣☘️; #JohnPaulMacIssac: I simply, or merely, tell💭💬📣🔊📢 the #FBI, to go & fuck themselves; & to eat shit💩🚽, & die💀😵⚰️⚱️. 👀
☎️▶️⏯⏩⏭➡️🔀↕️🔘https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=qKVkhQQXEGE&feature=share
She asked me to cum⛲️💦💧🌊🎣🐟🔫 over, to #Steinway🎹🏭, in #Astoria👸; & then, after driving from #Pennsylvania #Pistolvania, she was on the #AOL_IM #AIM, w/ #JesseHenry. I told her that she was being rude; & she told me to go & fuck myself. So; I left, drove home🏡, & ate the cost💸 of travel. &, I went & fuckt myself. &; she was unhappy that I left; & she didn't get none. &; I don't really give a fuck. She can eat shit💩🚽, & die💀.👀❄️ @/#GregGutfeld #CarleyShimkus
#OliviaCampbellPatton #OliviaWildeNeeCockburne
🏰🏯🔘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigiriya
By the way; it is #Ceylon; do not offend me again. This is your first(ly)☝️, & only⏳⌛️ warning⚠️⛔️☣️☢️
#SAP_q / #SAR_Q, how-ever, not #SAP-q / #SAR-Q; #RobertCharles #THE_COMMODORES_CIRCLE.👀😾😠😤😡
👀😎⚠️⛔️☣️☢️🔘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_access_program#:~:text=Special%20access%20programs%20%28SAPs%29%20in%20the%20U.S.%20Federal,that%20exceed%20those%20for%20regular%20%28collateral%29%20classified%20information.
☝️; there is no quick select, of 20,000+ images, on #iPhone, #Apple #TimCook. ✌️; there is no #conspicuous way to remove the #Slideslow option, on #iPhone, w/ your shitty, shitty musick selection. Therefore, I cannot turn it off. Oh, by the way; I cannot trash individual #AppCaches, neither, all of them, in a single tap. Take a wild guess what that means for you; all of you. #HighTreason = #Execution🔫 @ the #Gallows💀😵, or #Gibbet💀😵.👋👋👋
3️⃣; @/ #GregGutfeld‼️⚠️ : The #Saxophone🎷 is lame, gey, & any-person, who may believe it to be kool, or trendy, or even good; they may eat shit💩🚽, & die💀😵.
4️⃣ By the way; #SullyErna; you're a bitch.👋💀
🔘https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=R8pj2y39_jc&feature=share
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It is nice to see #TulsiGabbard; @/#FoxNewsCorp.
#Owlephant
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#ELDER_SCROLL_OF_MNEM_0.0♾😻
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#EvanRachelWood-._•✏️📝✍️🔏🐧
--WRW
_.• ✍️🔏
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Please attribute to Lorie Shaull if used elsewhere.
"Scaffold," a wood & steel sculpture by the artist Sam Durant, was a composite of the representations of 7 historical gallows used in US state-sanctioned executions by hanging between 1859 and 2006. One of them being the gallows constructed in Mankato, Minnesota to simultaneously hang 38 Dakota men on December 26, 1862 on orders signed by President Lincoln following the U.S.-Dakota War. The Mankato execution is the largest one-day execution in US history.
Some additional information on the context of historical events surrounding the Mankato hanging:
www.mprnews.org/story/2017/05/30/why-scaffold-struck-so-f...
The names of the 38 Dakota men executed in Mankato on December 26, 1862:
1. Ti-hdo’-ni-ca (One Who Jealousy Guards His Home)
2. Ptan Du-ta (Scarlet Otter)
3. O-ya’-te Ta-wa (His people)
4. Hin-han’-sun-ko-yag-ma-ni (One who Walks Clothed in Owl Feathers)
5. Ma-za Bo-mdu (Iron Blower)
6. Wa-hpe Du-ta (Scarlet Leaf)
7. Wa-hi’na (I Came)
8. Sna Ma-hi (Tinkling Walker)
9. Hda In-yan-ka (Rattling Runner)
10. Do-wan’-s’a (Sings A Lot)
11. He-pan (Second Born Male Child)
12. Sun-ka Ska (White Dog)
13. Tun-kan’ I-ca’hda Ma-ni (One Who Walks by His Grandfather)
14. Wa-kin’-yan-na (Little Thunder)
15. I-te’ Du-ta (Scarlet Face)
16. Ka-mde’-ca (Broken to Pieces)
17. He pi’ da (Third Born Male)
18. Ma-hpi’-ya A-i’-na-zin (Cut Nose)
19. Henry Milord
20. Cas-ke’-da (First Born)
21. Baptiste Campbell
22. Ta-te’ Ka-ga (Wind Maker)
23. He in’-kpa (The Tip of the Horn)
24. Hypolite Auge
25. Na-pe’-sni (Fearless)
26. Wa-kan Tan-ka (Great Spirit)
27. Tun-kan’ K o-yag I-na’-zin (One Who Stands Cloaked in Stone)
28. Ma-ka’-ta I-na’ (One Who Stands on Earth)
29. Ma-za Ku-te Ma-ni (One Who Shoots As He Walks)
30. Ta-te’ Hdi-da (Wind Comes Home)
31. Wa-si’-cun (White Man)
32. A-i’-ca-ge (To Grow Upon)
33. Ma-hu’-we-hi (He Comes for Me)
34. Ho-i’-tan-in Ku (Returning Clear Voice)
35. Ce-tan’ Hun-ka’ (Elder Hawk)
36. Can-ka-hda (Near the Woods)
37. Hda’-hin-hde (Sudden Rattle)
38. O-ya’-te A-ku’ (He Brings the People)
The names of the 2 Dakota men subsequently executed on November 11, 1865 at Fort Snelling for participating in the US-Dakota War:
Wa-kan-o-zhan-zhan (Medicine Bottle)
Sakpedan (Shakopee, Little Six)
Tomek Pizoń
Tomek executed three of my murals by now (also Candy Stick / Satanico Tropical [2nd version] & Vortex) - The Best Man: sharp and obsessed with quality – I wish I could always work with people like him.
Volcanic, Maurycy Gomulicki, 2013
mural aprox: 60m2
Volcanic mural I designed for private house in Podkowa Leśna near Warsaw. I was invited by the architect Jakub Szczęsny to do the intervention in the house. The space is very peculiar: Jakub worked with Voronoi formula – the effect is an asymmetric house with almost no right angles inside. The house – a bizarre wooden container, sort of Scandinavian hunting lodge taken to the next level stands sunken between the trees. I wanted to relate as much to architecture as to the green surroundings – so the decision of vertical modules and color. Also in the emotional aspect of it I was searching the experience or the warmth that would be specially appreciable in the winter time after half an hour ride back home trough cold gray darkness.
design: Maurycy Gomulicki
executed by Tomek Maped Pizoń
architect: Jakub Szczęsny / Centrala
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#ELDER_SCROLL_OF_MNEM_0.0♾😻
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ℹ️8️⃣📞📲📳☎️♾💁♂️
ℹ️▶️⏯⏭↕️🔘https://youtu.be/bS5JnGBmghM
First of all; the #FBI does not have the clearance, to be in possession, of my nuclear codesz.
Load, Load, Load; you're too slow, #YouTube. And do you know what that means? It means that you are #Guilty of #HighTreason. &, do you know what that means? It means that you are #Executed by #FiringSquad.
Nope; your apology means nothing to me. It means, that you are still #Executed by #FiringSquad.
That's one☝️. Two✌️; I👆, told you💭💬📣🔊📢; I did not suggest to you – I told you, #YouTube; that I need 14-15,000 characters🔤🔡🔠🔢; &, you refused to comply. Therefore; you are shot🔫 to death – #Executed for #HighTreason, twice✌️👋😽💀😵.👀
Three3️⃣☘️; #JohnPaulMacIssac: I simply, or merely, tell💭💬📣🔊📢 the #FBI, to go & fuck themselves; & to eat shit💩🚽, & die💀😵⚰️⚱️. 👀
☎️▶️⏯⏩⏭➡️🔀↕️🔘https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=qKVkhQQXEGE&feature=share
She asked me to cum⛲️💦💧🌊🎣🐟🔫 over, to #Steinway🎹🏭, in #Astoria👸; & then, after driving from #Pennsylvania #Pistolvania, she was on the #AOL_IM #AIM, w/ #JesseHenry. I told her that she was being rude; & she told me to go & fuck myself. So; I left, drove home🏡, & ate the cost💸 of travel. &, I went & fuckt myself. &; she was unhappy that I left; & she didn't get none. &; I don't really give a fuck. She can eat shit💩🚽, & die💀.👀❄️ @/#GregGutfeld #CarleyShimkus
#OliviaCampbellPatton #OliviaWildeNeeCockburne
🏰🏯🔘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigiriya
By the way; it is #Ceylon; do not offend me again. This is your first(ly)☝️, & only⏳⌛️ warning⚠️⛔️☣️☢️
#SAP_q / #SAR_Q, how-ever, not #SAP-q / #SAR-Q; #RobertCharles #THE_COMMODORES_CIRCLE.👀😾😠😤😡
👀😎⚠️⛔️☣️☢️🔘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_access_program#:~:text=Special%20access%20programs%20%28SAPs%29%20in%20the%20U.S.%20Federal,that%20exceed%20those%20for%20regular%20%28collateral%29%20classified%20information.
☝️; there is no quick select, of 20,000+ images, on #iPhone, #Apple #TimCook. ✌️; there is no #conspicuous way to remove the #Slideslow option, on #iPhone, w/ your shitty, shitty musick selection. Therefore, I cannot turn it off. Oh, by the way; I cannot trash individual #AppCaches, neither, all of them, in a single tap. Take a wild guess what that means for you; all of you. #HighTreason = #Execution🔫 @ the #Gallows💀😵, or #Gibbet💀😵.👋👋👋
3️⃣; @/ #GregGutfeld‼️⚠️ : The #Saxophone🎷 is lame, gey, & any-person, who may believe it to be kool, or trendy, or even good; they may eat shit💩🚽, & die💀😵.
4️⃣ By the way; #SullyErna; you're a bitch.👋💀
🔘https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=R8pj2y39_jc&feature=share
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It is nice to see #TulsiGabbard; @/#FoxNewsCorp.
#Owlephant
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#ELDER_SCROLL_OF_MNEM_0.0♾😻
•———————————•
#EvanRachelWood-._•✏️📝✍️🔏🐧
--WRW
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St Albans claims to be the earliest site of Christian pilgrimage in England, being named after our first martyr, who was executed at some point in the 3rd century AD (when the city was still known by its Roman name, Verulanium) having sheltered a persecuted Christian priest, St Amphibalus, and been impressed by his faith, offering himself for arrest in his place. Both men were buried here and Alban's tomb was venerated and marked in some form long before the present cathedral was built.
The cathedral is nonetheless one of the most ancient of our major churches, though its cathedral status dates only to 1877 when the new diocese of St Albans was formed. The church was originally founded as St Alban's Abbey, and built close to the presumed site of Alban's martyrdom. Founded in 793 by King Offa, the abbey was rebuilt several times with the earliest parts of the present cathedral dating back to the late 11th century. Much use was made of recycled material from the abandoned Roman city of Verulanium, and the handsome Romanesque tower appears to be entirely constructed of reused Roman bricks. The Abbey was built on an impressive scale, and must have once been a very wealthy institution owing to pilgrimages to the shrine of St Alban behind the high altar. However its fortunes had begun to decline even before the Reformation swept medieval monastic life away.
The abbey church miraculously survived the Dissolution in its entirety and was sold to the town for use as their parish church. The monastic buildings however were completely erased aside from the splendid Abbey Gatehouse near the west end, and only the weathered remains of arcading on the south side of the nave remains of the former cloisters. Upkeep thereafter seems to have been a serious challenge and the huge church spent much of the following centuries in poor repair, thus much work was done by a succession of architects in the Victorian period prior to the abbey church being raised to the status of cathedral. The most obvious interventions are those made by Edmund Beckett / Lord Grimthorpe, an amateur architect who paid for much of the work in the 1870s in return for a free hand in redesigning parts of the building. His are the strange turrets on ends of the transepts, along with their facade windows below and the west front, which is clearly a Victorian confection, though the medieval facade it replaced had been left in a rather bare, unfinished state.
The cathedral we see today is thus a rather surprising mixture of styles and materials, everything from Roman brick, flint and rubble to fine white limestone., which gives it a rather patchy appearance. Its great length however is remarkable, being the second longest medieval church in the country (only Winchester is longer, but St Albans has a longer nave). The oldest parts are the towers and transepts from the end of the 11th century, along with much of the north side of the nave, all fine examples of early Romanesque architecture. Most of the rest was rebuilt in the Gothic style in various phases throughout the 14th century, including the greater part of the nave and all of the choir and Lady Chapel (though the east end was heavily renewed externally in the Victorian restoration).
Entering the cathedral one cannot fail to be impressed by the enormous length of the nave,, mostly of late 13th and early 14th century date aside from the strikingly austere north arcade in the more easterly section, where the raw unadorned early Norman architecture contrasts dramatically with the more ornate Gothic arcade opposite. The Norman columns have the added appeal of retaining substantial remains of medieval mural decoration, with a succession of Crucifixion scenes that may have originally served as reredos to long vanished side altars. The medieval pulpitum screen remains and separates the eastern bays for use as the choir beyond it. This area also retains its flat late medieval wooden ceiling complete with painted panels of angels holding shields.
The transepts and crossing beneath the tower form an especially memorable interior space, again the architecture is of the more raw, auster Norman variety, but the tower arches are enlivened with painted decoration simulating brickwork and much Roman and Saxon material is incorporated in to the transepts. Beyond is the fully Gothic eastern limb with the presbytery covered by a handsome medieval wooden vault, again replete it medieval painted decoration, and the striking altar reredos, a towering late medieval screen populated with elaborate niches and statuary (the latter being Victorian replacements for originals long lost). Behind this is the re-assembled shrine of St Alban (along with that of St Amphibalus in the south choir aisle nearby). The Lady Chapel beyond is a handsome example of 14th century Decorated Gothic, though much restored following centuries of use as a schoolroom separated from the rest of the church.
There is much of interest to see in the cathedral, though most of the furnishings are Victorian (the originals having long vanished) and there are few monuments of note aside from the two late medieval chantry chapels of Abbot Ramryge and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, the latter overlooking the shrine of St Alban and balanced by a 15th century wooden watching loft on the opposite side (a rare survival). There is a mixture of glass, the most notable pieces being the most recent additions in the south aisle and north transept rose window. The best features are the unusually extensive remnants of medieval mural painting in various parts of the church, a quite remarkable survival, making a thorough exploration of this cathedral all the more rewarding.
This was my third visit, and longest one, though my attempt at a fuller photographic record was severely compromised by accidents with my camera, which at one point fell from my tripod onto the stone floor in one of the chantry chapels. I was lucky it survived at all given the dreadful crash it made, but it was seriously affected and my photos were very hit and miss from that point onwards. My day however ended on a happier note, returning in the evening to attend a lovely performance of Mozart's Requiem, and the acoustics in there are indeed impressive.
For more about the cathedral see below.
Pisa - Baptisterium und Dom
seen from Leaning Tower
gesehen vom Schiefen Turm
The Pisa Baptistery of St. John (Italian: Battistero di San Giovanni) is a Roman Catholic ecclesiastical building in Pisa, Italy. Construction started in 1152 to replace an older baptistery, and when it was completed in 1363, it became the second building, in chronological order, in the Piazza dei Miracoli, near the Duomo di Pisa and the cathedral's free-standing campanile, the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. The baptistery was designed by Diotisalvi, whose signature can be read on two pillars inside the building, with the date 1153.
Description
The largest baptistery in Italy, it is 54.86 m high, with a diameter of 34.13 m. The Pisa Baptistery is an example of the transition from the Romanesque style to the Gothic style: the lower section is in the Romanesque style, with rounded arches, while the upper sections are in the Gothic style, with pointed wimpergs and a rich figurative program. Like the cathedral and the campanile the Baptistery is built of bichromatic Carrara marble, white with recurring horizontal lines in blueish-grey stone, also used for abstract floral and graphic decoration, a unique trait of some of the most important religious buildings in Tuscany (In the neighboring Florence and Pistoia the dark marmo verde from Prato was used).
The east portal from probably around 1200 is facing the facade of the cathedral. The door is flanked by two columns with foliage decoration, a direct copy of a classical model. Engaged with the portal frame are two smaller three-quarter columns with a simpler, less deep floral ornamentation. The inner jambs between each pair of columns are decorated each with eleven figurative reliefs executed in Byzantine style. On the left there are depictions of the months (with September and October combined in one panel), beginning with January at the bottom. On the right it begins at the top with the Ascension of Christ, then angels, Mary with lifted hands, then the Apostels depicted in pairs looking up, and second to the bottom the Harrowing of Hell; the lowermost relief shows King David. The tripartite form is conveyed in the arch with three retreating archivolts with the Twenty-Four Elders in medaillons and the Lamb as the keystone.
The architrave is divided in two tiers. The upper one is slightly tilted and shows Christ between the Mary and St. John the Baptist, flanked by angels and the evangelists. The lower tier depicts several episodes in the life of St. John the Baptist, the natural patron of the baptistery: his sermon, the baptism of Christ, his imprisonment on behalf of Herod, Salome dances before Herod, his subsequent beheading and his burial. The architraves are probably by the same artists who also did the foiled columns and the reliefs on the jambs.
Only the north portal has also figurative decoration on its architrave, picturing the Annunciation to Zechariah and St. Elizabeth, the parents of St. John, flanked by two prophets and two angels in light armour with swords.
The interior
The interior is overwhelming and lacks decoration. The octagonal font at the centre dates from 1246 and was made by Guido Bigarelli da Como. The bronze sculpture of St. John the Baptist at the centre of the font is a work by Italo Griselli.
The famous pulpit was sculpted between 1255-1260 by Nicola Pisano, father of Giovanni, the artist who produced the pulpit in the Duomo. The scenes on the pulpit, and especially the classical form of the nude Hercules, show Nicola Pisano's qualities as the most important precursor of Italian Renaissance sculpture by reinstating antique representations: surveys of the Italian Renaissance often begin with the year 1260, the year that Nicola Pisano dated this pulpit.
Constructed on the same unstable sand as the tower and cathedral, the Baptistery leans 0.6 degrees toward the cathedral. Originally the shape of the Baptistery, according to the project by Diotisalvi, was different. It was perhaps similar to the church of Holy Sepulchre in Pisa, with its pyramidal roof. After the death of the architect, Nicola Pisano continued the work, changing the style to the more modern Gothic one. Also, an external roof was added giving the shape of a cupola. As a side effect of the two roofs, the pyramidal inner one and the domed external one, the interior is acoustically perfect, making of that space a resonating chamber.
The exterior of the dome is clad with lead sheets on its east side (facing the cathedral) and red tiles on its west side (facing the sea), giving a half grey and half red appearance from the south.
An inscription, currently undeciphered, is located to the left of the door jamb of the Baptistery.
(Wikipedia)
Pisa Cathedral (Italian: Cattedrale Metropolitana Primaziale di Santa Maria Assunta; Duomo di Pisa) is a medieval Roman Catholic cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, in the Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa, Italy, the oldest of the three structures in the plaza followed by the Pisa Baptistry and the Campanile known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The cathedral is a notable example of Romanesque architecture, in particular the style known as Pisan Romanesque. Consecrated in 1118, it is the seat of the Archbishop of Pisa. Construction began in 1063 and was completed in 1092. Additional enlargements and a new facade were built in the 12th century and the roof was replaced after damage from a fire in 1595.
History
Construction on the cathedral began in 1063 (1064 according to the Pisan calendar of the time) by the architect Buscheto, and expenses were paid using the spoils received fighting against the Muslims in Sicily in 1063. It includes various stylistic elements: classical, Lombard-Emilian, Byzantine, and Islamic, drawing upon the international presence of Pisan merchants at that time. In the same year, St. Mark's Basilica began its reconstruction in Venice, evidence of a strong rivalry between the two maritime republics to see which could create the most beautiful and luxurious place of worship.
The church was erected outside Pisa's early medieval walls, to show that Pisa had no fear of being attacked.[citation needed] The chosen area had already been used in the Lombard era as a necropolis and at the beginning of the 11th century a church had been erected here, but never finished, that was to be named Santa Maria.[citation needed] Buscheto's grand new church was initially called Santa Maria Maggiore until it was officially named Santa Maria Assunta.
In 1092 the cathedral was declared primatial church, archbishop Dagobert having been given the title of Primate by Pope Urban II. The cathedral was consecrated in 1118 by Pope Gelasius II, who belonged to the Caetani family which was powerful both in Pisa and in Rome.
In the early 12th century the cathedral was enlarged under the direction of architect Rainaldo, who increased the length of the nave by adding three bays consistent with the original style of Buscheto, enlarged the transept, and planned a new facade which was completed by workers under the direction of the sculptors Guglielmo and Biduino. The exact date of the work is unclear: according to some, the work was done right after the death of Buscheto about the year 1100, though others say it was done closer to 1140. In any case, work was finished in 1180, as documented by the date written on the bronze knockers made by Bonanno Pisano found on the main door.
The structure's present appearance is the result of numerous restoration campaigns that were carried out in different eras. The first radical interventions occurred after the fire of 1595, following which the roof was replaced and sculptors from the workshop of Giambologna, among whom were Gasparo Mola and Pietro Tacca, created the three bronze doors of the facade. In the early 18th century began the redecoration of the inside walls of the cathedral with large paintings, the "quadroni", depicting stories of the blesseds and saints of Pisa. These works were made by the principal artists of the era, and a group of citizens arranged for the special financing of the project. Successive interventions occurred in the 19th century and included both internal and external modifications; among the latter was the removal of the original facade statues (presently in the cathedral museum) and their replacement with copies.
Other notable interventions include: the dismantling of Giovanni Pisano's pulpit between 1599 and 1601 that only in 1926 was reassembled and returned to the cathedral (with some original pieces missing, including the staircase); and the dismantling of the monument to Henry VII made by Lupo di Francesco that was found in front of the door of San Ranieri and later substituted by a simpler, symbolic version.
Description
The original building plan was a Greek cross with a grand cupola at the crossing, but today the plan is a Latin cross with a central nave flanked by two side aisles on each side, with the apse and transepts having three naves. The inside offers a spatial effect similar to that of the great mosques thanks to the use of raised lancet arches, the alternating layers of black and white marble, and the elliptical dome, inspired by the Moors. The presence of two raised matronea in the nave, with their solid, monolithic columns of granite, is a clear sign of Byzantine influence. Buscheto welcomed Islamic and Armenian influence.
Exterior
The rich exterior decoration contains multicolored marble, mosaic, and numerous bronze objects from the spoils of war, among which is the griffin. The arrival of the griffin in Pisa has been attributed to numerous Pisan military victories of the 11th and 12th centuries, including the 1087 Mahdia Campaign and the 1113-1115 Balearic Expedition. The griffin was placed on a platform atop a column rising from the gable above the apse at the east end of the roof, probably as continuation of the original construction that started in 1064. In the early 19th century the original sculpture, which can now be seen in the cathedral museum, was removed from the roof and replaced with a copy. The high arches show Islamic and southern Italian influence.Ref? The blind arches with lozenge shapes recall similar structures in Armenia. The facade of grey and white marble, decorated with colored marble inserts, was built by Master Rainaldo. Above the three doorways are four levels of loggia divided by cornices with marble intarsia, behind which open single, double, and triple windows.
The cathedral was heavily damaged by a fire in 1595. The heavy bronze doors of the façade were newly designed, executed and completed in 1602 by sculptors around Giambologna on the expense of Ferdinando I de' Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. At the top there is a Madonna and Child and, in the angles, the four evangelists. The tomb of Buscheto is found to the left of the north door of the facade.
Contrary to what might be thought, from the beginning the faithful entered the cathedral through the Gate of Saint Rainerius, found in the south transept of the same name, which faces the bell tower. For townsfolk approaching by via Santa Maria it was the shortest way to enter the cathedral. The door wings were cast about 1180 by Bonanno Pisano, and it is the only door not destroyed in 1595. The 24 bronze reliefs show stories of the New Testament. This bronze portal is one of the first produced in Italy during the Middle Ages, and is a forerunner of the bronze doors created by Andrea Pisano for the Baptistery in Florence (1329–1336).
Of further interest
At the end of the 10th century Pisa established March 25 as the beginning of its new year. This date was considered very important because it is both the Feast of the Annunciation (occurring nine months before Christ's birth on December 25) and it falls very close to the spring equinox. To mark the beginning of the Pisan new year a system was devised in the cathedral whereby a beam of light shines through a round window on the south side of the nave and, precisely at noon on March 25, lands on the same spot every year: on top of a shelf affixed to a pylon on the opposite side of the church. This shelf rests on a marble egg, a symbol of birth and new life. In 1750 the first day of the new year was officially changed to January 1, but this event is still celebrated every year accompanied by solemn religious and civic celebrations.
The lamp at the center of the nave is called Galileo's lamp, because a legend says that the great scientist formulated his theory of isochronism of the pendulum while watching its oscillations from the roof of the nave. The original, however, smaller and very different than this one, is found today in the Camposanto.
On the north side, to the left side of the facade in front of the Camposanto at about eye level, is an original piece of Roman marble (as testified to by its decoration that can still in part be seen), on which are a series of small black marks. Legend says that these marks were left by the devil when he climbed up to the dome attempting to stop its construction, and so they are referred to as the scratches of the devil. (The legend also says that out of spite the number of scratches always changes when counted.)
Legend has it that the amphora placed on a small column on the right side of the apse was used by Christ at the wedding feast of Cana when he turned water into wine.
Pope Gregory VIII is buried in the cathedral.
(Wikipedia)
Der frei auf der Piazza dei Miracoli stehende Bau wurde 1152 von Diotisalvi als Ergänzung zum Dom im romanischen Stil auf kreisförmigem Grundriss nach dem Vorbild der Anastasis Rotunde des Heiligen Grabes in Jerusalem begonnen. Es ist die mit insgesamt 54 Meter Höhe und einem Umfang von 107 Meter größte Taufkirche in der christlichen Geschichte.
Architektur
Nach einem finanziell bedingten Baustopp am Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts wurde die Außenverkleidung erst 1270 von Niccolò Pisano und nach dessen Tod 1278 von seinem Sohn Giovanni Pisano fortgeführt. Während die Fassade der ersten Etage noch mit rundbogigen Blendarkaden im Stil des Doms ausgeführt wurde, gestaltete man die zweite Etage zwar auch mit einer Galerie, wie sie vielstöckig die Domfassade prägt, setzte dieser jedoch gotische Fialen und Ziergiebel, sogenannte Wimperge, aus Maßwerk auf und stattete diese mit einem bis dahin auf Außenwänden seltenen und erstmals so reichen Figurenprogramm aus. Je drei Bögen entsprechen dem Abstand zwischen zwei Säulen der Blendarkade. Wie am Dom liegt dem Kapitellkelch jeweils ein aus der Wand ragender Gebälkblock auf, auf dem wiederum ein kleiner Kämpfer den Brustteil für die kleinen Frauen- und Männerköpfe bildet, die zwischen den Bogenanfängern liegen, 60 an der Zahl und 45–50 cm groß. Die 60 Schlusssteine der Bögen sind mit etwas kleineren Männer- und Tiermasken verziert. Über jeweils zwei Säulen der Galerie stehen die Wimperge, die mit Krabbenkämmen dekoriert und von insgesamt 30 eineinhalb Meter hohen Skulpturen bekrönt werden, 27 ganzfigurigen Heiligen und über dem Hauptportal drei Halbfiguren von Christus, Maria und Johannes dem Täufer. Die Giebel fassen Dreipassbögen auf stilisierten ionischen Säulchen ein, die als Rahmen für die immensen, 160–180 cm großen, Halbfiguren dienen. Die Skulpturen stellen Heilige mit ihren Attributen dar und stehen, wie auch die viergliedrigen Fialen, auf dekorativen Konsolen. Der Stil der Halbfiguren ist heterogen. Zum Teil weisen sie starke klassische Züge auf, andere wirken französisch (speziell Reims). Man ist sich weitestgehend einig, dass die meisten Köpfe von Nicolà Pisano stammen, wenn auch nur teilweise von ihm ausgeführt, so doch zumindest im Entwurf. Auch John Pope-Hennessy sieht Nicolà als Autor mindestens der zentralen großen Halbfiguren der Jungfrau mit Kind, des Johannes und der sich ihm anschließenden vier Evangelisten. Allgemein jedoch werden die Halbfiguren in den Giebeln seinem Sohn Giovanni und dessen Werkstatt zugeschrieben und auf die Zeit datiert, nachdem dieser mit der Arbeit an der Fontana Maggiore in Perugia fertig war, also nach 1278.
Der Bau hat innen einen zweigeschossigen Stützenkranz aus 12 Pfeilern und Säulen, der einen kreuzgratgewölbten Umgang vom Mittelbereich unter der Innenkuppel trennt. Diese Innenkuppel besteht aus einem Kegelstumpf, der zunächst oben offen blieb. Die äußere Segmentkuppel, die die Innenkuppel teils überdeckt, wurde erst 1358 von Cellino di Nese und von Zibellinus, einem Baumeister aus Bologna, errichtet. Dabei fügte man dem Bau ein drittes Außengeschoss hinzu. 1394 schloss man die offene Mitte der alten Kegelkuppel mit einem kleinen Gewölbe, was den Bau auf seine heutige Gesamthöhe brachte.
Auf der Spitze der Kirche steht eine drei Meter hohe Bronzestatue von Johannes dem Täufer, die am Anfang des 15. Jahrhunderts dort befestigt wurde. Das Hauptportal ist von zwei mit Reliefs verzierten Säulen eingerahmt. Zwei Architrave liegen über dem Portal, das obere, leicht geneigte zeigt Jesus flankiert von Maria und Evangelisten alternierend mit Engeln. Der untere gibt Szenen aus der Lebensgeschichte von Johannes dem Täufer wieder. Im Giebelfeld steht eine Kopie der Maria mit Kind von Giovanni Pisano (um 1295).
Ausstattung im Innenraum
In der Mitte des Kirchenraums steht ein achteckiges Taufbecken, das von Guidobono Bigarelli da Como 1246 vollendet wurde. 1929 wurde eine Statue von Johannes dem Täufer durch Italo Griselli hinzugefügt.
Die Marmorkanzel Niccolò Pisanos
Die freistehende Marmorkanzel im Baptisterium stammt von Niccolò Pisano und ist von ihm mit dem Jahr 1260 signiert. Toskanischer Stil vereinigt sich hier erstmalig mit französischer Gotik und antiken Einflüssen aus Süditalien, wo Niccolò vermutlich herkam und am Hof Friedrichs II. mit französischer wie antiker Skulptur vertraut wurde. Die Kanzel gilt mit ihrer Verwendung dieser antiker Vorbilder in der Kunstgeschichte als früher Markstein auf dem Weg zur Renaissance (siehe auch Protorenaissance).
Sieben Säulen tragen das sechseckige Kanzelbecken, auf dem das Lesepult von einem Adler getragen wird. Die Kapitelle sind mit gotischem Blattwerk verziert, drei der Säulen sind verkürzt und werden von naturalistisch gehauenen Löwen getragen, während die Basis der Mittelsäule von grotesken Figuren und Tieren gesäumt wird. An der Brüstung der Kanzel befinden sich fünf Reliefs mit den neutestamentarischen Szenen Maria Verkündung/Geburt Jesu/Verkündung an die Schäfer, Anbetung der heiligen drei Könige, Darstellung im Tempel, Kreuzigung und Jüngstes Gericht. In den Zwickeln sind gepaart Propheten zu sehen, unter der Kreuzigung und dem Jüngsten Gericht sind es Evangelisten. Über den Kapitellen sind die fünf Tugenden und unter dem Pult Johannes der Täufer dargestellt. Die Stärke findet ihr Vorbild in einem nackten Herkules.
Über Treppen kann man sowohl auf den Emporen-Umgang als auch unter das Kuppeldach gelangen. Auf dem Umgang sind Skizzen der größtenteils zerstörten Fresken aus dem Camposanto ausgestellt.
Das Baptisterium hat durch seine zylindrische Bauweise ein besonderes Echoverhalten. Gelegentlich stimmt einer der Wächter mehrere verschiedene Gesangstöne an, die in Kombination miteinander durch das Echo im Gebäude zu einem Klangerlebnis werden.
Wie in vielen mittelalterlichen Sakralgebäuden wird auch im Pisaner Baptisterium der Zahlensymbolik bezüglich der Zahl von Architekturelementen (zum Beispiel Säulen, Stützen usw.) eine besondere Bedeutung beigemessen und ihre Anzahl mit Zahlen, die in der Bibel vorkommen, in Zusammenhang gebracht. Im Baptisterium sind besonders die Vier, die Acht und die Zwölf vertreten.
(Wikipedia)
Der Dom Santa Maria Assunta (italienisch Cattedrale Metropolitana Primaziale di Santa Maria Assunta) ist eine Kirche in Pisa, zu der der weltweit berühmte Schiefe Turm von Pisa gehört. Sie ist die Kathedrale des Erzbistums Pisa.
Der Dom steht auf dem weitläufigen Rasenplatz der Piazza del Duomo, auf dem sich auch die drei dazugehörenden Bauwerke Baptisterium, Camposanto Monumentale und der Campanile („Der Schiefe Turm von Pisa“) befinden. Dieser Platz wurde vom Dichter D’Annunzio als Piazza dei Miracoli (Platz der Wunder) bezeichnet und wird noch heute so genannt. Trotz einer Bauzeit von über 200 Jahren wurde durch den gleichbleibenden Baustoff Carrara-Marmor und die einheitliche Fassadengestaltung ein zusammenhängendes Bild geschaffen. Der Dom wurde zum Vorbild für spätere Dombauten wie z. B. in Florenz und Siena und galt jahrhundertelang als monumentalster Bau der christlichen Geschichte.
Papst Gelasius II. weihte 1118 den damals noch unvollendeten Dom ein. Er trägt das Patrozinium der Himmelfahrt Mariens.
Baugeschichte
Buscheto di Giovanni Giudice begann mit dem Bau des Doms im Jahre 1063 auf dem Schwemmboden vor der alten Stadtmauer. Finanziert wurde das Bauwerk mit den im gleichen Jahr von den Sarazenen vor Palermo eroberten Schätzen. Durch den weichen Untergrund sank auch der Dom im Osten leicht ein. Die kreuzförmige Grundfläche des Doms war zu diesem Zeitpunkt in Italien neu. Über der Vierung der fünfschiffigen Basilika mit dem dreischiffigen Querhaus erhebt sich eine elliptische Kuppel mit einem oktogonalen Ansatz. Sie wurde erst 1380 durch Lupo di Gante und Puccio di Gadduccio im gotischen Stil nachträglich hinzugefügt.
Die Fassade wurde am Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts von Rainaldo geschaffen und wurde als Pisaner Romanik in der gesamten Toskana zum Vorbild. Bei der westlichen Fassade erheben sich über den sieben Blendarkadenbögen im Erdgeschoss mit seinen drei Portalen vier Galerien mit insgesamt 52 Säulen. Auf dem Giebel der 35,5 m breiten und 34,2 m hohen Fassade steht eine Madonna mit Kind von Andrea Pisano. An ihrer Seite stehen Engel, die zusammen mit den beiden Evangelisten auf der ersten Galerie durch Schüler von Giovanni Pisano entstanden. Das mittlere Portal ist dem Leben Marias gewidmet. Im linken Bogen der Fassade ist das Grab des ersten Dombaumeisters Buscheto mit einer antiken Sarkophagspolie und einer langen Huldigung in die Wand eingefasst.
Die drei Bronzetore aus dem 17. Jahrhundert ersetzen die von Bonanno Pisano geschaffenen Tore von 1180, die bei einem schweren Feuer 1595 zerstört wurden. Die neuen Türen mit umfangreichen Reliefszenen wurden bis 1602 durch Schüler Giambolognas, Francavilla, Mocchi und Tacca, in loser Anlehnung an das alte Vorbild gegossen. Die Porta di San Ranieri am südlichen Seitenschiff ist dem Campanile zugewandt. Hier ist das restaurierte Original des Meisters Bonanno Pisano von 1186 noch erhalten. Es ist nach dem Schutzpatron Pisas benannt und stellt u. a. Szenen aus dem Leben Christi dar.
Am gesamten Gebäude findet man vielfach zusammenhanglose Zeichen auf den Außenwänden. Der Grund dafür liegt darin, dass man antike Baumaterialien wiederverwendete oder Materialien aus eroberten Städten holte.
Datierungsprobleme
Im Hinblick auf die Datierung des Baus und die historische Herleitung ihrer einzelnen Bauformen gibt es in der Forschung seit langem unterschiedliche Ansichten. Eine verbreitete Theorie nennt konkrete Zahlen und die Namen verschiedener Baumeister. Andere Kunsthistoriker halten diese Geschichten für bereits im Mittelalter erfundene Legenden.
Nach der ersten Theorie war der Seesieg bei Palermo über die damals im Mittelmeer herrschenden Sarazenen im Jahr 1063 Anlass zum Bau der Gesamtanlage. In Venedig spielten diese sarazenischen Seeräuber ebenfalls eine Rolle. Auch dort war die Abwendung dieser Gefahr Anlass gewesen, den Markusdom neu zu bauen, und zwar im selben Jahr 1063, in dem die Anlage in Pisa möglicherweise begonnen wurde. Auch die Pisaner hatten durch diesen Seesieg reiche Beute gemacht und den Ertrag zur Glorifizierung ihrer Stadt genutzt; Pisa war im 11. Jahrhundert die mächtigste Stadt der Toskana.
Nach der zweiten Ansicht ist lediglich erwiesen, dass im Jahr 1118 die Kathedrale im Bau befindlich war. Das sei das einzige zuverlässige Datum. Man habe damals die eher zufällige Anwesenheit des Papstes Gelasius II. genutzt, um eine angemessene Weihe zu vollziehen. Der Bau musste für diesen Fall schon weit genug fortgeschritten gewesen sein, so dass sich die angesetzten Entstehungszeiten der beiden Theorien nicht wesentlich unterscheiden.
Die Kathedrale gehört zusammen mit dem Markusdom in Venedig zu den ersten Monumentalbauten des mittelalterlichen Italiens. Daher stellt sich die Frage, auf wen die entscheidenden Bauideen zurückgehen. Die Stadt Pisa popularisierte schon sehr früh eine eigene lokalpatriotische Version, die dem Baumeister die gesamte Anlage als geniale, völlig eigenständige Idee zuschrieb, ohne dass fremde Einflüsse eine Rolle spielten. Demzufolge soll der erste Baumeister der Kathedrale Buscheto gewesen sein, über den nur sehr wenig bekannt ist. Vasari berichtet in seinen Vite, "Busketos" sei griechischer Herkunft gewesen – also kein geborener Pisaner. Dies wird mancherorts bestritten und vor allem lokal dadurch unterstrichen, dass man ihn „Buscheto Pisano“ nennt. Belegt ist seine Eigenschaft als Prokurator der Pfarre und als Mitglied der Dombauhütte.
Keine Einigkeit besteht in der Forschung, wer die Idee zu der Kathedrale hatte und was seine stilistischen Vorbilder waren. Pisa hatte – wie Venedig – als Seemacht intensive Handelsbeziehungen im östlichen Mittelmeer. Deshalb liegt es nahe, dass die östliche Baukunst hier Einfluss ausüben konnte. Auf jeden Fall war der Baumeister mit dem byzantinischen Kulturraum vertraut. Seine Baukunst nimmt Anleihen auf bei persischen Moscheen und bei frühchristlichen Kirchen in Armenien und Georgien. Zudem vereint sie Elemente der italienischen Romanik mit Motiven aus der Stadtmauer von Kairouan. Inschriften im Dom belegen die Mitarbeit von Heiden: Türken, Afrikanern, Persern und Chaldäern.
Auch wenn sich die Bauzeit des Pisaner Doms lange hinzog, ist der Gesamteindruck einheitlich. Der ersten Theorie zufolge verlief die weitere Entwicklung folgendermaßen: Vor Fertigstellung des Doms habe der neue Baumeister Rainaldus um 1100 den ursprünglichen Grundriss geändert. Er ließ das Langhaus verlängern, den Obergaden erhöhen – die ursprüngliche Höhe ist noch am Querhaus erkennbar – und das untere Geschoss der Fassade errichten. Vollendet worden soll der Bau bis 1160 durch den Innsbrucker Meister Wilhelm gen. Guglielmus (auch Guilielmus)., der um diese Zeit auch die erste Kanzel für den Dom schuf.
Rechts über dem mittleren Portal der Westfassade sind zwei Inschriften in die Wand eingelassen, deren erste Rainaldo als Bauherrn rühmen. Als demütige Replik folgt ein Bibelzitat aus der Vulgata (Psalm 21, Vers 22):
Hoc opus eximium tam mirum tam pretiosum
Rainaldus prudens operator et ipse magister
constituit mire sollerter et ingeniose
De ore leonis libera me domine et
a cornibus unicornium humilitatem meam
Dieses hervorragende Werk, ebenso wunderbar wie kostspielig,
errichtete Rainald, der kluge Erbauer und selbst [Bau]meister,
in wundervoller, kunstvoller und erfinderischer Weise.
Aus dem Rachen des Löwen befreie mich, o Herr,
und von den Hörnern der Einhörner meine Niedrigkeit.
Bedeutung der Fassade für die Datierung
Die Westfassade des Doms stellt für die abendländische Architekturgeschichte eine entscheidende Neuerung dar, den Übergang von der glatten Wand zur plastisch gestalteten Schaufläche. Daher ist auch die Frage ihrer genauen Datierung wichtig, denn ähnlich gestaltete Fassaden wurden auch andernorts gebaut, etwa in Lucca an der Kathedrale San Martino, dessen Baumeister Guidetto da Como, der auch in Pisa tätig war, auf der Fassade mit dem Datum 1204 verewigt wurde.
Die kritischere zweite Theorie akzeptiert lediglich, dass in der zweiten Hälfte des 12. Jahrhunderts im Westen des Hauptschiffes drei Joche angefügt und die heutige Fassade begonnen wurden. Namen werden in dieser Theorie nicht genannt. Demnach könnte die gesamte Fassade auch erst um 1200 fertig und möglicherweise von Anfang an in ihrer heutigen Form geplant gewesen sein. Andere Schätzungen nehmen sogar erst die Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts an – also hundert Jahre nach dem Datierungszeitraum der ersten Theorie.
Trotzdem spricht viel dafür, dass man zwei verschiedene Phasen in der Entwicklung des Dekorationssystems unterscheiden kann. Die ursprüngliche Konzeption hätte demnach vorgesehen, die Außenmauern im Erdgeschoss durch folgende Elemente zu gliedern: erstens durch Blendbögen, sodann durch waagerechte Streifen aus farbigem Marmor – nach dem Vorbild des Baptisteriums in Florenz – und durch eingelegte Ornamente und Medaillons. Dieses Schema gilt für das ganze Kathedraläußere, an den Seitenwänden auch für die oberen Geschosse. Doch in den über dem Erdgeschoß liegenden Etagen der Westfassade übertraf man diesen Formenreichtum noch um ein Vielfaches. Statt flächiger Aufblendung ließ man in vier Galerien übereinander eine plastische Dekorationsschicht aus Säulen und verzierten Bögen vor der eigentlichen Kirchenmauer deutlich hervortreten.
Legenden
Im Hauptschiff hängt ein bronzener Leuchter von Vincenzo Possenti aus dem Jahre 1587, der Entwurf stammt aber von Giovanni Battista Lorenzi. Es gibt die Geschichte, dass an dem Leuchter Galileo Galilei die Gesetze der Pendelschwingung gefunden haben soll. Sollte es ein Leuchter in dieser Kirche gewesen sein, der ihn auf das Gesetz brachte, kann es allerdings nicht dieser Leuchter gewesen sein, da Galileo Galilei das Gesetz um 1584 veröffentlicht hat.
Zwischen dem nördlichen Seitenschiff und der westlichen Fassade findet man an der Außenwand des Doms an einem Pfeiler einen Stein mit vielen schwarzen Punkten. Von diesem Stein erzählt man sich, dass er vom Teufel sei. Zählt man zweimal hintereinander die Punkte nach, so kommt man jeweils auf ein anderes Ergebnis.
(Wikipedia)
The single most controversial monument at Andersonville is not even in the park service grounds but in the neighboring and namesake Town of Andersonville. This obelisk is a monument to Capt Heinrich or Henry Wirz, the leader of Andersonville Prison, who was later convicted and executed for his role.
A Swiss who fled bad debts to the United States and ended up as a plantation overseer in Louisiana, Wirz fought in the American Civil War and was crippled by a wound to the arm in 1863. He was assigned to Brig Gen John Winder as an adjutant. In April 1864, Wirz took command of Camp Sumter, better known as Andersonville Prison, where some 13000 out of 45000 Union prisoners held under his guard died of starvation, diseases and/or exposure. Wirz knew about the deteriorating conditions, at one point offering to parole prisoners if the Federal government would provide transportation to ship them. This was refused on the grounds that there were no transportation and supplies necessary to take in such a large scale of parolees (interestingly the Nazis similarly offered to release concentration camp inmates near the end of WWII, with the same results). Promoted shortly before the end of the war, he was quickly arrested at the end of it.
In what would become the first war crimes trial held in the history of the United States, Henry Wirz was charged with:
"combining, confederating, and conspiring, ... to injure the health and destroy the lives of soldiers in the military service of the United States, then held and being prisoners of war within the lines of the so-called Confederate States, and in the military prisons thereof, to the end that the armies of the United States might be weakened and impaired, in violation of the laws and customs of war", and for "violation of the laws of war, to impair and injure the health and to destroy the lives—by subjecting to torture and great suffering; by confining in unhealthy and unwholesome quarters; by exposing to the inclemency of winter and to the dews and burning sun of summer; by compelling the use of impure water; and by furnishing insufficient and unwholesome food—of large numbers of Federal prisoners".
He was charged with 13 acts of cruelty and murder, including stomping on prisoners, ordering guards to shoot prisoners, and shooting prisoners himself.
Some 160 witnesses were called to the stand. Testimony varied wildly, and may have suggested violent mood swings. However they did show a history of intimidation and cruelty: perhaps influenced by his time in the plantations, Wirz used iron shackles and bloodhounds liberally, and one Confederate guard recalled Wirz allowed a prisoner to drown while shackled in a rainstorm. Father Peter Whelan, "the Angel of Andersonville" and former Gen Robert Lee testified that Wirz had done all he could and was simply overwhelmed that led to the high death rate. Interestingly, both the prosecution and defense used what would become known as the "Nuremberg Defense"; Wirz hoped to pass responsibility to levels above him and that he was "just following orders", while the Federal prosecutors hoped to use his testimony to blame the Confederate leadership for the high death rate.
In November the Military Commission found Wirz guilty of 11 of the 13 charges and sentenced him to death. A clemency plea to Pres Andrew Johnson went unanswered, though according to some Southern sources a cabinet official visited Wirz and offered to commute his sentence in exchange for implicating Confederate Pres Jefferson Davis; this was refused, supposedly with Wirz stating: "Mr. Schade, you know that I have always told you that I do not know anything about Jefferson Davis. He had no connection with me as to what was done at Andersonville. If I knew anything of him I would not become a traitor against him, or anybody else, even to save my life."
Henry Wirz was hanged on November 10, 1865 in the Old Capitol Prison. Wirz, along with Champ Ferguson are the only people executed for war crimes during the American Civil War. The controversy did not die with Wirz, especially after a witness for the prosecution Felix de la Baume turned out to be a deserter named Felix Oeser, the implication being his testimony was perjured and the entire trial a farce. Wirz's role at Andersonville quickly divided along partisan lines, the North portraying him as an almost demonic villain, while the South portrayed him as an almost angelic martyr. Interestingly since the 1960s the Lost Cause viewpoint has become dominant, with a mythos such that Grant or Sherman helped cause the suffering at Andersonville or that Felix Oeser's perjury showed Wirz's innocence. It seems sufficient to say that as the leader of Andersonville Prison Henry Wirz was way over his head, overwhelmed by the ineptitudes of the Confederate government (mostly courtesy of John Winder) and the collapse of the Confederate transportation system, but simultaneously attempted to keep control by utilizing petty but violent and sometimes deadly acts of cruelty. Wirz was likely guilty of war crimes, though in the hindsight of the incredible cruelties of the American Civil War, those crimes seem to pale in comparison to say the actions of Nathan Forrest or William Qunatrill.
Built by the UDC in 1916 in response to the Northern monuments being erected around Andersonville Prison, this is the only monument erected to a war criminal in the United States. Many in Georgia were uneasy about the monument being so closely placed to the site of Andersonville, and managed to get the UDC to tone down language such as "an illegal court martial" and "a judicial murder". Even so as expected, the statue outraged Northern veterans, and the monument has been subject to frequent vandalism.
The wordy text of the monument:
North Side
When time shall have softened passion and prejudice, when reason shall have stripped the mask from misrepresentations, then justice, holding evenly her scales, will require much of past censures and praise to change places.
Jefferson Davis, Dec. 1888
South Side
Discharging his duty with such humanity as the harsh circumstances of the times, and the policy of the foe permitted Capt. Wirz became at last the victim of a misdirected popular clamor. He was arrested in the time of peace, while under the protection of parole, tried by a military commission of a service to which he did not belong, and condemned to ignominious death on charges of excessive cruelty to Federal prisoners. He indignantly spurned a pardon proffered on condition that he would incriminate President Davis and thus exonerate himself from charges of which both were innocent.
East Side
In memory of Captain Henry Wirz, C.S.A. born Zurich, Switzerland, 1822, sentenced to death and executed at Washington D.C. November 10, 1865. To rescue his name from the stigma attached to it by embittered prejudice this shaft is erected by the Georgia division, United Daughters of the Confederacy.
West Side
It is hard on our men held in southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. At this particular time to release all rebel prisoners would insure Sherman’s defeat and would compromise our safety here. Ulysses S. Grant, Aug. 18, 1864
Andersonville, Georgia