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Thirteen Things
Since this year started I have:
1. Walked barefoot on a tropical beach on 1st January.
2. Been told 'welcome home' by the passport officer as I walked through the 'NZ Residents' line at Auckland airport, with no ticket back out of the country.
3. Been interviewed by The New York Times.
4. Had a photograph published in a book.
5. Discovered how much I miss the internet when I don't have it for a prolonged period and am thousands of miles away from almost everyone I know (and need the web for finding houses, etc).
6. Met up with my brother and sister-in-law after five years.
7. Paid (a lot of money) for a visit to the doctor - for the first time ever, apart from when I had food poisoning in India.
8. Sunbathed in the nude - now that I have a garden with private areas where I won't frighten or offend any one.
9. Joined a library - with no limits to how many books I could take out (just limits on how long I can keep them).
10. Posed naked for photographs on the beach/rock pools.
11. Went to the theatre with a (Meet Up) group of strangers (I usually go alone)
12. Sat in a spa pool under the stars.
13. Started to re-evaluate my life: where I'm at, where/who/what I want to be.
Of all the shots I took for this one, only the one with the top of my head cut off was otherwise 'good' (ie, not blurred, not with a hideous expression on my face). So I'm going to pretend that it is deliberate, an 'arty' statement of this list being 'off the top of my head' or maybe that I'm losing my head, or that I'm taking the lid off and looking inside.
The last time I played 'Thirteen Things was 30th December 2007 .
A year ago today I was able to eat again.
All Saints, Alburgh, Norfolk
It was one of those intensely hot days at the start of August 2018, and the cool shade of the over-bowering trees along the narrow lanes was a blessing. You don't have to get far from the Waveney and the busy A137 taking the traffic through to Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth to find peace. Here in the folding ridges to the north are secret villages linked by lonely, jinking roads. I had just come from Denton, its church hidden in the trees in a dip and reached only by a bridge and a track through the grounds of the Hall. And now it was a short distance from there to the larger village of Alburgh, and I caught my first sight of the curiously narrow top of Alburgh church tower appearing above the trees and the barley-stubbled rises. Soon, I came down into civilisation, and there was the church, its tower towards the road.
Not a spectacular church at all, but it has a special connection for me as someone I was very fond of came from here. I was back after twelve years away, but that visit was still clear in my mind, not least because of what I had felt about it then. When I'd got home, I had written: 'Coming down Norfolk by a different road, I came out into a landscape that I knew. It was early spring, and five years before I had explored the Suffolk side of the Waveney valley at the same time of year. Here in Norfolk were the same rolling, secretive meadows, the copses that seeped and spread between the fields, the quiet, scattered parishes with mere hints of village centres. Introspective hamlets, not talking to each other, the narrow lanes that connected them veering and dipping as if trying to shake them off.
At a crossroads, an old Methodist chapel sulked under the indignity of conversion. And there were wide pig farms and ancient silage heaps and faded bottle banks outside the village hall. No commuters here, no holiday cottages or weekend homes. Everyone except me was here because they had to be. This was where they lived, where they worked. They were the modern equivalents of the blacksmith, the carter, the wheelwright. The Waveney valley is the heart of rural East Anglia, perhaps the last truly insular place in the south-east of England. I was glad to be here.
Alburgh is not a place I have ever thought of often. But now, in the crisp air, I stood in the graveyard and looked across the country at the scattered village and its setting. Beyond the houses was the ancient field pattern, the beech trees on the ridge and the rooks wheeling above them. I thought of a song of the early eighties, Pete Wylie's Story of the Blues, and his declaiming, towards the end, the words of Kerouac's Sal Paradise: the city intellectuals of the world are divorced from the folk-body blood of the land, and are just rootless fools. I had been born in a place like this, tiny and remote in the Cambridgeshire fens, a world away from now in the 1960s. But we moved to Cambridge when I was two, and I had lived in urban areas ever since. I was a city intellectual, and I stood now and looked around at the land, a rootless fool.
I first heard of Alburgh more than twenty years ago. I was living unhappily in Brighton at the time, learning to teach, finding out how little I actually knew about anything. I would cycle out to the University through the stinking traffic on the Lewes road, and often arrive cold, wet and battered by the wind from the downs. At first, I knew nobody, and I spent most evenings in my attic room listening to music and feeling sorry for myself. In the bitter-sweet autumn sunshine of the weekends I would cycle around the downs, searching for old churches, repopulating the hamlets and lanes of East Sussex with characters from Hardy and Trollope.
I hardly went into town at all. Everybody seems to love Brighton, and they can't understand it when I say that I don't, but perhaps I was too often miserable there. In my memory I still associate Brighton with debt, and with the transience of being a student. And then, extraordinarily, a brief, doomed relationship, a love affair, became the one vivid thing, a brief, sweet memory of my year in that brash town.
She came from Alburgh, and at first I thought she meant Aldeburgh in Suffolk, and she said it again, Ar-brer, and showed me on a map. How narrow was the single bed we shared, how intense those brief few weeks. And she loved me more than I could possibly have loved her, for I had already met the woman who would become my wife. And so it was messy, and then it ended. But Alburgh still existed, of course, and so coming here I remembered.
If that had been all there was, then I wouldn't have thought it worth mentioning, but there was also the Kerouac quote, and I had recently gone back to the village where I was born. It was a tiny hamlet, off of the Cambridge to Ely road. My mother had been born there, my parents married in the Church there. I was baptised there, and so were my brothers.
At one time there had been three farms, a shop, a railway halt, a pub, a school, a church and a chapel. I'm not looking this up in some mid-19th century White's Directory, I remember them from the 1960s and 1970s. Now, they were nearly all gone. The farms had been built over, the pub, shop and chapel converted to houses. To stand beside the railway line, you'd need a vivid imagination to guess that the halt had even existed, as the expresses screamed through at over a hundred miles an hour.
The church and the school survived, but only because this was now a commuter village. Every morning, hundreds and hundreds of white-collar workers left their identical modern houses and piled up the A10 to Cambridge and Ely. I knew nobody there any more - my grandmother was dead, and all my relatives had left, or were lying under the frozen turf of the little cemetery. It made me sad. I thought that perhaps this was what growing old was, seeing change and resenting it. And so I liked Alburgh because it appeased my sense of loss, as if something might survive after all.'
All this then, gentle reader, was in my mind as I returned to Alburgh after twelve years away. The tower I had seen from Denston churchyard, and which bobbed its head above the copses and the rolling fields as I approached it, stands tall and proud, four-square to the road, the aisleless nave and chancel disappearing into the narrowing churchyard beyond. An imposing sight, though not a huge tower, merely large in proportion. The bulk of it is probably 14th century, but the bell stage with its enormous bell windows is later, a late medieval addition. It looks awkward, because the new building technology no longer required that the buttresses should continue up the bell stage. But the effect is unfortunate, I think, like the unnaturally small head of a large man. The buttressed pinnacles on the four corners are a more recent confection, for the very top of the tower collapsed in 1895, and what we see at the top now dates from the dawn of the new century.
The west front must have been rather grand once, with large niches flanking the window, but the canopies of the niches have gone, either vandalised by protestants or more likely worn away by the passing of the centuries. In proportion with the nave, the south porch seems bigger than it is. A 1463 bequest for the porch by the Wright family is recorded, but it now looks all of its Victorian restoration.
And so, I am afraid, does the inside of the church, a big 19th century barn with a lot of the anonymity you'd expect of this date. And yet, there are neat, local, rustic touches, and the pride of the early 20th Century parish in the boys who went off to war and never came back is still evident, great lists of names rather haunting in their context. Surprisingly, the roof is old, and it spreads impressively across the wide nave. A beautiful gilded rood screen dado is almost defiant in the face of all the restoration. There are pretty little gilded gesso saints in niches on the buttresses along the front, but I think the colour is wholly modern.
Echoing it, perhaps inspired by it, insipid apostles flank the altar and its simple reredos, a William Morris-style hanging. Turning back, the tower arch lifts tall and dreamily, light from the west window flooding the reset font below, the space becoming an echo of the wide chancel arch at the other end of the great roof. There's a pleasing harmony to the whole piece, and perhaps the Victorians should not be blamed for too much.
And so, that was all, my return to Alburgh. Just another church, and yet, like all medieval parish churches, a place full of stories, and memories, hopes, fears, regrets, embarrassments, delights, hungers, desires, agonies, beginnings and endings. Here, I sensed around me a building that was a touchstone down the long generations, and a beacon across miles and oceans. Just another church, but always and everywhere and forever. Think of the millions of people who can trace atoms of their being back to this place! Think of the lives touched by people who stepped out from this parish! And that's true of anywhere of course.
I went back outside and pottered around the graveyard. The heat was stifling after the coolness inside the church. A large dragonfly buzzed around my head and then veered away on the currents rising from the long grass. I sat down on a bench facing towards the newer headstones, and placed on the arm of the bench I found to my surprise a painted flintstone.
It had a message painted and lacquered onto it. On one side was a pink heart, and the words 'I ♥ Norfolk'. On the other side, the artist had painstakingly lettered in tiny writing 'congratulations on finding a Norfolk Rock', and asked the finder to 'either take me or rehide me'. It was extraordinary.
I slipped it into my pocket, not sure if this counted as taking it or rehiding it, possibly both, and thinking to myself that it felt like the goal of a pilgrimage. I wandered over to take a look at the more recent graves, which included a number in the last twenty years with her surname on. It is a common one in this village, but I wondered if any of them could have been her parents, who I had not known. I thought that she had probably been married in this place, if she had ever married, and so I said a silent prayer for all the people I have ever known and lost touch with, wherever they may be in the world, whether or not they remember me, or think of me, or are even reading this now.
I stood for a while, thinking of the years, and then got back in the saddle, shaking off a maudlin veil which was beginning to settle over me. I kicked off into a rush of heat lifted by the sudden breeze of my movement. A long stretch lay ahead of me now through delicious rolling back lanes with melting tarmac, zigzagging down into Harleston.
I asked her to be introspective, and this was her response. i think she is beautiful You can see more of her in my set "Ashley". Taken at Boyd Pond Park Aiken South Carolina with a Canon 5D Mark ii.
www.messersmith.name/wordpress/2010/11/29/walking-the-ten...
After my last post, all cheery and grateful, I'm ahead far enough on happy credits to grow all sombre and introspective again. Today I took delivery of a lonely, stormy Sunday. Last night I attended the annual Country Women's Association Quiz night, a sort of mega-Trivial Pursuit distraction which provides the folk of Madang with an evening of aimless and good natured competition.
Since this is going to be yet another soul-searching ramble through the back alleys of my cranium, let me first demonstrate that I am not in a bad mood at all. These are among the finest bananas I have ever had the pleasure of smushing up in my still toothy gob. Somebody brought them up to the beach at Blueblood a couple of weeks ago. I must have eaten about six of them. As you can see they are rather small. They are incredibly sweet and the flavour is slightly reminiscent of green apples:
See, that's a happy thing. You may find little flakes of freeze-dried happiness elsewhere on this page. Let's see what happens. I'm winging it.
As I plan to intersperse scenes from last night's frivolities here and there as I plod along, I may as well get started. This is our intrepid QuizMaster, Shane McCarthy overseeing the presentation of the craft projects. Each table of six participants was required, on pain of merciless ridicule, to create an object d'art from the miscellaneous contents of a cardboard box. Imaginations ran rampant on the theme of "Christmas Carol":
Once again I found myself facing a dilemma, the magnitude of which might seem trivial when seen from some remote location outside my skull. Over and over again, because of my life situation, smack dab in the middle of everything which meant anything to us, I have to decide if I'm going to do this or that and wonder what my reaction is going to be. The problem is that there is no more us. There is just me. The range of effects which I have experienced has fallen between the extremes of euphoria and despair. I honestly don't know beforehand what is going to happen. I'm just along for the ride.
This is a tender minefield. While that expression may seem an oxymoronic, it is not. All that is happening here is that my community is allowing me the freedom to find a new normality. People are treating me as if everything is business as usual. This is exactly what they ought to do. The minefield is of my own device.
I had waited for an invitation to a table at Quiz Night until I felt that I had to take some active part in my life once more. Two days before the event I called two friends asking, in a not-so-transparent manner, if they had a table and if it was filled. Later that day, I did receive an invitation, after I mentioned it, from another friend. So, committed as I am to allowing life to carry me where it will with as little interference from me as is prudent, I accepted with a mixture of gratitude and foreboding. I'm such a drama queen. Everything has to be a big production. Nothing is easy. Truthfully, I blame my mother, but don't tell her.
It is a minefield, but it bears me no malice. It is simply there, inert until provoked. If I stay in place, I won't get anywhere. I'll stand and take root in this miserable existence. I can walk gingerly, experimentally, but I know that the odds are against me. I've already stepped on a few and I have big chunks missing here and there. The wounds are painful, but they heal rapidly, some more rapidly than others.
There is fun aplenty at every Quiz Night. Ridiculous, giggly fun. Here three teams compete to determine which can most rapidly expend an entire roll of toilet paper by wrapping a team-mate in it:
Following the analogy of the minefield, I'll tell you a true story (really) about a related metaphor, The Point of No Return.
When you note that you have reached the geometrical centre of the minefield and you count your injuries, it dawns on you that you are only half-way home. Injury-wise it might make more sense to retrace your steps and return to GO, not collecting $200. Yet that way lies the madness of arriving back at the beginning and realising that the only reasonably safe option is to once again retrace your footsteps back to the point at which you turned around and proceed from there. You could have done that without wasting energy. Rational decisions at this point are extremely difficult to reach.
Late one Sunday afternoon in the early '70s, I roared away from Chicago Midway Airport in a US Army UH-1 "Huey" helicopter with my crew of four en-route to Decatur Illinois, our home airfield. It was a late departure and each of us had a severe case of "get-home-itis"; families and jobs awaited us. I was Pilot in Command, as sorry a situation as you could want. I was neither much of a pilot nor much of a commander. Deeming that we had sufficient fuel, we lifted off post-haste.
Shortly after passing Kankakee, we could see a massive line of thunderstorms ahead of us. This is my no means unusual for a summer evening in Illinois and it seemed that there were plenty of non-flashing holes through which we could safely pass. We fluttered on, listening to AM radio rock-n-roll through our helmet speakers. After a while it was becoming more and more obvious that we were going to be doing some ducking and weaving. I tapped my finger on the fuel gauge. My co-pilot nodded and frowned. I considered a hop back to Kankakee and a miserable night with a grumbling crew in a motel and rejected it.
We dodged thunderheads visible only by their fireworks and suffered some moderate turbulence which reminded us how long it had been since lunch - just long enough. Nobody wants to barf into his helmet bag. With all of that dodging and searching for holes, I could see that fuel was going to be a teensy-weensy problem. The chatter on the intercom went significantly silent. Everybody knew that we had just passed the Point of No Return. I was wondering precisely how many Army Regs and Flight Rules I had already busted. I was about to bust a few more.
Well, I see that it's time to shorten this long story. We passed safely, if unsteadily through the flashy Texas Line Dance of cumulonimbus incus aircraft washers and into the still, star-studded air of central Illinois about twenty-five minutes from Decatur when the Twenty Minute Fuel Warning light began excitedly to advertise its presence. Uh-oh. As pilots are wont to put it rather indelicately, the pucker factor increased by an order of magnitude.
Let me take a break from that breathless and somewhat pointless reminiscence to show you our creation: (and then I'll try to explain the inexplicable)
I sincerely hope that you can see that it is a manger scene, complete with a tiny, fuzzy Baby Jesus. I contributed, somewhat distractedly, the snowflake and the exclamatory Moo from the spotted cow.
So, was there any point at all to the helicopter story? Probably not. But, if I had to guess, I guess it would be that we are sometimes so distracted by what we so desperately want that we are unable to recognise what we so desperately need. Now, connecting this somewhat tenuously back to the minefield thing, a few of those mines might capriciously explode into bouquets of roses, unlikely as that might seem. Others will blow a leg off. Some might be duds. The problem is that I must keep moving and the only way I know the intent of a mine is to step on it. You know, my situation is not a bit different from yours, now that I think of it. Humpf! And I thought I was special.
Some things which I fervently desire now are not yet available to me. Someday some of them might be. Time will tell. Time will also tell whether they were things which I actually needed. Other things, things which I do not currently yearn for, may turn out to be the things which I need. It would have been such a senseless tragedy if I had killed my crew and myself in a flame-out crash because I did not want to spend a night in a motel in Kankakee. That is what I needed. I realised that most certainly when that warning light came on.
I'm striving quite earnestly to keep my eyes peeled for the warning lights. Right now, I know that I can't trust my desires to be in my best interest. Though some, with that fearful symmetry, burn as bright as William Blake's tiger in the forest, I can never forget the minefield. It is not just a figure of speech. I must move forward. Carefully.
So, with that hopeful thought, I will give you a happy, pretty face. No, not mine. Though I have now made myself happier than I was a couple of hours ago I am still no prettier. Writing does that for me.
This is the lovely smiling face of Michaela of Vienna, who rescued me from an evening of solitary regret:
Saved again by a sensible and loving friend.
Final days of:
GEE VAUCHER: INTROSPECTIVE
EXHIBITIONS END ON SATURDAY MAY 3RD
GALLERY HOURS 11A - 6P
Track 16 Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave., C1
Santa Monica, CA 90404
310.264.4678
new installation at Westlake Park...26 life-sized figures by Icelandic sculptor Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir
Forgive me for getting a bit introspective, but I think these pics of me on the stairs serve as a metaphor. I am heading somewhere (upwards, I believe), with a bit of trepidation, but also with a profound sense of excitement and adventure. I couldn't tell you exaxctly what lies ahead, but that is what makes life interesting. The difference is that these stairs lead up to a level, uniform area; I hope my life never levels out--I always want change :)
Acrylic,alkyd paint,plain wood, used corrugated cardboard
Kitajima Hirofumi ___contemporary art Contemporary Art CONTEMPORARY ART Cool Japan Mountain
The painting of the young couple sitting on a garden bench, in front of a lake, watching the sunset by Mário Silva is dominated by tones of black. The sky, the lake water and most of the garden are plunged into a melancholic darkness, only lit by a few spots of color.
The figures of the couple and the bench dissolve into shades of dark gray, their shapes blending with the gloom of the environment. The shadows fall long and thick, creating an atmosphere of stillness and introspection.
The night sky is filled with fluid strokes of black, with some lighter patches that suggest the presence of clouds. The absence of stars or the moon creates a void that intensifies the feeling of loneliness and isolation.
On the horizon, a narrow band of intense pink represents the setting sun. This single explosion of color contrasts with the sobriety of the rest of the painting, creating a focal point that attracts the viewer's eye.
The dark surface of the lake reflects the gloom of the sky and the shapes of the surrounding elements. This reflection contributes to the feeling of stillness and melancholy that permeates the work.
The couple, represented by dark silhouettes, is sitting on a bench facing the lake. Their faces are not visible, which makes them anonymous and universal figures. Its posture suggests a deep contemplation of the sunset spectacle, a moment of reflection and introspection.
Mário Silva's painting evokes a feeling of melancholy and stillness. The predominance of black, the scarcity of colors and the couple's contemplative posture create an introspective atmosphere and invite the observer to reflect on their own feelings and experiences.
The work can be interpreted in different ways. The couple can represent a moment of solitude and isolation in a tribute to the beauty of nature. The contrast between the prevailing darkness and the light of the setting sun can symbolize the struggle between hope and despair, or the search for meaning in an often bleak world.
"Young couple sitting on a garden bench, in front of a lake, contemplating the sunset" is an evocative and melancholic painting that invites the viewer to delve into their own thoughts and emotions. Mário Silva's mastery of using watercolor to create a dense atmosphere full of meaning makes this work a unique and memorable piece.
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This photo is supposed to be an introspective look at what has been done - self harm, drug or alcohol abuse of some kind, or just and pain and emotional problems felt. Basically about regret... Well, this is another one in my new project! It's all about verbal abuse, and how it can lead to possible self harm and suicide - a heavy topic and one of today's leading social issues among teens and young adults. Let us ALL stand up and speak out! Learn to be comfortable in yourself and not let others bring you down. Only surround yourself by those who will push you forward, not backward. Stay strong, because I know you are!
It took me lots of time and work to be comfortable with myself and my body and my mind. I think differently than others, and I am never very good at expressing myself, but I grew and I learned through experience. It was hard, and there were times I wanted to end it all, but look at me now! I am slowing learning to love again, and soon I will be off to Germany and off to college and it will be amazing! And along my way, I found those who helped me, I hope you do too. "We are called to help each other along. Today, find a way to encourage someone to be a better person/Christian/sibling/lover/etc. because we make each other better."
Two types of people will look at this picture. Those who will see it and go 'meh' and move on, and those who wonder what the hell it's about. This is what it's all about.
I posted that about two months ago and have throughout that time stood fairly resolutely to my thoughts that I should really give up on this idea of photographing people, especially women. Some argued that if it pissed me off that much perhaps I shouldn't post on Flickr for the combined pervs of the internet to descend on, when in actual fact that doesn't bother me, a simple 'block' solves that as best you can.
What bugged me, and still does, is that to many, even on common occasion those who know me well (do they?) the very act of shooting women seems cause for ridicule or suspicion. And when those attitudes, those stinking, shitty attitudes are combined with the common occurances of exceptionally dodgy bastards making those of us who do try to tow the line look like wankers, it's just a bit much. This book project, to which I've devoted almost everything photographically, and in many senses emotionally too, which is going to be years in the making, seems like nothing but a way to give myself a headache, and I've had to ask, if it's not fun, is it worth it? If I'm not enjoying shooting these people and the grief I get afterwards, why bother?
The answer is this. Because taking photos like this is what I fucking do. Add that to the above, and it fucks me off, and I wish I could change, but without it, I'm hollow. There's a hatred and resentment that I have become reliant on something that gives me headaches, but it doesn't change the fact that from morning til night, I see and think things in photos. And short of a few things, nothing fires me more than people. People that fascinate me.
The lady in the picture is Toni. I met Toni, months and months and months ago through Brent after he photographed her for his State of the Nation project, (see here.) Toni, I quickly realised is something a bit special. She's got a deep seated desire to learn photography, and realistically only lacks two things, a camera, and the technical knowledge. What she has in spades, in fact waaaaay more than I have, by literally a factor of thousands is the vision and artistic scope to come up with ideas. She's obsessed by retro and style over the eras. She knows more about subtle nuances of any scene you've ever looked at than you can dream of. She should be an art director, but shit gets in the way. She is, I firmly believe, a bit of a genius.
And so what happens when you bang her head together with mine?
A realisation.
I can't sit on the sidelines and let something which is so integral to me go, when there are people like Toni around. People to tell me stories, to make stories with and to let me save their own stories. People who flat out, rock my world. Sitting chatting with her, an hour flashes past in two minutes. You've spoken about every too cool musician you can think of, their album covers, the books they wrote and the poems they inspired. You look up buzzing, swimming in some sea of inspiration and realise the time for the shoot passed three days ago.
So, I don't want to be part of this shit storm of tossers that make up 99% of model photographers, it makes my skin crawl and I want nothing to do with it.
I do realise, through gritted painful teeth that I can't ignore that, but that I need to do it anyway. I think...
And I do realise there are people out there, muses like Toni, who just make being alive and taking pictures worth it. I hold out my hand in recognition of something greater, and just hope to fuck it's worth it. Toni is.
Four shoots in eight days, and I'm still not sure. New work coming, more old work too.
(Strobist/flash info: Orbis ringlight fired via 580 EXII and Cybersyncs at 1/8th power. Ambient light available too...)
St Columba Church of Scotland, Downing Street, Cambridge
Introspective and unimposing, the 1891 work of J McVicar Anderson. Rather cowed on its site now by the height of the more modern buildings opposite. Although part of the United Reformed Church it retains its Church of Scotland identity by being their chaplaincy to the University of Cambridge. The little St Columba chapel is open everyday, and worth seeing for being the only chapel i have ever come across which is focused on a fire place.
Buste of painter Lorenzo Viani, Viareggio.
Lorenzo Viani
(Viareggio 1882 - Lido di Ostia 1936)
Lorenzo Viani spent his childhood at the Royal Villa in Viareggio, where his father was employed by Don Carlos of Bourbon. The Viani’s economic situation was comfortable as long as the father continued to work for Don Carlos. Lorenzo attended only the first three grades of elementary school. The boy was not easily biddable and yet introspective. He preferred spending his time walking on the beach or in the woods.
When his father lost his job, the family fell upon hard times. Young Lorenzo was familiar with poverty since his peregrinations through the most destitute neighborhoods of Viareggio had left a deep impression upon his spirit. In 1893 he was put to work as a helper in Fortunato Primo Puccini’s barbershop , where he remained for several years. Working for Puccini’s shop brought Lorenzo into daily contact with people from all walks of life and these encounters were a sort of “education in human anatomy”. He wrote: “Before drawing these unkempt faces, I had to handle them with my hands”. As a result, Lorenzo’s training was totally personal and independent from any traditional schooling.
After he met Plinio Nomellini in Puccini’s barbershop, the painter encouraged him to enroll at the Institute of Fine Arts in Lucca. Viani attended classes there for about three years, from 1900 to 1903; at the Institute he met Moses Levy. During his years in Lucca, Lorenzo became involved in politics, and together with other anarchists he was arrested and imprisoned. In 1904 he was accepted at the Free School for Drawing Nudes at the Academy of Fine Arts; he also started to go to Giovanni Fattori’s studio, having met him in 1901, thanks to Nomellini’s introduction. His months spent in Florence were very stimulating for Viani, especially because of the many acquaintances he made.
After returning to Viareggio, he took up residence in Torre del Lago and became a member of the “Bohème Club.” In 1907 he spent a few months in Genoa and exhibited a handful of drawings at the Venice Biennial. He also traveled to Paris, where he spent a little over a year (January 1908-spring 1909). His long-coveted Parisian visit turned out to be filled with economic difficulties and loneliness, and yet it also proved to be very rewarding because of the experiences he had and the acquaintances he made. Between 1911 and 1915 Viani was busy working and traveling to his solo shows in many Italian cities. He served in World War I from 1916 to 1919, years in which, despite his lack of free time, he managed to draw, paint and illustrate incessantly.
On March 2, 1919, he married Giulia Giorgietti and moved to Montecatini, where his wife was an elementary school teacher. His tender portraits of children busy studying and writing belong to this period. After two years, the couple returned to Viareggio. From 1920 to 1922 Viani regularly exhibited his work in Bologna, Lucca and Rome, started writing again and also worked on the Viareggio War Memorial, which was unveiled in July 1927. In 1924 Viani moved to Fossa dell’Abate (today’s Lido di Camaiore) where his son Franco was born the following year, after which Lorenzo left again for Paris.
In 1928 he suffered the first of many asthma attacks that would plague him with varying degrees of severity for the rest of his life. This was a happy time for Viani in terms of his career: he was well known all over Italy and his exhibits became a magnet for learned and international art lovers. In 1933 he spent a long period of time in the psychiatric hospital of Nozano, near Lucca, after a serious bout of asthma. Throughout these dark months of pain and suffering Viani continued his work, producing an abundance of drawings: the mental patients attracted him just as the poor people of Viareggio had. They were marginalized human beings who lived in a state of total unconsciousness, without any possibility of appeal: their mental illness made them forgotten and defenseless, and thus worthy of special attention.
In 1936 he was commissioned to do a series of paintings for Ostia College. After many days of incessant work he was unable to attend the inauguration and died from a severe attack of asthma on November 2, 1936.
Some movie art I did on the set of the short film Denounced, by the Brooklyn Authentic Film-Making (BAF) Production Group.
After a full day of shooting, I was lucky enough to get Dorothy and Gilbrando (in the photo) to execute some poses I had in mind, inspired by the scene they shot that day. They pulled it off exactly as I wanted and I couldn't be pleased more with the shot. Definitely looking forward to hopefully doing another shoot with them soon!
Checkout the Halcyon Habit Facebook Page for more movie art and behind the scenes pictures from Denounced.
Strobist Info: SB-600 through Umbrella up and to the right of the camera, using Nikon CLS.
A glowing bulb captured in black and white, symbolizing warmth and hope against the surrounding darkness. The rustic rope beneath adds texture and contrast, enhancing the play between light and shadow.
Ingo had a friend who had left to him an old camper bus, which is now eternally nestled in a forest for visitors to stay in. It was great fun to have my own space like this. A cozy, introspective morning.
Around Johannes Vermeer's The Art of Painting and Jacob van Ruisdael's The Great Forest - two icons of the picture gallery - this room combines other masterpieces of Dutch painting. These paintings form the focus of the presentation of the Delft and Haarlem school of painting.
Complemented by examples of the Leiden genre painting, they show the visitor distinguishing facets of Dutch paintings of the Golden Age. The quiet, introspective painting of domestic genre scenes Pieter de Hooch's and Gerard ter Borch's (Delft) contrasts with the loud, colorful bustle of the tavern scenes and easygoing circles of Jan Steen (Leiden).
Also in the Landscape Painting (Haarlem), another genuine genre of Dutch painting, not infrequently genre painting elements become part of it, such as with Salomon van Ruysdael.
While the origin of some of the pictures shown here is due to the imperial old stock, the majority of these works only in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries was added to the museum's collection, as spread the taste for bourgeois Dutch art.
Um Johannes Vermeers Die Malkunst und Jacob van Ruisdaels Der große Wald - zwei Ikonen der Gemäldegalerie - vereint dieser Saal weitere Meisterwerke der holländischen Malerei. Diese Gemälde bilden den Schwerpunkt der Präsentation der Delfter und Haarlemer Malschule.
Komplettiert durch Beispiele der Leidener Genremalerei führen sie dem Besucher charakteristische Facetten der holländischen Bildkunst des Goldenen Jahrhunderts vor Augen. Die ruhige, introspektive Malerei häuslicher Genreszenen Pieter de Hoochs und Gerard ter Borchs (Delft) kontrastiert mit dem lauten, bunten Treiben der Wirtshausszenen und lockeren Gesellschaften Jan Steens (Leiden).
Auch in der Landschaftsmalerei (Haarlem), einer weiteren genuinen Gattung der holländischen Malerei, finden nicht selten Genrebildelemente Eingang, wie etwa bei Salomon van Ruysdael.
Während die Herkunft einiger der hier gezeigten Bilder auf den kaiserlichen Altbestand zurückzuführen ist, trat die Mehrheit dieser Werke erst im Laufe des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts in die Sammlung des Museums ein, als sich der Geschmack für die bürgerliche holländische Kunst verbreitete.
Austria Kunsthistorisches Museum
Federal Museum
Logo KHM
Regulatory authority (ies)/organs to the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture
Founded 17 October 1891
Headquartered Castle Ring (Burgring), Vienna 1, Austria
Management Sabine Haag
www.khm.at website
Main building of the Kunsthistorisches Museum at Maria-Theresa-Square
The Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM abbreviated) is an art museum in Vienna. It is one of the largest and most important museums in the world. It was opened in 1891 and 2012 visited of 1.351.940 million people.
The museum
The Kunsthistorisches Museum is with its opposite sister building, the Natural History Museum (Naturhistorisches Museum), the most important historicist large buildings of the Ringstrasse time. Together they stand around the Maria Theresa square, on which also the Maria Theresa monument stands. This course spans the former glacis between today's ring road and 2-line, and is forming a historical landmark that also belongs to World Heritage Site Historic Centre of Vienna.
History
Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery
The Museum came from the collections of the Habsburgs, especially from the portrait and armor collections of Ferdinand of Tyrol, the collection of Emperor Rudolf II (most of which, however scattered) and the art collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm into existence. Already In 1833 asked Joseph Arneth, curator (and later director) of the Imperial Coins and Antiquities Cabinet, bringing together all the imperial collections in a single building.
Architectural History
The contract to build the museum in the city had been given in 1858 by Emperor Franz Joseph. Subsequently, many designs were submitted for the ring road zone. Plans by August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Null planned to build two museum buildings in the immediate aftermath of the Imperial Palace on the left and right of the Heroes' Square (Heldenplatz). The architect Ludwig Förster planned museum buildings between the Schwarzenberg Square and the City Park, Martin Ritter von Kink favored buildings at the corner Währinger street/Scots ring (Schottenring), Peter Joseph, the area Bellariastraße, Moritz von Loehr the south side of the Opera ring, and Ludwig Zettl the southeast side of the Grain market (Getreidemarkt).
From 1867, a competition was announced for the museums, and thereby set their current position - at the request of the Emperor, the museum should not be too close to the Imperial Palace, but arise beyond the ring road. The architect Carl von Hasenauer participated in this competition and was able the at that time in Zürich operating Gottfried Semper to encourage to work together. The two museum buildings should be built here in the sense of the style of the Italian Renaissance. The plans got the benevolence of the imperial family. In April 1869, there was an audience of Joseph Semper with the Emperor Franz Joseph and an oral contract was concluded, in July 1870 was issued the written order to Semper and Hasenauer.
Crucial for the success of Semper and Hasenauer against the projects of other architects were among others Semper's vision of a large building complex called "Imperial Forum", in which the museums would have been a part of. Not least by the death of Semper in 1879 came the Imperial Forum not as planned for execution, the two museums were built, however.
Construction of the two museums began without ceremony on 27 November 1871 instead. Semper subsequently moved to Vienna. From the beginning on, there were considerable personal differences between him and Hasenauer, who finally in 1877 took over sole construction management. 1874, the scaffolds were placed up to the attic and the first floor completed, in 1878, the first windows installed, in 1879, the Attica and the balustrade finished, and from 1880 to 1881 the dome and the Tabernacle built. The dome is topped with a bronze statue of Pallas Athena by Johannes Benk.
The lighting and air conditioning concept with double glazing of the ceilings made the renunciation of artificial light (especially at that time, as gas light) possible, but this resulted due to seasonal variations depending on daylight to different opening times.
Dome hall
Entrance (by clicking on the link at the end of the side you can see all the pictures here indicated!)
Grand staircase
Hall
Empire
The Kunsthistorisches Museum was on 17 October 1891 officially opened by Emperor Franz Joseph I. Since 22 October 1891, the museum is accessible to the public. Two years earlier, on 3 November 1889, the collection of arms, Arms and Armour today, had their doors open. On 1 January 1890 the library service resumed its operations. The merger and listing of other collections of the Highest Imperial Family from the Upper and Lower Belvedere, the Hofburg Palace and Ambras in Tyrol needs another two years.
1891, the Court museum was organized in seven collections with three directorates:
Directorate of coins, medals and antiquities collection
The Egyptian Collection
The Antique Collection
The coins and medals collection
Management of the collection of weapons, art and industrial objects
Weapons collection
Collection of industrial art objects
Directorate of Art Gallery and Restaurieranstalt (Restoration Office)
Collection of watercolors, drawings, sketches, etc.
Restoration Office
Library
Very soon the room the Court Museum (Hofmuseum) for the imperial collections was offering became too narrow. To provide temporary help, an exhibition of ancient artifacts from Ephesus in the Theseus Temple was designed. However, additional space had to be rented in the Lower Belvedere.
1914, after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne, his "Estensische Sammlung (Collection)" passed to the administration of the Court Museum. This collection, which emerged from the art collection of the house of d'Este and world travel collection of Franz Ferdinand, was placed in the New Imperial Palace since 1908. For these stocks, the present collection of old musical instruments and the Museum of Ethnology emerged.
The First World War went by, apart from the oppressive economic situation without loss. The Court museum remained during the five years of war regularly open to the public.
Until 1919 the K.K. Art Historical Court Museum was under the authority of the Oberstkämmereramt (head chamberlain office) and belonged to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. The officials and employees were part of the royal household.
First Republic
The transition from monarchy to republic, in the museum took place in complete tranquility. On 19 November 1918 the two imperial museums on Maria Theresa Square were placed under the state protection of the young Republic of German Austria. Threatening to the stocks of the museum were the claims raised in the following weeks and months of the "successor states" of the monarchy as well as Italy and Belgium on Austrian art collection. In fact, it came on 12th February 1919 to the violent removal of 62 paintings by armed Italian units. This "art theft" left a long time trauma among curators and art historians.
It was not until the Treaty of Saint-Germain on 10 September 1919, providing in Article 195 and 196 the settlement of rights in the cultural field by negotiations. The claims of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Italy again could mostly being averted in this way. Only Hungary, which presented the greatest demands by far, was met by more than ten years of negotiation in 147 cases.
On 3 April 1919 was the expropriation of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine by law and the acquisition of its property, including the "Collections of the Imperial House", by the Republic. On 18 June 1920 the then provisional administration of the former imperial museums and collections of Este and the secular and clergy treasury passed to the State Office of Internal Affairs and Education, since 10 November 1920, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Education. A few days later it was renamed the Art History Court Museum in the "Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna State", 1921 "Kunsthistorisches Museum" . Of 1st January 1921 the employees of the museum staff passed to the state of the Republic.
Through the acquisition of the former imperial collections owned by the state, the museum found itself in a complete new situation. In order to meet the changed circumstances in the museum area, designed Hans Tietze in 1919 the "Vienna Museum program". It provided a close cooperation between the individual museums to focus at different houses on main collections. So dominated exchange, sales and equalizing the acquisition policy in the interwar period. Thus resulting until today still valid collection trends. Also pointing the way was the relocation of the weapons collection from 1934 in its present premises in the New Castle, where since 1916 the collection of ancient musical instruments was placed.
With the change of the imperial collections in the ownership of the Republic the reorganization of the internal organization went hand in hand, too. Thus the museum was divided in 1919 into the
Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection (with the Oriental coins)
Collection of Classical Antiquities
Collection of Ancient Coins
Collection of modern Coins and Medals
Weapons collection
Collection of Sculptures and Crafts with the Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments
Picture gallery
The Museum 1938-1945
Count Philipp Ludwig Wenzel Sinzendorf according to Rigaud. Clarisse 1948 by Baroness de Rothschildt "dedicated" to the memory of Baron Alphonse de Rothschildt; restituted to the Rothschilds in 1999, and in 1999 donated by Bettina Looram Rothschild, the last Austrian heiress.
With the "Anschluss" of Austria to the German Reich all Jewish art collections such as the Rothschilds were forcibly "Aryanised". Collections were either "paid" or simply distributed by the Gestapo at the museums. This resulted in a significant increase in stocks. But the KHM was not the only museum that benefited from the linearization. Systematically looted Jewish property was sold to museums, collections or in pawnshops throughout the German Reich.
After the war, the museum struggled to reimburse the "Aryanised" art to the owners or their heirs. They forced the Rothschild family to leave the most important part of their own collection to the museum and called this "dedications", or "donations". As a reason, was the export law stated, which does not allow owners to bring certain works of art out of the country. Similar methods were used with other former owners. Only on the basis of international diplomatic and media pressure, to a large extent from the United States, the Austrian government decided to make a change in the law (Art Restitution Act of 1998, the so-called Lex Rothschild). The art objects were the Rothschild family refunded only in the 1990s.
The Kunsthistorisches Museum operates on the basis of the federal law on the restitution of art objects from the 4th December 1998 (Federal Law Gazette I, 181 /1998) extensive provenance research. Even before this decree was carried out in-house provenance research at the initiative of the then archive director Herbert Haupt. To this end was submitted in 1998 by him in collaboration with Lydia Grobl a comprehensive presentation of the facts about the changes in the inventory levels of the Kunsthistorisches Museum during the Nazi era and in the years leading up to the State Treaty of 1955, an important basis for further research provenance.
The two historians Susanne Hehenberger and Monika Löscher are since 1st April 2009 as provenance researchers at the Kunsthistorisches Museum on behalf of the Commission for Provenance Research operating and they deal with the investigation period from 1933 to the recent past.
The museum today
Today the museum is as a federal museum, with 1st January 1999 released to the full legal capacity - it was thus the first of the state museums of Austria, implementing the far-reaching self-financing. It is by far the most visited museum in Austria with 1.3 million visitors (2007).
The Kunsthistorisches Museum is under the name Kunsthistorisches Museum and Museum of Ethnology and the Austrian Theatre Museum with company number 182081t since 11 June 1999 as a research institution under public law of the Federal virtue of the Federal Museums Act, Federal Law Gazette I/115/1998 and the Museum of Procedure of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and Museum of Ethnology and the Austrian Theatre Museum, 3 January 2001, BGBl II 2/ 2001, in force since 1 January 2001, registered.
In fiscal 2008, the turnover was 37.185 million EUR and total assets amounted to EUR 22.204 million. In 2008 an average of 410 workers were employed.
Management
1919-1923: Gustav Glück as the first chairman of the College of science officials
1924-1933: Hermann Julius Hermann 1924-1925 as the first chairman of the College of the scientific officers in 1925 as first director
1933: Arpad Weixlgärtner first director
1934-1938: Alfred Stix first director
1938-1945: Fritz Dworschak 1938 as acting head, from 1938 as a chief, in 1941 as first director
1945-1949: August von Loehr 1945-1948 as executive director of the State Art Collections, in 1949 as general director of the historical collections of the Federation
1945-1949: Alfred Stix 1945-1948 as executive director of the State Art Collections, in 1949 as general director of art historical collections of the Federation
1949-1950: Hans Demel as administrative director
1950: Karl Wisoko-Meytsky as general director of art and historical collections of the Federation
1951-1952: Fritz Eichler as administrative director
1953-1954: Ernst H. Buschbeck as administrative director
1955-1966: Vincent Oberhammer 1955-1959 as administrative director, from 1959 as first director
1967: Edward Holzmair as managing director
1968-1972: Erwin Auer first director
1973-1981: Friderike Klauner first director
1982-1990: Hermann Fillitz first director
1990: George Kugler as interim first director
1990-2008: Wilfried Seipel as general director
Since 2009: Sabine Haag as general director
Collections
To the Kunsthistorisches Museum also belon the collections of the New Castle, the Austrian Theatre Museum in Palais Lobkowitz, the Museum of Ethnology and the Wagenburg (wagon fortress) in an outbuilding of Schönbrunn Palace. A branch office is also Ambras in Innsbruck.
Kunsthistorisches Museum (main building)
Picture Gallery
Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection
Collection of Classical Antiquities
Vienna Chamber of Art
Numismatic Collection
Library
New Castle
Ephesus Museum
Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments
Arms and Armour
Archive
Hofburg
The imperial crown in the Treasury
Imperial Treasury of Vienna
Insignia of the Austrian Hereditary Homage
Insignia of imperial Austria
Insignia of the Holy Roman Empire
Burgundian Inheritance and the Order of the Golden Fleece
Habsburg-Lorraine Household Treasure
Ecclesiastical Treasury
Schönbrunn Palace
Imperial Carriage Museum Vienna
Armory in Ambras Castle
Ambras Castle
Collections of Ambras Castle
Major exhibits
Among the most important exhibits of the Art Gallery rank inter alia:
Jan van Eyck: Cardinal Niccolò Albergati, 1438
Martin Schongauer: Holy Family, 1475-80
Albrecht Dürer : Trinity Altar, 1509-16
Portrait Johann Kleeberger, 1526
Parmigianino: Self Portrait in Convex Mirror, 1523/24
Giuseppe Arcimboldo: Summer 1563
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio: Madonna of the Rosary 1606/ 07
Caravaggio: Madonna of the Rosary (1606-1607)
Titian: Nymph and Shepherd to 1570-75
Portrait of Jacopo de Strada, 1567/68
Raffaello Santi: Madonna of the Meadow, 1505 /06
Lorenzo Lotto: Portrait of a young man against white curtain, 1508
Peter Paul Rubens: The altar of St. Ildefonso, 1630-32
The Little Fur, about 1638
Jan Vermeer: The Art of Painting, 1665/66
Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Fight between Carnival and Lent, 1559
Kids, 1560
Tower of Babel, 1563
Christ Carrying the Cross, 1564
Gloomy Day (Early Spring), 1565
Return of the Herd (Autumn), 1565
Hunters in the Snow (Winter) 1565
Bauer and bird thief, 1568
Peasant Wedding, 1568/69
Peasant Dance, 1568/69
Paul's conversion (Conversion of St Paul), 1567
Cabinet of Curiosities:
Saliera from Benvenuto Cellini 1539-1543
Egyptian-Oriental Collection:
Mastaba of Ka Ni Nisut
Collection of Classical Antiquities:
Gemma Augustea
Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós
Gallery: Major exhibits
We must not expect happiness, Sayuri. It is not something we deserve. When life goes well, it is a sudden gift; it cannot last forever.
Memories of a geisha
Non dobbiamo aspettarci la felicità, Sayuri. Non è una cosa che ci è dovuta. Quando la vita va bene, è un dono improvviso, non può durare per sempre.
Memorie di una geisha
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