At some stage, Ukraine will become EU member.

 

EU Council President Charles Michel said earlier today that he expects Zelensky to formally apply for EU membership some time soon. the EU commission will then formulate an advice, it will require a unanimous agreement of the 27 member states to approve the application and grant the status of candidate member state, which would be the start of the formal accession procedure for the Ukraine (this accession procedure takes several years).

 

Meanwhile, in a never before taken measure, yesterday the Council of National Ministers of the 27member states of the European Union, unanimously decided that Ukrainian refugees arriving in the EU will automatically get protected status for up to three years without having to go through the usual asylum procedure.

 

360,000 Ukrainian refugees have already arrived in the EU, a figure that is expected to rise to several millions over the next couple of days and weeks.

   

On March 5, 1866, Daniel Willard Fiske and Andrew D. White founded the Onondaga Club. It was the first social club organized in Syracuse and its purpose was to create an association for literary and recreational purposes. Within a few weeks of its founding, its membership grew to 100 strong. As a select group of community leaders, businessmen and professionals, membership remained at 100 for the next 10 years. On September 13, 1876, a new charter was drawn and the members of the Onondaga Club became the charter members of the Century Club. The Onondaga Club faded away, and the Century Club carried on its stead, its membership intact.

Major Moses Dewitt Burnet, a prominent Syracuse businessman, built the present clubhouse at James and North Townsend streets in about 1842. It was occupied as his residence and rivaled the best homes in the city. In 1881, the residence was acquired by the Century Club for its clubhouse. A 21-step staircase led from James Street to the entrance on the second floor and was one of the club's many distinguishing features

As an amateur photographer this is the first time in my life that it ever happened to me.

Yesterday I was doing street through the old town and while I was walking around I met a group of members belonging to Fotoclubvalencia, a photography association in my city.

They were taking photographs of the area where I was, so I took the opportunity to take some pictures of them too (in the photograph only appears two of them).

They all were especially kind with me, taking interest in my activity and inviting me to join their club, so I think this is going to be the beginning of a new adventure in my life as a photographer.

Time will show where it drives me but I'm very emotioned with this new adventure that is yet to start.

www.fotoclubvalencia.com/?fbclid=PAAaZztOgaBnp4K3KN-g0Er0...

Membership comes with perks! Special Monthly gifts, Discounts with in-store shopping & more!

Batala Mersey was founded in 2015 and is part of an international network founded by Bahian percussionist Giba Gonçalves with a worldwide membership of over 1,000 drummers.

Join the Group / one door a .

Het hoofdbestanddeel moet een hele deur zijn /geen personen

The main component has to be a door / No persons

Get a Membership / Word lid !!

  

Dank voor je commentaar

Danke für deinen Kommentar

Thank you for your comment

Gracias por tu comentario

Merci pour votre commentaire

Obrigado pelo seu comentário

 

Awesome emerald like natural formation on a foggy day. Captured when the spider was not at home! Please press L for better viewing. Best @ 1600 for the wow! Dear friends and viewers, you can also find me on www.500px.com/azimaging

As I near my one year anniversary of pro membership, here are some of the photos that enlightened, inspired and delighted me.

 

If you see your photo... please leave a note of the image

 

With the help of the flickr leach.

beta.flickrleech.net/

   

1. Excited Elizabeth, 2. Daffodil, 3. Planet X - the unknown virtual planet, 4. Homeshots2 086 - Max - mommy's boy, 5. Untitled, 6. The Fishermen and the Icebergs, 7. The Girls, 8. Damned Beauty XII, 9. I've Been To The Hairdresser!! - Day301/365, 10. What's not to Love . .. ., 11. Waiting for the Sunset, 12. RED DAWN, 13. Vermilion Lighthouse on Blue, 14. puppie, 15. Covergirl, 16. Portage Lake Alaska, Ominous Clouds looming, 17. A Happy Ending To A Sad Start - Day164/365, 18. Incense, 19. throwing stones, 20. Mitzu At Pastel's House, 21. Angel of 21st Feb, 22. BetterThanGoode, 23. Atlantis, 24. Received My Tax Refund!, 25. Fishing boats !, 26. Lonely, Frosty, Falls, 27. Last Wave, 28. What's going on over there? (71/366), 29. Upper Tahquamenon Falls, 30. Those nights..., 31. Lego my Eggo, 32. "Marina" 2, 33. From the depths of the night, I'll be watching you..., 34. death space2, 35. only thing better than the weekend?, 36. Untitled

 

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

US Airways' EMB-190AR arriving as US1588 from Philadelphia... a brand spanking new Embraer :) Beautiful site!

 

*Airlines 101* (See the Set Airliners 101)

 

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_airways

Website: www.usairways.com

Region: North America

Name: (US) US AIrways

Founded: 1939

Based in: Tempe, Arizona, USA

Fleet: EMB-190, A319, A320, A321, A330, A340, 737, 757, 767

Route Map: www.airlineroutemaps.com/USA/US_Airways_America_West.shtml

Hubs: Charlotte, Philadelphia, Phoenix

Alliance Membership: Star Alliance

Type: Inter-continental flag carrier for the USA

Note: Is now a combine operation comprising US Airways & America West.

Hey, we have a great present idea for you or for a friend. Think of it as a Wine of the Month Club that's BYOB and includes about 100 fun photo tutorial videos, presets, and something new every Sunday. Great how-tos and all other kinds of behind-the-scenes stuff with the "Passport Membership" on my blog. Anyway, it's a great gift to give to yourself or an awesome friend... the gift that keeps on giving! See more at www.StuckInCustoms.com/Passport

 

Copyright Trey Ratcliff www.StuckInCustoms.com

on the occasion of the annual membership meeting of the San Francisco Heritage organization (formerly San Francisco Architectural Heritage)

The Journey, Unlimited membership season 2 is here and will be active until the end of June!

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In the beginning of my flick membership the idea was: just to "have the account" ... But then I started to upload some of my photos and soon, most important, I have seen so many great works, that inspired and motivated me to do more ...

Thanks to all for sharing their work and sometimes for finding time to look at my amateur efforts.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with the delegation from the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats political group of the European Parliament led by its President Iratxe García Pérez.

The Head of State thanked the European Parliament and the European Council for the financial and political support provided to Ukraine since the very beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion.

“Yesterday's allocation of 4.1 billion euros to Ukraine for this year under the Ukraine Facility program is very important for us. We are also looking forward to the 18-billion-euro macro-financial loan for Ukraine. These decisions are very important for us. All political decisions supported by the majority of the European Parliament during these almost three years have been very important for us,” the President said.

During the meeting, the parties discussed military support and strengthening of air defense to protect people and critical infrastructure in Ukraine from Russian attacks.

The use of frozen Russian assets for defense needs and strengthening air defense was one of the key topics of the talks. After all, this directly contributes to bringing Ukraine and the world closer to a just peace.

Special attention was paid to Ukraine's progress towards EU membership.

“Our goal is to move closer to the EU as soon as possible. We are committed to actively adopting the necessary laws and implementing reforms,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Iratxe García Pérez emphasized the importance of continued military, financial and humanitarian support for Ukraine.

“We know how important this is for all of us. You are defending your country and our common values, freedom. We know how important it is to continue working in this direction,” she said.

I post this series of photos of a pro-Ukraine protest in London's Trafalgar Square as a neutral observer (more photos will be following soon). I'm no fan of either Russian or Western imperialism and military aggression and I have every sympathy with the Ukrainians who are facing a war of aggression from their more powerful northern neighbour, part of the motive for which seems to be to rebuild the prestige and power of Russia, as a sort of new Russian empire reflecting the former hegemonic influence over Eastern Europe of the Soviet Union. All at an immense cost in lives, and also a clear and grave violation of international law. Putin's decision to escalate the nuclear standoff with the West by publicly placing his nuclear forces on high alert should be another reminder of just how dangerous he is.

 

However, the West should also share a significant portion of the blame for this war. The Russian invasion is far from "unprovoked" as many media commentators claim. First, we have to remember recent history and how Russia has good reason to fear NATO which was originally set up to combat the threat of the 'Russian hordes.' It is remarkable how in 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev, despite his familiarity with Germany's responsibility for having invaded Russia twice during the twentieth century (in 1914 and 1941), agreed to allow East Germany to join West Germany inside a hostile military alliance. There was however a quid pro quo, as promised by President George H. W. Bush (senior) and Secretary of State James Baker that NATO wouldn't move "another inch to the east" but that promise was soon broken as during the Clinton presidency, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined, and then under President George W. Bush, the NATO alliance was further extended to include Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Baltic States, and further still under Obama to Croatia and Albania.

 

This means that NATO forces are now frequently deployed right around Russia's western borders (except for Ukraine and Belarus). One can imagine, Washington's paranoia, if say in the 1960s or 1970s, Mexico and Canada had declared their intention to join the Warsaw Pact and many people may be familiar with how Cuba's desire to station Soviet missiles on its territory to deter a feared US invasion (and frequent terror attacks), almost led to a nuclear war, though fortunately Khrushchev saw wisdom and backed down in the face of JFK's terrifying brinkmanship and secretly the United States did agree to withdraw some of its older strategic nuclear missiles from Turkey.

 

At the same time the United States sees Ukraine as occupying a key space on the strategic chessboard, and has ensured that Ukraine has become increasingly dependent on foreign debt and Washington's goodwill, and has continued to plan for Ukraine's eventual incorporation into NATO. That would mean Ukraine, which occupies a vital strategic position on Russia's southern flank and with its border just 350 miles from Moscow, would also become a potential platform for an assault on Russia and even if no assault ever occurred, the mere fact of NATO's enhanced power, would inevitably greatly diminish any remaining influence Russia had to counterbalance US hegemony in Europe. That's why Ukraine's membership of NATO is something which no Russian leader was ever likely to accept. It is of course easy to see a possible compromise - that Ukraine should remain neutral but that in return all countries should respect its territorial integrity, although allowing some autonomy for the Russian speaking areas in Crimea and the Donbass.

 

Western media has downplayed the suffering of the Russian population in the Donbass region, which for years has been subjected to constant shelling from government forces, and although Ukrainian civilians have also been killed by Russian backed separatists, the UN figures clearly show that year after year, it was the Russian population which suffered a far higher level of fatalities and serious injuries, including the deaths of many children.

 

ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-relat...

 

Western media also holds up Ukraine as a beacon of freedom and democracy, but while there have been some important gains for civil society in recent years, Russians have good reason to be unhappy. The Ukraine government has harassed and detained several opposition and pro-Russian journalists and in February 2017 it banned the commercial importation of books from Russia and a new education law made Ukrainian the sole language of instruction in secondary schools, which obviously discriminated against its Russian population. Fascist militias are also growing in number and corruption is endemic while the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture suspects the Ukrainian government of operating secret prisons.

 

However, it should be noted that the human rights record of the separatist regions of Luhansk and Donetsk have also received intense criticism from the UN OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) and various NGOs for suspected human rights abuses, while Russia's appalling human rights record and its increasing authoritarianism is well known.

 

To avoid the enormous risk of a nuclear confrontation the West has to start thinking of a way to allow Putin to climb down, without jeopardising European security or sacrificing the freedoms of the Ukrainian people and the obvious way would be to agree to recognise Ukraine as a neutral sovereign state which would remain outside NATO and with a real democratic autonomy for the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

 

If the West continues to funnel enormous quantities of high tech military equipment into Ukraine, without any attempt to reach a political compromise (by recognising Russia's legitimate security concerns and autonomy for the Donbass region while still guaranteeing Ukraine's sovereignty) there's a very real risk that an increasingly frustrated Putin will issue an ultimatum for the tactical use of nuclear weapons in order to regain the upper hand on the battlefield, and this will be an incredibly dangerous moment for humankind.

   

Erdogan's become the Islamist terrorist leader we knew he has always been, violently killing innocents and civilians. Is any nation or world organization going to step up and stop this!? America as leader of the Free World has been neutered by Trump, it's pathetic, corrupt, bought and paid for "leader". The U.S. could stop Turkey with a single phone call! Where is the Pentagon? Where are America's Generals of integrity? Where are America's Senators and Congressmen? Why hasn't NATO stripped Turkey of its membership in that organization? Why hasn't the EU stepped in? Germany? France? Britain? Has the entire civilized world become a group of feckless eunuchs? Perhaps it's time Israel stepped in, as an Israeli, I would support the risk. We cannot allow the genocide of the Kurds, while we still have beating hearts.

PLEASE, NO invitations or self promotions, THEY WILL BE DELETED. My photos are FREE to use, just give me credit and it would be nice if you let me know, thanks.

 

Historic St. James United Church is the heart of Great Village. An aging/declining church membership has resulted in the church building being sold.

 

Built 1845, Burnt 1882, Built 1883. This is what the plaque above the front entrance to this former Presbyterian, later United Church, informs the visitor. Beside the entrance is another sign, informing us that the church is now an Antique Store.

  

Owned by Art Wesselman.

 

51st Packards Int'l Membership Meet & Valentine's Party

 

My YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTtf-Hz1nTzZMoBqyBDeKA/videos

Just goes to show you that pretty much anyone can climb on and off a cruise ship. If Park Rangers can handle it.....

 

Actually, that is what was happening. While spending most of the day cruising the glaciers there were several park rangers onboard watching for wildlife, assisting cruisers with answers to their questions, etc. The one I found the most interesting was the Raven/Raven Clan spokesman who gave such detailed explanations on how he acquired the Raven/Raven rather than the Raven/Eagle clan membership. Amazing history of the Tlingit Clan. www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&s...

Master of the Schotten altar Nuremberg around 1470

Adoration of Magi Lamentation of Christ

Wien Belvedere.

 

L'ART MIROIR DES VALEURS D'UNE SOCIETE (1)

 

"Regardez notre art, nous avons l'esthétique de notre éthique : un cri dans le désert.

Jean DUCHE". Le Bouclier d’Athéna. L'Occident, son histoire, son destin. 1983

 

L'Art Roman ? L'Art Gothique ? Un fameux succès de l'imaginaire. La preuve que l'homme est beaucoup plus que l'homme, et qu'il mérite Dieu.

Jean DUCHE. Le Bouclier d'Athena.

 

"Une œuvre est reconnue comme œuvre d'art parce qu'elle a subi victorieusement l'épreuve de la critique, de l’opinion publique commune et du temps."

Mikel DUFRENNE (1910-1995 Universalis. article Œuvre d’art)

  

L'Art est ce que vous croyez. Et l'art vous fait croire en ce que vous croyez. L'art vous fait aussi croire en ce que vous ne croiriez pas, si vous étiez libre de croire. Et si vous ne croyez plus en rien ? Même pas en l'homme ? Seulement en vous-même, au mépris de tous les autres ? C'est l'Art Contemporain Officiel.

 

L'art est une expression de la manipulations des hommes par leurs élites gouvernantes, politiques et idéologiques. C'est un fait historique. Reste une question : cette manipulation est-elle bénéfique, créatrice d'une civilisation durable dans une société donnée? Ou cet art et l'idéologie qu'il sert sont-ils stériles et conduisent-ils à la mort des sociétés auxquelles ils ont été imposées ? Il existe là aussi des exemples historiques.

L'Histoire de la peinture européenne démontre une vérité : l'Art est fondamentalement idéologique et politique. Dans la Politique Aristote a défini l'homme comme un animal politique. Et l'homme se gouverne et est gouverné par des croyances, des idéologies.

L'Art est idéologique c'est à dire qu'il est le reflet, l'expression, du système de valeurs qui façonne une société donnée à une époque donnée. L'Art est politique car ce système de valeurs est toujours imposé par les puissances gouvernantes de l'époque. Ces puissances gouvernantes ne se confondent pas nécessairement avec les chefs politiques au pouvoir. Ce sont des Influences qui débordent souvent le cercle étroit des dirigeants manifestes, les politiciens. Les politiciens peuvent être totalement dominés par les idéologues, ou non, ou un équilibre peut s'instaurer. A partir de la seconde moitié du 19è siècle, en Occident, une très ancienne catégorie d'acteurs des sociétés humaines s'est imposée, discrètement, progressivement, mais totalement jusqu'à devenir, les Maîtres du Monde: les commerçants, et plus particulièrement les commerçants de l'argent, les financiers.

Ce qui est certain c'est que chacune de ces catégories a besoin de l'autre autant qu'elle est en concurrence. Gouverner c'est frapper les imaginations populaires d'une manière ou d'une autre, pour le bien ou pour le mal. Gouverner c'est idéologiser. L'homme est idéologique avant d'être politique. C'est la différence avec les fourmis. Les fourmis aussi sont politiques, mais elles ne sont pas idéologiques. Reste à savoir quelles idéologies les gouvernants vont utiliser pour asseoir leur pouvoir.

L'art de tous les temps et dans toutes les sociétés est un moyen pour les élites d'imposer une religion (sacrée) ou une idéologie (profane, laïque). Dans toutes les civilisations l'art de chaque époque se comprend au travers du filtre idéologique qui inspire les élites de cette civilisation à cette époque.

L'art est donc un intéressant révélateur de la pensée philosophique et morale qui anime les élites d'une société donnée en un temps donné. Ces religions ou idéologies peuvent différer beaucoup quant au bénéfice que les peuples vont, ou non, en retirer. Certaines sont propices à l'établissement de civilisations au long cours (Egypte ancienne, Antiquité greco-romaine, Christianisme, Hindouisme, Bouddhisme, Islam....) d'autres sont plus ou moins rapidement mortelles ( Religions Aztèque et Inca, Communisme, National-Socialisme). En effet certaines idéologies, sacrées ou profanes, conçues par les élites, ont été, à plus ou moins court terme, acceptées et totalement partagées par les peuples qui y ont adhéré sans réticence. Elles peuvent alors s'imposer totalement sans heurter les sentiments et les libertés des populations, ou tout au moins d'une majorité largement significative, voire faire l'unanimité à l'intérieur de leur société durant une longue période de temps.

D'autres idéologies par contre ont été imposées par les élites, mais n'ont pas suscité l'adhésion unanime ou majoritaire des peuples qui sont entrés en résistance, passive ou active avec plus ou moins de succès au bout d'une période plus ou moins longue.

 

Une des caractéristiques de l'Europe qui transparaît au travers de l'histoire de sa peinture est une nette tendance, à l'instabilité, à l'impermanence culturelle et idéologique. Une difficulté à pérenniser et a contrario une propension au changement qui caractérise cette société en comparaison d'autres civilisations. Fernand Braudel a très bien cerné ce phénomène avec l'acuité de son esprit de synthèse comparative :

"Les civilisations d'Extrême Orient se présentent comme des ensembles qui auraient atteint très précocement une maturité et un développement remarquable mais pour rendre quasi immuables certaines de leurs structures essentielles. Elles en ont tiré une cohésion remarquable mais aussi une difficulté à se transformer elle mêmes, à vouloir et pouvoir évoluer. En Extrême Orient où les monuments se détériorent comme en Chine et au Japon car bâtis en matériaux légers, l'homme, le social, le culturel semblent au contraire d'une permanence indestructible. Pérennité religieuse, philosophique, sociale et politique sont sa marque, au contraire de l'Occident" (Grammaire des civilisations)

  

1° L'Art de L'Egypte était clairement le reflet des croyances religieuses de l'époque et du pays. Une époque qui a duré plus de 3.000 ans.

 

2° L'Art Gréco-Romain est commandé par sa vision d'un monde où l'Harmonie universelle dépend du repect par les Dieux et par les hommes, chacuns à leurs places, des règles qui régissent les grands équilibres naturels.C'est cette croyance en une loi d'Harmonie universelle qui explique l'architecture, la sculpture et la peinture grecque et romaine. Pour l'Antiquité Gréco-romaine, l'architecture et la sculpture sont les témoins essentiels de l'art de cette époque. La peinture est seulement aperçue au travers de témoignages très rares, souvent en mosaïque. L'Ordre harmonique, divin et humain, semble en être le commandement principal. Mais il n'est pas à l'origine du monde.

C'est la fonction de Zeus (Jupiter) : Avoir fondé, dans la lutte et par la guerre, et préservé ensuite par son autorité bienveillante un ordre universel, chez les Dieux et chez les hommes. Un Ordre à peu près harmonieux, après les grands bouleversements des Temps Primordiaux et les règnes chaotiques de Ouranos (Uranus) et Chronos ( Saturne). Cette mythologie est une représentation symbolique tout à fait en accord avec ce que la science contemporaine nous dit de la formation de la Terre. L'Ordre harmonieux n'est venu qu'après une longue période de formation cataclysmique.

Un Ordre universel qui relie les Dieux et les hommes dans un esprit de sagesse et d'accord distancié. Distancié, car l'homme doit honorer les Dieux, mais s'en tenir à l'écart s'il veut bien vivre. L'homme doit impérativement éviter l'Ubris (Hybris), l'esprit de démesure, l'orgueil, qui le porte trop souvent à croire qu'il est l'égal des Dieux. Zeus est un Dieu suprême, mais pas créateur, seulement organisateur, plein d'une saine et paillarde vigueur masculine, très indo-européenne.

On est très loin avec les Grecs d' une vision du monde divin et humain identique à celle sémitique. On est très loin aussi de la vision du monde occidentale, telle que celle issue de la religion des "Lumières". L'homme grec est éclairé en comparaison du barbare, mais il s'interdit de se croire aussi éclairé que les Dieux. S'il venait à l'homme l'idée de se croire bon juge dans les querelles entre les divinités, grandes ou moins grandes, il se trouverait affublé d'oreilles d'âne comme le Roi Midas. Et encore la sanction serait très modérée: Midas aurait pu être écorché vif comme Marsyas.

Sagesse antique. Chacun à sa place, l'homme n'est pas suffisamment éclairé pour mépriser les grands équilibres naturels garantis par les Dieux, et régner sans conditions sur l'Univers. Il doit s'y conformer modestement, même s'il peut raisonnablement tenter de le comprendre et de l'utiliser avec prudence. En mesurant sans cesse son insignifiance, mais sans timidité excessive ou sentiment de culpabilité pour autant. C'est la conception que l'église catholique adoptera, sans doute parce qu'une partie de ses sources sont grecques. L'homme des Lumières d'Occident placé devant l'immensité des problèmes que lui posent son Dieu "Progrès" et sa Déesse "Modernité", finira peut être par revenir à cette sagesse. Mais il a encore bien du chemin à parcourir.

 

Les Grecs n'ont pas inventé l'art, d'autres l'avaient fait avant eux, depuis même le paléolithique!! Mais la théorie de la démocratie (pas la pratique, les Grecs étaient nuls dans cette pratique) la philosophie rationaliste, et même les prémisses de l'esprit scientifique sont à mettre à leur crédit.

Le résultat en art est brillant : Un art millénaire, et même plus que millénaire par ses répercussions aux époques ultérieures dans toute l'Europe, et même l'Occident. La Statue de la Liberté de New York est un pastiche de l' antique : Un mixte du Phare d'Alexandrie et du Colosse de Rhodes, ressuscités par deux franc-maçons français.

L'art grec privilégie l'harmonie, la clarté des formes, ses thèmes sont la Nature, les Dieux et les hommes. Les Dieux Grecs sont tout à fait anthropomorphes. Différence notable avec la religion Égyptienne et même avec celle de la Mésopotamie. Est ce déjà le signe d'une rupture entre l'homme et la nature avec ses "Dix Mille Êtres" ? Quand l'homme choisit l'anthropomorphisme pour représenter ses Dieux il s'instaure définitivement au dessus de l'animal. Il ne totémise plus, mais il cesse de participer avec l'animalité et s'éloigne peut être de l'Esprit Universel. Est ce une promotion de l'homme ce point de vue humain sur toutes choses ? N'est ce pas une perte de Sens, un tragique éloignement de la Vie et de la Nature? Une trahison qui commence ? L'homme était il destiné à régner absolument sur le monde ? Régner sur le monde au mépris de la Nature et des Dix Mille Êtres, y compris au mépris des hommes et de leur diversité raciale et culturelle ?

Ce sont des questions que l'art grec conduit à se poser, car il est à l'image d'une société qui n'était pas parfaite, mais qui vivait à peu près en harmonie avec son environnement.

L'art est un reflet des valeurs de son temps, mais il peut éclairer l'avenir des temps.

A la condition que l'homme accepte d'examiner et de respecter les leçons du passé. Qu'il cesse de se croire supérieur parce qu'il est Eclairé, Moderne et Progressiste. Qu'il se pense dans la continuité de l' histoire des hommes et non pas d'un concept d'homme abstrait, et dans la continuité de l'histoire d'un vivant multiple. Univers est un mot d'origine latine : unus/versus, c'est à dire unité/diversité. Le contraire du projet mondialiste d'uniformisation des peuples et de son art contemporain, laid et absurde, identique dans le monde entier. Avec l'art Grec, beau et harmonieux, superbe et modeste, équilibré, on est très loin des excès provocateurs de l'art contemporain officiel et des banquiers qui lui sont associés et qui ont provoqué la grande crise mondiale, financière et économique, de 2008.

 

3°Un des premiers commandements de l'Islam est la condamnation de la représentation de Dieu et son art pictural géométrique et abstrait est le reflet de cette interdiction. Il n'existe pas d'art contre les croyances ou les incroyances des hommes.

Une des grandes guerres civiles dans l'Empire Byzantin a été de savoir si on représenterait ou non Dieu, la Vierge. C'est la crise iconoclaste qui s'achève par la victoire des Images.

 

4° De 500 à 1500 en Europe l'Art a été presque exclusivement catholique, ou orthodoxe à l'Est.

Il faut bien voir que l'effondrement de l'Antiquité et la substitution aux valeurs gréco-romaines, dont les sources étaient indo-européennes, des valeurs chrétiennes, dans leur version catholique et orthodoxe, a été une rupture culturelle considérable. Le christianisme a introduit en Europe toute une vision du monde et de l'homme qui était totalement étrangère à la société européenne entre moins 500 et plus 500. Les nouvelles valeurs et la vision du monde chrétienne est empruntée de manière massive à la culture judaïque et plus largement sémitique. De ce point de vue la christianisation de l'Europe est une acculturation considérable des populations européennes. Pendant Mille ans la peinture et la sculpture européenne ont été le résultat de cette idéologie religieuse.

La Renaissance est une résurrection, très partielle, réservée à une élite intellectuelle et sociale, de la pensée et de certaines valeurs des sociétés grecques et romaines de sources indo-européennes .

Toute la peinture européenne entre 1500 et et le 19è siècle est la manifestation du double héritage culturel de l'Europe, indo-européen d'origine et sémitique d'importation.

A ces époques l'art est incontestablement un art imposé aux peuples par les élites du moment, mais c'est aussi un art partagé, auquel les peuples adhèrent, car il correspond à leur conception du beau et est porteur d'un message compris par eux. Bref l'art roman ou gothique est inter-social, il réunit les élites et les peuples dans une même vision du monde. C'est un art inspiré par une idéologie unique qui anime pleinement la société de cette époque, mais cette société n'est pas totalitaire, sinon il n'y aurait pas eu d'art. La sincérité évidente des artistes de cette époque, l'authenticité manifeste de leurs oeuvres bâties, sculptées, peintes sont la démonstration d'une réelle liberté de création à l'intérieur d'un système spirituel et moral aux tendances univoques.

 

5° Au 15è siècle en Italie apparaissent de nouveaux thèmes : La religion catholique n'est plus l'unique inspiratrice de la peinture et de la sculpture européenne. La Mythologie et l'Histoire de la Grèce et de Rome fournissent de nouveaux thèmes à l'art européen, qui retrouve les règles stylistiques en vigueur pendant l'Antiquité. Notamment une représentation naturaliste et réaliste du monde. Mais cette nouvelle inspiration de la peinture européenne n'exclut pas du tout l'art religieux, qui se maintient vivant à destination des peuples et d'une grande partie de l'élite. La coexistence entre les deux sources durera dans les pays d'Europe du Sud jusqu'à la fin du 19è siècle. Nous sommes toujours dans un art imposé-partagé. Imposé, certes d'en haut par les élites, mais accepté, compris par la grande majorité des peuples. La preuve: tous les artistes, à l'époque des artisans, sont issus des peuples.

Certes la Renaissance introduit une nouveauté : Un Art à deux vitesses, un art très majoritaire en quantité, à destination des peuples, l'autre à destination d'une fraction plus étroite, aristocratique et bourgeoise, intéressée par la culture de l'antiquité gréco-latine

 

6° C'est au 17è siècle, aux Pays Bas protestants, que devient totalement dominante une peinture d'esprit non religieux, laïque, qui privilégie la représentation de la nature, les natures mortes, de la société du temps, et les portraits. Le premier acte des protestants dans toute l'Europe a été de détruire les églises et les oeuvres d'art catholiques. De nouvelles valeurs, plus profanes et matérialistes se sont alors mises en place. Les représentations religieuses deviennent tout à fait minoritaires dans cet art. 1000 ans de racines catholiques de l'Europe s'effacent. Il en est de même d'ailleurs des motifs de tableaux tirés des autres racines de l'Europe : l'Antiquité gréco-romaine. La peinture des Pays Bas du Nord abandonne totalement au 17è siècle la Mythologie et l'Histoire Gréco-Romaine comme source d'inspiration.

Cette rupture culturelle, très importante dans l'histoire de l'Europe, bien plus que "la Renaissance", sera l'occasion d'un renouvellement tout à fait intéressant de la peinture européenne avec l'apparition ou le développement :

- du paysage comme motif unique des tableaux.Sans aucune allusion religieuse ou mythologique. Les peintres d'églises ne peignent pas non plus des oeuvres religieuses, mais des paysages d'églises.

- de la peinture de moeurs, soit en milieu paysan, soit en milieu bourgeois.

- de la nature morte. Les "vanités" sont une survivance moraliste de la peinture religieuse mais aussi bien souvent l'occasion de célébrer la prospérité du pays et la richesse de ses habitants. Elle sont un miroir d'une société très matérialiste.

- Le portrait est un art très développé. Les personnages des tableaux sont des bourgeois. Différence sensible avec les autres pays européens, la France par exemple..

Cette évolution va gagner l'Europe du sud ou celle germanique et slave, mais beaucoup plus lentement au cours du 18è et du 19è siècle.

L'art des Pays Bas protestants du siècle d'Or, le 17è siècle, est une étape très importante sur le chemin qui va de sociétés aux tendances spiritualistes plus ou moins affirmées vers des sociétés qui, comme celle de l'Occident actuel, s'organisent sur des bases totalement matérialistes.

L'histoire de la peinture démontre très clairement que c'est cette évolution, du spiritualisme vers le matérialisme, que l'Europe a suivi entre l'an 1000 et l'an 2000. Selon les textes philosophiques hindoues et notamment les "Puranas", ce serait un schéma applicable à l'évolution de toute société humaine. Pas seulement à l'Europe.

 

7° Il ne faut pas confondre l'Art Moderne et l'Art Contemporain. Ils ne reflètent pas du tout les mêmes circonstances politiques et idéologiques. La continuité n'est qu'apparente, ou propagande.

 

a) L'Art Moderne, de 1850 à 1940-1950, est le reflet d'une période historique où les idéologies les plus diverses coexistent ou s'affrontent en Europe. C'est ce qui explique l'étonnante diversité et l'esprit de recherche de nouvelles esthétiques qui caractérise cet art. Cette période de l'art est sans doute la seule dans toute l'histoire de l'art européen où la peinture a pu être un phénomène spontané, né de la base populaire, sans intervention directrice observable des élites. Les élites européennes étaient trop divisées pour imposer une esthétique. Les artistes romantiques, réalistes, les pré-impressionnistes, les impressionnistes, les post impressionnistes n'obéissent pas à des mots d'ordres politiques ou idéologiques précis. Ils peuvent avoir leurs opinions, mais leur art n'est pas dirigé et la spontanéité de l'artiste est respectée. Il n'existe pas, pendant toute cette période en Europe, d'art officiel, d'art d’État. Sauf à partir de 1917 en URSS et de 1930 en Allemagne. Les artistes fuient alors ces régimes ou se conforment. Et en réalité il n'y a pas d'art du tout dans ces deux pays totalitaires.

 

b) L'Art Contemporain, en peinture et en sculpture, est né à New York dans les années 1920, en provenance de Paris, et il ne s'impose dans les cercles officiels européens, qu' à partir des années 1950. Le monolithisme de cet art du Laid et du Non Sens poussé jusqu'à l'absurdité la plus provocatrice, la peinture massacrée prédite par Joan Miro, est le reflet du triomphe progressif de l'Idéologie Eclairée du Nouvel Ordre Mondial. L'Art Contemporain Institutionnel, l'Art Mondialiste, ne se comprend qu'en référence aux grands dogmes qui structurent le catéchisme qui est celui des "Lumières", l'idéologie qui, après une montée en puissance qui a duré plus d'un siècle, gouverne absolument tout l'Occident depuis l'après seconde guerre mondiale. C'est la nouvelle religion occidentale. L'Europe, après la brève période de libertés de l'Art Moderne (en datation large : 1815-1940), est revenue à un art officiel imposé, exposé dans ses musées d'art contemporain. Un art imposé aux peuples, mais aussi aux artistes qui se conforment pour réussir dans cette voie là.

Cette religion laïque a son clergé, ses ordres, et ses temples, certains ostensibles, publics, beaucoup d'autres discrets et même secrets. Car la religion des "Lumières" cultive dans le secret, mais avec constance, l'Ombre. Les musées d'art contemporain font partie des temples publics de l'idéologie officielle. C'est l'art des Guidestones et de la Corporatocratie. Un art qui se dit volontiers "Conceptuel" mais qui est totalement vide de toute spiritualité, et dont le seul concept agissant, obsessionnel, est le renversement total des valeurs qui ont structurées toutes les civilisations humaines depuis les temps historiques. Un art dont la prétention à l'intelligence n'a d'égal que sa bêtise et sa laideur. Il ne faut pas confondre cet Art Mondialiste Institutionnel, qui est le monopole des grands musées occidentaux, avec d'autres secteurs de la peinture ou de la sculpture : l'art commercial et privé de niveau non pas international mais national, régional ou local, et l'art des rues. Deux secteurs importants de l'art contemporain qui témoignent d'une bien plus grande diversité créative que l'art institutionnel et qui continuent de proposer au public, pas toujours mais le plus souvent, un art du Sens et du Beau. C'est dans ces arts non officiels, extérieurs aux grandes institutions publiques et privées du mondialisme que se rencontre l'art libre et inventif. Les successeurs des Impressionnistes sont là, pas du tout dans les collections permanentes et la plupart des expositions temporaires des musées d'Art Contemporain.

D'autre part on observe une évolution récente, toujours en cours, qui consiste à supprimer l'appellation Art Contemporain pour la remplacer par celle d'Art Moderne qui se veut applicable à tout l'art occidental depuis les impressionnistes. Un changement d'appellation qui a bien sûr une signification idéologique et politique (cf le texte "Art ancien, Art moderne, Art abstrait, Art Contemporain")

 

L'histoire de l'art européen contient un enseignement qui tient en un constat de fait et un jugement :

1° De - 500 à + 1950 l'art européen en peinture et en sculpture s'est voulu Beau et dans son ensemble a été beau.

2° A partir de la deuxième moitié du 20è siècle l'art européen, devenu l'art occidental, l'art officiel, celui des élites idéologiques et politiques, a rejeté la finalité du Beau. L'Art Contemporain officiel est Laid. Une anti esthétique, revendiquée comme telle. L'Anti-Art, imposé par les élites contre les sentiments des populations est une caractéristique de notre temps en Occident.

Ce sont des faits. Il est possible de les nier, et de construire un "réel idéologique", une réalité inventée, c'est à dire fabriquée pour être conforme aux croyances actuelles. Mais ce sont des faits quand même.

3° l'Art Contemporain Institutionnel, Mondialiste, laid, absurde et provocateur, est un signe de décadence, de destruction, de mort. Car tout est relié, le Beau, le Bien, le Vrai. Les élites occidentales ont une éthique dont leur esthétique officielle est nécessairement le reflet. Les peuples ainsi dirigés ont du souci à se faire. C'est un jugement, une opinion, qu'il est possible de ne pas partager.

 

L'histoire de l'art européen contient un second enseignement : Elle montre une évolution qui part d'un art spiritualiste, pour aboutir à un art matérialiste.

Second constat en effet : Le Non-Art Institutionnel, l'Anti-Art du Mondialisme n'est pas seulement laid et absurde, il est totalement, tristement, matérialiste. Il est dépourvu de tout idéal et de toute transcendance. Il n'a pas d'âme. C'est une brocante triviale qui constitue un étalage de présent, omniprésent, totalement coupé de tout environnement culturel, spatial, temporel : Des toiles unies, colorées ou pas, des lignes, des points, des traits et des cercles, des carrés, des rectangles, et bien sûr des taches, surtout des taches. Des gravats, des tuyaux, des balais, des serpillières, des échelles, des lits, des chaises et tables bancales, des entassements de choses diverses : charbon, pierre, cartons, papiers, plastiques. Des poutrelles rouillées, tordues, cassées, des cartons assemblés, des vêtements et chiffons entassés, des boites ouvertes ou fermées, des machineries cassées ou concassées, des tubulures, poutres de ciment, moellons, parpaings, tuiles, briques entières ou pulvérisées, des tubes de néon, des sacs vides ou des sacs pleins, toutes les sortes de tuyaux (fer, ciment, plastiques), du caoutchouc, des seaux, brocs, pots; des palissades, des téléphones, des machines à écrire emballées ou pas, des éviers, des urinoirs, des vélos, des fruits et légumes... tout un super-marché. Mais les prix ne sont pas affichés, ils sont secret d'état. Il est vrai que cet art n'est pas destiné aux peuples. C'est un art d'apartheid, absolument réservé à une prétendue élite. Le discours que l'Art Contemporain Institutionnel tient sur lui-même, totalement provocateur et absurde, artificiel et inintelligible, ne contient plus aucune référence spirituelle, métaphysique ou symbolique.

Il n'a plus rien du spiritualisme de la peinture gothique et orthodoxe

Il n'a plus rien non plus du spiritualisme associé à l'humanisme de la Renaissance.

il n'a plus rien non plus du matérialisme corrigé par la foi protestante, du réalisme positiviste et du naturalisme empathique de la peinture des Pays Bas du 17è siècle.

Il n'a rien de l'explosion de diversité tout à la fois spiritualiste et matérialiste, ni de l'optimisme de l'art moderne.

Le portrait ? Il n'y a plus de portrait dans l'art contemporain institutionnel, ou alors il est totalement hideux.

Une désespérance dans l'homme qui ne s'avoue pas ?

La Nature ? A observer l'Art Contemporain Institutionnel, à étudier son discours, il est clair que l'homme occidental n'est pas non plus sur la voie du rapprochement avec la Nature. La nature, les animaux, et l'humanité - sauf quand elle est laide et absurde - ont presque totalement disparu de l'art occidental institutionnel. Le rapprochement avec la Nature est pourtant un thème que tous les médias occidentaux à destination du grand public développent régulièrement. Le thème de l'animal n'a pas non plus disparu de l'art des rues ni de l'art commercial privé local, régional ou national. Il est omniprésent dans la photographie.

Pourquoi ce divorce entre l'Art Officiel Mondialiste, l'art réservé aux élites éclairées, totalement artificiel et contre nature, et les arts ou les médias à destination du grand public ?

Pourquoi cet Art Institutionnel est-il déraciné non seulement des différentes cultures humaines, mais aussi de la Nature ?

  

ART, MIRROR OF THE VALUES OF A SOCIETY (1)

 

"Look at our art, we have the aesthetics of our ethics: a cry in the desert."

Jean DUCHE. The Shield of Athena The West, its history, its destiny 1983

 

Romanesque Art? Gothic Art? A famous success of the imagination. Proof that man is much more than man, and that he deserves God.

Jean DUCHE. The Athena Shield.

 

"A work is recognized as a work of art because it has won the test of criticism, public opinion and time."

Mikel DUFRENNE (1910-1995 Universalis. Artwork)

  

Art is what you believe. And art makes you believe in what you believe. Art also makes you believe in what you would not believe, if you were free to believe. What if you don't believe in anything anymore? Not even in man? Only in yourself, in defiance of all others? That's Official Contemporary Art.

 

Art is an expression of the manipulation of men by their governing, political and ideological elites. This is a historical fact. A question remains: is this manipulation beneficial, creating a sustainable civilization in a given society? Or are this art and the ideology it serves sterile and lead to the death of the societies on which it has been imposed? Here too there are historical examples.

The history of European painting shows a truth: Art is fundamentally ideological and political.

In Politics Aristotle defined man as a political animal. And man governs himself and is governed by beliefs, ideologies.

Art is ideological ie it is the reflection, the expression, of the value system which shapes a society at a given time. Art is political because this system of values is always imposed by the ruling powers of the time. The governing powers do not necessarily overlap with the political leaders in power. These are Influences that often extend beyond the narrow circle of manifest leaders, the politicians. From the second half of the 19th century, in the West, a very ancient category of actors of human societies imposed themselves, discreetly, gradually, but totally until becoming, the Masters of the World: traders, and more particularly money traders, financiers. What is certain is that each of these categories needs the other as much as it competes. To govern is to strike popular imaginations in one way or another, for good or for evil. To govern is to ideologize. Man is ideological before he is political. That's the difference with ants. Ants are also political, but they are not ideological. It remains to be seen what ideologies the rulers will use to establish their power.

The art of all times and in all societies is a means for the elites to impose a (sacred) religion or an ideology (secular, secular). In all civilizations the art of each era is understood through the ideological filter that inspires the elites of this civilization at that time. Art is therefore an interesting revealer of the philosophical and moral thought that inspires the elites of a given society in a given time. These religions or ideologies can differ a lot as to the benefit that peoples will or will not withdraw. Some are conducive to the establishment of long-term civilizations (ancient Egypt, Greek-Roman antiquity, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam ...) others are more or less rapidly mortal (Aztec and Inca religions, Communism, national Socialism).

Indeed, certain ideologies, sacred or secular, conceived by the elites, have been, more or less short term, accepted and totally shared by the peoples who adhered to it without reluctance. They can then impose themselves completely without hurting the feelings and freedoms of the people, or at least a largely significant majority, even unanimity within their society for a long period of time.

Other ideologies, on the other hand, have been imposed by the elites, but did not generate the membership unanimous or majority of peoples that came into resistance, passive or active with more or less success after a shorter or longer period.

 

One of the characteristics of Europe, which is reflected in the history of its painting is a clear tendency towards instability and cultural and ideological impermanence. A difficulty in perennializing and, on the contrary, a propensity for change that characterizes this society in comparison with other civilizations. Fernand Braudel has very well described this phenomenon with the acuity of his mind of comparative synthesis:

"The civilizations of the Far East present themselves as groups that would have reached remarkable maturity and development very early on, but to make some of their essential structures almost immutable. They have achieved remarkable cohesion but also a difficulty in transforming themselves, in wanting and being able to evolve. In the Far East, where monuments are deteriorating as in China and Japan because they are built of light materials, man, society and culture seem to be indestructible. Religious, philosophical, social and political sustainability are its hallmark, unlike the West" (Grammar of Civilizations)

  

1° The Art of Ancient Egypt was clearly reflect the religious beliefs of that time and of that country.

An era that lasted more than 3,000 years.

 

2° The Greco-Roman art is driven by its vision of a world where universal Harmony depends on the respect by the gods and men, each in his place, the rules that govern the great natural balances. It is this belief in a universal Harmony law that explains the architecture, sculpture and painting of Greek and Roman. For Greco-Roman antiquity, architecture and sculpture are the essential witnesses of the art of that time. The painting is only seen through very rare testimonies, often in mosaic.

The harmonic Order, divine and human, seems to be the main command.But he is not at the origin of the world.

It is the function of Zeus (Jupiter): To have founded, in the struggle and by the war, and then preserved by his benevolent authority a universal order, among the Gods and among the men. An almost harmonious order, after the great upheavals of the Primordial Times and the chaotic reigns of Ouranos (Uranus) and Chronos (Saturn). This mythology is a symbolic representation that is very much in line with what contemporary science tells us about the formation of the Earth. The Harmonious Order came only after a long period of cataclysmic formation.

A universal Order that connects Gods and men in a spirit of wisdom and distant agreement. Distanced, because the man must honor the Gods, but stay away of the Gods if he wants to live well. Man must absolutely avoid Ubris (Hybris), the spirit of excess, pride, which too often carries him to believe that he is the equal of the Gods. Zeus is a supreme God, but not a creator, only an organizer, full of a wholesome and masculine vigor, very Indo-European.

We are very far away with the Greeks from a vision of the divine and human world identical to that of Semitic. It is also very far from the Western world view, such as that resulting from the religion of the "Enlightenment". The Greek man is enlightened in comparison with the barbarian, but he forbids himself to believe himself as enlightened as the Gods. If it came to man the idea of believing himself to be a good judge in the quarrels between divinities, big or small, he would be decked out with donkey's ears like King Midas. And again the penalty would be very moderate: Midas could have been skinned alive like Marsyas.

Ancient wisdom. Everyone in his place, the man is not sufficiently enlightened to despise the great natural balances guaranteed by the Gods, and reign unconditionally on the Universe. He must abide modestly, although he may reasonably attempt to understand and use it with caution. By constantly measuring his insignificance, but without excessive shyness or guilt. This is the conception that the Catholic Church will adopt. probably because some of its sources are Greek.

The Western Enlightenment man, faced with the immensity of the problems posed by his God "Progress" and his Goddess "Modernity", may end up returning to this wisdom. But there is still a long way to go.

 

The Greeks did not invent art, others had done before them, since the Paleolithic! But the theory of democracy (not the practice, the Greeks were void in this practice) the rationalist philosophy, and even the premises of the scientific mind are to be put to their credit.

The result in art is brilliant: A thousand-year-old art, and even more than millennial by its repercussions at later times throughout Europe, and even the West. The Statue of Liberty of New York is a pastiche of the ancient: A mixture of the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Colossus of Rhodes, resurrected by a French Freemason.

Greek art favors harmony, the clarity of forms, its themes are Nature, Gods and men. The Greek gods are predominantly anthropomorphic. Noticeable difference with the Egyptian religion and even with that of Mesopotamia. Is this already the sign of a break between man and nature with his "Ten Thousand Beings"? When the man chooses the anthropomorphism to represent his Gods he settles definitively above the animal. It does not totémise anymore, but it stops participating with animality and may move away from the Universal Spirit. Is this a promotion of man, this human point of view on all things? Is it not a loss of meaning, a tragic distance taken with life and nature? A betrayal that begins? Was the man destined to reign supreme over the world? To rule over the world in defiance of Nature and the Ten Thousand Beings, including the contempt of men and of their racial and cultural diversity?

These are questions that Greek art leads to ask, because it is a reflection of a society that was not perfect, but lived in harmony with its environment.

Art is a reflection of the values of its time, but it can illuminate the future of the times.

On the condition that the man agrees to examine and respect the lessons of the past. That he ceases to believe himself superior because he is Enlightened, Modern and Progressive. That he thinks himself in the continuity of the history of the men and not of a concept of abstract man, and in the continuity of the history of a multiple living. Universe is a word of Latin origin: unus / versus, ie unity / diversity. The opposite of the globalist project of standardization of peoples and its contemporary art, ugly and absurd, identical in the whole world. With Greek art, beautiful and harmonious, superb and modest, balanced, we are very far from the provocative excesses of the official contemporary art and the bankers who are associated with it and which caused the great global crisis, financial and economic, of 2008.

  

3° One of the first commandments of Islam, is the condemnation of the representation of God, and his geometric and abstract pictgorial art is the reflection of this prohibition. There is no art against the beliefs or unbelief of men.

A major civil war in the Byzantine Empire has been to know whether, yes or no, the art would represent God, the Virgin .... This is the iconoclastic crisis, which ended with the victory of Images

 

4° From 500 tou 1500, Art in Europe has been almost exclusively Catholic, or Orthodox in the east. It must be seen that the collapse of antiquity and the substitution of Christian values, in their Catholic and Orthodox versions, for Greek-Roman values, whose sources were Indo-European, was a considerable cultural rupture. Christianity introduced into Europe a whole vision of the world and of man that was totally foreign to European society between minus 500 and plus 500. The new values and the Christian worldview are borrowed in a massive way from the Judaic culture and more widely Semitic. From this point of view, the Christianization of Europe is a considerable acculturation of the European populations. During thousand years painting and European sculpture was the result of this religious ideology.

The Renaissance is a very partial resurrection, reserved for an intellectual and social elite, of the thought and certain values of Greek and Roman societies from Indo-European sources.

All European painting between 1500 and the 19th century is the manifestation of Europe's dual cultural heritage, Indo-European in origin and Semitic in import.

At these times art is undoubtedly an art imposed on peoples by the elites of the moment, but it is also a shared art, to which the peoples adhere, because it corresponds to their conception of the beautiful and carries a message understood by them. In short, Romanesque or Gothic art is inter-social, it brings together elites and peoples in the same vision of the world. It is an art inspired by a unique ideology that fully animates the society of that time, but this society is not totalitarian, otherwise there would have been no art. The obvious sincerity of the artists of this period, the evident authenticity of their built, sculpted and painted works, are the demonstration of a real freedom of creation within a spiritual and moral system with univocal tendencies.

 

5° In the 15th century in Italy appear new artistic themes: Catholicism is not the only inspiration for painting and European sculpture. Mythology and history of Greece and Rome provide new themes to European art, which applies to new, stylistic rules applicable during Antiquity. Especially a naturalistic and realistic representation of the world. But this new inspiration of European painting does not exclude at all religious art, which keeps itself alive for the people and a large part of the elite. The coexistence between the two sources will last in the countries of Southern Europe until the end of the 19th century. We are always in an imposed-shared art. Imposed, certainly from above by the elites, but accepted, understood by the great majority of peoples. The proof: all the artists, at the time of the craftsmen, are from the peoples. Certainly the Renaissance introduces a novelty: A two-speed art, a very majority art, for the peoples, the other for a narrower, aristocratic and bourgeois fraction, interested by the culture of antiquity Greco-latine.

6° It's in the 17th century, in the Netherlands Protestants, that becomes completely dominant non-religious spirit painting, secular, which favors the representation of nature, still life, of the society of the time, and portraits. The first act of Protestants in all Europe was to destroy Catholic churches and works of art. New values, more secular and materialistic, were then put in place. Religious representations become a minority in this art.

1000 years of Europe's Catholic roots disappear. It is the same elsewhere of the patterns of paintings, from other roots of Europe: the Greco-Roman Antiquity. The painting of the Northern Low Countries completely abandons, in the 17th century, Mythology and History Greco-Roman as a source of inspiration.

This cultural rupture, very important in the history of Europe, much more than the "Renaissance" will be an opportunity for renewal quite interesting of European painting with the appearance or development:

- The Landscape as unique pattern of the tables. Without any religious or mythological allusion. The painters of churches, nor painted religious works, but churches landscapes.

- Painting of manners, either farm or in bourgeois circles.

- Still life. The "vanities" is a moralistic survival of religious painting but often the occasion to celebrate the prosperity and the wealth of its inhabitants. It is a mirror of a very materialistic society.

- The portrait is a highly developed art. The characters of tables are bourgeois. Significant difference with other European countries, France for example ..

This evolution is going to win Southern Europe or the Germanic and Slavic, but much more slowly during the 18th and 19th century.

The art of the Protestant Netherlands of the Golden Age, the 17th century, is a very important stage on the path that goes from societies with more or less assertive spiritualist tendencies to societies which, like that of the West today, are organised on a totally materialistic basis.

The history of painting shows very clearly that it is this evolution from spiritualism to materialism that Europe followed between 1000 and 2000. According to Hindu philosophical texts, and in particular the "Puranas", it would be a scheme applicable to the evolution of any human society. Not only to the Europe.

 

7° We must not confuse the Modern and the Contemporary Art. They do not reflect at all the same political and ideological circumstances. Continuity is only appearance, or propaganda.

a) Modern Art from 1850 to 1940 to 1950, in large dates, is a reflection of a historical period in which the most diverse ideologies coexist or confront each other in Europe. This is what explains the astonishing diversity and the spirit of seeking the new aesthetics that characterizes this art. This period of art is undoubtedly the only one in the history of European art where painting has been a spontaneous phenomenon, born from the popular base, without observable directional intervention of the elites. European elites were too divided to impose an aesthetic. Romantic, realistic artists, pre-impressionists, impressionists and post-impressionists do not obey precise political or ideological words of order. They can have their opinions, but their art is not directed and the spontaneity of the artist is respected. There is no official art and state art throughout this period in Europe. Except from 1917 in the USSR and 1930 in Germany. The artists flee these regimes or conform. And in reality there is no art at all in these two totalitarian countries.

b )The Contemporary Art, in painting and sculpture, was born in New York in the 1920s, but it comes from Paris, and it is not imposed in official European circles until the 1950s. The monolithism of this art of ugly and nonsense pushed to the most provocative absurdity, the massacred painting predicted by Joan Miro, is the reflection of the progressive triumph of the Enlightened Ideology of the New World Order.

Institutional Contemporary Art, Globalist Art, can only be understood with reference to the great dogmas that structure the catechism of the "Enlightenment", the ideology that, after a rise in power that lasted more than a century, has governed absolutely the entire West since the end of the Second World War. This is the new Western religion.

Europe, after the brief period of liberties of modern Art (in broad dating: 1815-1940) came back to an imposed official art, exhibited in its contemporary art museums. An art imposed on the peoples, but also the artists, who conform to succeed in this way.

This secular religion has its clergy, its orders, and its temples, some ostensible, public, many other discreet and even secret. Because the religion of the "Enlightenment" cultivates in secret, but with consistency, the Shadow. Contemporary art museums are part of the public temples of official ideology.

This is the art of the Guidestones and the Corporatocracy. An art which is said hitself to be "conceptual" but which is totally void of all spirituality, and whose only obsessive concept of action is the total reversal of the values that have structured all human civilizations since historical times. An art whose the pretension to intelligence is matched only by its stupidity and ugliness.

This Institutional Globalist Art, which is the monopoly of the great Western museums, should not be confused with other sectors of painting or sculpture: commercial and private art of not international but national, regional or local level, and street art. Two important sectors of contemporary art which show a much greater creative diversity than institutional art and which continue to offer the public, not always but more often than not, an art of Meaning and Beauty. It is in these unofficial arts, outside the great public and private institutions of globalism, that free and inventive art meets. The successors of the Impressionists are there, not at all in the permanent collections and most of the temporary exhibitions of the museums of Contemporary Art.

On the other hand we observe a recent evolution, still in progress, which consists of removing the name Contemporary Art to replace it with that of Modern Art which is intended to apply to all Western art since the Impressionists. A change of name which of course has an ideological and political meaning (see the text "Ancient Art, Modern Art, Abstract Art, Contemporary Art")

 

The history of European art contains a teaching that is based on a statement of fact and judgment:

1 ° From - 500 to + 1950 European art in painting and sculpture wanted to be beauitful, and as a whole was beautiful.

2 ° From the second half of the 20th century, European art, now Western art, the official art, that of ideological and political elites, rejected the finality of the beautiful. Official Contemporary Art is Ugly.

An anti aesthetic, claimed as such. The Anti-Art, imposed by the elites against the feelings of the populations, is a characteristic of our time in the West.

These are facts. It is possible to deny them, and to build an "ideological real", an invented reality, that is to say manufactured to conform to current beliefs. But these are facts anyway.

3° Institutional Contemporary Art, Globalist, ugly, absurd and provocative, is a sign of decadence, destruction, death. Because everything is connected, the Beautiful, the Good, the True. Western elites have an ethic which is necessarily reflected in their official aesthetics. The peoples thus directed have a lot to worry about. It is a judgment, an opinion, that it is possible not to share.

 

The history of European art contains a second teaching: It shows an evolution from a spiritualistic art to a materialistic art.

The second observation is this: The Institutional Non-Art, the Anti-Art of Globalism is not only ugly and absurd, it is totally, sadly, materialistic. It is devoid of any ideal and of any transcendence. It has no soul.

It is a trivial flea market that constitutes a display of the present, omnipresent, totally cut off from any cultural, spatial or temporal environment: plain canvases, coloured or not, lines, dots, lines and circles, squares, rectangles, and of course stains, especially stains. Rubble, pipes, broomsticks, mops, ladders, beds, chairs and wobbly tables, piles of various things: coal, stone, cardboard, paper, plastics. Rusty, twisted, broken, bent, assembled cardboard joists, stacked clothing and rags, open or closed boxes, broken or crushed machinery, pipes, cement beams, rubble, cinder blocks, tiles, whole or pulverized bricks, neon tubes, empty bags or full bags, all kinds of pipes (iron, cement, plastic), rubber, buckets, brocs, pots; fences, telephones, typewriters, packaged or unpacked, sinks, urinals, bicycles, fruits and vegetables.... a whole supermarket. But the prices are not displayed, they are state secrets.

It is true that this art is not intended for peoples. It is an apartheid art, absolutely reserved for a alleged elite. The discourse that Institutional Contemporary Art holds on itself, totally provocative and absurd, artificial and unintelligible, no longer contains any spiritual, metaphysical or symbolic reference.

It no longer has anything to do with the spiritualism of Gothic and Orthodox painting.

Nor does it have anything of the spiritualism associated with Renaissance humanism.

It has nothing to do with the materialism corrected by the Protestant faith, positivist realism and empathic naturalism of 17th century Dutch painting.

It has nothing to do with the explosion of diversity that is both spiritualistic and materialistic, nor with the optimism of modern art.

The portrait? There is no longer a portrait in official contemporary art, or if there is, it totally hideous.

This is despair in the mankind, which it does not dare to admit to itself.

The Nature ? By observing Institutional Contemporary Art, by studying its discourse, it is clear that Western man is not on the path of rapprochement with Nature. Nature, animals, and humanity - except when it is ugly and absurd - have almost totally disappeared from Western institutional art. The rapprochement with Nature is however a theme that all Western media aimed at the general public regularly develop. The theme of the animal has not disappeared from street art or from local, regional or national private commercial art either. It is omnipresent in photography.

Why this divorce between the Official Mundialist Art, art reserved for the enlightened elite, totally artificial and counter nature, and the arts or media aimed at the general public?

Why is this Institutional Art uprooted not only from the different human cultures, but also from Nature?

   

Circa 1978, English Channel.

 

Completed in 1976 by Șantierul naval Galați, Galati, Romania (644)

4,997 g.t. and 8,300 dwt., as:

'Frendo Membership' to 1976,

'Membership' to 1981,

'Shaula' to 1985,

'Ember' to 1986,

'Alessia' to 1990,

'Ianuaria' to 1990,

'Yary' to 1993,

'Cruz' to 1994,

'Allah Kareem' to 1996,

'Fadel' to 1996,

'Allah Kareem' to 1997,

'Angelito' to 1997,

'Ideal' to 1999, and

'Reborn' until sold for demolition to Turkey.

 

Arrived at Aliaga on 13/12/2011.

Get Carter is a 1971 British gangster film, written and directed by Mike Hodges in his directorial debut and starring Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, John Osborne, Britt Ekland and Bryan Mosley. Based on Ted Lewis's 1970 novel Jack's Return Home, the film follows the eponymous Jack Carter (Caine), a London gangster who returns to his hometown in North East England to learn about his brother's supposedly accidental death. Suspecting foul play, and with vengeance on his mind, he investigates and interrogates, regaining a feel for the city and its hardened-criminal element.

 

Producer Michael Klinger optioned Lewis's novel shortly after its publication and made a deal with the ailing Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to finance and release the film, making Get Carter the last project to be approved by the studio's Borehamwood division before its closure. The production went from novel to finished film in ten months, with principal photography taking place from July to September 1970 in and around Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and County Durham. Hodges, Klinger and Caine intended to create a more realistic portrayal of violence and criminal behaviour than had previously been seen in British films: Caine, who also served as an uncredited co-producer, incorporated aspects of criminal acquaintances into his characterisation of Carter, while Hodges conducted research into the criminal underworld of Newcastle (in particular the one-armed bandit murder). Cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky worked with Hodges to give scenes a naturalistic feel, drawing heavily on their backgrounds in documentary films.

 

Turning a respectable profit upon its initial UK release, Get Carter initially attracted mixed reviews. Critics begrudgingly appreciated the film's technical achievements and Caine's performance while criticizing the complex plot, violence and amorality, in particular Carter's apparent lack of remorse for his actions. American critics were generally more enthusiastic, but the film languished on the drive-in circuit, while MGM focused its resources on producing Hit Man, a blaxploitation-themed remake of the film.

 

Get Carter eventually garnered a cult following, and further endorsements from directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie led to the film being critically re-evaluated, with its depiction of class structure and life in 1970s Britain and Roy Budd's minimalist jazz score receiving considerable praise. In 1999, Get Carter was ranked 16th on the BFI Top 100 British films of the 20th century; five years later, a survey of British film critics in Total Film magazine chose it as the greatest British film of all time. A poorly received second remake under the same title was released in 2000, with Sylvester Stallone portraying Jack Carter and Caine in a supporting role.

 

Sir Michael Caine CBE (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite; 14 March 1933) is an English retired actor. Known for his distinctive Cockney accent, he has appeared in more than 160 films over a career spanning eight decades and is considered a British film icon. He has received numerous awards including two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. As of 2017, the films in which Caine has appeared have grossed over $7.8 billion worldwide. Caine is one of only five male actors to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting in five different decades. In 2000, he received a BAFTA Fellowship and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

 

Often playing a Cockney, Caine made his breakthrough in the 1960s with starring roles in British films such as Zulu (1964), The Ipcress File (1965), The Italian Job (1969), and Battle of Britain (1969). During this time he established a distinctive visual style wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses combined with sharp suits and a laconic vocal delivery; he was recognised as a style icon of the 1960s. He solidified his stardom with roles in Get Carter (1971), The Last Valley (1971), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), and A Bridge Too Far (1977).

 

Caine received two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor for his roles as Elliot in Woody Allen's comedy Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and as Dr. Wilbur Larch in Lasse Hallström's drama The Cider House Rules (1999). His other Oscar-nominated films include Alfie (1966), Sleuth (1972), Educating Rita (1983), and The Quiet American (2002). Other notable performances include in the films California Suite (1978), Dressed to Kill (1980), Mona Lisa (1986), Little Voice (1998), Quills (2000), Children of Men (2006), Harry Brown (2009), and Youth (2015).

 

Caine is also known for his performance as Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), and for his comedic roles in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), Miss Congeniality (2000), Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and Secondhand Lions (2003). Caine portrayed Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy (2005–2012). He has also had roles in five other Nolan films: The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), and Tenet (2020). He announced his retirement from acting in October 2023, with his final film being The Great Escaper, which came out in the same month.

 

Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).

 

Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions

 

"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".

 

The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.

 

The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.

 

Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.

 

Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:

 

Wet with cool dew drops

fragrant with perfume from the flowers

came the gentle breeze

jasmine and water lily

dance in the spring sunshine

side-long glances

of the golden-hued ladies

stab into my thoughts

heaven itself cannot take my mind

as it has been captivated by one lass

among the five hundred I have seen here.

 

Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.

 

Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.

 

There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.

 

Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.

 

The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.

 

In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:

 

During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".

 

Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.

 

While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’

 

Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.

 

An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.

 

Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983

 

Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture

Main article: Commercial graffiti

With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.

 

In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".

 

Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.

 

Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.

 

Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.

 

Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.

 

There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.

 

The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.

 

Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.

 

Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis

 

Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.

 

Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.

 

Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"

 

Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal

 

In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.

 

Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.

 

Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.

 

Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.

 

With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.

 

Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.

 

Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.

 

Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.

 

Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.

 

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.

 

Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.

 

Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.

 

The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.

 

I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.

 

The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.

 

Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.

 

Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.

 

In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".

 

There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.

 

Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.

 

A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.

By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.

 

Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.

 

In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.

 

A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.

 

From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

 

In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.

 

Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.

 

Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.

 

Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.

  

In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.

 

Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.

 

In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.

 

In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."

 

In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.

 

In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.

 

In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.

 

In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.

 

In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.

 

The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.

 

To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."

 

In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.

 

In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.

 

Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".

 

Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)

In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.

 

Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.

 

Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.

 

In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.

 

Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.

 

Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.

 

To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.

 

When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.

Midland region allocated 25323 stands between 31301 and a class 33 at Bath Road depot on 19th April 1986.

 

I fund my Flickr membership, scanner and software myself. So, if you like my pictures please consider buying me a coffee! www.buymeacoffee.com/seanl

 

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ICANN76 Sunday 12 March NCSG Membership Meeting

Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (Russian: Владимир Семёнович Высоцкий, IPA: [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr sʲɪˈmʲɵnəvʲɪtɕ vɨˈsotskʲɪj]; 25 January 1938 – 25 July 1980), was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor who had an immense and enduring effect on Soviet culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street-jargon. He was also a prominent stage- and screen-actor. Though the official Soviet cultural establishment largely ignored his work, he was remarkably popular during his lifetime, and to this day exerts significant influence on many of Russia's musicians and actors.

 

Vysotsky was born in Moscow at the 3rd Meshchanskaya St. (61/2) maternity hospital. His father, Semyon Volfovich (Vladimirovich) (1915–1997), was a colonel in the Soviet army, originally from Kiev. Vladimir's mother, Nina Maksimovna, (née Seryogina, 1912–2003) was Russian, and worked as a German language translator.[3] Vysotsky's family lived in a Moscow communal flat in harsh conditions, and had serious financial difficulties. When Vladimir was 10 months old, Nina had to return to her office in the Transcript bureau of the Soviet Ministry of Geodesy and Cartography (engaged in making German maps available for the Soviet military) so as to help her husband earn their family's living.

 

Vladimir's theatrical inclinations became obvious at an early age, and were supported by his paternal grandmother Dora Bronshteyn, a theater fan. The boy used to recite poems, standing on a chair and "flinging hair backwards, like a real poet," often using in his public speeches expressions he could hardly have heard at home. Once, at the age of two, when he had tired of the family's guests' poetry requests, he, according to his mother, sat himself under the New-year tree with a frustrated air about him and sighed: "You silly tossers! Give a child some respite!" His sense of humor was extraordinary, but often baffling for people around him. A three-year-old could jeer his father in a bathroom with unexpected poetic improvisation ("Now look what's here before us / Our goat's to shave himself!") or appall unwanted guests with some street folk song, promptly steering them away. Vysotsky remembered those first three years of his life in the autobiographical Ballad of Childhood (Баллада о детстве, 1975), one of his best-known songs.

 

As World War II broke out, Semyon Vysotsky, a military reserve officer, joined the Soviet army and went to fight the Nazis. Nina and Vladimir were evacuated to the village of Vorontsovka, in Orenburg Oblast where the boy had to spend six days a week in a kindergarten and his mother worked for twelve hours a day in a chemical factory. In 1943, both returned to their Moscow apartment at 1st Meschanskaya St., 126. In September 1945, Vladimir joined the 1st class of the 273rd Moscow Rostokino region School.

 

In December 1946, Vysotsky's parents divorced. From 1947 to 1949, Vladimir lived with Semyon Vladimirovich (then an army Major) and his Armenian wife, Yevgenya Stepanovna Liholatova, whom the boy called "aunt Zhenya", at a military base in Eberswalde in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany (later East Germany). "We decided that our son would stay with me. Vladimir came to stay with me in January 1947, and my second wife, Yevgenia, became Vladimir's second mother for many years to come. They had much in common and liked each other, which made me really happy," Semyon Vysotsky later remembered. Here living conditions, compared to those of Nina's communal Moscow flat, were infinitely better; the family occupied the whole floor of a two-storeyed house, and the boy had a room to himself for the first time in his life. In 1949 along with his stepmother Vladimir returned to Moscow. There he joined the 5th class of the Moscow 128th School and settled at Bolshoy Karetny [ru], 15 (where they had to themselves two rooms of a four-roomed flat), with "auntie Zhenya" (who was just 28 at the time), a woman of great kindness and warmth whom he later remembered as his second mother. In 1953 Vysotsky, now much interested in theater and cinema, joined the Drama courses led by Vladimir Bogomolov.[7] "No one in my family has had anything to do with arts, no actors or directors were there among them. But my mother admired theater and from the earliest age... each and every Saturday I've been taken up with her to watch one play or the other. And all of this, it probably stayed with me," he later reminisced. The same year he received his first ever guitar, a birthday present from Nina Maksimovna; a close friend, bard and a future well-known Soviet pop lyricist Igor Kokhanovsky taught him basic chords. In 1955 Vladimir re-settled into his mother's new home at 1st Meshchanskaya, 76. In June of the same year he graduated from school with five A's.

 

In 1955, Vladimir enrolled into the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering, but dropped out after just one semester to pursue an acting career. In June 1956 he joined Boris Vershilov's class at the Moscow Art Theatre Studio-Institute. It was there that he met the 3rd course student Iza Zhukova who four years later became his wife; soon the two lovers settled at the 1st Meschanskaya flat, in a common room, shielded off by a folding screen. It was also in the Studio that Vysotsky met Bulat Okudzhava for the first time, an already popular underground bard. He was even more impressed by his Russian literature teacher Andrey Sinyavsky who along with his wife often invited students to his home to stage improvised disputes and concerts. In 1958 Vysotsky's got his first Moscow Art Theatre role: that of Porfiry Petrovich in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. In 1959 he was cast in his first cinema role, that of student Petya in Vasily Ordynsky's The Yearlings (Сверстницы). On 20 June 1960, Vysotsky graduated from the MAT theater institute and joined the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre (led by Boris Ravenskikh at the time) where he spent (with intervals) almost three troubled years. These were marred by numerous administrative sanctions, due to "lack of discipline" and occasional drunken sprees which were a reaction, mainly, to the lack of serious roles and his inability to realise his artistic potential. A short stint in 1962 at the Moscow Theater of Miniatures (administered at the time by Vladimir Polyakov) ended with him being fired, officially "for a total lack of sense of humour."

 

Vysotsky's second and third films, Dima Gorin's Career and 713 Requests Permission to Land, were interesting only for the fact that in both he had to be beaten up (in the first case by Aleksandr Demyanenko). "That was the way cinema greeted me," he later jokingly remarked. In 1961, Vysotsky wrote his first ever proper song, called "Tattoo" (Татуировка), which started a long and colourful cycle of artfully stylized criminal underworld romantic stories, full of undercurrents and witty social comments. In June 1963, while shooting Penalty Kick (directed by Veniamin Dorman and starring Mikhail Pugovkin), Vysotsky used the Gorky Film Studio to record an hour-long reel-to-reel cassette of his own songs; copies of it quickly spread and the author's name became known in Moscow and elsewhere (although many of these songs were often being referred to as either "traditional" or "anonymous"). Just several months later Riga-based chess grandmaster Mikhail Tal was heard praising the author of "Bolshoy Karetny" (Большой Каретный) and Anna Akhmatova (in a conversation with Joseph Brodsky) was quoting Vysotsky's number "I was the soul of a bad company..." taking it apparently for some brilliant piece of anonymous street folklore. In October 1964 Vysotsky recorded in chronological order 48 of his own songs, his first self-made Complete works of... compilation, which boosted his popularity as a new Moscow folk underground star.

 

In 1964, director Yuri Lyubimov invited Vysotsky to join the newly created Taganka Theatre. "'I've written some songs of my own. Won't you listen?' – he asked. I agreed to listen to just one of them, expecting our meeting to last for no more than five minutes. Instead I ended up listening to him for an entire 1.5 hours," Lyubimov remembered years later of this first audition. On 19 September 1964, Vysotsky debuted in Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan as the Second God (not to count two minor roles). A month later he came on stage as a dragoon captain (Bela's father) in Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time. It was in Taganka that Vysotsky started to sing on stage; the War theme becoming prominent in his musical repertoire. In 1965 Vysotsky appeared in the experimental Poet and Theater (Поэт и Театр, February) show, based on Andrey Voznesensky's work and then Ten Days that Shook the World (after John Reed's book, April) and was commissioned by Lyubimov to write songs exclusively for Taganka's new World War II play. The Fallen and the Living (Павшие и Живые), premiered in October 1965, featured Vysotsky's "Stars" (Звёзды), "The Soldiers of Heeresgruppe Mitte" (Солдаты группы "Центр") and "Penal Battalions" (Штрафные батальоны), the striking examples of a completely new kind of a war song, never heard in his country before. As veteran screenwriter Nikolay Erdman put it (in conversation with Lyubimov), "Professionally, I can well understand how Mayakovsky or Seryozha Yesenin were doing it. How Volodya Vysotsky does it is totally beyond me." With his songs – in effect, miniature theatrical dramatizations (usually with a protagonist and full of dialogues), Vysotsky instantly achieved such level of credibility that real life former prisoners, war veterans, boxers, footballers refused to believe that the author himself had never served his time in prisons and labor camps, or fought in the War, or been a boxing/football professional. After the second of the two concerts at the Leningrad Molecular Physics institute (that was his actual debut as a solo musical performer) Vysotsky left a note for his fans in a journal which ended with words: "Now that you've heard all these songs, please, don't you make a mistake of mixing me with my characters, I am not like them at all. With love, Vysotsky, 20 April 1965, XX c." Excuses of this kind he had to make throughout his performing career. At least one of Vysotsky's song themes – that of alcoholic abuse – was worryingly autobiographical, though. By the time his breakthrough came in 1967, he'd suffered several physical breakdowns and once was sent (by Taganka's boss) to a rehabilitation clinic, a visit he on several occasions repeated since.

 

Brecht's Life of Galileo (premiered on 17 May 1966), transformed by Lyubimov into a powerful allegory of Soviet intelligentsia's set of moral and intellectual dilemmas, brought Vysotsky his first leading theater role (along with some fitness lessons: he had to perform numerous acrobatic tricks on stage). Press reaction was mixed, some reviewers disliked the actor's overt emotionalism, but it was for the first time ever that Vysotsky's name appeared in Soviet papers. Film directors now were treating him with respect. Viktor Turov's war film I Come from the Childhood where Vysotsky got his first ever "serious" (neither comical, nor villainous) role in cinema, featured two of his songs: a spontaneous piece called "When It's Cold" (Холода) and a dark, Unknown soldier theme-inspired classic "Common Graves" (На братских могилах), sung behind the screen by the legendary Mark Bernes.

 

Stanislav Govorukhin and Boris Durov's The Vertical (1967), a mountain climbing drama, starring Vysotsky (as Volodya the radioman), brought him all-round recognition and fame. Four of the numbers used in the film (including "Song of a Friend [fi]" (Песня о друге), released in 1968 by the Soviet recording industry monopolist Melodiya disc to become an unofficial hit) were written literally on the spot, nearby Elbrus, inspired by professional climbers' tales and one curious hotel bar conversation with a German guest who 25 years ago happened to climb these very mountains in a capacity of an Edelweiss division fighter. Another 1967 film, Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters featured Vysotsky as the geologist Maxim (paste-bearded again) with a now trademark off-the-cuff musical piece, a melancholy improvisation called "Things to Do" (Дела). All the while Vysotsky continued working hard at Taganka, with another important role under his belt (that of Mayakovsky or, rather one of the latter character's five different versions) in the experimental piece called Listen! (Послушайте!), and now regularly gave semi-official concerts where audiences greeted him as a cult hero.

 

In the end of 1967 Vysotsky got another pivotal theater role, that of Khlopusha [ru] in Pugachov (a play based on a poem by Sergei Yesenin), often described as one of Taganka's finest. "He put into his performance all the things that he excelled at and, on the other hand, it was Pugachyov that made him discover his own potential," – Soviet critic Natalya Krymova wrote years later. Several weeks after the premiere, infuriated by the actor's increasing unreliability triggered by worsening drinking problems, Lyubimov fired him – only to let him back again several months later (and thus begin the humiliating sacked-then-pardoned routine which continued for years). In June 1968 a Vysotsky-slagging campaign was launched in the Soviet press. First Sovetskaya Rossiya commented on the "epidemic spread of immoral, smutty songs," allegedly promoting "criminal world values, alcoholism, vice and immorality" and condemned their author for "sowing seeds of evil." Then Komsomolskaya Pravda linked Vysotsky with black market dealers selling his tapes somewhere in Siberia. Composer Dmitry Kabalevsky speaking from the Union of Soviet Composers' Committee tribune criticised the Soviet radio for giving an ideologically dubious, "low-life product" like "Song of a Friend" (Песня о друге) an unwarranted airplay. Playwright Alexander Stein who in his Last Parade play used several of Vysotsky's songs, was chastised by a Ministry of Culture official for "providing a tribune for this anti-Soviet scum." The phraseology prompted commentators in the West to make parallels between Vysotsky and Mikhail Zoschenko, another Soviet author who'd been officially labeled "scum" some 20 years ago.

 

Two of Vysotsky's 1968 films, Gennady Poloka's Intervention (premiered in May 1987) where he was cast as Brodsky, a dodgy even if highly artistic character, and Yevgeny Karelov's Two Comrades Were Serving (a gun-toting White Army officer Brusentsov who in the course of the film shoots his friend, his horse, Oleg Yankovsky's good guy character and, finally himself) – were severely censored, first of them shelved for twenty years. At least four of Vysotsky's 1968 songs, "Save Our Souls" (Спасите наши души), "The Wolfhunt" (Охота на волков), "Gypsy Variations" (Моя цыганская) and "The Steam-bath in White" (Банька по-белому), were hailed later as masterpieces. It was at this point that 'proper' love songs started to appear in Vysotsky's repertoire, documenting the beginning of his passionate love affair with French actress Marina Vlady.

 

In 1969 Vysotsky starred in two films: The Master of Taiga where he played a villainous Siberian timber-floating brigadier, and more entertaining Dangerous Tour. The latter was criticized in the Soviet press for taking a farcical approach to the subject of the Bolshevik underground activities but for a wider Soviet audience this was an important opportunity to enjoy the charismatic actor's presence on big screen. In 1970, after visiting the dislodged Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at his dacha and having a lengthy conversation with him, Vysotsky embarked on a massive and by Soviet standards dangerously commercial concert tour in Soviet Central Asia and then brought Marina Vlady to director Viktor Turov's place so as to investigate her Belarusian roots. The pair finally wed on 1 December 1970 (causing furore among the Moscow cultural and political elite) and spent a honeymoon in Georgia. This was the highly productive period for Vysotsky, resulting in numerous new songs, including the anthemic "I Hate" (Я не люблю), sentimental "Lyricale" (Лирическая) and dramatic war epics "He Didn't Return from the Battle" (Он не вернулся из боя) and "The Earth Song" (Песня о Земле) among many others.

 

In 1971 a drinking spree-related nervous breakdown brought Vysotsky to the Moscow Kashchenko clinic [ru]. By this time he has been suffering from alcoholism. Many of his songs from this period deal, either directly or metaphorically, with alcoholism and insanity. Partially recovered (due to the encouraging presence of Marina Vladi), Vysotsky embarked on a successful Ukrainian concert tour and wrote a cluster of new songs. On 29 November 1971 Taganka's Hamlet premiered, a groundbreaking Lyubimov's production with Vysotsky in the leading role, that of a lone intellectual rebel, rising to fight the cruel state machine.

 

Also in 1971 Vysotsky was invited to play the lead in The Sannikov Land, the screen adaptation of Vladimir Obruchev's science fiction,[47] which he wrote several songs for, but was suddenly dropped for the reason of his face "being too scandalously recognisable" as a state official put it. One of the songs written for the film, a doom-laden epic allegory "Capricious Horses" (Кони привередливые), became one of the singer's signature tunes. Two of Vysotsky's 1972 film roles were somewhat meditative: an anonymous American journalist in The Fourth One and the "righteous guy" von Koren in The Bad Good Man (based on Anton Chekov's Duel). The latter brought Vysotsky the Best Male Role prize at the V Taormina Film Fest. This philosophical slant rubbed off onto some of his new works of the time: "A Singer at the Microphone" (Певец у микрофона), "The Tightrope Walker" (Канатоходец), two new war songs ("We Spin the Earth", "Black Pea-Coats") and "The Grief" (Беда), a folkish girl's lament, later recorded by Marina Vladi and subsequently covered by several female performers. Popular proved to be his 1972 humorous songs: "Mishka Shifman" (Мишка Шифман), satirizing the leaving-for-Israel routine, "Victim of the Television" which ridiculed the concept of "political consciousness," and "The Honour of the Chess Crown" (Честь шахматной короны) about an ever-fearless "simple Soviet man" challenging the much feared American champion Bobby Fischer to a match.

 

In 1972 he stepped up in Soviet Estonian TV where he presented his songs and gave an interview. The name of the show was "Young Man from Taganka" (Noormees Tagankalt).

 

In April 1973 Vysotsky visited Poland and France. Predictable problems concerning the official permission were sorted after the French Communist Party leader Georges Marchais made a personal phone call to Leonid Brezhnev who, according to Marina Vlady's memoirs, rather sympathized with the stellar couple. Having found on return a potentially dangerous lawsuit brought against him (concerning some unsanctioned concerts in Siberia the year before), Vysotsky wrote a defiant letter to the Minister of Culture Pyotr Demichev. As a result, he was granted the status of a philharmonic artist, 11.5 roubles per concert now guaranteed. Still the 900 rubles fine had to be paid according to the court verdict, which was a substantial sum, considering his monthly salary at the theater was 110 rubles. That year Vysotsky wrote some thirty songs for "Alice in Wonderland," an audioplay where he himself has been given several minor roles. His best known songs of 1973 included "The Others' Track" (Чужая колея), "The Flight Interrupted" (Прерванный полёт) and "The Monument", all pondering on his achievements and legacy.

 

In 1974 Melodiya released the 7" EP, featuring four of Vysotsky's war songs ("He Never Returned From the Battle", "The New Times Song", "Common Graves", and "The Earth Song") which represented a tiny portion of his creative work, owned by millions on tape. In September of that year Vysotsky received his first state award, the Honorary Diploma of the Uzbek SSR following a tour with fellow actors from the Taganka Theatre in Uzbekistan. A year later he was granted the USSR Union of Cinematographers' membership. This meant he was not an "anti-Soviet scum" now, rather an unlikely link between the official Soviet cinema elite and the "progressive-thinking artists of the West." More films followed, among them The Only Road (a Soviet-Yugoslav joint venture, premiered on 10 January 1975 in Belgrade) and a science fiction movie The Flight of Mr. McKinley (1975). Out of nine ballads that he wrote for the latter only two have made it into the soundtrack. This was the height of his popularity, when, as described in Vlady's book about her husband, walking down the street on a summer night, one could hear Vysotsky's recognizable voice coming literally from every open window. Among the songs written at the time, were humorous "The Instruction before the Trip Abroad", lyrical "Of the Dead Pilot" and philosophical "The Strange House". In 1975 Vysotsky made his third trip to France where he rather riskily visited his former tutor (and now a celebrated dissident emigre) Andrey Sinyavsky. Artist Mikhail Shemyakin, his new Paris friend (or a "bottle-sharer", in Vladi's terms), recorded Vysotsky in his home studio. After a brief stay in England Vysotsky crossed the ocean and made his first Mexican concerts in April. Back in Moscow, there were changes at Taganka: Lyubimov went to Milan's La Scala on a contract and Anatoly Efros has been brought in, a director of radically different approach. His project, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, caused a sensation. Critics praised Alla Demidova (as Ranevskaya) and Vysotsky (as Lopakhin) powerful interplay, some describing it as one of the most dazzling in the history of the Soviet theater. Lyubimov, who disliked the piece, accused Efros of giving his actors "the stardom malaise." The 1976 Taganka's visit to Bulgaria resulted in Vysotskys's interview there being filmed and 15 songs recorded by Balkanton record label. On return Lyubimov made a move which many thought outrageous: declaring himself "unable to work with this Mr. Vysotsky anymore" he gave the role of Hamlet to Valery Zolotukhin, the latter's best friend. That was the time, reportedly, when stressed out Vysotsky started taking amphetamines.

 

Another Belorussian voyage completed, Marina and Vladimir went for France and from there (without any official permission given, or asked for) flew to the North America. In New York Vysotsky met, among other people, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Joseph Brodsky. In a televised one-hour interview with Dan Rather he stressed he was "not a dissident, just an artist, who's never had any intentions to leave his country where people loved him and his songs." At home this unauthorized venture into the Western world bore no repercussions: by this time Soviet authorities were divided as regards the "Vysotsky controversy" up to the highest level; while Mikhail Suslov detested the bard, Brezhnev loved him to such an extent that once, while in hospital, asked him to perform live in his daughter Galina's home, listening to this concert on the telephone. In 1976 appeared "The Domes", "The Rope" and the "Medieval" cycle, including "The Ballad of Love".

 

In September Vysotsky with Taganka made a trip to Yugoslavia where Hamlet won the annual BITEF festival's first prize, and then to Hungary for a two-week concert tour. Back in Moscow Lyubimov's production of The Master & Margarita featured Vysotsky as Ivan Bezdomny; a modest role, somewhat recompensed by an important Svidrigailov slot in Yury Karyakin's take on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Vysotsky's new songs of this period include "The History of Illness" cycle concerning his health problems, humorous "Why Did the Savages Eat Captain Cook", the metaphorical "Ballad of the Truth and the Lie", as well as "Two Fates", the chilling story of a self-absorbed alcoholic hunted by two malevolent witches, his two-faced destiny. In 1977 Vysotsky's health deteriorated (heart, kidneys, liver failures, jaw infection and nervous breakdown) to such an extent that in April he found himself in Moscow clinic's reanimation center in the state of physical and mental collapse.

 

In 1977 Vysotsky made an unlikely appearance in New York City on the American television show 60 Minutes, which falsely stated that Vysotsky had spent time in the Soviet prison system, the Gulag. That year saw the release of three Vysotsky's LPs in France (including the one that had been recorded by RCA in Canada the previous year); arranged and accompanied by guitarist Kostya Kazansky, the singer for the first time ever enjoyed the relatively sophisticated musical background. In August he performed in Hollywood before members of New York City film cast and (according to Vladi) was greeted warmly by the likes of Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro. Some more concerts in Los Angeles were followed by the appearance at the French Communist paper L’Humanité annual event. In December Taganka left for France, its Hamlet (Vysotsky back in the lead) gaining fine reviews.

 

1978 started with the March–April series of concerts in Moscow and Ukraine. In May Vysotsky embarked upon a new major film project: The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed (Место встречи изменить нельзя) about two detectives fighting crime in late 1940s Russia, directed by Stanislav Govorukhin. The film (premiered on 11 November 1978 on the Soviet Central TV) presented Vysotsky as Zheglov, a ruthless and charismatic cop teaching his milder partner Sharapov (actor Vladimir Konkin) his art of crime-solving. Vysotsky also became engaged in Taganka's Genre-seeking show (performing some of his own songs) and played Aleksander Blok in Anatoly Efros' The Lady Stranger (Незнакомка) radio play (premiered on air on 10 July 1979 and later released as a double LP).

 

In November 1978 Vysotsky took part in the underground censorship-defying literary project Metropolis, inspired and organized by Vasily Aksenov. In January 1979 Vysotsky again visited America with highly successful series of concerts. That was the point (according to biographer Vladimir Novikov) when a glimpse of new, clean life of a respectable international actor and performer all but made Vysotsky seriously reconsider his priorities. What followed though, was a return to the self-destructive theater and concert tours schedule, personal doctor Anatoly Fedotov now not only his companion, but part of Taganka's crew. "Who was this Anatoly? Just a man who in every possible situation would try to provide drugs. And he did provide. In such moments Volodya trusted him totally," Oksana Afanasyeva, Vysotsky's Moscow girlfriend (who was near him for most of the last year of his life and, on occasion, herself served as a drug courier) remembered. In July 1979, after a series of Central Asia concerts, Vysotsky collapsed, experienced clinical death and was resuscitated by Fedotov (who injected caffeine into the heart directly), colleague and close friend Vsevolod Abdulov helping with heart massage. In January 1980 Vysotsky asked Lyubimov for a year's leave. "Up to you, but on condition that Hamlet is yours," was the answer. The songwriting showed signs of slowing down, as Vysotsky began switching from songs to more conventional poetry. Still, of nearly 800 poems by Vysotsky only one has been published in the Soviet Union while he was alive. Not a single performance or interview was broadcast by the Soviet television in his lifetime.

 

In May 1979, being in a practice studio of the MSU Faculty of Journalism, Vysotsky recorded a video letter to American actor and film producer Warren Beatty, looking for both a personal meeting with Beatty and an opportunity to get a role in Reds film, to be produced and directed by the latter. While recording, Vysotsky made a few attempts to speak English, trying to overcome the language barrier. This video letter never reached Beatty. It was broadcast for the first time more than three decades later, on the night of 24 January 2013 (local time) by Rossiya 1 channel, along with records of TV channels of Italy, Mexico, Poland, USA and from private collections, in Vladimir Vysotsky. A letter to Warren Beatty film by Alexander Kovanovsky and Igor Rakhmanov. While recording this video, Vysotsky had a rare opportunity to perform for a camera, being still unable to do it with Soviet television.

 

On 22 January 1980, Vysotsky entered the Moscow Ostankino TV Center to record his one and only studio concert for the Soviet television. What proved to be an exhausting affair (his concentration lacking, he had to plod through several takes for each song) was premiered on the Soviet TV eight years later. The last six months of his life saw Vysotsky appearing on stage sporadically, fueled by heavy dosages of drugs and alcohol. His performances were often erratic. Occasionally Vysotsky paid visits to Sklifosofsky [ru] institute's ER unit, but would not hear of Marina Vlady's suggestions for him to take long-term rehabilitation course in a Western clinic. Yet he kept writing, mostly poetry and even prose, but songs as well. The last song he performed was the agonizing "My Sorrow, My Anguish" and his final poem, written one week prior to his death was "A Letter to Marina": "I'm less than fifty, but the time is short / By you and God protected, life and limb / I have a song or two to sing before the Lord / I have a way to make my peace with him."

 

Although several theories of the ultimate cause of the singer's death persist to this day, given what is now known about cardiovascular disease, it seems likely that by the time of his death Vysotsky had an advanced coronary condition brought about by years of tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, as well as his grueling work schedule and the stress of the constant harassment by the government. Towards the end, most of Vysotsky's closest friends had become aware of the ominous signs and were convinced that his demise was only a matter of time. Clear evidence of this can be seen in a video ostensibly shot by the Japanese NHK channel only months before Vysotsky's death, where he appears visibly unwell, breathing heavily and slurring his speech. Accounts by Vysotsky's close friends and colleagues concerning his last hours were compiled in the book by V. Perevozchikov.

 

Vysotsky suffered from alcoholism for most of his life. Sometime around 1977, he started using amphetamines and other prescription narcotics in an attempt to counteract the debilitating hangovers and eventually to rid himself of alcohol addiction. While these attempts were partially successful, he ended up trading alcoholism for a severe drug dependency that was fast spiralling out of control. He was reduced to begging some of his close friends in the medical profession for supplies of drugs, often using his acting skills to collapse in a medical office and imitate a seizure or some other condition requiring a painkiller injection. On 25 July 1979 (a year to the day before his death) he suffered a cardiac arrest and was clinically dead for several minutes during a concert tour of Soviet Uzbekistan, after injecting himself with a wrong kind of painkiller he had previously obtained from a dentist's office.

 

Fully aware of the dangers of his condition, Vysotsky made several attempts to cure himself of his addiction. He underwent an experimental (and ultimately discredited) blood purification procedure offered by a leading drug rehabilitation specialist in Moscow. He also went to an isolated retreat in France with his wife Marina in the spring of 1980 as a way of forcefully depriving himself of any access to drugs. After these attempts failed, Vysotsky returned to Moscow to find his life in an increasingly stressful state of disarray. He had been a defendant in two criminal trials, one for a car wreck he had caused some months earlier, and one for an alleged conspiracy to sell unauthorized concert tickets (he eventually received a suspended sentence and a probation in the first case, and the charges in the second were dismissed, although several of his co-defendants were found guilty). He also unsuccessfully fought the film studio authorities for the rights to direct a movie called The Green Phaeton. Relations with his wife Marina were deteriorating, and he was torn between his loyalty to her and his love for his mistress Oksana Afanasyeva. He had also developed severe inflammation in one of his legs, making his concert performances extremely challenging.

 

In a final desperate attempt to overcome his drug addiction, partially prompted by his inability to obtain drugs through his usual channels (the authorities had imposed a strict monitoring of the medical institutions to prevent illicit drug distribution during the 1980 Olympics), he relapsed into alcohol and went on a prolonged drinking binge (apparently consuming copious amounts of champagne due to a prevalent misconception at the time that it was better than vodka at countering the effects of drug withdrawal).

 

On 3 July 1980, Vysotsky gave a performance at a suburban Moscow concert hall. One of the stage managers recalls that he looked visibly unhealthy ("gray-faced", as she puts it) and complained of not feeling too good, while another says she was surprised by his request for champagne before the start of the show, as he had always been known for completely abstaining from drink before his concerts. On 16 July Vysotsky gave his last public concert in Kaliningrad. On 18 July, Vysotsky played Hamlet for the last time at the Taganka Theatre. From around 21 July, several of his close friends were on a round-the-clock watch at his apartment, carefully monitoring his alcohol intake and hoping against all odds that his drug dependency would soon be overcome and they would then be able to bring him back from the brink. The effects of drug withdrawal were clearly getting the better of him, as he got increasingly restless, moaned and screamed in pain, and at times fell into memory lapses, failing to recognize at first some of his visitors, including his son Arkadiy. At one point, Vysotsky's personal physician A. Fedotov (the same doctor who had brought him back from clinical death a year earlier in Uzbekistan) attempted to sedate him, inadvertently causing asphyxiation from which he was barely saved. On 24 July, Vysotsky told his mother that he thought he was going to die that day, and then made similar remarks to a few of the friends present at the apartment, who begged him to stop such talk and keep his spirits up. But soon thereafter, Oksana Afanasyeva saw him clench his chest several times, which led her to suspect that he was genuinely suffering from a cardiovascular condition. She informed Fedotov of this but was told not to worry, as he was going to monitor Vysotsky's condition all night. In the evening, after drinking relatively small amounts of alcohol, the moaning and groaning Vysotsky was sedated by Fedotov, who then sat down on the couch next to him but fell asleep. Fedotov awoke in the early hours of 25 July to an unusual silence and found Vysotsky dead in his bed with his eyes wide open, apparently of a myocardial infarction, as he later certified. This was contradicted by Fedotov's colleagues, Sklifosovsky Emergency Medical Institute physicians L. Sul'povar and S. Scherbakov (who had demanded the actor's immediate hospitalization on 23 July but were allegedly rebuffed by Fedotov), who insisted that Fedotov's incompetent sedation combined with alcohol was what killed Vysotsky. An autopsy was prevented by Vysotsky's parents (who were eager to have their son's drug addiction remain secret), so the true cause of death remains unknown.

 

No official announcement of the actor's death was made, only a brief obituary appeared in the Moscow newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva, and a note informing of Vysotsky's death and cancellation of the Hamlet performance was put out at the entrance to the Taganka Theatre (the story goes that not a single ticket holder took advantage of the refund offer). Despite this, by the end of the day, millions had learned of Vysotsky's death. On 28 July, he lay in state at the Taganka Theatre. After a mourning ceremony involving an unauthorized mass gathering of unprecedented scale, Vysotsky was buried at the Vagankovskoye Cemetery in Moscow. The attendance at the Olympic events dropped noticeably on that day, as scores of spectators left to attend the funeral. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of his coffin.

 

According to author Valery Perevozchikov part of the blame for his death lay with the group of associates who surrounded him in the last years of his life. This inner circle were all people under the influence of his strong character, combined with a material interest in the large sums of money his concerts earned. This list included Valerii Yankelovich, manager of the Taganka Theatre and prime organiser of his non-sanctioned concerts; Anatoly Fedotov, his personal doctor; Vadim Tumanov, gold prospector (and personal friend) from Siberia; Oksana Afanasyeva (later Yarmolnik), his mistress the last three years of his life; Ivan Bortnik, a fellow actor; and Leonid Sul'povar, a department head at the Sklifosovski hospital who was responsible for much of the supply of drugs.

 

Vysotsky's associates had all put in efforts to supply his drug habit, which kept him going in the last years of his life. Under their influence, he was able to continue to perform all over the country, up to a week before his death. Due to illegal (i.e. non-state-sanctioned) sales of tickets and other underground methods, these concerts pulled in sums of money unimaginable in Soviet times, when almost everyone received nearly the same small salary. The payouts and gathering of money were a constant source of danger, and Yankelovich and others were needed to organise them.

 

Some money went to Vysotsky, the rest was distributed amongst this circle. At first this was a reasonable return on their efforts; however, as his addiction progressed and his body developed resistance, the frequency and amount of drugs needed to keep Vysotsky going became unmanageable. This culminated at the time of the Moscow Olympics which coincided with the last days of his life, when supplies of drugs were monitored more strictly than usual, and some of the doctors involved in supplying Vysotsky were already behind bars (normally the doctors had to account for every ampule, thus drugs were transferred to an empty container, while the patients received a substitute or placebo instead). In the last few days Vysotsky became uncontrollable, his shouting could be heard all over the apartment building on Malaya Gruzinskaya St. where he lived amongst VIP's. Several days before his death, in a state of stupor he went on a high speed drive around Moscow in an attempt to obtain drugs and alcohol – when many high-ranking people saw him. This increased the likelihood of him being forcibly admitted to the hospital, and the consequent danger to the circle supplying his habit. As his state of health declined, and it became obvious that he might die, his associates gathered to decide what to do with him. They came up with no firm decision. They did not want him admitted officially, as his drug addiction would become public and they would fall under suspicion, although some of them admitted that any ordinary person in his condition would have been admitted immediately.

 

On Vysotsky's death his associates and relatives put in much effort to prevent a post-mortem being carried out. This despite the fairly unusual circumstances: he died aged 42 under heavy sedation with an improvised cocktail of sedatives and stimulants, including the toxic chloral hydrate, provided by his personal doctor who had been supplying him with narcotics the previous three years. This doctor, being the only one present at his side when death occurred, had a few days earlier been seen to display elementary negligence in treating the sedated Vysotsky. On the night of his death, Arkadii Vysotsky (his son), who tried to visit his father in his apartment, was rudely refused entry by Yankelovich, even though there was a lack of people able to care for him. Subsequently, the Soviet police commenced a manslaughter investigation which was dropped due to the absence of evidence taken at the time of death.

 

Vysotsky's first wife was Iza Zhukova. They met in 1956, being both MAT theater institute students, lived for some time at Vysotsky's mother's flat in Moscow, after her graduation (Iza was 2 years older) spent months in different cities (her – in Kiev, then Rostov) and finally married on 25 April 1960.

 

He met his second wife Lyudmila Abramova in 1961, while shooting the film 713 Requests Permission to Land. They married in 1965 and had two sons, Arkady (born 1962) and Nikita (born 1964).

 

While still married to Lyudmila Abramova, Vysotsky began a romantic relationship with Tatyana Ivanenko, a Taganka actress, then, in 1967 fell in love with Marina Vlady, a French actress of Russian descent, who was working at Mosfilm on a joint Soviet-French production at that time. Marina had been married before and had three children, while Vladimir had two. They were married in 1969. For 10 years the two maintained a long-distance relationship as Marina compromised her career in France to spend more time in Moscow, and Vladimir's friends pulled strings for him to be allowed to travel abroad to stay with his wife. Marina eventually joined the Communist Party of France, which essentially gave her an unlimited-entry visa into the Soviet Union, and provided Vladimir with some immunity against prosecution by the government, which was becoming weary of his covertly anti-Soviet lyrics and his odds-defying popularity with the masses. The problems of his long-distance relationship with Vlady inspired several of Vysotsky's songs.

 

In the autumn of 1981 Vysotsky's first collection of poetry was officially published in the USSR, called The Nerve (Нерв). Its first edition (25,000 copies) was sold out instantly. In 1982 the second one followed (100,000), then the 3rd (1988, 200,000), followed in the 1990s by several more. The material for it was compiled by Robert Rozhdestvensky, an officially laurelled Soviet poet. Also in 1981 Yuri Lyubimov staged at Taganka a new music and poetry production called Vladimir Vysotsky which was promptly banned and officially premiered on 25 January 1989.

 

In 1982 the motion picture The Ballad of the Valiant Knight Ivanhoe was produced in the Soviet Union and in 1983 the movie was released to the public. Four songs by Vysotsky were featured in the film.

 

In 1986 the official Vysotsky poetic heritage committee was formed (with Robert Rozhdestvensky at the helm, theater critic Natalya Krymova being both the instigator and the organizer). Despite some opposition from the conservatives (Yegor Ligachev was the latter's political leader, Stanislav Kunyaev of Nash Sovremennik represented its literary flank) Vysotsky was rewarded posthumously with the USSR State Prize. The official formula – "for creating the character of Zheglov and artistic achievements as a singer-songwriter" was much derided from both the left and the right. In 1988 the Selected Works of... (edited by N. Krymova) compilation was published, preceded by I Will Surely Return... (Я, конечно, вернусь...) book of fellow actors' memoirs and Vysotsky's verses, some published for the first time. In 1990 two volumes of extensive The Works of... were published, financed by the late poet's father Semyon Vysotsky. Even more ambitious publication series, self-proclaimed "the first ever academical edition" (the latter assertion being dismissed by sceptics) compiled and edited by Sergey Zhiltsov, were published in Tula (1994–1998, 5 volumes), Germany (1994, 7 volumes) and Moscow (1997, 4 volumes).

 

In 1989 the official Vysotsky Museum opened in Moscow, with the magazine of its own called Vagant (edited by Sergey Zaitsev) devoted entirely to Vysotsky's legacy. In 1996 it became an independent publication and was closed in 2002.

 

In the years to come, Vysotsky's grave became a site of pilgrimage for several generations of his fans, the youngest of whom were born after his death. His tombstone also became the subject of controversy, as his widow had wished for a simple abstract slab, while his parents insisted on a realistic gilded statue. Although probably too solemn to have inspired Vysotsky himself, the statue is believed by some to be full of metaphors and symbols reminiscent of the singer's life.

 

In 1995 in Moscow the Vysotsky monument was officially opened at Strastnoy Boulevard, by the Petrovsky Gates. Among those present were the bard's parents, two of his sons, first wife Iza, renown poets Yevtushenko and Voznesensky. "Vysotsky had always been telling the truth. Only once he was wrong when he sang in one of his songs: 'They will never erect me a monument in a square like that by Petrovskye Vorota'", Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov said in his speech.[95] A further monument to Vysotsky was erected in 2014 at Rostov-on-Don.

 

In October 2004, a monument to Vysotsky was erected in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, near the Millennium Bridge. His son, Nikita Vysotsky, attended the unveiling. The statue was designed by Russian sculptor Alexander Taratinov, who also designed a monument to Alexander Pushkin in Podgorica. The bronze statue shows Vysotsky standing on a pedestal, with his one hand raised and the other holding a guitar. Next to the figure lies a bronze skull – a reference to Vysotsky's monumental lead performances in Shakespeare's Hamlet. On the pedestal the last lines from a poem of Vysotsky's, dedicated to Montenegro, are carved.

 

The Vysotsky business center & semi-skyscraper was officially opened in Yekaterinburg, in 2011. It is the tallest building in Russia outside of Moscow, has 54 floors, total height: 188.3 m (618 ft). On the third floor of the business center is the Vysotsky Museum. Behind the building is a bronze sculpture of Vladimir Vysotsky and his third wife, a French actress Marina Vlady.

 

In 2011 a controversial movie Vysotsky. Thank You For Being Alive was released, script written by his son, Nikita Vysotsky. The actor Sergey Bezrukov portrayed Vysotsky, using a combination of a mask and CGI effects. The film tells about Vysotsky's illegal underground performances, problems with KGB and drugs, and subsequent clinical death in 1979.

 

Shortly after Vysotsky's death, many Russian bards started writing songs and poems about his life and death. The best known are Yuri Vizbor's "Letter to Vysotsky" (1982) and Bulat Okudzhava's "About Volodya Vysotsky" (1980). In Poland, Jacek Kaczmarski based some of his songs on those of Vysotsky, such as his first song (1977) was based on "The Wolfhunt", and dedicated to his memory the song "Epitafium dla Włodzimierza Wysockiego" ("Epitaph for Vladimir Vysotsky").

 

Every year on Vysotsky's birthday festivals are held throughout Russia and in many communities throughout the world, especially in Europe. Vysotsky's impact in Russia is often compared to that of Wolf Biermann in Germany, Bob Dylan in America, or Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel in France.

 

The asteroid 2374 Vladvysotskij, discovered by Lyudmila Zhuravleva, was named after Vysotsky.

 

During the Annual Q&A Event Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, Alexey Venediktov asked Putin to name a street in Moscow after the singer Vladimir Vysotsky, who, though considered one of the greatest Russian artists, has no street named after him in Moscow almost 30 years after his death. Venediktov stated a Russian law that allowed the President to do so and promote a law suggestion to name a street by decree. Putin answered that he would talk to Mayor of Moscow and would solve this problem. In July 2015 former Upper and Lower Tagansky Dead-ends (Верхний и Нижний Таганские тупики) in Moscow were reorganized into Vladimir Vysotsky Street.

 

The Sata Kieli Cultural Association, [Finland], organizes the annual International Vladimir Vysotsky Festival (Vysotski Fest), where Vysotsky's singers from different countries perform in Helsinki and other Finnish cities. They sing Vysotsky in different languages and in different arrangements.

 

Two brothers and singers from Finland, Mika and Turkka Mali, over the course of their more than 30-year musical career, have translated into Finnish, recorded and on numerous occasions publicly performed songs of Vladimir Vysotsky.

 

Throughout his lengthy musical career, Jaromír Nohavica, a famed Czech singer, translated and performed numerous songs of Vladimir Vysotsky, most notably Песня о друге (Píseň o příteli – Song about a friend).

 

The Museum of Vladimir Vysotsky in Koszalin dedicated to Vladimir Vysotsky was founded by Marlena Zimna (1969–2016) in May 1994, in her apartment, in the city of Koszalin, in Poland. Since then the museum has collected over 19,500 exhibits from different countries and currently holds Vladimir Vysotsky' personal items, autographs, drawings, letters, photographs and a large library containing unique film footage, vinyl records, CDs and DVDs. A special place in the collection holds a Vladimir Vysotsky's guitar, on which he played at a concert in Casablanca in April 1976. Vladimir Vysotsky presented this guitar to Moroccan journalist Hassan El-Sayed together with an autograph (an extract from Vladimir Vysotsky's song "What Happened in Africa"), written in Russian right on the guitar.

 

In January 2023, a monument to the outstanding actor, singer and poet Vladimir Vysotsky was unveiled in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in the square near the Rodina House of Culture. Author Vladimir Chebotarev.

 

After her husband's death, urged by her friend Simone Signoret, Marina Vlady wrote a book called The Aborted Flight about her years together with Vysotsky. The book paid tribute to Vladimir's talent and rich persona, yet was uncompromising in its depiction of his addictions and the problems that they caused in their marriage. Written in French (and published in France in 1987), it was translated into Russian in tandem by Vlady and a professional translator and came out in 1989 in the USSR. Totally credible from the specialists' point of view, the book caused controversy, among other things, by shocking revelations about the difficult father-and-son relationship (or rather, the lack of any), implying that Vysotsky-senior (while his son was alive) was deeply ashamed of him and his songs which he deemed "anti-Soviet" and reported his own son to the KGB. Also in 1989 another important book of memoirs was published in the USSR, providing a bulk of priceless material for the host of future biographers, Alla Demidova's Vladimir Vysotsky, the One I Know and Love. Among other publications of note were Valery Zolotukhin's Vysotsky's Secret (2000), a series of Valery Perevozchikov's books (His Dying Hour, The Unknown Vysotsky and others) containing detailed accounts and interviews dealing with the bard's life's major controversies (the mystery surrounding his death, the truth behind Vysotsky Sr.'s alleged KGB reports, the true nature of Vladimir Vysotsky's relations with his mother Nina's second husband Georgy Bartosh etc.), Iza Zhukova's Short Happiness for a Lifetime and the late bard's sister-in-law Irena Vysotskaya's My Brother Vysotsky. The Beginnings (both 2005).

 

A group of enthusiasts has created a non-profit project – the mobile application "Vysotsky"

 

The multifaceted talent of Vysotsky is often described by the term "bard" (бард) that Vysotsky has never been enthusiastic about. He thought of himself mainly as an actor and poet rather than a singer, and once remarked, "I do not belong to what people call bards or minstrels or whatever." With the advent of portable tape-recorders in the Soviet Union, Vysotsky's music became available to the masses in the form of home-made reel-to-reel audio tape recordings (later on cassette tapes).

 

Vysotsky accompanied himself on a Russian seven-string guitar, with a raspy voice singing ballads of love, peace, war, everyday Soviet life and of the human condition. He was largely perceived as the voice of honesty, at times sarcastically jabbing at the Soviet government, which made him a target for surveillance and threats. In France, he has been compared with Georges Brassens; in Russia, however, he was more frequently compared with Joe Dassin, partly because they were the same age and died in the same year, although their ideologies, biographies, and musical styles are very different. Vysotsky's lyrics and style greatly influenced Jacek Kaczmarski, a Polish songwriter and singer who touched on similar themes.

 

The songs – over 600 of them – were written about almost any imaginable theme. The earliest were blatnaya pesnya ("outlaw songs"). These songs were based either on the life of the common people in Moscow or on life in the crime people, sometimes in Gulag. Vysotsky slowly grew out of this phase and started singing more serious, though often satirical, songs. Many of these songs were about war. These war songs were not written to glorify war, but rather to expose the listener to the emotions of those in extreme, life-threatening situations. Most Soviet veterans would say that Vysotsky's war songs described the truth of war far more accurately than more official "patriotic" songs.

 

Nearly all of Vysotsky's songs are in the first person, although he is almost never the narrator. When singing his criminal songs, he would adopt the accent and intonation of a Moscow thief, and when singing war songs, he would sing from the point of view of a soldier. In many of his philosophical songs, he adopted the role of inanimate objects. This created some confusion about Vysotsky's background, especially during the early years when information could not be passed around very easily. Using his acting talent, the poet played his role so well that until told otherwise, many of his fans believed that he was, indeed, a criminal or war veteran. Vysotsky's father said that "War veterans thought the author of the songs to be one of them, as if he had participated in the war together with them." The same could be said about mountain climbers; on multiple occasions, Vysotsky was sent pictures of mountain climbers' graves with quotes from his lyrics etched on the tombstones.

 

Not being officially recognized as a poet and singer, Vysotsky performed wherever and whenever he could – in the theater (where he worked), at universities, in private apartments, village clubs, and in the open air. It was not unusual for him to give several concerts in one day. He used to sleep little, using the night hours to write. With few exceptions, he wasn't allowed to publish his recordings with "Melodiya", which held a monopoly on the Soviet music industry. His songs were passed on through amateur, fairly low quality recordings on vinyl discs and magnetic tape, resulting in his immense popularity. Cosmonauts even took his music on cassette into orbit.

 

Musically, virtually all of Vysotsky's songs were written in a minor key, and tended to employ from three to seven chords. Vysotsky composed his songs and played them exclusively on the Russian seven string guitar, often tuned a tone or a tone-and-a-half below the traditional Russian "Open G major" tuning. This guitar, with its specific Russian tuning, makes a slight yet notable difference in chord voicings than the standard tuned six string Spanish (classical) guitar, and it became a staple of his sound. Because Vysotsky tuned down a tone and a half, his strings had less tension, which also colored the sound.

 

His earliest songs were usually written in C minor (with the guitar tuned a tone down from DGBDGBD to CFACFAC)

 

Songs written in this key include "Stars" (Zvyozdy), "My friend left for Magadan" (Moy drug uyekhal v Magadan), and most of his "outlaw songs".

 

At around 1970, Vysotsky began writing and playing exclusively in A minor (guitar tuned to CFACFAC), which he continued doing until his death.

 

Vysotsky used his fingers instead of a pick to pluck and strum, as was the tradition with Russian guitar playing. He used a variety of finger picking and strumming techniques. One of his favorite was to play an alternating bass with his thumb as he plucked or strummed with his other fingers.

 

Often, Vysotsky would neglect to check the tuning of his guitar, which is particularly noticeable on earlier recordings. According to some accounts, Vysotsky would get upset when friends would attempt to tune his guitar, leading some to believe that he preferred to play slightly out of tune as a stylistic choice. Much of this is also attributable to the fact that a guitar that is tuned down more than 1 whole step (Vysotsky would sometimes tune as much as 2 and a half steps down) is prone to intonation problems.

 

Vysotsky had a unique singing style. He had an unusual habit of elongating consonants instead of vowels in his songs. So when a syllable is sung for a prolonged period of time, he would elongate the consonant instead of the vowel in that syllable.

I wish they would have done these for all the years! There are so many things they could have done!

L'ART CONTEMPORAIN : UN SIGNE D'APPARTENANCE ET D'EXCLUSION. CONTEMPORARY ART: A SIGN OF MEMBERSHIP AND EXCLUSION

 

L'Art Contemporain officiel a été décrit par un universitaire spécialiste de l'histoire de l'Art comme "un art désinvestit de tout discours".

C'est à dire un Art qui ne signifie rien. Un art qui n'est porteur d'aucun message explicite, compréhensible par les peuples. L'Art Contemporain, officiel, n'a pas de signification partagée avec les masses actuelles. C'est ce que j'appelle l'Art du Non Sens.

Selon André Malraux cette situation résulte du fait que les élites contemporaines n'ont pas de valeurs à transmettre aux peuples." On ne peut pas faire un art qui parle aux masses quand on n'a rien à leur dire."

 

C'est en partie exact, mais cette formulation n'épuise pas le sujet.

Des précisions complémentaires doivent être apportées qui expliquent les motifs de cette absence de signification des oeuvres d'art contemporaines.

Le Non Sens n'est pas seulement le résultat d'une carence de la pensée des Elites. Le Non Sens est résultat d'une volonté des Elites qui trouve une possibilité de s'exprimer dans le domaine de l'Art.

Les élites occidentales contemporaines ont leur religion, comme les élites des siècles passés. Elles ont fabriqué elles aussi leur "opium du peuple".

C'est l'idéologie démocratique, l'idéologie des Droits de l'Homme et de la République Universelle.

Cette religion contemporaine est officielle, constamment réaffirmée, proclamée haut et fort. Elle justifie toutes les interventions militaires des Etats Unis ou des pays qui les suivent, comme la France en Lybie.

La guerre au nom du Christ ou de Allah a été remplacée par la guerre au nom de la démocratie et des droits de l'homme. Les français on inauguré ce prétexte en 1792, et ils ont fait beaucoup d'émules.

Ce n'est donc pas seulement une carence de valeurs qui explique l'Art Contemporain du Non Sens. C'est une volonté de faire de l'Art Contemporain officiel, un domaine réservé aux élites, dans lequel elles se retrouvent seules, avec leurs partisans.

Pour le peuple, il existe ce qu'il lui faut : la télévision, les journaux, et la multitude de peintres et sculpteurs qui ouvrent des galeries sur internet et ne rentreront jamais dans les musées.

 

En réalité l'Art Contemporain, a donc bien un sens. Il a un sens caché.

1° L'Art Contemporain est un signe d'appartenance que l'élite se donne. Un signe par lequel elle se reconnaît, se compte, et se distingue des gens du commun.

2° L'Art Contemporain est donc, en même temps, par là même, un signe d'exclusion de tous ceux qui n'appartiennent pas à l'élite. Toute critique de l'Art Contemporain est irrecevable, comme formulée par un non-initié, un non-éclairé.

 

L'Art Contemporain est un produit, direct, de l'idéologie des "Lumières", formulée au 18è siècle en Europe, et qui domine totalement l'Occident contemporain.

"les Lumières" sont apportées par les "Eclairés", qui seuls peuvent conduire les masses ignorantes, à la société radieuse des "lendemains qui chantent" de la Démocratie Universelle.

C'est la philosophie du "Contrat Social" de Jean Jacques Rousseau : La majorité qui doit inspirer la politique de la société n'est pas la majorité mathématique, mais la petite majorité des "Eclairés". C'est à dire une Minorité. Cette invention de Jean Jacques Rousseau est une merveille doctrinale déguisée derrière un langage amphigourique. Elle a permis de concilier le principe de légitimité politique de l'élection populaire, devenu exclusif et incontournable, tout en maintenant un contrôle strict de la société par une petite minorité discrète, inommable. Cachée derrière le paravent des Elus. Car les élus ne sont pas forcément très hauts placés parmi les Elites. En majorité ce sont les Gardiens de la République. Ils ne font pas partie des Sages. Inommables.

 

Chez les communistes c'est "la dictature éclairée du prolétariat". En réalité la dictature, pas éclairée du tout, sur le prolétariat. On l'a vu.

Dans l'Occident capitaliste, triomphant depuis 1990, le projet politique des "Eclairés" a pris une forme infiniment plus subtile, plus déguisée, plus efficace, car peu visible et indolore.

Grâce aux méthodes très élaborées de "la démocratie représentative" s'est mis en place le "totalitarisme doux" : Pas de camps de concentration, pas de Goulag, pas de Laogaï, pas d'hôpitaux psychiatriques. Seulement un contrôle total, mais invisible, de l'éducation et de l'information. Ce totalitarisme a une apparence libérale annoncée par Tocqueville dans la "Démocratie en Amérique".

Le rêve de Napoléon Ier s'est réalisé : Une censure invisible, qui n'a pas l'air de venir des gouvernants, mais qui vient des gouvernés eux mêmes, qui participent à leur propre contrôle,

Le monde contemporain est en train de mettre en pratique une très vieille utopie : Celle imaginée par Platon dans "la République". Un livre qui se lit aussi bien que Orson Wells ou Haldous Huxley.

 

Conclusion :

Pendant des siècles l'Art a été pour les élites de l'Europe une méthode pour communiquer avec les peuples et leur proposer une idéologie (une religion). C'est ainsi que pendant des siècles les artistes ont peint et sculpté des Christ en croix et des Vierges à l'Enfant. Puis sont apparus les thèmes tirés de l'Antiquité Gréco-Latine, et à partir du 17è siècle les thèmes de la vie quotidienne et profane : les paysages, les scène de la vie paysanne et bourgeoise, les natures mortes, les bouquets de fleurs.....

Pendant des siècles l'art a proposé des oeuvres que tous les peuples, même incultes, pouvaient comprendre.

Depuis la deuxième guerre mondiale, avec l'Art Contemporain, c'est fini.

Les idéologies contemporaines sont distribuées aux peuples par la télévision, la radio, les journaux. Plus besoin de l'art.

L'Art Contemporain officiel, en peinture et en sculpture, est devenu un domaine réservé aux Sages et aux Gardiens que décrit la République de Platon.

La phrase d'André Malraux " On ne peut pas faire un art qui parle aux masses quand on n'a rien à leur dire", se corrige ainsi : " Quand on ne veut rien dire aux masses, quand on veut rester entre élites, on fait un art qui ne parle pas aux masses".

L'Art Contemporain n'a pas de sens partagé parce que les élites le veulent ainsi.

Par contre, quand les élites veulent se faire comprendre des masses, elles font des panneaux de signalisation routière, des émissions de radio et de télévision et des articles dans les journaux.

Si les élites veulent vendre leurs marchandises, elles font de la Publicité, qui parle aussi très simplement aux masses.

 

CONTEMPORARY ART: A SIGN OF MEMBERSHIP AND EXCLUSION.

  

Contemporary Art Official was described by an academic specialist in the history of Art as "an art disinvests of all discourse."

That is an art that means nothing. An art that does not transmit explicit message, understandable by the people. The Contemporary Art, official, has no shared meaning with current masses. This is what I call the Art of Non Sens.

According to André Malraux that situation results from the fact that contemporary elites have no values to be transmitted to the people. "You can not make an art that speaks to the masses when you have nothing to say."

This formulation is partly true, but it does not exhaust the subject. Additional clarifications need to be made to explain the reasons for this lack of meaning, systematic, contemporary works of the art. The No Sense is not only the result of a lack of thought of the Elites. The No Sense, is the result of a desire of the Elites that is expressed in the field of Art. The contemporary Western elites have their religion, as the elites of past centuries. They also manufactured their "opium of the people". It is the democratic ideology, the ideology of Human Rights and the Universal Republic.

This contemporary official religion is constantly affirmed, loudly proclaiming. It justifies all military interventions of the United States or countries that follow, like France in Libya.

The war in the name of Christ or Allah was replaced with the war in the name of democracy and human rights. The French were inaugurated this pretext in 1792, and they made a lot of followers.

This is not only a lack of values that explains the Contemporary Art of No Sense. It is a desire to make official Contemporary Art, an area reserved for elites, in which they find themselves alone with their supporters.

For the people there what he needs: television, newspapers, and many painters and sculptors who open galleries on the internet and never will return in museums.

  

In reality contemporary art, so has a meaning. It has a hidden meaning.

1. The Contemporary Art is a sign of belonging that gives the elite. A sign by which it recognizes, can be counted, and is distinguished from the common people.

2. The Contemporary Art is at the same time, by the same token, a sign of exclusion of those who do not belong to the elite. Criticism of Contemporary Art is inadmissible, as formulated by the uninitiated, an unlit.

 

The Contemporary Art is a product, direct, of the ideology of "Enlightenment", formulated in the 18th century in Europe, and which totally dominates the contemporary West. "Enlightenment" are made by the "Enlightened", which alone can lead the ignorant masses to the "singing tomorrows" of Universal Democracy. This is the philosophy of the "Social Contract" of Jean Jacques Rousseau: The majority that must inspire the policy of the sociéty is not the mathematical majority, but the small majority of "Enlightened". Ie, a minority. This invention of Jean Jacques Rousseau is disguised behind a doctrinal wonderfully nonsensical language. She helped reconcile the principle of political legitimacy of popular election, became exclusive and essential, while maintaining a strict control of the company by a small discrete minority, inommable. Hidden behind the screen of the Elect.

Because elected officials are not necessarily very high ranking among the Elites. Mostly they are the Guardians of the Republic. They are not part of the Sages. Inommables.

 

At the communists is "enlightened dictatorship of the proletariat". In reality the dictatorship, not lit at all, over the proletariat. We saw it. In the capitalist West, triumphant since 1990, the political project of "Illuminated" took an infinitely more subtle, more disguised, more efficient, as barely visible and painless. Thanks to sophisticated methods of "representative democracy" went on place the "soft totalitarianism": no concentration camps, no Gulag, no Laogai, no psychiatric hospitals. Only total control, but invisible, of the education and of the information. This totalitarianism, has a liberal appearance announced by Tocqueville in "Democracy in America."

Napoleon's dream came true: An invisible censorship, which does not seem to come from governments, but just the governed themselves, participating in their own control,

The contemporary world is being put into practice, a very old utopia imagined by Plato in The "Republic". A book that reads as well as Orson Wells or Huxley Haldous.

 

CONCLUSION:

For centuries the art has been for the elite of Europe a method to communicate with people, and offer them an ideology (religion). This is how for many centuries the artists have painted and carved crucifix and the Virgin and Child. Then appeared the themes from Greco-Latin antiquity, and from the 17th century themes of daily life and profane: landscapes, scenes of peasant and bourgeois life, still lifes, bouquets of flowers. ....

For centuries art has proposed, works that all peoples, even uneducated, could understand.

Since World War II, with contemporary art, it's over.

The contemporary ideologies are distributed to people through television, radio, newspapers. More needs art.

The Official Art Contemporain, painting and sculpture, has become a exclusive domain of the Wise and the Guardians described by Plato in "The République".

The sentence of André Malraux "You can not make an art that speaks to the masses when you have nothing to say to them", and corrects: "When you means nothing to the masses, when we want to remain among the elite, it is an art that does not speak to the masses."

The Contemporary Art has no shared sense because the elites want it so. By cons, when the elites want to be understood by the masses, they make traffic signs, radio and television programs and newspaper articles. If the elites want to sell their goods, they make Publicity, which also speaks very simply to the masses.

 

WEEK 30 – Sam's Club Pre-Remodel, Set I

 

Turning back to the left, here's yet another shot from the actionway that leads straight into the salesfloor from the vestibule, but looking into the main shopping portion of the club this time (as opposed to the checkout and dining areas). There's definitely an umistakable warehouse environment in play here! As a part of that, there's very little décor to speak of, and in fact this Sam's seems to have the deluxe (and earlier: those two seem to go hand in hand, especially with Walmart...) version of this particular package. But the latest redesign, which this store is remodeling to, seems to be trying to create a bit more of an upscale feel for Sam's Club. A short read on that, with a few pics, is at this link.

 

(c) 2017 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

Preserved 45041 stands in the yard at Crewe works during an open day.

 

I fund my Flickr membership, scanner and software myself. So, if you like my pictures please consider buying me a coffee! www.buymeacoffee.com/seanl

 

© Sean Lancastle, all rights reserved. Please do not share or post elsewhere without permission.

Hey folks! A bunch of you have already pre-ordered the new membership kit, thank you very much. I appreciate your support!

I have some good news: The sample of the patch has been made by Falls Creek Outfitters. It looks great! See it above. So if you were hesitant about ordering because you were unsure how the finished product was going to look, fear no more!

And there have been a few questions from people who are already members about the new kit. So, to clear it up:

If you are already a member, you will still retain your member number, you will not be a "new member" per se.

At some point (most likely January), existing members will be able to purchase individual stickers, buttons, and patches a la carte. However, the "best" deal for current and new members alike is to get in on the pre-sale. The prices will be better, and you'll get the extras plus a year of Postcard Club.

And in case you need a refresher:

The new SoTS Membership pack will feature:

The patch!

Two 1 inch buttons of the design

Three 1 1/2 inch stickers of the design

One year of Postcard Club. You'll get about four unique event postcards sent to you!

A subscription to the Society of Three Speeds email list, where you will be notified of upcoming SoTS events and other items of interest.

Some other special goodness!

And of course, your membership card with your membership number!

So want in on the action? Act now, because I'm offering two special pre-order sales!

Get the SoTS membership pack for $15 plus shipping and fees! (The membership price will go up to $20 after pre-order sale.)

Get the SoTS patch for $5 plus shipping and fees! (You must be a member to get the patch individually. Patch price will go up to $7 after pre-order sale.)

The pre-order sale for both ends at 11:59 PM Pacific Time on Friday December 7th. Orders will be shipped by January.

Questions? Please get in touch.

Go here to order.

urbanadventureleague.storenvy.com/

I don't think these Oystercatchers have paid their membership, but they do like to make use of the bowling club facilities in the local park, early morning. Haven't seen them trying to get in the clubhouse, but they do like to tidy up the green.

Virgin liveried 43098 stands on a northbound Crosscountry service at Exeter.

 

I fund my Flickr membership, scanner and software myself. So, if you like my pictures please consider buying me a coffee! www.buymeacoffee.com/seanl

 

© Sean Lancastle, all rights reserved. Please do not share or post elsewhere without permission.

Varosha - Maras is the southern quarter of the Famagusta, a de jure territory of Cyprus, currently under the control of Northern Cyprus. Varosha has a population of 226 in the 2011 Northern Cyprus census. The area of Varosha is 6.19 km2 (2.39 sq mi).

 

The name of Varosha derives from the Turkish word varoş (Ottoman Turkish: واروش, 'suburb'). The place where Varosha is located now was empty fields in which animals grazed.

 

In the early 1970s, Famagusta was the number-one tourist destination in Cyprus. To cater to the increasing number of tourists, many new high-rise buildings and hotels were constructed. During its heyday, Varosha was not only the number-one tourist destination in Cyprus, but between 1970 and 1974, it was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world and was a favorite destination of such celebrities as Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Raquel Welch, and Brigitte Bardot.

 

Before 1974, Varosha was the modern tourist area of the Famagusta city. Its Greek Cypriot inhabitants fled during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, when the city of Famagusta came under Turkish control, and it has remained abandoned ever since. In 1984 a U.N. resolution called for the handover of the city to UN control and said that only the original inhabitants, who were forced out, could resettle in the town.

 

Entry to part of Varosha was opened to civilians in 2017.

 

In August 1974, the Turkish Army advanced as far as the Green Line, a UN-patrolled demilitarized zone between the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, and controlled and fenced Varosha. Just hours before the Greek Cypriot and Turkish armies met in combat on the streets of Famagusta, the entire Greek Cypriot population fled to Paralimni, Dherynia, and Larnaca, fearing a massacre. The evacuation was aided and orchestrated by the nearby British military base. Paralimni has since become the modern-day capital of the Famagusta province of Greek Cypriot-led Cyprus.

 

The Turkish Army has allowed the entry of only Turkish military and United Nations personnel since 2017.

 

One such settlement plan was the Annan Plan to reunify the island that provided for the return of Varosha to the original residents. But this was rejected by Greek Cypriots in a 2004 referendum. The UN Security Council Resolution 550 states that it "considers attempts to settle any part of Varosha by people other than its inhabitants as inadmissible and calls for the transfer of this area to the administration of the United Nations".

 

The European Court of Human Rights awarded between €100,000 and €8,000,000 to eight Greek Cypriots for being deprived of their homes and properties as a result of the 1974 invasion. The case was filed jointly by businessman Constantinos Lordos and others, with the principal judgement in the Lordos case dating back to November 2010. The court ruled that, in the case of eight of the applicants, Turkey had violated Article 1 of Protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights on the right of peaceful enjoyment of one's possessions, and in the case of seven of the applicants, Turkey had violated Article 8 on the right to respect for private and family life.

 

In the absence of human habitation and maintenance, buildings continue to decay. Over time, parts of the city have begun to be reclaimed by nature as metal corrodes, windows are broken, and plants work their roots into the walls and pavement and grow wild in old window boxes. In 2014, the BBC reported that sea turtles were observed nesting on the beaches in the city.

 

During the Cyprus Missile Crisis (1997–1998), the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, threatened to take over Varosha if the Cypriot government did not back down.

 

The main features of Varosha included John F. Kennedy Avenue, a street which ran from close to the port of Famagusta, through Varosha and parallel to Glossa beach. Along JFK Avenue, there were many well known high rise hotels including the King George Hotel, The Asterias Hotel, The Grecian Hotel, The Florida Hotel, and The Argo Hotel which was the favourite hotel of Elizabeth Taylor. The Argo Hotel is located near the end of JFK Avenue, looking towards Protaras and Fig Tree Bay. Another major street in Varosha was Leonidas (Greek: Λεωνίδας), a major street that came off JFK Avenue and headed west towards Vienna Corner. Leonidas was a major shopping and leisure street in Varosha, consisting of bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and a Toyota car dealership.

 

According to Greek Cypriots, 425 plots exist on the Varosha beach front, which extends from the Contandia hotel to the Golden Sands hotel. The complete number of plots in Varosha are 6082.

 

There are 281 cases of Greek Cypriots who filed to the Immovable Property Commission (IPC) of Northern Cyprus for compensation.

 

In 2020, Greek Cypriot Demetrios Hadjihambis filed a lawsuit seeking state compensation for financial losses.

 

The population of Varosha was 226 in the 2011 Northern Cyprus census.

 

In 2017, Varosha's beach was opened for the exclusive use of Turks (both Turkish Cypriots and Turkish nationals).

 

In 2019, the Government of Northern Cyprus announced it would open Varosha to settlement. On 14 November 2019, Ersin Tatar, the prime minister of Northern Cyprus, announced that Northern Cyprus aims to open Varosha by the end of 2020.

 

On 25 July 2019, Varosha Inventory Commission of Northern Cyprus started its inventory analysis on the buildings and other infrastructure in Varosha.

 

On 9 December 2019, Ibrahim Benter, the Director-General of the Turkish Cypriot EVKAF religious foundation's administration, declared all of Maraş/Varosha to be the property of EVKAF. Benter said "EVKAF can sign renting contracts with Greek Cypriots if they accept that the fenced-off town belongs to the Evkaf."

 

In 2019–20, inventory studies of buildings by the Government of Northern Cyprus were concluded. On 15 February 2020, the Turkish Bar Association organised a round table meeting at the Sandy Beach Hotel in Varosha, which was attended by Turkish officials (Vice President Fuat Oktay and Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül), Turkish Cypriot officials, representatives of the Turkish Cypriot religious foundation Evkaf, and Turkish and Turkish Cypriot lawyers.

 

On 22 February 2020, Cyprus declared it would veto European Union funds to Turkish Cypriots if Varosha were opened to settlement.

 

On 6 October 2020, Ersin Tatar, the Prime Minister of Northern Cyprus, announced that the beach area of Varosha would reopen to the public on 8 October 2020. Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said Turkey fully supported the decision. The move came ahead of the 2020 Northern Cypriot presidential election, in which Tatar was a candidate. Deputy Prime Minister Kudret Özersay, who had worked on the reopening previously, said that this was not a full reopening of the area, that this was just a unilateral election stunt by Tatar. His People's Party withdrew from the Tatar cabinet, leading to the collapse of the Turkish Cypriot government. The EU's diplomatic chief condemned the plan and described it as a "serious violation" of the U.N. ceasefire agreement. In addition, he asked Turkey to stop this activity. The U.N. Secretary-General expressed concern over Turkey's decision.

 

On 8 October 2020, some parts of Varosha were opened from the Officers' Club of Turkish and Turkish Cypriot Army to the Golden Sands Hotel.

 

In November 2020, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkey's ambassador to Nicosia, visited Varosha. In addition, the main avenue in Varosha has been renamed after Semih Sancar, Chief of the General Staff of Turkey from 1973 to 1978, a period including the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

 

The European Parliament on 27 November, asked Turkey to reverse its decision to re-open part of Varosha and resume negotiations aimed at resolving the Cyprus problem on the basis of a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation and called on the European Union to impose sanctions against Turkey, if things do not change. Turkey rejected the resolution, adding that Turkey will continue to protect both its own rights and those of Turkish Cypriots. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus presidency also condemned the resolution.

 

On 20 July 2021, Tatar, the president of Northern Cyprus announced the start of the 2nd phase of the opening of Varosha. He encouraged Greek Cypriots to apply Immovable Property Commission of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to claim their properties back if they have any such rights.

 

Bilal Aga Mosque, constructed in 1821 and taken out of service in 1974, was re-opened on 23 July 2021.

 

In response to a decision by the government of Turkish Cyprus, the presidential statement of the United Nations Security Council dated on 23 July said that settling any part of the abandoned Cypriot suburb of Varosha, "by people other than its inhabitants, is 'inadmissible'." The same day, Turkey rejected the presidential statement of the UNSC on Maras (Varosha), and said that these statements were based on Greek-Greek Cypriot propaganda, were groundless and unfounded claims, and inconsistent with the realities on the Island. On 24 July 2021, the presidency of Northern Cyprus condemned the presidential statement of the UNSC dated on 23 July, and stated that "We see and condemn it as an attempt to create an obstacle for the property-rights-holders in Varosha to achieve their rights".

 

By 1 January 2022, nearly 400,000 people had visited Varosha since its opening to civilians on 6 October 2020.

 

On 19 May 2022, Northern Cyprus opened a 600m long X 400m wide stretch of beach on the Golden Sands beach (from the King George Hotel to the Oceania Building) in Varosha for commercial use. Sun beds and umbrellas were installed.

 

UNFICYP said it would raise the decision taken by Turkish Cypriot authorities to open that stretch of beach in Varosha with the Security Council, spokesperson for the peacekeeping force Aleem Siddique said on Friday. The UN announced its "position on Varosha is unchanged and we are monitoring the situation closely".

 

In October 2022, the Turkish Cypriots announced that public institutions will be opened in the city.

 

In April 2023, Cleo Hotel, the 7-floor Golden Seaside Hotel, and the 3-star Aegean Hotel were purchased by a Turkish Cypriot businessman (from their Greek Cypriot owners) who will operate them within 2025.

 

On 10 August 2023, the Government of Northern Cyprus decided to construct a marina and tourist facility in Varosha.

 

Varosha was analyzed by Alan Weisman in his book The World Without Us as an example of the unstoppable power of nature.

 

Filmmaker Greek Cypriot Michael Cacoyannis described the city and interviewed its exiled citizens in the film Attilas '74, produced in 1975.

 

In 2021, the Belarusian group Main-De-Gloire dedicated a song to this city that has become a ghostly place.

 

Northern Cyprus, officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), is a de facto state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. It is recognised only by Turkey, and its territory is considered by all other states to be part of the Republic of Cyprus.

 

Northern Cyprus extends from the tip of the Karpass Peninsula in the northeast to Morphou Bay, Cape Kormakitis and its westernmost point, the Kokkina exclave in the west. Its southernmost point is the village of Louroujina. A buffer zone under the control of the United Nations stretches between Northern Cyprus and the rest of the island and divides Nicosia, the island's largest city and capital of both sides.

 

A coup d'état in 1974, performed as part of an attempt to annex the island to Greece, prompted the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. This resulted in the eviction of much of the north's Greek Cypriot population, the flight of Turkish Cypriots from the south, and the partitioning of the island, leading to a unilateral declaration of independence by the north in 1983. Due to its lack of recognition, Northern Cyprus is heavily dependent on Turkey for economic, political and military support.

 

Attempts to reach a solution to the Cyprus dispute have been unsuccessful. The Turkish Army maintains a large force in Northern Cyprus with the support and approval of the TRNC government, while the Republic of Cyprus, the European Union as a whole, and the international community regard it as an occupation force. This military presence has been denounced in several United Nations Security Council resolutions.

 

Northern Cyprus is a semi-presidential, democratic republic with a cultural heritage incorporating various influences and an economy that is dominated by the services sector. The economy has seen growth through the 2000s and 2010s, with the GNP per capita more than tripling in the 2000s, but is held back by an international embargo due to the official closure of the ports in Northern Cyprus by the Republic of Cyprus. The official language is Turkish, with a distinct local dialect being spoken. The vast majority of the population consists of Sunni Muslims, while religious attitudes are mostly moderate and secular. Northern Cyprus is an observer state of ECO and OIC under the name "Turkish Cypriot State", PACE under the name "Turkish Cypriot Community", and Organization of Turkic States with its own name.

 

Several distinct periods of Cypriot intercommunal violence involving the two main ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, marked mid-20th century Cyprus. These included the Cyprus Emergency of 1955–59 during British rule, the post-independence Cyprus crisis of 1963–64, and the Cyprus crisis of 1967. Hostilities culminated in the 1974 de facto division of the island along the Green Line following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The region has been relatively peaceful since then, but the Cyprus dispute has continued, with various attempts to solve it diplomatically having been generally unsuccessful.

 

Cyprus, an island lying in the eastern Mediterranean, hosted a population of Greeks and Turks (four-fifths and one-fifth, respectively), who lived under British rule in the late nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century. Christian Orthodox Church of Cyprus played a prominent political role among the Greek Cypriot community, a privilege that it acquired during the Ottoman Empire with the employment of the millet system, which gave the archbishop an unofficial ethnarch status.

 

The repeated rejections by the British of Greek Cypriot demands for enosis, union with Greece, led to armed resistance, organised by the National Organization of Cypriot Struggle, or EOKA. EOKA, led by the Greek-Cypriot commander George Grivas, systematically targeted British colonial authorities. One of the effects of EOKA's campaign was to alter the Turkish position from demanding full reincorporation into Turkey to a demand for taksim (partition). EOKA's mission and activities caused a "Cretan syndrome" (see Turkish Resistance Organisation) within the Turkish Cypriot community, as its members feared that they would be forced to leave the island in such a case as had been the case with Cretan Turks. As such, they preferred the continuation of British colonial rule and then taksim, the division of the island. Due to the Turkish Cypriots' support for the British, EOKA's leader, Georgios Grivas, declared them to be enemies. The fact that the Turks were a minority was, according to Nihat Erim, to be addressed by the transfer of thousands of Turks from mainland Turkey so that Greek Cypriots would cease to be the majority. When Erim visited Cyprus as the Turkish representative, he was advised by Field Marshal Sir John Harding, the then Governor of Cyprus, that Turkey should send educated Turks to settle in Cyprus.

 

Turkey actively promoted the idea that on the island of Cyprus two distinctive communities existed, and sidestepped its former claim that "the people of Cyprus were all Turkish subjects". In doing so, Turkey's aim to have self-determination of two to-be equal communities in effect led to de jure partition of the island.[citation needed] This could be justified to the international community against the will of the majority Greek population of the island. Dr. Fazil Küçük in 1954 had already proposed Cyprus be divided in two at the 35° parallel.

 

Lindley Dan, from Notre Dame University, spotted the roots of intercommunal violence to different visions among the two communities of Cyprus (enosis for Greek Cypriots, taksim for Turkish Cypriots). Also, Lindlay wrote that "the merging of church, schools/education, and politics in divisive and nationalistic ways" had played a crucial role in creation of havoc in Cyprus' history. Attalides Michael also pointed to the opposing nationalisms as the cause of the Cyprus problem.

 

By the mid-1950's, the "Cyprus is Turkish" party, movement, and slogan gained force in both Cyprus and Turkey. In a 1954 editorial, Turkish Cypriot leader Dr. Fazil Kuchuk expressed the sentiment that the Turkish youth had grown up with the idea that "as soon as Great Britain leaves the island, it will be taken over by the Turks", and that "Turkey cannot tolerate otherwise". This perspective contributed to the willingness of Turkish Cypriots to align themselves with the British, who started recruiting Turkish Cypriots into the police force that patrolled Cyprus to fight EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist organisation that sought to rid the island of British rule.

 

EOKA targeted colonial authorities, including police, but Georgios Grivas, the leader of EOKA, did not initially wish to open up a new front by fighting Turkish Cypriots and reassured them that EOKA would not harm their people. In 1956, some Turkish Cypriot policemen were killed by EOKA members and this provoked some intercommunal violence in the spring and summer, but these attacks on policemen were not motivated by the fact that they were Turkish Cypriots.

 

However, in January 1957, Grivas changed his policy as his forces in the mountains became increasingly pressured by the British Crown forces. In order to divert the attention of the Crown forces, EOKA members started to target Turkish Cypriot policemen intentionally in the towns, so that Turkish Cypriots would riot against the Greek Cypriots and the security forces would have to be diverted to the towns to restore order. The killing of a Turkish Cypriot policeman on 19 January, when a power station was bombed, and the injury of three others, provoked three days of intercommunal violence in Nicosia. The two communities targeted each other in reprisals, at least one Greek Cypriot was killed and the British Army was deployed in the streets. Greek Cypriot stores were burned and their neighbourhoods attacked. Following the events, the Greek Cypriot leadership spread the propaganda that the riots had merely been an act of Turkish Cypriot aggression. Such events created chaos and drove the communities apart both in Cyprus and in Turkey.

 

On 22 October 1957 Sir Hugh Mackintosh Foot replaced Sir John Harding as the British Governor of Cyprus. Foot suggested five to seven years of self-government before any final decision. His plan rejected both enosis and taksim. The Turkish Cypriot response to this plan was a series of anti-British demonstrations in Nicosia on 27 and 28 January 1958 rejecting the proposed plan because the plan did not include partition. The British then withdrew the plan.

 

In 1957, Black Gang, a Turkish Cypriot pro-taksim paramilitary organisation, was formed to patrol a Turkish Cypriot enclave, the Tahtakale district of Nicosia, against activities of EOKA. The organisation later attempted to grow into a national scale, but failed to gain public support.

 

By 1958, signs of dissatisfaction with the British increased on both sides, with a group of Turkish Cypriots forming Volkan (later renamed to the Turkish Resistance Organisation) paramilitary group to promote partition and the annexation of Cyprus to Turkey as dictated by the Menderes plan. Volkan initially consisted of roughly 100 members, with the stated aim of raising awareness in Turkey of the Cyprus issue and courting military training and support for Turkish Cypriot fighters from the Turkish government.

 

In June 1958, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was expected to propose a plan to resolve the Cyprus issue. In light of the new development, the Turks rioted in Nicosia to promote the idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots could not live together and therefore any plan that did not include partition would not be viable. This violence was soon followed by bombing, Greek Cypriot deaths and looting of Greek Cypriot-owned shops and houses. Greek and Turkish Cypriots started to flee mixed population villages where they were a minority in search of safety. This was effectively the beginning of the segregation of the two communities. On 7 June 1958, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Turkish Embassy in Cyprus. Following the bombing, Turkish Cypriots looted Greek Cypriot properties. On 26 June 1984, the Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktaş, admitted on British channel ITV that the bomb was placed by the Turks themselves in order to create tension. On 9 January 1995, Rauf Denktaş repeated his claim to the famous Turkish newspaper Milliyet in Turkey.

 

The crisis reached a climax on 12 June 1958, when eight Greeks, out of an armed group of thirty five arrested by soldiers of the Royal Horse Guards on suspicion of preparing an attack on the Turkish quarter of Skylloura, were killed in a suspected attack by Turkish Cypriot locals, near the village of Geunyeli, having been ordered to walk back to their village of Kondemenos.

 

After the EOKA campaign had begun, the British government successfully began to turn the Cyprus issue from a British colonial problem into a Greek-Turkish issue. British diplomacy exerted backstage influence on the Adnan Menderes government, with the aim of making Turkey active in Cyprus. For the British, the attempt had a twofold objective. The EOKA campaign would be silenced as quickly as possible, and Turkish Cypriots would not side with Greek Cypriots against the British colonial claims over the island, which would thus remain under the British. The Turkish Cypriot leadership visited Menderes to discuss the Cyprus issue. When asked how the Turkish Cypriots should respond to the Greek Cypriot claim of enosis, Menderes replied: "You should go to the British foreign minister and request the status quo be prolonged, Cyprus to remain as a British colony". When the Turkish Cypriots visited the British Foreign Secretary and requested for Cyprus to remain a colony, he replied: "You should not be asking for colonialism at this day and age, you should be asking for Cyprus be returned to Turkey, its former owner".

 

As Turkish Cypriots began to look to Turkey for protection, Greek Cypriots soon understood that enosis was extremely unlikely. The Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios III, now set independence for the island as his objective.

 

Britain resolved to solve the dispute by creating an independent Cyprus. In 1959, all involved parties signed the Zurich Agreements: Britain, Turkey, Greece, and the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Makarios and Dr. Fazil Kucuk, respectively. The new constitution drew heavily on the ethnic composition of the island. The President would be a Greek Cypriot, and the Vice-President a Turkish Cypriot with an equal veto. The contribution to the public service would be set at a ratio of 70:30, and the Supreme Court would consist of an equal number of judges from both communities as well as an independent judge who was not Greek, Turkish or British. The Zurich Agreements were supplemented by a number of treaties. The Treaty of Guarantee stated that secession or union with any state was forbidden, and that Greece, Turkey and Britain would be given guarantor status to intervene if that was violated. The Treaty of Alliance allowed for two small Greek and Turkish military contingents to be stationed on the island, and the Treaty of Establishment gave Britain sovereignty over two bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

 

On 15 August 1960, the Colony of Cyprus became fully independent as the Republic of Cyprus. The new republic remained within the Commonwealth of Nations.

 

The new constitution brought dissatisfaction to Greek Cypriots, who felt it to be highly unjust for them for historical, demographic and contributional reasons. Although 80% of the island's population were Greek Cypriots and these indigenous people had lived on the island for thousands of years and paid 94% of taxes, the new constitution was giving the 17% of the population that was Turkish Cypriots, who paid 6% of taxes, around 30% of government jobs and 40% of national security jobs.

 

Within three years tensions between the two communities in administrative affairs began to show. In particular disputes over separate municipalities and taxation created a deadlock in government. A constitutional court ruled in 1963 Makarios had failed to uphold article 173 of the constitution which called for the establishment of separate municipalities for Turkish Cypriots. Makarios subsequently declared his intention to ignore the judgement, resulting in the West German judge resigning from his position. Makarios proposed thirteen amendments to the constitution, which would have had the effect of resolving most of the issues in the Greek Cypriot favour. Under the proposals, the President and Vice-President would lose their veto, the separate municipalities as sought after by the Turkish Cypriots would be abandoned, the need for separate majorities by both communities in passing legislation would be discarded and the civil service contribution would be set at actual population ratios (82:18) instead of the slightly higher figure for Turkish Cypriots.

 

The intention behind the amendments has long been called into question. The Akritas plan, written in the height of the constitutional dispute by the Greek Cypriot interior minister Polycarpos Georkadjis, called for the removal of undesirable elements of the constitution so as to allow power-sharing to work. The plan envisaged a swift retaliatory attack on Turkish Cypriot strongholds should Turkish Cypriots resort to violence to resist the measures, stating "In the event of a planned or staged Turkish attack, it is imperative to overcome it by force in the shortest possible time, because if we succeed in gaining command of the situation (in one or two days), no outside, intervention would be either justified or possible." Whether Makarios's proposals were part of the Akritas plan is unclear, however it remains that sentiment towards enosis had not completely disappeared with independence. Makarios described independence as "a step on the road to enosis".[31] Preparations for conflict were not entirely absent from Turkish Cypriots either, with right wing elements still believing taksim (partition) the best safeguard against enosis.

 

Greek Cypriots however believe the amendments were a necessity stemming from a perceived attempt by Turkish Cypriots to frustrate the working of government. Turkish Cypriots saw it as a means to reduce their status within the state from one of co-founder to that of minority, seeing it as a first step towards enosis. The security situation deteriorated rapidly.

 

Main articles: Bloody Christmas (1963) and Battle of Tillyria

An armed conflict was triggered after December 21, 1963, a period remembered by Turkish Cypriots as Bloody Christmas, when a Greek Cypriot policemen that had been called to help deal with a taxi driver refusing officers already on the scene access to check the identification documents of his customers, took out his gun upon arrival and shot and killed the taxi driver and his partner. Eric Solsten summarised the events as follows: "a Greek Cypriot police patrol, ostensibly checking identification documents, stopped a Turkish Cypriot couple on the edge of the Turkish quarter. A hostile crowd gathered, shots were fired, and two Turkish Cypriots were killed."

 

In the morning after the shooting, crowds gathered in protest in Northern Nicosia, likely encouraged by the TMT, without incident. On the evening of the 22nd, gunfire broke out, communication lines to the Turkish neighbourhoods were cut, and the Greek Cypriot police occupied the nearby airport. On the 23rd, a ceasefire was negotiated, but did not hold. Fighting, including automatic weapons fire, between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and militias increased in Nicosia and Larnaca. A force of Greek Cypriot irregulars led by Nikos Sampson entered the Nicosia suburb of Omorphita and engaged in heavy firing on armed, as well as by some accounts unarmed, Turkish Cypriots. The Omorphita clash has been described by Turkish Cypriots as a massacre, while this view has generally not been acknowledged by Greek Cypriots.

 

Further ceasefires were arranged between the two sides, but also failed. By Christmas Eve, the 24th, Britain, Greece, and Turkey had joined talks, with all sides calling for a truce. On Christmas day, Turkish fighter jets overflew Nicosia in a show of support. Finally it was agreed to allow a force of 2,700 British soldiers to help enforce a ceasefire. In the next days, a "buffer zone" was created in Nicosia, and a British officer marked a line on a map with green ink, separating the two sides of the city, which was the beginning of the "Green Line". Fighting continued across the island for the next several weeks.

 

In total 364 Turkish Cypriots and 174 Greek Cypriots were killed during the violence. 25,000 Turkish Cypriots from 103-109 villages fled and were displaced into enclaves and thousands of Turkish Cypriot houses were ransacked or completely destroyed.

 

Contemporary newspapers also reported on the forceful exodus of the Turkish Cypriots from their homes. According to The Times in 1964, threats, shootings and attempts of arson were committed against the Turkish Cypriots to force them out of their homes. The Daily Express wrote that "25,000 Turks have already been forced to leave their homes". The Guardian reported a massacre of Turks at Limassol on 16 February 1964.

 

Turkey had by now readied its fleet and its fighter jets appeared over Nicosia. Turkey was dissuaded from direct involvement by the creation of a United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in 1964. Despite the negotiated ceasefire in Nicosia, attacks on the Turkish Cypriot persisted, particularly in Limassol. Concerned about the possibility of a Turkish invasion, Makarios undertook the creation of a Greek Cypriot conscript-based army called the "National Guard". A general from Greece took charge of the army, whilst a further 20,000 well-equipped officers and men were smuggled from Greece into Cyprus. Turkey threatened to intervene once more, but was prevented by a strongly worded letter from the American President Lyndon B. Johnson, anxious to avoid a conflict between NATO allies Greece and Turkey at the height of the Cold War.

 

Turkish Cypriots had by now established an important bridgehead at Kokkina, provided with arms, volunteers and materials from Turkey and abroad. Seeing this incursion of foreign weapons and troops as a major threat, the Cypriot government invited George Grivas to return from Greece as commander of the Greek troops on the island and launch a major attack on the bridgehead. Turkey retaliated by dispatching its fighter jets to bomb Greek positions, causing Makarios to threaten an attack on every Turkish Cypriot village on the island if the bombings did not cease. The conflict had now drawn in Greece and Turkey, with both countries amassing troops on their Thracian borders. Efforts at mediation by Dean Acheson, a former U.S. Secretary of State, and UN-appointed mediator Galo Plaza had failed, all the while the division of the two communities becoming more apparent. Greek Cypriot forces were estimated at some 30,000, including the National Guard and the large contingent from Greece. Defending the Turkish Cypriot enclaves was a force of approximately 5,000 irregulars, led by a Turkish colonel, but lacking the equipment and organisation of the Greek forces.

 

The Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1964, U Thant, reported the damage during the conflicts:

 

UNFICYP carried out a detailed survey of all damage to properties throughout the island during the disturbances; it shows that in 109 villages, most of them Turkish-Cypriot or mixed villages, 527 houses have been destroyed while 2,000 others have suffered damage from looting.

 

The situation worsened in 1967, when a military junta overthrew the democratically elected government of Greece, and began applying pressure on Makarios to achieve enosis. Makarios, not wishing to become part of a military dictatorship or trigger a Turkish invasion, began to distance himself from the goal of enosis. This caused tensions with the junta in Greece as well as George Grivas in Cyprus. Grivas's control over the National Guard and Greek contingent was seen as a threat to Makarios's position, who now feared a possible coup.[citation needed] The National Guard and Cyprus Police began patrolling the Turkish Cypriot enclaves of Ayios Theodoros and Kophinou, and on November 15 engaged in heavy fighting with the Turkish Cypriots.

 

By the time of his withdrawal 26 Turkish Cypriots had been killed. Turkey replied with an ultimatum demanding that Grivas be removed from the island, that the troops smuggled from Greece in excess of the limits of the Treaty of Alliance be removed, and that the economic blockades on the Turkish Cypriot enclaves be lifted. Grivas was recalled by the Athens Junta and the 12,000 Greek troops were withdrawn. Makarios now attempted to consolidate his position by reducing the number of National Guard troops, and by creating a paramilitary force loyal to Cypriot independence. In 1968, acknowledging that enosis was now all but impossible, Makarios stated, "A solution by necessity must be sought within the limits of what is feasible which does not always coincide with the limits of what is desirable."

 

After 1967 tensions between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots subsided. Instead, the main source of tension on the island came from factions within the Greek Cypriot community. Although Makarios had effectively abandoned enosis in favour of an 'attainable solution', many others continued to believe that the only legitimate political aspiration for Greek Cypriots was union with Greece.

 

On his arrival, Grivas began by establishing a nationalist paramilitary group known as the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston B or EOKA-B), drawing comparisons with the EOKA struggle for enosis under the British colonial administration of the 1950s.

 

The military junta in Athens saw Makarios as an obstacle. Makarios's failure to disband the National Guard, whose officer class was dominated by mainland Greeks, had meant the junta had practical control over the Cypriot military establishment, leaving Makarios isolated and a vulnerable target.

 

During the first Turkish invasion, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus territory on 20 July 1974, invoking its rights under the Treaty of Guarantee. This expansion of Turkish-occupied zone violated International Law as well as the Charter of the United Nations. Turkish troops managed to capture 3% of the island which was accompanied by the burning of the Turkish Cypriot quarter, as well as the raping and killing of women and children. A temporary cease-fire followed which was mitigated by the UN Security Council. Subsequently, the Greek military Junta collapsed on July 23, 1974, and peace talks commenced in which a democratic government was installed. The Resolution 353 was broken after Turkey attacked a second time and managed to get a hold of 37% of Cyprus territory. The Island of Cyprus was appointed a Buffer Zone by the United Nations, which divided the island into two zones through the 'Green Line' and put an end to the Turkish invasion. Although Turkey announced that the occupied areas of Cyprus to be called the Federated Turkish State in 1975, it is not legitimised on a worldwide political scale. The United Nations called for the international recognition of independence for the Republic of Cyprus in the Security Council Resolution 367.

 

In the years after the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus one can observe a history of failed talks between the two parties. The 1983 declaration of the independent Turkish Republic of Cyprus resulted in a rise of inter-communal tensions and made it increasingly hard to find mutual understanding. With Cyprus' interest of a possible EU membership and a new UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 1997 new hopes arose for a fresh start. International involvement from sides of the US and UK, wanting a solution to the Cyprus dispute prior to the EU accession led to political pressures for new talks. The believe that an accession without a solution would threaten Greek-Turkish relations and acknowledge the partition of the island would direct the coming negotiations.

 

Over the course of two years a concrete plan, the Annan plan was formulated. In 2004 the fifth version agreed upon from both sides and with the endorsement of Turkey, US, UK and EU then was presented to the public and was given a referendum in both Cypriot communities to assure the legitimisation of the resolution. The Turkish Cypriots voted with 65% for the plan, however the Greek Cypriots voted with a 76% majority against. The Annan plan contained multiple important topics. Firstly it established a confederation of two separate states called the United Cyprus Republic. Both communities would have autonomous states combined under one unified government. The members of parliament would be chosen according to the percentage in population numbers to ensure a just involvement from both communities. The paper proposed a demilitarisation of the island over the next years. Furthermore it agreed upon a number of 45000 Turkish settlers that could remain on the island. These settlers became a very important issue concerning peace talks. Originally the Turkish government encouraged Turks to settle in Cyprus providing transfer and property, to establish a counterpart to the Greek Cypriot population due to their 1 to 5 minority. With the economic situation many Turkish-Cypriot decided to leave the island, however their departure is made up by incoming Turkish settlers leaving the population ratio between Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots stable. However all these points where criticised and as seen in the vote rejected mainly by the Greek Cypriots. These name the dissolution of the „Republic of Cyprus", economic consequences of a reunion and the remaining Turkish settlers as reason. Many claim that the plan was indeed drawing more from Turkish-Cypriot demands then Greek-Cypriot interests. Taking in consideration that the US wanted to keep Turkey as a strategic partner in future Middle Eastern conflicts.

 

A week after the failed referendum the Republic of Cyprus joined the EU. In multiple instances the EU tried to promote trade with Northern Cyprus but without internationally recognised ports this spiked a grand debate. Both side endure their intention of negotiations, however without the prospect of any new compromises or agreements the UN is unwilling to start the process again. Since 2004 negotiations took place in numbers but without any results, both sides are strongly holding on to their position without an agreeable solution in sight that would suit both parties.

Model Mayhem #3094822

 

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Some shots of 5 Vauxhall Vectra Rapid Response Vehicles & 3 Jakab Ambulances partially decommissioned

 

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N672DDY South East Coast Ambulance Toyota Land Cruiser Rapid Response Vehicle 605 Based at Hastings Make Ready Center

  

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www.nhs-membership.co.uk/seas

 

Click Here to see their short DVD and let their staff show you what their work involves and tell you how you can get involved.

The group [AMARELO MANGA] opens for free membership today at 10:00 am slt (October 01, 2013) and will be open for 24 hours. (till tomorrow day October 2, 2013 at 10 am slt). Enjoy and see gifts available. (group costs 200 lindens to adhesion).

  

Tagged group you still have 10% discount on purchases

 

[AMARELO MANGA] MAINSTORE

Taken at Weston Bike Night 05 08 2010

 

Copies of this picture can be ordered via e-mail to

 

"bikenightphotos@btinternet.com" .

 

A donation of £5 is requested for each photo which will go to the charity being supported by the event "The Poppy Appeal".

 

Payment can be made via Paypal to the above address please state which image(s) and these will e-mailed to you.

 

Please show your support for the event and donate for any photos you use, full size images are 3888 X 2592.

 

Further Information

 

The Riders Branch of the Royal British Legion

 

Membership open to all who have a love of motorcycling and are in agreement with the aims of the British Legion

 

www.rblr.co.uk/westonbikenight.html