Scottish Backhold Wrestling at Cowal Gathering 2013 with Frazer Hirsch performing an outside stroke with is evaded by George Reid.

 

Scottish Wrestling Bond - Rules for Competition

 

1.Every fall shall be decided by two Judges and a Referee, or by special permission applied for and granted by the General Secretary, by a Referee only.

2.The Referee shall be appealed to if the Judges disagree and his decision shall be final, and further he shall be empowered to decide any point not provided in these rules.

3.On taking hold the wrestlers stand up chest to chest, each placing his chin on his opponent's right shoulder and grasping him round the body, each placing his left arm above the right arm of his opponent.

4.Thirty seconds shall be allowed in which to take hold.

5.After the first fall the referee is empowered to stop the bout at any point if in his opinion a wrestler or both wrestlers are not serious in their attempt to take hold.

6.The time clock shall be started when the wrestlers shake hands.

7.In the event of the hold not being obtained, the Referee shall compel the contestants to take hold across a back. The wrestler refusing to take hold shall be disqualified.

8.When both men have got hold and are fairly on their guard the referee shall call "hold" and the wrestling will commence, with the exception of kicking, the wrestlers are allowed to use every legitimate means to throw each other. To strike with the side of the foot shall not be deemed kicking.

9.If either party breaks his hold, that is, loose his grip, though not on the ground, and the other still retains his hold, the one leaving loose shall be declared the loser.

10.Deliberately striking at an opponents hands in looseholds to open them is not permitted and if successful is not considered a fall.

11.If either man touches the ground with one knee only or other part of his body, though he may still retain his hold, he shall not be allowed to recover himself but shall be deemed the loser.

12.If both fall to the ground, the man who is first down or falls under the other shall be the loser, but if they fall side by side or otherwise so that the Officials cannot decide which was first on the ground, it shall be termed a "dog fall" and shall be wrestled over again.

13.The wrestlers shall compete in their stockinged feet or by permission of the referee on barefeet.

14.Wearing of sweaters is forbidden.

15.Only one upper garment is permitted which should be sleeveless.

16.A fall is defined as touching the ground with any part of the person, the feet excepted.

17.The referee shall disqualify any wrestler using unfair means who has been twice previously cautioned.

 

Mat Competitions

 

18.The competition area when indoors shall be a mat of 12m diameter or 12m x 12m square, the outer two metres shall be the protection area, a further one metre warning area shall be marked in red

19.The warning area is provided for the purpose of revealing the passive wrestler, of doing away with systematic wrestling on the edge of the mat, as well as thoughtless departures from the wrestling area.

20.If wrestlers stop their action in the warning area and stay there without any action, the referee will interrupt the bout and return the wrestlers to the centre of the mat, without prejudice to the application of the rules on passivity.

21.In all cases when there is one foot outside the wrestling area the referee will stop the bout.

  

Passivity Rules to be Applied:

 

22.When a wrestler refuses to attempt to wrestle.

23.When a wrestler deliberately pushes his opponent off the mat

24.When a wrestler backs off the mat.

25.When a wrestler deliberately backs towards the edge of the mat and continues to wrestle with his back towards the edge of the mat.

  

Fleeing the Mat and Fleeing the Hold

 

26.A wrestler who flees the mat to evade a hold will have a fall awarded against him and receive a warning.

27.Wrestlers will be disqualified for passivity after receiving three warnings.

28.Disqualifications and warnings must be by a majority vote of the three officials.

29.In all such cases the officer in charge must consult the other officials and if necessary call a vote.

 

Competition Systems

 

30.Competitions may be decided by the "Round Robin" system where there are five or fewer wrestlers in a weight category.

31.Where two wrestlers in a Round Robin have won the same number of bouts, the higher placing will be given to the wrestler who won the bout involving both wrestlers.

32.When three or more wrestlers in a Round Robin have won the same number of bouts they must then wrestle again for one fall only (sudden death) to decide placings.

33.Competitions may be decided by the pool system when there are six or more wrestlers in a weight category.

34.There must be a cross over repechage system i.e., the winner of pool A wrestles the second of pool B and the winner of pool B wrestles the second of pool A, these are the semi finals.

35.All bouts shall be best of five falls

36.In certain circumstances it may not be practical to wrestle every bout best of five. In these circumstances the match officials are empowered to change to the best of three with the following exceptions.

37.All finals and semi-finals must be best of five.

   

Another poor quality photo, but is shows the massive kitchen fireplace and the way through to the substantial drum-tower built on the north-east corner of the ‘palace block’.

  

It would appear that Lord Pitsligo was not attainted for his share in the ‘Fifteen. He returned to Scotland in 1720, and resided here at Pitsligo Castle, staying away from public affairs and “gaining, through his charity, kindness and benevolence, the respect and affection of all around him”. At the heart of his attitude to life and his fellow man were his Quietist beliefs.

 

Quietism was a Christian philosophy that became popular in the late 17th century, particularly in France. The Quietists believed that “by reaching a state of intellectual stillness and interior passivity they could reach such a degree of perfection as to become utterly sinless.” These days of course, we would call this meditation! Quietism was a form of mysticism in that it ultimately pursued an awareness of God through direct experience, intuition, or insight. The Catholic church proscribed Quietism as heretical, believing that it had an undermining effect on Church unity and discipline. The last thing the church hierarchy needed was the unwashed masses making contact with God without using the proper channels – them! The irony of this was that many of its proponents were amongst the Catholic world’s most shining examples of piety. To them, it was simply a refined form of prayer.

 

Although not a new idea, Quietist thinking was further developed by a French widow by the name of Madam Guyon who published her thoughts and achieved a considerable following amongst the enlightened thinkers of the day – including some from the highest ranks of the church, such as Archbishop Fenelon of Cambrai. The State however supported the official church line, and Madam Guyon was eventually imprisoned in 1695 and not released from the Bastille until 1703. It was in this post-Bastille period of her life, while she was living quietly in the country, that she was visited by Lord Pitsligo.

 

As a devotee, Lord Pitsligo took Quietism back with him to Aberdeenshire, where he introduced it to his friends – Pitsligo Castle becoming almost a retreat for religious meditation right through until 1745. This explains and supports my translation of the Latin motto “HAEC • CORP • SYDERA • MENTEM” over the main gate (first photo) as “Here the body, in the stars the mind”!

 

Date: 03/11/2006 Time: 08:40 PM Visits: 15

Unburden to Unlearn Photography

Pictures are happening every minute you dont need to search through the eye of your camera, the camera eye is deceptive you shoot one thing,it shows you another thing..this is not the passivity of a potographic emulsion.

If a poet resides in your soul it does ,you have to really work on bringing it out and new arenas and vistas start opening up..I remember being a loner as a photograher ..the group at Vasai fort a unique place hidden in a fishing village and ramparts built by the Portuguese and graves and a chapel.. all in ruins crumbling unforgotten.. I would wander and footsteps around me disturbed the moment of my minds imprisonment I turned back and saw this lady trailing me I was terribly upset and lashed out at her..her word s and I am ashamed I was new to the medium still reverbrate ..she said" Firoze Sir I want to shoot pictures like you..I am learning and new to Photography.".I snubbed her and went away..as I neared the boats and the beach I realised my nastiness I went back to her, apologized and till date I am a fan of her picture taking.maybe I taught her nothing but she taught me a lesson in life thats called Unlearning Photography.Her name is Kalpana Shah she is very active at the Photographic Society Of India..

I am a life member..there a grand dame of a 65 year old institution.. history called PSI Mumbai.

Even when I spoke about the Blog and Buzznet and you guys from the podium, she took my picture and I posted it all dressed in leopards skin..

Marc commented on it too..

And we all want to shoot like someone else and its good later on we will develop our quirks and that will become style..

My mentor the great Mr K G Maheswari shoots high key flawlessly and low key in the deathly shades of grey and people dont take to kindly to his Yousuf Karsh style but its not easy doing the same thing and still portraying it differently..

My othe mentor Prof B W Jatkar shoots nature, nudes landscapes is an artist in black and white wet lab techniques.. he taught me the most..shooting sea gulls but I taught him how I would lie on the deck of the boat and shoot seagulls shooting against light and getting fabulous details in the wings..diffused natural lighting.. he could not do that due to inhibitions and arthritis of a one track mind.

Todays kids ..no they are not kids at all and I am not kidding..they are masters innovators and they come up with ideas that would put reasoning to shame...

The underprivileged kids of Mumbai studying in municipal schools are given disposable cameras free by Kodak India through the Mumbai Municipality my other teacher Mr Shrikant Malushte guides them..he at the start takes them to a photography exhibition.. they know nothing..zilch..no lighting only fighting..

 

Then with their cameras he lets them lose in the Municipal zoo.. and you got to see the results, then they watch their pictures at a gallery that showcases top photographers at the amateur level of photography and subject Mumbai..and as you cruise through this gallery you see these underprivileged guys and what they shot..these guys that have no electricity in their homes..hawkers children, mothers maidservants.. no money for further education..this is unlearning photography ..for once I can tell you I learnt to see like them and while hitting the trigger tried to be like them.. see the way they would have seen it and that's what makes my pictures different an alloy of humanity and pain of the underprivileged.

This is written from the heart of an unlearning photographer.. I have left their world but they have not left mine..at the zoo I was their model for a portrait session.. and my eyes are moist the Future of India shooting a derelict of a past of a Photographer.. the punishing poses they made me enact.. this was the most rigorous stage as an up coming model.. being shot by a child the true father of Man.

The blog made me Photographer No1..your love

made me a humane a sensitive PN NO1.

 

Photographer no 1

  

THE GUARDIAN, RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL

Thursday, Jan 08, 2009, Page 7

Plans to surround a Rio de Janeiro slum with a 650m-long concrete barrier have come under fire from environmentalists and human rights activists.

 

Brazil authorities say the US$436,000 “ecobarrier,” which would encircle part of the famous Dona Marta slum, is intended to protect the nearby Atlantic rainforest from illegal occupation as well as to improve security and living conditions for slum residents.

 

As tenders for construction of the 3m-high wall opened on Monday, critics claimed the project was a form of “social apartheid,” comparing it to Israel’s security barrier.

 

SEGREGATION

 

“This is something that is very similar to what Israel does to the Palestinians and to what happened in South Africa,” said Mauricio Campos, from the Rio human rights organization Network of Communities Against Violence.

 

He said a wall would serve only to “segregate” slum residents from the rest of society.

 

The wall is expected to be completed by the end of this year and, according to reports in the local press, may be followed by similar barriers around Rio’s other slums, known as favelas. In a statement, the state governor, Sergio Cabral, who ordered the “eco-limit” fence to be built, said it was part of moves by his administration to improve living standards and protect residents from the armed gangs that control many of Rio’s 600 or so slums.

 

“What has happened in Rio de Janeiro over the last two decades has been the passivity of authorities in relation to the uncontrolled growth of the slums,” he said.

 

Such walls would, Cabral said, help the city deal with “drug trafficking and vigilantes, [by] putting limits on uncontrolled growth.”

 

FAVELA IN FILM

 

Dona Marta is home to an estimated 7,500 people. The favela was the setting for an award-winning documentary about cocaine by the British film-maker Angus Macqueen, as well as a 1996 Michael Jackson music video directed by Spike Lee.

 

Jackson’s producers were forced to negotiate access with the local drug traffickers. Since last November, however, the shantytown has been under 24-hour police occupation as part of a state government initiative to make Dona Marta a “model favela.”

 

The pilot project aims to rid the favelas of traffickers using a mixture of military force and “hearts and minds” community policing. A soccer pitch was recently opened in Dona Marta as part of a redevelopment program, which includes new houses as well as the controversial wall.

 

Rio’s environmentalists say that unless low-cost housing options are given to the poor who live in the favelas they will continue to encroach on the hillsides of the city and into the surrounding rainforest.

During the Jazz Age:

 

As Daisy started towards home to confront the person who claimed to be David, the Prince of Wales, she reflected on how naive she had been when her little girl Pammy was born and Daisy told her cousin Nick that she immediately wished for Pammy to grow up to be "a beautiful little fool," claiming that was the best thing a girl could be.

 

Foolishness and passivity, Daisy had come to realize, had caused so many mistakes-even disasters--in her life: her true love Jay Gatsby's murder after he was blamed by George Wilson for killing his wife Myrtle in an automobile accident when in reality, Daisy was the driver; her neglect of Pammy; she even blamed herself for the fact that Pammy was abducted and still had not been found. "It's almost as if," Daisy thought, "I was stupid by self-design to a great degree, and add to that what society told girls what we should be. I almost never took action to change things that I could sense were wrong. But I'm not that Daisy anymore."

 

Daisy had lived and lost enough to realize that “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”*

 

As she neared her home, a quotation she had read in school long ago echoed in her mind: "Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”***

 

"I really need to take that thought in, and to see if I can live it. Still, whatever happens, I'm not going to let myself be content to let others determine my life and try to make me go back to being 'a beautiful fool.' I've paid a high price to gain knowledge--perhaps even wisdom--and I won't give up my power, which is doing my best to act on what I know is right."

 

*Confucius

 

*** William Shakespeare, "All's Well That Ends Well"

Mark Rothko, born Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz (Russian: Ма́ркус Я́ковлевич Ротко́вич, Latvian: Markuss Rotkovičs; name not Anglicized until 1940; September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970), was a Latvian-born American abstract painter. He is best known for his color field paintings that depicted irregular and painterly rectangular regions of color, which he produced from 1949 to 1970.

 

Although Rothko did not personally subscribe to any one school, he is associated with the American Abstract Expressionist movement of modern art. Originally emigrating to Portland, Oregon, from Russian Empire (Latvia) with his family, Rothko later moved to New York City where his youthful period of artistic production dealt primarily with urban scenery. In response to World War II, Rothko's art entered a transitional phase during the 1940s, where he experimented with mythological themes and Surrealism to express tragedy. Toward the end of the decade, Rothko painted canvases with regions of pure color which he further abstracted into rectangular color forms, the idiom he would use for the rest of his life.

 

In his later career, Rothko executed several canvases for three different mural projects. The Seagram murals were to have decorated the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building, but Rothko eventually grew disgusted with the idea that his paintings would be decorative objects for wealthy diners and refunded the lucrative commission, donating the paintings to museums including the Tate Modern. The Harvard Mural series was donated to a dining room in Harvard's Holyoke Center (now Smith Campus Center); their colors faded badly over time due to Rothko's use of the pigment Lithol Red together with regular sunlight exposure. The Harvard series has since been restored using a special lighting technique. Rothko contributed 14 canvases to a permanent installation at the Rothko Chapel, a non-denominational chapel in Houston, Texas.

 

Although Rothko lived modestly for much of his life, the resale value of his paintings grew tremendously in the decades following his suicide in 1970. In 2021, one of his works sold at auction for $82.5 million.

 

Childhood

 

Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, in the Russian Empire (now Daugavpils, Latvia). His father, Jacob (Yakov) Rothkowitz, was a pharmacist and intellectual who initially provided his children with a secular and political, rather than religious, upbringing. According to Rothko, his Marxist father was "violently anti-religious". In an environment where Jews were often blamed for many of the evils that befell Russia, Rothko's early childhood was plagued by fear.

 

Despite Jacob Rothkowitz's modest income, the family was highly educated ("We were a reading family", Rothko's sister recalled), and Rothko spoke Lithuanian Yiddish (Litvish), Hebrew and Russian. Following his father's return to the Orthodox Judaism of his own youth, Rothko, the youngest of four siblings, was sent to the cheder at age five, where he studied the Talmud, although his elder siblings had been educated in the public school system.

 

Migration from Russia to the U.S.

 

Fearing that his elder sons were about to be drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, Jacob Rothkowitz emigrated from Russia to the United States. Markus remained in Russia with his mother and elder sister Sonia. They arrived as immigrants, at Ellis Island, in late 1913. From there, they crossed the country, to join Jacob and the elder brothers, in Portland, Oregon. Jacob's death, a few months later, of colon cancer, left the family without economic support. Sonia operated a cash register, while Markus worked in one of his uncle's warehouses, selling newspapers to employees. His father's death also led Rothko to sever his ties with religion. After he had mourned his father's death for almost a year at a local synagogue, he vowed never to set foot in one again.

 

Rothko started school in the United States in 1913, quickly accelerating from third to fifth grade. In June 1921, he completed the secondary level, with honors, at Lincoln High School in Portland, Oregon, at age 17. He learned his fourth language, English, and became an active member of the Jewish community center, where he proved adept at political discussions. Like his father, Rothko was passionate about issues such as workers' rights and contraception. At the time, Portland was a center of revolutionary activity in the U.S. and the region where the revolutionary syndicalist union Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was active.

 

Having grown up around radical workers' meetings, Rothko attended meetings of the IWW, including such speakers as the radical socialist Bill Haywood and the anarchist Emma Goldman, where he developed strong oratorical skills he later used in defense of Surrealism. With the onset of the Russian Revolution, Rothko organized debates about it. Despite the repressive political atmosphere, he wished to become a labor union organizer.

 

Rothko received a scholarship to Yale. At the end of his first year in 1922, the scholarship was not renewed, and he worked as a waiter and delivery boy to support his studies. He found Yale elitist and racist. Rothko and a friend, Aaron Director, started a satirical magazine, The Yale Saturday Evening Pest, that lampooned the school's stuffy, bourgeois tone. Rothko was more an autodidact than a diligent pupil:

 

One of his fellow students remembers that he hardly seemed to study, but that he was a voracious reader.

 

At the end of his sophomore year, Rothko dropped out, and he did not return until he was awarded an honorary degree 46 years later.

 

Early career

 

In the autumn of 1923, Rothko found work in New York's garment district. While visiting a friend at the Art Students League of New York, he saw students sketching a model. According to Rothko, this was the beginning of his life as an artist. He later enrolled in the Parsons The New School for Design, where one of his instructors was Arshile Gorky. Rothko characterized Gorky's leadership of the class as "overcharged with supervision." That same autumn, he took courses at the Art Students League taught by Cubist artist Max Weber, who had been a part of the French avant-garde movement. To his students eager to know about Modernism, Weber was seen as "a living repository of modern art history". Under Weber's tutelage, Rothko began to view art as a tool of emotional and religious expression. Rothko's paintings from this era reveal the influence of his instructor. Years later, when Weber attended a show of his former student's work and expressed his admiration, Rothko was immensely pleased.

 

Rothko's circle

 

Rothko's move to New York landed him in a fertile artistic atmosphere. Modernist painters regularly exhibited in New York galleries, and the city's museums were an invaluable resource for a budding artist's knowledge and skills. Among the important early influences on him were the works of the German Expressionists, the surrealist art of Paul Klee, and the paintings of Georges Rouault.

 

In 1928, with a group of other young artists, Rothko exhibited works at the Opportunity Gallery. His paintings, including dark, moody, expressionist interiors and urban scenes, were generally well accepted among critics and peers. To supplement his income, in 1929 Rothko began instructing schoolchildren in drawing, painting, and clay sculpture at the Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, where he remained active for over twenty years.

 

During the early 1930s, Rothko met Adolph Gottlieb, who, along with Barnett Newman, Joseph Solman, Louis Schanker, and John Graham, was part of a group of young artists surrounding the painter Milton Avery. According to Elaine de Kooning, it was Avery who "gave Rothko the idea that [the life of a professional artist] was a possibility." Avery's abstract nature paintings, utilizing a rich knowledge of form and color, had a tremendous influence on him. Soon, Rothko's paintings took on the subject matter and color similar to Avery's, as seen in Bathers, or Beach Scene of 1933–1934.

 

Rothko, Gottlieb, Newman, Solman, Graham, and their mentor, Avery, spent considerable time together, vacationing at Lake George, New York, and Gloucester, Massachusetts. In the daytime, they painted, then discussed art in the evenings. During a 1932 visit to Lake George, Rothko met Edith Sachar, a jewelry designer, whom he married later that year. The following summer, his first one-person show was held at the Portland Art Museum, consisting mostly of drawings and aquarelles. For this exhibition, Rothko took the very unusual step of displaying works done by his pre-adolescent students from the Center Academy, alongside his own. His family was unable to understand Rothko's decision to be an artist, especially considering the dire economic situation of the Depression. Having suffered serious financial setbacks, the Rothkowitzes were mystified by Rothko's seeming indifference to financial necessity. They felt he was doing his mother a disservice by not finding a more lucrative and realistic career.

 

First solo show in New York

 

Returning to New York, Rothko had his first East Coast one-person show at the Contemporary Arts Gallery. He showed fifteen oil paintings, mostly portraits, along with some aquarelles and drawings. Among these works, the oil paintings especially captured the art critics' eyes. Rothko's use of rich fields of colors moved beyond Avery's influence. In late 1935, Rothko joined with Ilya Bolotowsky, Ben-Zion, Adolph Gottlieb, Louis Harris, Ralph Rosenborg, Louis Schanker and Joseph Solman to form "The Ten". According to a gallery show catalog, the mission of the group was "to protest against the reputed equivalence of American painting and literal painting."

 

Rothko was earning a growing reputation among his peers, particularly among the group that formed the Artists' Union. The Artists' Union, including Gottlieb and Solman, hoped to create a municipal art gallery, to show self-organized group exhibitions. In 1936, the group exhibited at the Galerie Bonaparte in France, which resulted in some positive critical attention. One reviewer remarked that Rothko's paintings "display authentic coloristic values." Later, in 1938, a show was held at the Mercury Gallery in New York, intended as a protest against the Whitney Museum of American Art, which the group regarded as having a provincial, regionalist agenda. Also during this period, Rothko, like Avery, Gorky, Pollock, de Kooning, and many others, found employment with the Works Progress Administration.

 

Development of style

 

Rothko's work has been described in eras. His early period (1924-1939) saw representational art inflected by impressionism, usually depicting urban scenes. His middle, "transitional" years (1940-1950) involved phases of figurative mythological abstraction, "biomorphic" abstraction, and "multiforms", the latter being canvases with large regions of color. Rothko's transitional decade was influenced by World War II, which prompted him to seek novel expression of tragedy in art. During this time Rothko was influenced by ancient Greek tragedians such as Aeschylus and his reading of Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. In Rothko's mature or "classic" period (1951-1970), he consistently painted rectangular regions of color, intended as "dramas" to elicit an emotional response from the viewer.

 

In 1936, Rothko began writing a book, never completed, about similarities between the art of children and the work of modern painters. According to Rothko, the work of modernists, influenced by primitive art, could be compared to that of children in that "child art transforms itself into primitivism, which is only the child producing a mimicry of himself." In this manuscript, he observed: "Tradition of starting with drawing in academic notion. We may start with color." Rothko was using fields of color in his aquarelles and city scenes. His style was already evolving in the direction of his renowned later works. Despite this newfound exploration of color, Rothko turned his attention to other formal and stylistic innovations, inaugurating a period of surrealist paintings influenced by mythological fables and symbols.

 

Maturity

 

Rothko separated temporarily from his wife Edith in mid-1937. They reconciled several months later, but their relationship remained tense and they would divorce in 1944. On February 21, 1938, Rothko finally became a citizen of the United States, prompted by fears that the growing Nazi influence in Europe might provoke the sudden deportation of American Jews. Concerned about antisemitism in America and Europe, Rothko abbreviated his name from "Markus Rothkowitz" to "Mark Rothko". The name "Roth", a common abbreviation, was still identifiably Jewish, so he settled upon "Rothko."

 

Inspiration from mythology

 

Fearing that modern American painting had reached a conceptual dead end, Rothko was intent on exploring subjects other than urban and nature scenes. He sought subjects that would complement his growing interest in form, space, and color. The world crisis of war gave this search a sense of immediacy. He insisted that the new subject matter have a social impact, yet be able to transcend the confines of current political symbols and values. In his essay "The Romantics Were Prompted," published in 1948, Rothko argued that the "archaic artist ... found it necessary to create a group of intermediaries, monsters, hybrids, gods and demigods," in much the same way that modern man found intermediaries in Fascism and the Communist Party.[citation needed] For Rothko, "without monsters and gods, art cannot enact a drama".

 

Rothko's use of mythology as a commentary on current history was not novel. Rothko, Gottlieb, and Newman read and discussed the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. In particular, they took interest in psychoanalytical theories concerning dreams, and archetypes of a collective unconscious. They understood mythological symbols as images, operating in a space of human consciousness, which transcends specific history and culture. Rothko later said that his artistic approach was "reformed" by his study of the "dramatic themes of myth". He allegedly stopped painting altogether in 1940, to immerse himself in reading Sir James Frazer's study of mythology The Golden Bough, and Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams.

 

Nietzsche's influence

 

Rothko's new vision attempted to address modern man's spiritual and creative mythological requirements. The most crucial philosophical influence on Rothko in this period was Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche claimed that Greek tragedy served to redeem man from the terrors of mortal life. The exploration of novel topics in modern art ceased to be Rothko's goal. From this time on, his art had the goal of relieving modern man's spiritual emptiness. He believed that this emptiness resulted partly from lack of mythology, which, according to Nietzsche, "The images of the myth have to be the unnoticed omnipresent demonic guardians, under whose care the young soul grows to maturity and whose signs help the man to interpret his life and struggles." Rothko believed his art could free unconscious energies, previously bound by mythological images, symbols, and rituals. He considered himself a "mythmaker", and proclaimed that "the exhilarated tragic experience is for me the only source of art".

 

Many of his paintings in this period contrast barbaric scenes of violence with civilized passivity, using imagery drawn primarily from Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy. A list of Rothko's paintings from this period illustrates his use of myth: Antigone, Oedipus, The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Leda, The Furies, Altar of Orpheus. Rothko evokes Judeo-Christian imagery in Gethsemane, The Last Supper, and Rites of Lilith. He also invokes Egyptian (Room in Karnak) and Syrian (The Syrian Bull) myths. Soon after World War II, Rothko believed his titles limited the larger, transcendent aims of his paintings. To allow maximum interpretation by the viewer, he stopped naming and framing his paintings, referring to them only by numbers.

 

"Mythomorphic" abstractionism

 

At the root of Rothko and Gottlieb's presentation of archaic forms and symbols, illuminating modern existence had been the influence of Surrealism, Cubism, and abstract art. In 1936, Rothko attended two exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, "Cubism and Abstract Art", and "Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism".

 

In 1942, following the success of shows by Ernst, Miró, Wolfgang Paalen, Tanguy, and Salvador Dalí, artists who had immigrated to the United States because of the war, Surrealism took New York by storm. Rothko and his peers, Gottlieb and Newman, met and discussed the art and ideas of these European pioneers, as well as those of Mondrian.

 

New paintings were unveiled at a 1942 show at Macy's department store in New York City. In response to a negative review by The New York Times, Rothko and Gottlieb issued a manifesto, written mainly by Rothko. Addressing the Times critic's self-professed "befuddlement" over the new work, they stated "We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth." On a more strident note, they criticized those who wanted to live surrounded by less challenging art, noting that their work necessarily "must insult anyone who is spiritually attuned to interior decoration".

 

Rothko viewed myth as a replenishing resource for an era of spiritual void. This belief had begun decades earlier, through his reading of Carl Jung, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Thomas Mann, among other authors.

 

Break with Surrealism

 

On June 13, 1943, Rothko and Sachar separated again. Rothko suffered depression following their divorce. Thinking that a change of scenery might help, Rothko returned to Portland. From there, he traveled to Berkeley, where he met artist Clyfford Still, and the two began a close friendship. Still's deeply abstract paintings would be of considerable influence on Rothko's later works. In the autumn of 1943, Rothko returned to New York. He met with noted collector and art dealer Peggy Guggenheim, but she was initially reluctant to take on his artworks. Rothko's one-person show at Guggenheim's The Art of This Century Gallery, in late 1945, resulted in few sales, with prices ranging from $150 to $750. The exhibit also attracted less-than-favorable reviews from critics. During this period, Rothko had been stimulated by Still's abstract landscapes of color, and his style shifted away from surrealism. Rothko's experiments in interpreting the unconscious symbolism of everyday forms had run their course. His future lay with abstraction:

 

I insist upon the equal existence of the world engendered in the mind and the world engendered by God outside of it. If I have faltered in the use of familiar objects, it is because I refuse to mutilate their appearance for the sake of an action which they are too old to serve, or for which perhaps they had never been intended. I quarrel with surrealists and abstract art only as one quarrels with his father and mother; recognizing the inevitability and function of my roots, but insistent upon my dissent; I, being both they and an integral completely independent of them.

 

Rothko's masterpiece Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea (1945) illustrates his newfound propensity towards abstraction. It has been interpreted as a meditation on Rothko's courtship of his second wife, Mary Alice "Mell" Beistle, whom he met in 1944 and married in early 1945. Other readings have noted echoes of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, which Rothko saw at an "Italian Masters" loan exhibition, at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1940. The painting presents, in subtle grays and browns, two human-like forms embraced in a swirling, floating atmosphere of shapes and colors. The rigid rectangular background foreshadows Rothko's later experiments in pure color. The painting was completed, not coincidentally, in the year the Second World War ended.[66]

 

Despite the abandonment of his "Mythomorphic Abstractionism", Rothko would still be recognized by the public primarily for his surrealist works, for the remainder of the 1940s. The Whitney Museum included them in their annual exhibit of contemporary art from 1943 to 1950.

 

"Multiforms"

 

In 1946, Rothko created what art critics have since termed his transitional "multiform" paintings. Although Rothko never used the term multiform himself, it is nonetheless an accurate description of these paintings. Several of them, including No. 18[68] and Untitled (both 1948), are less transitional than fully realized. Rothko himself described these paintings as possessing a more organic structure, and as self-contained units of human expression. For him, these blurred blocks of various colors, devoid of landscape or the human figure, let alone myth and symbol, possessed their own life force. They contained a "breath of life" he found lacking in the most figurative painting of the era. They were filled with possibility, whereas his experimentation with mythological symbolism had become a tired formula. The "multiforms" brought Rothko to a realization of his signature style of rectangular regions of color, which he continued to produce for the rest of his life.

 

In the middle of this crucial period of transition, Rothko had been impressed by Clyfford Still's abstract fields of color, which were influenced in part by the landscapes of Still's native North Dakota.

 

In 1947, during a summer semester teaching at the California School of Fine Art, Rothko and Still flirted with the idea of founding their own curriculum. In 1948, Rothko, Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Barnett Newman, and David Hare founded the Subjects of the Artist School at 35 East 8th Street. Well-attended lectures there were open to the public, with speakers such as Jean Arp, John Cage, and Ad Reinhardt, but the school failed financially and closed in the spring of 1949. Although the group separated later in the same year, the school was the center of a flurry of activity in contemporary art. In addition to his teaching experience, Rothko began to contribute articles to two new art publications, Tiger's Eye and Possibilities. Using the forums as an opportunity to assess the current art scene, Rothko also discussed in detail his own work and philosophy of art. These articles reflect the elimination of figurative elements from his painting, and a specific interest in the new contingency debate launched by Wolfgang Paalen's Form and Sense publication of 1945.

 

Rothko described his new method as "unknown adventures in an unknown space", free from "direct association with any particular, and the passion of organism". Breslin described this change of attitude as "both self and painting are now fields of possibilities – an effect conveyed ... by the creation of protean, indeterminate shapes whose multiplicity is let be."

 

In 1947, he had a first solo exhibition at the Betty Parsons Gallery (March 3 to 22).

 

In 1949, Rothko became fascinated by Henri Matisse's Red Studio, acquired by the Museum of Modern Art that year. He later credited it as another key source of inspiration for his later abstract paintings.

 

Late period

 

Soon, the "multiforms" developed into the signature style; by early 1949 Rothko exhibited these new works at the Betty Parsons Gallery. For critic Harold Rosenberg, the paintings were nothing short of a revelation. After painting his first "multiform", Rothko had secluded himself in his home in East Hampton on Long Island. He invited only a select few, including Rosenberg, to view the new paintings. The discovery of his definitive form came at a period of great distress to the artist; his mother Kate had died in October 1948. Rothko happened upon the use of symmetrical rectangular blocks of two to three opposing or contrasting, yet complementary, colors, in which, for example, "the rectangles sometimes seem barely to coalesce out of the ground, concentrations of its substance. The green bar in Magenta, Black, Green on Orange, on the other hand, appears to vibrate against the orange around it, creating an optical flicker." Additionally, for the next seven years, Rothko painted in oil only for large canvases with vertical formats. Very large-scale designs were used in order to overwhelm the viewer, or, in Rothko's words, to make the viewer feel "enveloped within" the painting. For some critics, the large size was an attempt to make up for a lack of substance. In retaliation, Rothko stated:

 

I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however ... is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command!

 

Rothko even went so far as to recommend that viewers position themselves as little as eighteen inches away from the canvas[80] so that they might experience a sense of intimacy, as well as awe, a transcendence of the individual, and a sense of the unknown.

 

As Rothko achieved success, he became increasingly protective of his works, turning down several potentially important sales and exhibition opportunities:

 

A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore a risky and unfeeling act to send it out into the world. How often it must be permanently impaired by the eyes of the vulgar and the cruelty of the impotent who would extend the affliction universally!

 

Rothko's aims, in the estimation of some critics and viewers, exceeded his methods.[82] Many of the abstract expressionists discussed their art as aiming toward a spiritual experience, or at least an experience that exceeded the boundaries of the purely aesthetic. In later years, Rothko emphasized more emphatically the spiritual aspect of his artwork, a sentiment that would culminate in the construction of the Rothko Chapel.

 

Many of the "multiforms" and early signature paintings are composed of bright, vibrant colors, particularly reds and yellows, expressing energy and ecstasy. By the mid-1950s, however, close to a decade after the completion of the first "multiforms," Rothko began to employ dark blues and greens; for many critics of his work, this shift in colors was representative of growing darkness within Rothko's personal life.

 

Rothko's method was to apply a thin layer of a binder mixed with pigment directly onto uncoated and untreated canvas and to paint significantly thinned oils directly onto this layer, creating a dense mixture of overlapping colors and shapes. His brushstrokes were fast and light, a method he would continue to use until his death. His increasing adeptness at this method is apparent in the paintings completed for the Chapel. With an absence of figurative representation, what drama there is to be found in a late Rothko is in the contrast of colors, radiating against one another. His paintings can then be likened to a sort of fugue-like arrangement: each variation counterpoised against one another, yet all existing within one architectonic structure.

 

Rothko used several original techniques that he tried to keep secret even from his assistants. Electron microscopy and ultraviolet analysis conducted by the MOLAB showed that he employed natural substances such as egg and glue, as well as artificial materials including acrylic resins, phenol formaldehyde, modified alkyd, and others. One of his objectives was to make the various layers of the painting dry quickly, without mixing of colors, so that he could soon create new layers on top of the earlier ones.

 

In 1968 Rothko, in declining health, began painting most of his large works in acrylic paint instead of oils.

 

European travels: increasing fame

 

Rothko and his wife visited Europe for five months in early 1950. The last time he had been in Europe was during his childhood in Latvia, at that time part of Russia. Yet he did not return to his homeland, preferring to visit the important painting collections in the major museums of England, France, and Italy. The frescoes of Fra Angelico in the monastery of San Marco, Florence, most impressed him. Fra Angelico's spirituality and concentration on light appealed to Rothko's sensibilities, as did the economic adversities the artist faced, which Rothko saw as similar to his own.

 

Rothko had one-man shows at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1950 and 1951 and at other galleries across the world, including in Japan, São Paulo, and Amsterdam. The 1952 "Fifteen Americans" show curated by Dorothy Canning Miller at the Museum of Modern Art formally heralded the abstract artists and included works by Jackson Pollock and William Baziotes. It also created a dispute between Rothko and Barnett Newman, after Newman accused Rothko of having attempted to exclude him from the show. Growing success as a group was leading to infighting and claims of supremacy and leadership. When Fortune magazine named a Rothko painting in 1955 as a good investment. Newman and Clyfford Still branded him a sell-out with bourgeois aspirations. Still wrote to Rothko to ask that the paintings he had given him over the years be returned. Rothko was deeply depressed by his former friends' jealousy.

 

During the 1950 Europe trip, Rothko's wife, Mell, became pregnant. On December 30, when they were back in New York, she gave birth to a daughter, Kathy Lynn, called "Kate" in honor of Rothko's mother, Kate Goldin.

 

Reactions to his own success

 

Shortly thereafter, due to the Fortune magazine plug and further purchases by clients, Rothko's financial situation began to improve. In addition to sales of paintings, he also had money from his teaching position at Brooklyn College. In 1954, he exhibited in a solo show at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he met art dealer Sidney Janis, who represented Pollock and Franz Kline. Their relationship proved mutually beneficial.

 

Despite his fame, Rothko felt a growing personal seclusion and a sense of being misunderstood as an artist. He feared that people purchased his paintings simply out of fashion and that the true purpose of his work was not being grasped by collectors, critics, or audiences. He wanted his paintings to move beyond abstraction, as well as beyond classical art. For Rothko, the paintings were objects that possessed their own form and potential, and therefore, must be encountered as such. Sensing the futility of words in describing this decidedly non-verbal aspect of his work, Rothko abandoned all attempts at responding to those who inquired after its meaning and purpose, stating finally that silence is "so accurate":

 

"My paintings' surfaces are expansive and push outward in all directions, or their surfaces contract and rush inward in all directions. Between these two poles, you can find everything I want to say."

 

Rothko began to insist that he was not an abstractionist and that such a description was as inaccurate as labeling him a great colorist. His interest was:

 

... only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions ... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point."

 

For Rothko, color is "merely an instrument". The multiforms and the signature paintings are, in essence, the same expression of basic human emotions as his surrealistic mythological paintings, albeit in a purer form. What is common among these stylistic innovations is a concern for "tragedy, ecstasy and doom". It was Rothko's comment on viewers breaking down in tears before his paintings that may have convinced the de Menils to construct the Rothko Chapel. Whatever Rothko's feeling about interpretations of his work, it is apparent that, by 1958, the spiritual expression he meant to portray on canvas was growing increasingly dark. His bright reds, yellows, and oranges were subtly transformed into dark blues, greens, grays, and blacks.

 

Rothko's friend, the art critic Dore Ashton, points to the artist's acquaintance with poet Stanley Kunitz as a significant bond in this period ("conversations between painter and poet fed into Rothko's enterprise"). Kunitz saw Rothko as "a primitive, a shaman who finds the magic formula and leads people to it". Great poetry and painting, Kunitz believed, both had "roots in magic, incantation, and spell-casting" and were, at their core, ethical and spiritual. Kunitz instinctively understood the purpose of Rothko's quest.

 

In November 1958, Rothko gave an address to the Pratt Institute. In a tenor unusual for him, he discussed art as a trade and offered the

 

"recipe of a work of art—its ingredients—how to make it—the formula

 

There must be a clear preoccupation with death—intimations of mortality ... Tragic art, romantic art, etc., deals with the knowledge of death.

Sensuality. Our basis of being concrete about the world. It is a lustful relationship with things that exist.

Tension. Either conflict or curbed desire.

Irony, This is a modern ingredient—the self-effacement and examination by which a man for an instant can go on to something else.

Wit and play ... for the human element.

The ephemeral and chance ... for the human element.

Hope. 10% to make the tragic concept more endurable.

 

I measure these ingredients very carefully when I paint a picture. It is always the form that follows these elements and the picture results from the proportions of these elements."

 

In 1958, Rothko was awarded the first of two major mural commissions, which proved both rewarding and frustrating. The beverage company Joseph Seagram and Sons had recently completed the new Seagram Building skyscraper on Park Avenue, designed by architects Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Rothko agreed to provide paintings for the building's new luxury restaurant, the Four Seasons. This was, as art historian Simon Schama put it, "bring[ing] his monumental dramas right into the belly of the beast".

 

For Rothko, this Seagram murals commission presented a new challenge, since it was the first time he was required not only to design a coordinated series of paintings but to produce an artwork space concept for a large, specific interior. Over the following three months, Rothko completed forty paintings, comprising three full series in dark red and brown. He altered his horizontal format to vertical, to complement the restaurant's vertical features: columns, walls, doors, and windows.

 

The following June, Rothko and his family again traveled to Europe. While on the SS Independence he disclosed to journalist John Fischer, who was publisher of Harper's Magazine, that his true intention for the Seagram murals was to paint "something that will ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room". He hoped, he told Fischer, that his painting would make the restaurant's patrons "feel that they are trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall".

 

While in Europe, the Rothkos traveled to Rome, Florence, Venice, and Pompeii. In Florence, he visited Michelangelo's Laurentian Library, to see first-hand the library's vestibule, from which he drew further inspiration for the murals. He remarked that "the room had exactly the feeling that I wanted ... it gives the visitor the feeling of being caught in a room with the doors and windows walled-in shut." He was further influenced by the somber colors of the murals in the Pompeiian Villa of the Mysteries. Following the trip to Italy, the Rothkos voyaged to Paris, Brussels, Antwerp and Amsterdam, before going to London where Rothko spent time in the British Museum studying the Turner watercolors. They then traveled to Somerset and stayed with the artist William Scott who was just starting a large mural project and they discussed the respective issues of public and private sponsorship. After the visit the Rothkos continued to St. Ives in the West of England and met up with Patrick Heron and other Cornish painters before returning to London and then the United States.[citation needed]

 

Once back in New York, Rothko and his wife Mell visited the nearly-completed Four Seasons restaurant. Upset with the restaurant's dining atmosphere, which he considered pretentious and inappropriate for the display of his works, Rothko refused to continue the project and returned his cash advance to the Seagram and Sons Company. Seagram had intended to honor Rothko's emergence to prominence through his selection, and his breach of contract and public expression of outrage was unexpected.

 

Rothko kept the commissioned paintings in storage until 1968. Given that Rothko had known in advance about the luxury decor of the restaurant, and the social class of its future patrons, the motives for his abrupt repudiation remain mysterious, although he did write to his friend William Scott in England, "Since we had discussed our respective murals I thought you might be interested to know that mine are still with me. When I returned, I looked again at my paintings and then visited the premises for which they were destined, it seemed clear to me at once that the two were not for each other." A temperamental personality, Rothko never fully explained his conflicted emotions over the incident. One reading is offered by his biographer, James E.B. Breslin: the Seagram project could be seen as an acting-out of a familiar, in this case self-created "drama of trust and betrayal, of advancing into the world, then withdrawing, angrily, from it ... He was an Isaac who at the last moment refused to yield to Abraham." The final series of Seagram Murals was dispersed, and now hangs in three locations: London's Tate Britain, Japan's Kawamura Memorial Museum, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This episode was the main basis for John Logan's 2009 play Red.

 

In October 2012, Black on Maroon, one of the paintings in the Seagram series, was defaced with writing in black ink, while on display at Tate Modern. Restoration of the painting took eighteen months to complete. The BBC's Arts Editor Will Gompertz explained that the ink from the vandal's marker pen had bled all the way through the canvas, causing "a deep wound, not a superficial graze", and that the vandal had caused "significant damage".

 

Rising American prominence

 

Rothko's first completed space was created in the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., following the purchase of four paintings by collector Duncan Phillips. Rothko's fame and wealth had substantially increased; his paintings began to sell to notable collectors, including the Rockefeller family. In January 1961, Rothko sat next to Joseph Kennedy at John F. Kennedy's inaugural ball. Later that year, a retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art, to considerable commercial and critical success. In spite of this newfound fame, the art world had already turned its attention from the now passé abstract expressionists to the "next big thing", pop art, particularly the work of Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rosenquist.

 

Rothko labeled pop-art artists "charlatans and young opportunists", and wondered aloud during a 1962 exhibition of pop art, "Are the young artists plotting to kill us all?" On viewing Jasper Johns's flags, Rothko said, "We worked for years to get rid of all that."

 

On August 31, 1963, Mell gave birth to a second child, Christopher. That autumn, Rothko signed with the Marlborough Gallery for sales of his work outside the United States. In New York, he continued to sell the artwork directly from his studio.

 

Harvard Murals

 

Rothko received a second mural commission project, this time for a room of paintings for the penthouse of Harvard University's Holyoke Center. He made twenty-two sketches, from which ten wall-sized paintings on canvas were painted, six were brought to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and only five were hung: a triptych on one wall and opposite two individual panels. His aim was to create an environment for a public place. Harvard President Nathan Pusey, following an explanation of the religious symbology of the Triptych, had the paintings hung in January 1963, and later shown at the Guggenheim. During installation, Rothko found the paintings to be compromised by the room's lighting. Despite the installation of fiberglass shades, the paintings were all removed by 1979 and, due to the fugitive nature of some of the red pigments, in particular lithol red, were placed in dark storage and displayed only periodically. The murals were on display from November 16, 2014, to July 26, 2015, in the newly renovated Harvard Art Museums, for which the fading of the pigments has been compensated by using an innovative color projection system to illuminate the paintings.

 

The Rothko Chapel is located adjacent to the Menil Collection and the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. The building is small and windowless except for a skylight and features a geometric, postmodern structure. The Chapel, the Menil Collection, and the nearby Cy Twombly gallery were funded by Texas oil millionaires John and Dominique de Menil.

 

In 1964, Rothko moved into his last New York studio at 157 East 69th Street. To simulate the lighting he desired for the chapel, Rothko equipped the studio with pulleys carrying large walls of canvas material to regulate light from a central cupola. Rothko reportedly intended the chapel to be his most important artistic statement. He became extremely involved in the building's layout and insisted that it feature a central cupola like that of his studio. Architect Philip Johnson, unable to compromise with Rothko's vision about the kind of light he wanted in the space, left the project in 1967 and was replaced by Howard Barnstone and Eugene Aubry. The architects frequently flew to New York to consult. On one occasion they brought a miniature of the building for Rothko's approval.

 

For Rothko, the chapel was a place of pilgrimage far from the center of art (in this case, New York) where seekers of Rothko's newly "religious" artwork could journey. The chapel is now non-denominational, but it was originally intended to be Roman Catholic. During the first three years of the project (1964–67), Rothko believed it would remain so. The design of the building and the religious implications of the paintings were inspired by Roman Catholic art and architecture. Its octagonal shape is based on a Byzantine church of St. Maria Assunta, and the format of the triptychs is based on paintings of the Crucifixion. The de Menils believed the universal "spiritual" aspect of Rothko's work would complement the elements of Roman Catholicism.

 

Rothko's painting technique necessitated physical strength and stamina that the ailing artist could no longer muster. Rothko hired two assistants to apply the multiple layers of paint. On half of the works, Rothko applied none of the paint himself and was content to supervise the slow, arduous process. He felt the completion of the paintings to be "torment", and the inevitable result was to create "something you don't want to look at".

 

The chapel represents six years of Rothko's life and his growing concern for the transcendent. For some, viewing the chapel's these paintings is akin submitting to a spiritual experience. The paintings have been likened to self-awareness, hermeticism, and contemplativeness.

 

The chapel paintings consist of a monochrome triptych in soft brown, on the central wall, comprising three 5-by-15-foot panels and a pair of triptychs on the left and right made of opaque black rectangles. Between the triptychs are four individual paintings, measuring 11-by-15 feet each. One additional individual painting faces the central triptych, from the opposite wall. The effect is to surround the viewer with massive, imposing visions of darkness. Despite its basis in religious symbolism and imagery, the paintings may be considered distinct from traditional Christian motifs and may act on the viewers subliminally. Rothko's erasure of symbols both removes and creates barriers to the work.

 

The paintings were unveiled at the chapel's opening in 1971. Rothko never saw the completed chapel and never installed the paintings. On February 28, 1971, at the dedication, Dominique de Menil said, "We are cluttered with images and only abstract art can bring us to the threshold of the divine", noting Rothko's courage in painting "impenetrable fortresses" of color.

 

Suicide and estate lawsuit

 

In early 1968, Rothko was diagnosed with a mild aortic aneurysm. Ignoring doctor's orders, Rothko continued to drink and smoke heavily, avoided exercise, and maintained an unhealthy diet. "Highly nervous, thin, restless", was his friend Dore Ashton's description of Rothko at this time. However, he did follow the medical advice given not to paint pictures larger than a yard in height, and turned his attention to smaller, less physically strenuous formats, including acrylics on paper. Meanwhile, Rothko's marriage had become increasingly troubled, and his poor health and impotence resulting from the aneurysm compounded his feeling of estrangement in the relationship. Rothko and his wife Mell, to whom he was married from 1944 to 1970, separated on New Year's Day 1969; he moved into his studio.

 

On February 25, 1970, Oliver Steindecker, Rothko's assistant, found the artist lying dead on the kitchen floor in front of the sink, covered in blood. He had overdosed on barbiturates and cut an artery in his right arm with a razor blade. There was no suicide note. He was 66. The Seagram Murals arrived in London for display at the Tate Gallery on the day of his suicide.

 

Near the end of his life, Rothko painted a series known as the "Black on Grays", uniformly featuring a black rectangle above a gray rectangle. These canvases and Rothko's later work in general have been associated with his depression and suicide, although the association has been criticized. Rothko's suicide has been studied in the medical literature where his later paintings have been interpreted as "pictorial suicide notes" due to their somber palettes and especially in contrast with the brighter colors Rothko employed more frequently during the 1950s. Although art critic David Anfam acknowledged that the Black and Grays are interpreted as premonitions of suicide or as "moonscapes" (the first Apollo Moon landings were contemporaneous with their execution), he rejected the interpretations as "naive", arguing instead that the paintings were a continuation of his lifelong artistic themes and not symptoms of depression. Susan Grange also observed that, following his aneurysm, Rothko executed several smaller works on paper using lighter hues, which are less well-known. Throughout his life Rothko consistently intended his works to evoke serious dramatic content, regardless of the colors used in an individual painting. When a woman visited his studio asking to buy a "happy" painting featuring warm colors, Rothko retorted, "Red, yellow, orange – aren't those the colors of an inferno?"

 

Shortly before his death, Rothko and his financial advisor, Bernard Reis, had created a foundation, intended to fund "research and education", that would receive the bulk of Rothko's work following his death. Reis later sold the paintings to the Marlborough Gallery, at substantially reduced values, and then split the profits from sales with Gallery representatives. In 1971, Rothko's children filed a lawsuit against Reis, Morton Levine, and Theodore Stamos, the executors of his estate, over the sham sales. The lawsuit continued for more than 10 years and became known as the Rothko Case. In 1975, the defendants were found liable for negligence and conflict of interest, were removed as executors of the Rothko estate by court order, and, along with Marlborough Gallery, were required to pay a $9.2 million damages judgment to the estate. This amount represents only a small fraction of the eventual vast financial value, since achieved, by numerous Rothko works produced in his lifetime.

 

Rothko's estranged wife Mell, also a heavy drinker, died six months after him at the age of 48. The cause of death was listed as "hypertension due to cardiovascular disease".

 

Legacy

 

Rothko's complete works on canvas, 836 paintings, have been cataloged by art historian David Anfam, in his Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas: Catalogue Raisonné (1998), published by Yale University Press.

 

A previously unpublished manuscript by Rothko, The Artist's Reality (2004), about his philosophies on art, edited by his son Christopher, was published by Yale University Press.[citation needed]

 

Red, a play by John Logan based on Rothko's life, opened at the Donmar Warehouse in London, on December 3, 2009. The play, starring Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne, centered on the period of the Seagram Murals. This drama received excellent reviews and usually played to full houses. In 2010 Red opened on Broadway, where it won six Tony Awards, including Best Play. Molina played Rothko in both London and New York. A recording of Red was produced in 2018 for Great Performances with Molina playing Rothko and Alfred Enoch playing his assistant.

 

In Rothko's birthplace, the Latvian city of Daugavpils, a monument to him, designed by sculptor Romualds Gibovskis, was unveiled on the bank of the Daugava River in 2003. In 2013 the Mark Rothko Art Centre opened in Daugavpils after the Rothko family had donated a small collection of his original works.

 

A number of Rothko's works are held by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, both in Madrid. The Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY includes both Rothko's late painting, Untitled (1967) and a large mural by Al Held entitled Rothko's Canvas (1969–70).

(Wikipedia)

 

A page from my mother's leather bound photo album. Photos are mostly of our family and Kane Pa. in the 1950s. Young kids. The mill. This page shows a radiant mom with Baby number four, Jim in cub scout costume AND Davy Crockett costume, our family Station Wagon, The three oldest kids taking turns on the caterpillar tractor at the family mill. My memories of all of these events and places are pretty vivid. I could close my eyes, now, decades later and take a long walk through that little town in the '50s and name off the streets and the family names of who lived there. I couldn't even do this regarding my own current subdivision where I have lived for over 20 years.

 

For the year or so before mom's death, whenever I visited, I'd ask her where this album was. She'd say she didn't know, she thought it was lost. After her death I found it stuffed in a hamper with old clothes. I don't know why she put it there. Sometimes she put things in odd places because she was angry with someone from the past. Or angry with herself. Or simply angry and infested with angry internal voices. I was thrilled to find the album and to share it. It is a window into a short period of time when my parents were in love, happy and looking to a bright future.

 

*

The Hope of Giving Up

By Gerald May, M.D.

 

By the time they reach age 21, most everyone has gone crazy a few times and most everyone has gone sane a few times. Enough to know the difference. But many will have decided that crazy is the way to be, and they will be trying very hard to make ’some thing’ of themselves….

 

To wake up from the daze, to come home to consciousness again, to live brightly and fully with awareness clear as winter air - this sounds wonderful. But it also sounds like a fantasy. It appears as a dream beyond human capacity. It sounds like something which would require an incredible amount of doing and an unimaginable degree of fixing. It sounds this way because we have come to associate awareness so intimately with control that it is almost impossible to conceive of one existing without the other.

 

Being so used to evaluating and fixing ourselves every time awareness occurs, it seems difficult to conceive of being-in-that-awareness and resting at the same time. But it is not so difficult. It is no fantasy. And it takes no special fixing. It doesn’t even take doing. It takes perhaps some kind of allowing, allowing oneself to give up. But not suicide. It takes allowing of relaxation, but not lethargy. It takes acceptance, but not passivity. It takes simply being. But even that seems difficult. To simply be, to fully, dynamically, energetically be, and not do anything about it. It seems perhaps that the delusion is too firmly entrenched and sanity too incomprehensible. Sometimes it seems impossible.

 

Still, there is always room for great hope. For at every level of despair there is the possibility of giving up. In the midst of every dimension of delusion there are sparkles of sanity…. In the early years of life, giving up usually takes the form of faith. A leaping forward into a belief that one is loved, accepted, forgiven and redeemed just as one is, with nothing special needing to be done. In later years, giving up more often comes from despair. From the wisdom of realizing that no amount of continuing effort, no amount of fixing, will enable one to ‘get it all together.’ Despair then is forever a doorway to life.

 

It must be an act of grace, or of something beyond the individual will, which enables certain people to give up at certain times. Whether the giving up occurs gradually or swiftly, with great fanfare or absolute stillness, giving up is not something that can willfully be done. It can be allowed or it can be resisted, but it cannot be done. And that is where hope lies. Not hope in continuing effort, but hope for some kind of mercy. Hope that today or next month, or five years from now there will come a time when the struggle will be sacrificed.

 

Dr. Gerald May was a psychiatrist and spiritual teacher on the staff of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. He authored many books, including Addiction and Grace, The Awakened Heart and The Dark Night of the Soul. This writing is taken from Simply Sane, The Spirituality of Mental Health.

 

***

An Open Window

Gerald May

 

The importance of awareness is not so that we can better control ourselves. It is not so that we can analyze and interpret our minds or bodies or the world around us. To use awareness as a tool for self-manipulation only leads to treachery. Awareness is a space giver. An open window, letting the fresh air in. It unties the knots and loosens the tension. Awareness with full acceptance is like pure sunlight shining into a cellar, making it possible for healing to happen and growth to take place. One has to do nothing with it.

 

Simply Sane

Living in Transit: The Thinkers of a World in Turmoil

 

War looms over Europe, uncertainty seeps into everyday life, and the weight of history presses upon the present. The world is burning, and yet—there are those who seek understanding, those who bury themselves in the quiet refuge of books, the dim glow of libraries, the solitude of knowledge.

 

This series captures the introspective minds of young academic women—readers, thinkers, seekers. They wander through old university halls, their fingers tracing the spines of forgotten books, pulling out volumes of poetry, philosophy, and psychology. They drink coffee, they drink tea, they stay up late with ink-stained fingers, trying to decipher the world through words.

 

They turn to Simone Weil for moral clarity, Hannah Arendt for political insight, Rilke for existential wisdom. They read Baudrillard to untangle the illusions of modernity, Byung-Chul Han to understand society’s exhaustion, Camus to grasp the absurdity of it all. They devour Celan’s poetry, searching for beauty in catastrophe.

 

But they do not just read—they reflect, they question, they write. Their world is one of quiet resistance, an intellectual sanctuary amidst the chaos. In their solitude, they are not alone. Across time, across history, across the pages they turn, they are in conversation with those who, too, have sought meaning in troubled times.

 

This is a series about thought in transit—about seeking, reading, questioning, about the relentless pursuit of knowledge when the world feels on the brink.

 

Where the Thinkers Go

 

They gather where the dust has settled,

where books whisper in the hush of halls.

Pages thin as breath, torn at the edges,

cradling centuries of questions.

 

They drink coffee like it’s ink,

trace words like constellations,

follow Rilke into the dusk,

where solitude hums softly in the dark.

 

Outside, the world is fraying—

war threading through the seams of cities,

the weight of history pressing forward.

Inside, they turn pages, searching

for answers, for solace, for fire.

 

And somewhere between the lines,

between time-stained margins and fading ink,

they find the ghosts of others who

once sought, once wondered, once read—

and they do not feel alone.

 

Three Haikus

 

Night falls on paper,

books stacked like silent towers,

thoughts burn in the dark.

 

Tea cools in the cup,

a poem lingers on lips,

war rumbles beyond.

 

Footsteps in silence,

the scent of old ink and dust,

pages turn like ghosts.

 

ooOOOoo

 

Reading as Resistance

 

These young women do not read passively. They underline, they take notes, they write in the margins. They challenge the texts and themselves. They read because the world demands it of them—because, in a time of conflict and uncertainty, thought itself is an act of resistance.

 

Their books are worn, their pages stained with coffee, their minds alive with the urgency of understanding.

 

1. Political Thought, Society & Liberation

Essays, theory and critique on democracy, power and resistance.

 

Chantal Mouffe – For a Left Populism (rethinking democracy through radical left-wing populism)

Nancy Fraser – Cannibal Capitalism (an urgent critique of capitalism’s role in the destruction of democracy, the planet, and social justice)

Étienne Balibar – Citizenship (rethinking the idea of citizenship in an era of migration and inequality)

Silvia Federici – Caliban and the Witch (a feminist Marxist analysis of capitalism and gender oppression)

Didier Eribon – Returning to Reims (a deeply personal sociological reflection on class and identity in contemporary Europe)

Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt – Empire (rethinking global capitalism and resistance from a leftist perspective)

Thomas Piketty – Capital and Ideology (a profound analysis of wealth distribution, inequality, and the future of economic justice)

Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism (on why it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism)

2. Feminist & Queer Theory, Gender & Body Politics

Texts that redefine identity, gender, and liberation in the 21st century.

 

Paul B. Preciado – Testo Junkie (an autobiographical, philosophical essay on gender, hormones, and biopolitics)

Judith Butler – The Force of Nonviolence (rethinking ethics and resistance beyond violence)

Virginie Despentes – King Kong Theory (a raw and radical take on sex, power, and feminism)

Amia Srinivasan – The Right to Sex (rethinking sex, power, and feminism for a new generation)

Laurent de Sutter – Narcocapitalism (on how capitalism exploits our bodies, desires, and emotions)

Sara Ahmed – Living a Feminist Life (a deeply personal and political exploration of what it means to be feminist today)

3. Literature & Poetry of Resistance, Liberation & Exile

European novels, poetry and literature that embrace freedom, revolution, and identity.

 

Annie Ernaux – The Years (a groundbreaking memoir that blends personal and collective history, feminism, and social change)

Olga Tokarczuk – The Books of Jacob (an epic novel about alternative histories, belief systems, and European identity)

Édouard Louis – Who Killed My Father (a deeply political and personal exploration of class struggle and masculinity)

Bernardine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other (a polyphonic novel on race, gender, and identity in contemporary Europe)

Maggie Nelson (though American, widely read in European academia) – On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (a poetic, intellectual meditation on freedom and constraint)

Benjamín Labatut – When We Cease to Understand the World (a deeply philosophical novel on science, war, and moral responsibility)

Michel Houellebecq – Submission (controversial but widely read as a dystopian critique of political passivity in Europe)

4. Ecology, Anti-Capitalism & Posthumanism

Texts that explore the intersections of nature, economics, and radical change.

 

Bruno Latour – Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (rethinking ecology and politics in a world of climate crisis)

Andreas Malm – How to Blow Up a Pipeline (on the ethics of radical environmental resistance)

Emanuele Coccia – The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture (rethinking human and non-human coexistence)

Isabelle Stengers – Another Science is Possible (rethinking knowledge and resistance in an era of corporate science)

Kate Raworth – Doughnut Economics (rethinking economic models for social and ecological justice)

Donna Haraway – Staying with the Trouble (rethinking coexistence and posthumanist futures)

 

The Future of Thought

These are not just books; they are weapons, tools, compasses. These women read not for escapism, but for resistance. In a time of political upheaval, climate catastrophe, and rising authoritarianism, they seek alternative visions, radical possibilities, and new ways of imagining the world.

 

Their books are annotated, their margins filled with questions, their reading lists always expanding. Knowledge is not just power—it is revolution.

The Roman goddesses of vengeance, the Furies lived in the underworld, where they tortured sinners. The children of Gaea and Uranus, they were usually characterised as three sisters: Alecto (“unceasing”), Tisiphone (“avenging murder”), and Megaera (“grudging”).

  

Rack: Thinking of you Ruin.

  

Ruin: Tell me more, what are you thinking? I have been thinking of you too. Relative to the writing really, and my inability to pull it together, or even the energy to attempt it. The testosterone suppressors are working their deadening magic to a degree. It’s good, because my prostate has shrunk, and I can pee normally again, but then a lot of male energy comes from that same hormone, so that is double-edged, the losing of energy in exchange for freedom to urinate. I like the ‘baldness’ of it, that exchange, and find myself wondering how to somehow exploit it, whether it might encourage a more selective, dare I say female, approach. It might even necessitate an editing in the process of writing and making images.

  

Might I exploit my female energy? Funny idea that, exploiting my own lifelong passivity. As if I hadn’t been doing that anyway. Might one even become more thoughtful? Anyway, I continue to look, and continue to post, in the hope that it will all make its own sense in the end. ‘Dear Diary’ is coming along again. You see, I am a big girl’s blouse, with the added testosterone subtraction.

  

At this point it is just a record I make for myself, with little attention to continuity or even if it is making any sense. It’s an explaining this unravelling, trying to make sense of it personally, and keep optimistic about it, by fetishising Duchamp’s ‘Dust Breeding’, that idea of continuing in that way, as dust, and it being equal in every way to what we have now.

  

Delusion is central, but if it actually gets you through, well then, I have no problem with that. I know it sounds vaguely religious, but hey-ho, as they say. At least it’s all mine, with a little stolen from past religion makers, namely Joyce, Duchamp and a few others.

  

Onwards and upwards.

  

My energy holds up until around now, 13:30 here, then I deflate for the afternoon.

  

Love you, dearest.

  

Rack: Strange that you are having the last of your testosterone beaten into submission. I have a friend who was on a similar drug when he was going through prostate radiation for cancer. We used to sit in bars and have hot flashes together. In my view he has become a far more tender person since this brush with illness and testosterone removal.

  

I am ensconced in Brooklyn Heights dog sitting for 3 weeks. It is a strange solitary interlude overlooking the Hudson and New York harbour. Will lay off the booze and try and stay off it. Have been drinking far too much and now seem quite incapable of moderating. Much of what they say in AA, which I did for a year, about the illness of drinking too much alcohol is true.

  

I love the idea of you giving up on any context for the work. Just the doing of it. Very pure. I feel inspired by this. If I knew it was really just for myself, or you, maybe I would be less hindered by my own horror of failure. Sending love in 2024.

  

Ruin: Yes, pure but not so pure, on the flip side, I will use everything you say, until I no longer can. More later, whilst I digest this and let it become its own image. As you saw, super-chickenwoman is emerging.

  

Now, where did I put my other shoe? And, why wouldn't chickens be furious?

 

SOURCE: GREENPOINTNEWS.COM

TITLE: Beautiful Brooklyn: A Public Art Coalition Gets Rolling

DATE: Mar 05, 2009

AUTHOR: Adriane Quinlan

 

North Brooklyn may have a global reputation for its glut of artistic talent, but it is also known for not being the prettiest corner of the world—from unkempt curbs to elevated tracks above epic spans of underpass through which shiny cars, breezing to more beautiful places, so quickly pass.

This is the imbalance Councilmember David Yassky’s office was seeking to solve when it held the first meeting of the North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition last week. “We’re politicians,” said aide Rami Metal. “We’re not art organizations. It’s up to artists. It will come from you.”

In the audience were curators, artists and performers who had all come out to learn about existing opportunities outside of gallery walls. If they plant art for public eyes, would the city pay them instead of cuffing them into a cop car alongside a graffiti tagger? Was this a new, recession-inspired WPA ready to support artists through bleak times?

Perhaps, though the message delivered by civic art organizations last week could be frustrating: permits, insurance, proposals and a stack of grant applications must be waded through before the first brick might be laid. The room gasped when Director of the city program Art in the Parks acknowledged that every piece of artwork must be fully insured—a price that hovers between $300 and $500 dollars per month, the going rate of a Bushwick studio.

Still, most were excited that the city was doing something to engage with them. Tanda Francis was fine with lots of applications, as compared with a single gallery owner giving her stuff a glance. “The jury is larger,” she said. “It’s more democratic.” Though her portfolio is comprised of smaller pen and ink drawings, she found that overseeing a mural on a Con Ed building in the Bronx was completely rewarding. “Kids feel like they can’t paint on the walls at home, and here now they’re painting on the side of a building.”

That’s the type of engagement Zachary Barnett and Gabriela Alva, Directors of Eyelevel BQE on Leonard Street, love to see. Their windows look out to an ungainly concrete triangle skirting the BQE and they had come out to learn how to commission an artist to do something there. Barnett noted that it’s part of their goal to engage more with the community. In their windows, “Usually it’s just a bunch of homosexuals making hats,” he said, so the “rough street kids” en route home from school “just walk by.” But this month, a time lapse video of graffiti has really engaged them. “They stop, they watch it, they point it out.” They’d like to see more of that.

An additional source of frustration was that many examples of “public art” opportunities available were further from the category of “street art”—which seeks to engage with oppressive architecture and the passivity of passerby—and closer to the category of beautification. The grand majority of state-approved projects described were murals. Metal outlined one opportunity their office is happily accepting applications for: The painting of a wall on India Street. Loaned by developer D. Palin, the 300 foot swathe is currently in an industrial (and famously noxious) section of Greenpoint. But by next year, the developer hopes to turn the space residential. The irony, of course, is that by agreeing to beautify with a mural the artists may no longer be able to afford to live there. The reason for the seeming imbalance—of dull streets stocked with aesthetes—is that if it’s dull, it’s cheap, and thus artists can afford it.

The groups invited to speak delineated restrictive opportunities, but opportunities nonetheless, to install work on city buildings, city parks, and city streets.

Percent for Art, which allows artists to propose work for city buildings, owes its nascence to 1983 mayor Ed Koch, who passed into law that for every project built, 1% of funding should go toward art for that space. Director Sara Reisman noted that though since inception they have only done 220 projects, the group is currently at work on 66. “Because of the stimulus that we have more than ever,” Reisman said, noting the nearby McCarren Park Pool percent has been assigned to the California installation artist Pae White. The group identifies a work project and both accepts applications and hunts down artists that interest them, who will receive between $40,000 and $400,000, 80% of which goes toward construction. Representing Art in the Parks, Jonathan Kuhn clicked through 42 years of sculptures installed in various NYC parks from Christo’s well-known “Gates” to a smaller project in the Brooklyn Bridge Park of green stalks of fiber optic cables that sway like river reeds but light up at night. “You can do this on your own,” Kuhn said. “You don’t need a real estate developer or a gallery. Just sweat equity and your own ingenuity.” (Still, there was that $300 to $500 dollar insurance.) The most accessible opportunity was presented by the DOT’s Urban Art venture, which is less than a year old. Urban Adventure asks artists to team up with local nonprofit organizations and present proposals that use DOT space—streets, sidewalks, medians, bridges, etc. As New York pushes for bike paths, DOT is attempting to make the barriers less harsh, and many of the program’s past successes involved their decoration. Still, said Director Emily Colasacco, “If there’s a site right outside your door, anything interesting in street space,” she’s interested in receiving a proposal. When their January 30th deadline passed, she joked, “I’m not sure anybody even knew about it.”

Metal tried to get artists excited, encouraging them to go out in the neighborhood and identify potential sites, look to elected officials for funding: “It’s important to hit them up.” He might have said, we know you want to make the world a more beautiful place, but please start here.

Antonio Rosmini-Serbati (1797-1855)

Founder of Rosminian Institute of Charity

 

Born on 24 March 1797 to Pier Modesto and Giovanna dei Conti Formenti di Riva at Rovereto, a very "Italian" town although part of the Austrian Empire since 1509. He was baptized the following day and received his early education locally.

 

In 1816 he enrolled at the University of Padua, Italy, where he received doctorates in theology and canon law. After his studies he returned to Rovereto to prepare for Holy Orders.

 

In February 1820 he accompanied his sister, Margherita, to Verona where the Marquess Maddalena of Canossa (now Blessed) had founded a religious institute. During the visit Maddalena invited him to found a male religious institute as a twin to her own institute. While the young man politely declined, her invitation in time proved prophetic.

 

Antonio was ordained a priest on 21 April 1821 at Chioggia, Italy. In 1823 he travelled to Rome with the Patriarch of Venice, who arranged an audience for him with Pope Pius VII. In that audience the Pontiff encouraged him to undertake the reform of philosophy.

 

In 1826 he went to Milan to continue his research and publish the results of his philosophical studies. He wrote on many subjects, including the origin of ideas and certitude, the nature of the human soul, ethics, the relationship between Church and State, the philosophy of law, metaphysics, grace, original sin, the sacraments and education.

 

On Ash Wednesday, 20 February 1828, Fr Rosmini withdrew to write the Constitutions of the budding Institute of Charity, in which he incorporated the principle of passivity (to be concerned with one's personal sanctification until God's will manifests itself to undertake some external work of charity) and the principle of impartiality (to free one of any personal preference in assuming a work of charity).

 

To assure himself of God's will in his philosophical and foundational work, Rosmini went to Rome a second time, in November 1828, and there received Pope Leo XII's support. On 15 May 1829 he met with the new Pope, Pius VIII, who confirmed his double mission as philosopher and founder.

During this visit to Rome, Fr Rosmini published "Maxims of Christian Perfection" and "Origin of Ideas", winning the admiration of many scholars.

 

By 1832 the Institute of Charity had spread to Northern Italy and by 1835 it reached England, where the community enjoyed substantial growth. In England the Rosminians are credited with introducing the use of the Roman collar and cassock and the practice of wearing the religious habit in public. They were known for preaching missions, the practice of the Forty Hours, May devotions, the use of the scapular, novena celebrations, public processions and the blessing of throats on the feast of St Blaise.

 

Pope Gregory XVI approved the Constitutions of the Institute of Charity on 20 December 1838. On 25 March 1839 vows were taken by 20 Italian and 6 British priests. On 20 September 1839 Fr Rosmini was appointed provost general for life.

 

This happy period of growth and apostolic success, however, was tempered by opposition to his intellectual and philosophical writings from 1826 until his death.

 

Primarily his "Treatise on Moral Conscience" (1839) led to a sharp, 15-year controversy which required more than one Papal injunction to silence the "Rosminian Question". Another important, controversial work was "The Five Wounds of the Church" (1832).

 

Fr Rosmini found himself wedged between the obligation to renew Catholic philosophy and finding his works on the Index. But his obedience to the Church was admirable: "In everything, I want to base myself on the authority of the Church, and I want the whole world to know that I adhere to this authority alone" (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Note on the Force of the Doctrinal Decrees", L'Osservatore Romano English edition [ORE], 25 July 2001, p. 9).

 

To close the issue definitively, the Pontiff submitted all Rosmini's works to examination by the Congregation of the Index. On 3 July 1854, it was decreed: "All the works of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati that have recently been examined are to be dismissed, and this examination in no way detracts from the good name of the author, nor of the religious Society founded by him, nor from his life and singular merits towards the Church" (R. Malone, "Historical Overview of the Rosmini Case", ORE, 25 July 2001, p. 10).

 

Less than a year after this Decree Fr Antonio Rosmini died on 1 July 1855 at Stresa, Italy, at age 58.

Description: Julia Brace article located in Appendix D of the 10th Annual Report of Perkins Institution. Written by Perkins Director S.G. Howe. Continued.

 

Full text: Article Continued:

 

Her ideas of the rights of property were very strong. When anything is presented to her, she will not retain it until she has given it back, and by its being returned, or by some sign of property, she is convinced that it is given to her. Her countenance then exhibits marks of pleasure; she remembers it for months, and will bring forth the present whenever the giver comes. It has been remarked that notwithstanding the state of poverty in which she passed her childhood, when she subsequently brought into houses where tempting articles of food and dress were constantly thrown in her way, she has never been known to take the most trifling object without leave. She was equally tenacious of her own property, and felt deeply any invasion of her rights.

From a child she entertained the idea that the tallest ought to rule; and when shorter persons than herself in the house where she has lived, bade her to do, or not to do anything, she would respectfully let them know that she was the tallest. This idea, it is supposed, she entertained till she was grown taller than her mother; but she has now given up this childish notion.

Dr. Spurzheim, who saw her, says: “From the above-mentioned facts we perceive her love and care of children, her combativeness in punishing her brothers and sisters; her love of approbation, her cautiousness, her acquisitiveness, conscientiousness, reverence, benevolence, order, time, and reflection. She knows the inmates of the institution, and has chosen one girl for her particular friend. She was always fond of childish sports, and of playing tricks on others, in concealing things, or in shutting them up in rooms. When fatigued of being exhibited to strangers, she endeavors to get out of the way. She delights in order, cleanliness and dress. At the day of my visit, her head-dress was most carefully arranged, and it was her own doing. She examines with her hands and the hair dress of other ladies she meets with, and imitates the fashion. Since she has been in the American Institution, only once she was disobedient to the Superintendent, the Rev. Mr. Weld; but being put into a narrow room, she was completely corrected.”

She arrived here the 9th of April, 1842, being nearly thirty-five years old. She seemed to understand perfectly the object of her coming, and to be desirous of learning something in the school with the blind girls. The intelligence matron of the Hartford school accompanied her, and was able to make her comprehend many things by using natural signs. She had a sign for yesterday, tomorrow, for approbation and disapprobation, and for a friend, for the low numbers, and perhaps as high as ten, but about this I am not quite satisfied; at any rate she was possessed of the means of intercourse with deaf and dumb persons, to an extent which must be highly advantageous to her, living, as she does, in a community of them. There is however, about her inexpressive face, and her attitude and demeanor, a certain passivity denoting habitual inattention to external objects, which is a very unfavorable symptom, and which contrasts strongly with the appearance of Laura Bridgman, and Oliver Caswell; they are always on the alert; their spirits seem to be striving to get abroad,-to go out and examine the relations of external things; while Julia is content to sit within, and receive impressions made upon the surface of her body. When left alone she loses consciousness, and lies flat upon her face, sleeping or dozing for hours together. This makes her case very unfavorable; for long inactivity of the perceptive faculties not only prevents their attaining any vigor, but disinclines to mental activity, and incapacitates for its long continuance.

 

Publisher: Perkins Institution, & Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, Boston.

 

Date: 1842

 

Format: text

 

Digital Identifier: AG54-JB-0029

 

Rights: Samuel P. Hayes Research Library, Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA

This description has nothing to do with Jessica, and more with the message she wanted to identify with.

 

Yesterday I found out that a good friend of mine has split up with her husband. I've thought for some time that this would happen. I would like to be passive, but personally, I think that passivity is just another expression of indifference, which is the opposite of love. So as much as it is at odds my "don't take sides" preference, I have decided to stand with my friend. It takes courage and faith to stay in a difficult relationship, but it takes those same qualities to end one. I am proud of my friend for making her choice to end the war.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/24/americas-most-polit...

 

Artomatic For The People, 2017

 

www.artomatic.org/

Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair

Date: 1888/90

Artist: Paul Cézanne

French, 1839-1906

 

www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/arts/design/madame-czanne-at-t...

 

“Be an apple! Be an apple!” Paul Cézanne is said to have admonished his models, demanding absolute stillness and equanimity. “Do I have to tell you again you must sit like an apple?” he told a restless Ambroise Vollard, his dealer, who had fallen asleep in midpose.

In the exhibition “Madame Cézanne,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you sense that Cézanne did not need to give such directives to his wife, otherwise known as Hortense Fiquet. With her glazed eyes and tightly glued mouth, she’s a paragon of patience, passivity and silence.

Including 24 paintings made over a 20-year period, the Met’s intriguing show is the most exhaustive look yet at the woman who shared the painter’s household, bore his son and eventually became his legal spouse (despite his disapproving family) — the woman long dismissed, by the eminent Cézanne scholar John Rewald, among others, as a noninfluence.

The paintings of her have long stonewalled would-be psychologists, offering few indications of intimacy or interior life. (The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, enthusing over “Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair,” focused on the work’s color scheme and called the chair “a personality in its own right.”) But assembled at the Met, in significant quantity, they are more forthcoming. Poring over them, we slowly start to see Madame Cézanne as more person, less apple.

 

We observe small changes of expression from painting to painting, as in two subtly differentiated versions of “Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair” (one from the Fondation Beyeler, the other from the Art Institute of Chicago). In one, she is wary and wide-eyed, as in a portrait by Giacometti (who is known to have made drawings after some of the Madame Cézanne paintings); in the other, she looks distant and pensive.

We also notice intricacies of color, pattern and texture, for which Fiquet — who had a well-documented interest in fashion — may deserve some of the credit. Stripes, ruffles and bows enliven her high-necked ensembles. Cézanne, more than is usual in his portraits, seems to take an interest in these details and in the decorative surroundings — the diamond-motif wallpaper and brocaded chairs — of the couple’s various apartments.

And in two paintings — one from 1873-74, the other from 1890 — we even see her with her hair down in one of Cézanne’s rare concessions to sensuality. Her chestnut strands stream past her shoulders, although the forelocks are tucked neatly behind her ears, and her gaze, as usual, is opaque.

Organized by Dita Amory, a curator of the Met’s Robert Lehman Collection, the show unfolds mainly along two long walls of the Lehman Wing — using the paintings as a shield for the more intimate sketches tucked away in a nearby gallery. This arrangement speaks to the intense privacy of Cézanne’s domestic life; for more than a decade, he kept his relationship with Fiquet a secret from his father, fearing the cutoff of his monthly allowance.

The sketches are especially revealing, and not just because of their informal execution (in graphite in Cézanne’s small sketchbooks). They experiment with less guarded poses. A luscious profile, for instance, softens the subject’s jaw with gentle half-moons of hatching and conveys a sense of total absorption; Madame may be reading or sewing or tending to the couple’s son (whose downy infant head also appears in one sheet of multiple studies).

 

Fiquet is further humanized by the show’s catalog essays (including one by Philippe Cézanne, her great-grandson). They tell us, for instance, that the sense of stasis and permanence in the portraits is very much at odds with the peripatetic reality of the couple’s family life. Cézanne shuttled his companion and their son between homes in Paris and Aix-en-Provence, sometimes living with them and sometimes not, and this arrangement continued even after the marriage.

“Madame Cézanne” also suggests new ways of thinking about Cézanne’s portraiture, which often seems to have little to do with people; it’s another kind of still life (more apples) or a modern interpretation of genre painting, along the lines of “The Card Players.” (A larger show of his portraiture is scheduled to open at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in 2017 and to travel to the National Gallery in Washington.) It says that numbing familiarity was actually, for Cézanne, a form of intimacy; that he could connect with portrait subjects only when they were as reliable a presence in his life as Mont Sainte-Victoire.

And it raises a difficult question that goes beyond the Cézannes’ unconventional relationship: Do successful artists need to be understood by their partners? By most accounts, Fiquet did not really get her husband’s art. It comes as something of a shock to learn, in a catalog essay by the Matisse biographer Hilary Spurling, that she once described Cézanne to Matisse as “an old fool who couldn’t paint.”

But she seems to have supported him in other ways, by enduring both long portrait sessions and long stretches apart. As Cézanne’s great-grandson writes, “It is likely that he would have found a less independent woman unbearable.”

  

Living in Transit: The Thinkers of a World in Turmoil

 

War looms over Europe, uncertainty seeps into everyday life, and the weight of history presses upon the present. The world is burning, and yet—there are those who seek understanding, those who bury themselves in the quiet refuge of books, the dim glow of libraries, the solitude of knowledge.

 

This series captures the introspective minds of young academic women—readers, thinkers, seekers. They wander through old university halls, their fingers tracing the spines of forgotten books, pulling out volumes of poetry, philosophy, and psychology. They drink coffee, they drink tea, they stay up late with ink-stained fingers, trying to decipher the world through words.

 

They turn to Simone Weil for moral clarity, Hannah Arendt for political insight, Rilke for existential wisdom. They read Baudrillard to untangle the illusions of modernity, Byung-Chul Han to understand society’s exhaustion, Camus to grasp the absurdity of it all. They devour Celan’s poetry, searching for beauty in catastrophe.

 

But they do not just read—they reflect, they question, they write. Their world is one of quiet resistance, an intellectual sanctuary amidst the chaos. In their solitude, they are not alone. Across time, across history, across the pages they turn, they are in conversation with those who, too, have sought meaning in troubled times.

 

This is a series about thought in transit—about seeking, reading, questioning, about the relentless pursuit of knowledge when the world feels on the brink.

 

Where the Thinkers Go

 

They gather where the dust has settled,

where books whisper in the hush of halls.

Pages thin as breath, torn at the edges,

cradling centuries of questions.

 

They drink coffee like it’s ink,

trace words like constellations,

follow Rilke into the dusk,

where solitude hums softly in the dark.

 

Outside, the world is fraying—

war threading through the seams of cities,

the weight of history pressing forward.

Inside, they turn pages, searching

for answers, for solace, for fire.

 

And somewhere between the lines,

between time-stained margins and fading ink,

they find the ghosts of others who

once sought, once wondered, once read—

and they do not feel alone.

 

Three Haikus

 

Night falls on paper,

books stacked like silent towers,

thoughts burn in the dark.

 

Tea cools in the cup,

a poem lingers on lips,

war rumbles beyond.

 

Footsteps in silence,

the scent of old ink and dust,

pages turn like ghosts.

 

ooOOOoo

 

Reading as Resistance

 

These young women do not read passively. They underline, they take notes, they write in the margins. They challenge the texts and themselves. They read because the world demands it of them—because, in a time of conflict and uncertainty, thought itself is an act of resistance.

 

Their books are worn, their pages stained with coffee, their minds alive with the urgency of understanding.

 

1. Political Thought, Society & Liberation

Essays, theory and critique on democracy, power and resistance.

 

Chantal Mouffe – For a Left Populism (rethinking democracy through radical left-wing populism)

Nancy Fraser – Cannibal Capitalism (an urgent critique of capitalism’s role in the destruction of democracy, the planet, and social justice)

Étienne Balibar – Citizenship (rethinking the idea of citizenship in an era of migration and inequality)

Silvia Federici – Caliban and the Witch (a feminist Marxist analysis of capitalism and gender oppression)

Didier Eribon – Returning to Reims (a deeply personal sociological reflection on class and identity in contemporary Europe)

Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt – Empire (rethinking global capitalism and resistance from a leftist perspective)

Thomas Piketty – Capital and Ideology (a profound analysis of wealth distribution, inequality, and the future of economic justice)

Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism (on why it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism)

2. Feminist & Queer Theory, Gender & Body Politics

Texts that redefine identity, gender, and liberation in the 21st century.

 

Paul B. Preciado – Testo Junkie (an autobiographical, philosophical essay on gender, hormones, and biopolitics)

Judith Butler – The Force of Nonviolence (rethinking ethics and resistance beyond violence)

Virginie Despentes – King Kong Theory (a raw and radical take on sex, power, and feminism)

Amia Srinivasan – The Right to Sex (rethinking sex, power, and feminism for a new generation)

Laurent de Sutter – Narcocapitalism (on how capitalism exploits our bodies, desires, and emotions)

Sara Ahmed – Living a Feminist Life (a deeply personal and political exploration of what it means to be feminist today)

3. Literature & Poetry of Resistance, Liberation & Exile

European novels, poetry and literature that embrace freedom, revolution, and identity.

 

Annie Ernaux – The Years (a groundbreaking memoir that blends personal and collective history, feminism, and social change)

Olga Tokarczuk – The Books of Jacob (an epic novel about alternative histories, belief systems, and European identity)

Édouard Louis – Who Killed My Father (a deeply political and personal exploration of class struggle and masculinity)

Bernardine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other (a polyphonic novel on race, gender, and identity in contemporary Europe)

Maggie Nelson (though American, widely read in European academia) – On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (a poetic, intellectual meditation on freedom and constraint)

Benjamín Labatut – When We Cease to Understand the World (a deeply philosophical novel on science, war, and moral responsibility)

Michel Houellebecq – Submission (controversial but widely read as a dystopian critique of political passivity in Europe)

4. Ecology, Anti-Capitalism & Posthumanism

Texts that explore the intersections of nature, economics, and radical change.

 

Bruno Latour – Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (rethinking ecology and politics in a world of climate crisis)

Andreas Malm – How to Blow Up a Pipeline (on the ethics of radical environmental resistance)

Emanuele Coccia – The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture (rethinking human and non-human coexistence)

Isabelle Stengers – Another Science is Possible (rethinking knowledge and resistance in an era of corporate science)

Kate Raworth – Doughnut Economics (rethinking economic models for social and ecological justice)

Donna Haraway – Staying with the Trouble (rethinking coexistence and posthumanist futures)

 

The Future of Thought

These are not just books; they are weapons, tools, compasses. These women read not for escapism, but for resistance. In a time of political upheaval, climate catastrophe, and rising authoritarianism, they seek alternative visions, radical possibilities, and new ways of imagining the world.

 

Their books are annotated, their margins filled with questions, their reading lists always expanding. Knowledge is not just power—it is revolution.

More reminders in the red line subway that the cult of the ineloquent, passive amateur is hard at work. "I am waiting in a silent prayer. I am frightened by the load I bear ...?" Jebus!

Another unashamedly pictorialist landscape from Beijing's nearest big mountain, Yangtaishan (1274m). Believe it or not, this is still in Haidian District , though about 30 km north-west of Zhongguancun & Wudaokou.

 

In a spare afternoon, instead of going running to keep fit, you can jump on the subway at 1pm, start on the trail at 2:45, reach the summit ridges by 4:15, be well down the descent path by the time darkness falls at 6:30 pm, and by 9pm be back in a bar in the Beijing Hutong, drinking imported Belgian beer and listening to one of the numerous jazz/folk/punk bands who happen to be playing that night.

 

Decent quality of life is still possible in a metropolis of 15-20 million, even without a car, but it won't be presented to you. Like Shanghai, Beijing is very unforgiving of passivity. Perhaps it's true of all the world's megacities ? Regardless of income, you have to branch out and try to tailor the city into becoming the place you want it to be, otherwise you will be consumed by it.

 

Beijing, Oct 2011, Fuji GA645zi

Acrilico e marker su tela 30 x 40 cm

 

I campi da gioco, di qualsiasi gioco si tratti, sono degli spazi che si possono riempire di speranze, ideali ed energie tali che quanto i giocatori, quanto gli eventuali spettatori, finiscono per influenzare. In questo quadro assistiamo ad un'embrionale umanizzazione e conseguente presa di coscienza da parte di un tabellone di Scarabeo. Esso si scopre essere un paesaggio, un contenitore di situazioni che viene sfruttato passivamente. Le sue palpebre e il suo modo di vedere in generale, vengono influenzati direttamete dalle corna/joystick di questi cybercervi impigriti che ricorrono ad una sfida virtuale invece che ad uno scontro diretto. Nonostante la scarsa intensità dello scontro, l'idealizzazione della vittoria finale viene custodita dall'essere/paesaggio sotto una campana di vetro, in questo caso, il territorio che i due cervi si stanno contendendo.

  

Acrylic and marker on canvas 30 x 40 cm

 

Game fields, of any game we're talking about, are spaces that can be filled of hopes, ideals and energies that will be influenced by the gamers and the audience. In this painting we're attendind at an embryonic and consciousness raising of a Scrabble board. It discovers of being a landscape, a situation container exploited passively. Its eyelids are influenced by horns/joysticks of these two lazy cyberdeers who are challenging eachothers.

Althought the low intensity of the match, idealization of the final victory is garded from the creature/landscape under a bell jar, in this case, we're talking about the territory the two deers are fighting for.

Man, too, becomes perfect only when he has found within himself that absolute calm and passivity of the Brahman and supports by it with the same divine tolerance and the same divine bliss a free and inexhaustible activity. Those who have thus possessed the Calm within can perceive always welling out from its silence the perennial supply of the energies that work in the universe.

 

- Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

Even in a medium that allowed for perfect interactivity for all participants (something we have a reasonable approximation of today), the limits of human cognition will mean that the scale alone will kill conversations. In such a medium, even without any professional bottlenecks or forced passivity, fame happens.

 

Clay Shirky | Here Comes Everybody | p.95

 

www.will-lion.com/digitalbites

  

Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair

Date: 1888/90

Artist: Paul Cézanne

French, 1839-1906

 

www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/arts/design/madame-czanne-at-t...

 

“Be an apple! Be an apple!” Paul Cézanne is said to have admonished his models, demanding absolute stillness and equanimity. “Do I have to tell you again you must sit like an apple?” he told a restless Ambroise Vollard, his dealer, who had fallen asleep in midpose.

In the exhibition “Madame Cézanne,” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you sense that Cézanne did not need to give such directives to his wife, otherwise known as Hortense Fiquet. With her glazed eyes and tightly glued mouth, she’s a paragon of patience, passivity and silence.

Including 24 paintings made over a 20-year period, the Met’s intriguing show is the most exhaustive look yet at the woman who shared the painter’s household, bore his son and eventually became his legal spouse (despite his disapproving family) — the woman long dismissed, by the eminent Cézanne scholar John Rewald, among others, as a noninfluence.

The paintings of her have long stonewalled would-be psychologists, offering few indications of intimacy or interior life. (The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, enthusing over “Madame Cézanne in a Red Armchair,” focused on the work’s color scheme and called the chair “a personality in its own right.”) But assembled at the Met, in significant quantity, they are more forthcoming. Poring over them, we slowly start to see Madame Cézanne as more person, less apple.

 

We observe small changes of expression from painting to painting, as in two subtly differentiated versions of “Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair” (one from the Fondation Beyeler, the other from the Art Institute of Chicago). In one, she is wary and wide-eyed, as in a portrait by Giacometti (who is known to have made drawings after some of the Madame Cézanne paintings); in the other, she looks distant and pensive.

We also notice intricacies of color, pattern and texture, for which Fiquet — who had a well-documented interest in fashion — may deserve some of the credit. Stripes, ruffles and bows enliven her high-necked ensembles. Cézanne, more than is usual in his portraits, seems to take an interest in these details and in the decorative surroundings — the diamond-motif wallpaper and brocaded chairs — of the couple’s various apartments.

And in two paintings — one from 1873-74, the other from 1890 — we even see her with her hair down in one of Cézanne’s rare concessions to sensuality. Her chestnut strands stream past her shoulders, although the forelocks are tucked neatly behind her ears, and her gaze, as usual, is opaque.

Organized by Dita Amory, a curator of the Met’s Robert Lehman Collection, the show unfolds mainly along two long walls of the Lehman Wing — using the paintings as a shield for the more intimate sketches tucked away in a nearby gallery. This arrangement speaks to the intense privacy of Cézanne’s domestic life; for more than a decade, he kept his relationship with Fiquet a secret from his father, fearing the cutoff of his monthly allowance.

The sketches are especially revealing, and not just because of their informal execution (in graphite in Cézanne’s small sketchbooks). They experiment with less guarded poses. A luscious profile, for instance, softens the subject’s jaw with gentle half-moons of hatching and conveys a sense of total absorption; Madame may be reading or sewing or tending to the couple’s son (whose downy infant head also appears in one sheet of multiple studies).

 

Fiquet is further humanized by the show’s catalog essays (including one by Philippe Cézanne, her great-grandson). They tell us, for instance, that the sense of stasis and permanence in the portraits is very much at odds with the peripatetic reality of the couple’s family life. Cézanne shuttled his companion and their son between homes in Paris and Aix-en-Provence, sometimes living with them and sometimes not, and this arrangement continued even after the marriage.

“Madame Cézanne” also suggests new ways of thinking about Cézanne’s portraiture, which often seems to have little to do with people; it’s another kind of still life (more apples) or a modern interpretation of genre painting, along the lines of “The Card Players.” (A larger show of his portraiture is scheduled to open at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in 2017 and to travel to the National Gallery in Washington.) It says that numbing familiarity was actually, for Cézanne, a form of intimacy; that he could connect with portrait subjects only when they were as reliable a presence in his life as Mont Sainte-Victoire.

And it raises a difficult question that goes beyond the Cézannes’ unconventional relationship: Do successful artists need to be understood by their partners? By most accounts, Fiquet did not really get her husband’s art. It comes as something of a shock to learn, in a catalog essay by the Matisse biographer Hilary Spurling, that she once described Cézanne to Matisse as “an old fool who couldn’t paint.”

But she seems to have supported him in other ways, by enduring both long portrait sessions and long stretches apart. As Cézanne’s great-grandson writes, “It is likely that he would have found a less independent woman unbearable.”

  

The photographs of Samir Delic look at different women’s characters, placing them one towards the other as contradictions, re-examining differences of their nature. The photographs re-examine a symbolic border between movement and illusory passivity, between the strength of a personality and shadow, or its reflection.

 

The woman in Delic’s photographs is also a strong individual, who separates herself from numerous unclear shadows, and also a woman’s shadow in hot asphalt or a shadow giving her hands towards a man’s silhouette, larger and stronger; and an uninterested passer-by for political happenings and everyday, and also the one who participates in peace protests or devotes herself for labour rights.

 

Sometimes, it is just a traditional veil with no face, sometimes a young face framed by the veil. In these photographs, there is also a Sanjak woman who speaks even when she is just the shadow or the reflection, who speaks with her traditional clothing and her permanent movement, and with her youth and when her face symbolically alludes to mother Earth, with her face burst by a drought.

Nadija Rebronja

 

Samir Delic was born 1966th In Novi Pazar. Since 1988 working as a photographer for local media and later for the weekly Vreme. Today working as a newspaper photographer freelancer for agencies Beta and The Associated Press, UNDP PRO program, www.e-novine.com and several daily newspapers in the country and region. Article NUNS and the IFJ's. He has exhibited in several collective exhibitions. This is his third solo exhibition.

    

Photo: Samir delic

Maurício ouvindo o discurso de Martin Luther King, quando ele recebeu o nobel da paz na Noruega em 1964. O discurso tem a duraçao de 11 minutos e faz uma dura crítica aos governantes e ao próprio prêmio, pois cita que enquanto todos estão lá bem vestidos e com comida farta, negros em todo mundo estão morrendo de fome, etc, etc. Ficar 11 minutos, ouvindo o discurso desse cara numa sala sem ninguém foi algo único na minha vida.

Leiam o discurso do cara abaixo:

Acceptance Speech

 

Martin Luther King's Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1964

 

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

 

I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice. I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

 

Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.

 

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time - - the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

 

The tortuous road which has led from Montgomery, Alabama to Oslo bears witness to this truth. This is a road over which millions of Negroes are travelling to find a new sense of dignity. This same road has opened for all Americans a new era of progress and hope. It has led to a new Civil Rights Bill, and it will, I am convinced, be widened and lengthened into a super highway of justice as Negro and white men in increasing numbers create alliances to overcome their common problems.

 

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

 

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." I still believe that We Shall overcome!

 

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.

 

Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed dedication to humanity. I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood. I say I come as a trustee, for in the depths of my heart I am aware that this prize is much more than an honor to me personally.

 

Every time I take a flight, I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible - the known pilots and the unknown ground crew.

 

So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honor, once again, Chief Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and for his people, are still met with the most brutal expression of man's inhumanity to man. You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth. Most of these people will never make the headline and their names will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvellous age in which we live - men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization - because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake.

 

I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners - all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty - and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.

 

From Les Prix Nobel en 1964, Editor Göran Liljestrand, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1965

N achei o audio desse discurso, mas abaixo vai o mais importante deles:

"I have a dream..." speech:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk

Young Woman at her Toilette, 1515

At an alreadey advanced age, Bellini turned to the depiction of a new, "modern" theme, the female nude. I a balanced interplay of warm and cool colours, round and rectangular forms, proximity and distance, activity and passivity, the painter of the Madonna pays homage to the sight of a young woman. Absorbed in her own reflection, she embodies at the same time the act of contemplation. Yet the actual subject of the painting is beauty and the creative power of painting.

 

Giovanni Bellini (um 1430-1516), tätig in Venedig

Junge Frau bei der Toilette, 1515

Als schon hochbetagter Mann wandte sich Bellini der Darstellung eines neuen, "modernen" Themas zu, der weiblichen Aktfigur. In einem ausgewogenen Wechselspiel von warmen und kühlen Farben, runden und eckigen Formen, von Nähe und Ferne, von Tun und Passivität, huldigt der Madonnenmaler dem Anblick einer jungen Frau. Versunken in ihr Spiegelbild, wird sie zugleich zum Inbegriff kontemplativer Betrachtung. Das eigentliche Thema des Werkes aber ist die Schönheit und schöpferische Kraft der Malerei.

 

Austria Kunsthistorisches Museum

Federal Museum

Logo KHM

Regulatory authority (ies)/organs to the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture

Founded 17 October 1891

Headquartered Castle Ring (Burgring), Vienna 1, Austria

Management Sabine Haag

www.khm.at website

Main building of the Kunsthistorisches Museum at Maria-Theresa-Square

The Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM abbreviated) is an art museum in Vienna. It is one of the largest and most important museums in the world. It was opened in 1891 and 2012 visited of 1.351.940 million people.

The museum

The Kunsthistorisches Museum is with its opposite sister building, the Natural History Museum (Naturhistorisches Museum), the most important historicist large buildings of the Ringstrasse time. Together they stand around the Maria Theresa square, on which also the Maria Theresa monument stands. This course spans the former glacis between today's ring road and 2-line, and is forming a historical landmark that also belongs to World Heritage Site Historic Centre of Vienna.

History

Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in his Gallery

The Museum came from the collections of the Habsburgs, especially from the portrait and armor collections of Ferdinand of Tyrol, the collection of Emperor Rudolf II (most of which, however scattered) and the art collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm into existence. Already In 1833 asked Joseph Arneth, curator (and later director) of the Imperial Coins and Antiquities Cabinet, bringing together all the imperial collections in a single building .

Architectural History

The contract to build the museum in the city had been given in 1858 by Emperor Franz Joseph. Subsequently, many designs were submitted for the ring road zone. Plans by August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Null planned to build two museum buildings in the immediate aftermath of the Imperial Palace on the left and right of the Heroes' Square (Heldenplatz). The architect Ludwig Förster planned museum buildings between the Schwarzenberg Square and the City Park, Martin Ritter von Kink favored buildings at the corner Währingerstraße/ Scots ring (Schottenring), Peter Joseph, the area Bellariastraße, Moritz von Loehr the south side of the opera ring, and Ludwig Zettl the southeast side of the grain market (Getreidemarkt).

From 1867, a competition was announced for the museums, and thereby set their current position - at the request of the Emperor, the museum should not be too close to the Imperial Palace, but arise beyond the ring road. The architect Carl von Hasenauer participated in this competition and was able the at that time in Zürich operating Gottfried Semper to encourage to work together. The two museum buildings should be built here in the sense of the style of the Italian Renaissance. The plans got the benevolence of the imperial family. In April 1869, there was an audience with of Joseph Semper at the Emperor Franz Joseph and an oral contract was concluded, in July 1870 was issued the written order to Semper and Hasenauer.

Crucial for the success of Semper and Hasenauer against the projects of other architects were among others Semper's vision of a large building complex called "Imperial Forum", in which the museums would have been a part of. Not least by the death of Semper in 1879 came the Imperial Forum not as planned for execution, the two museums were built, however.

Construction of the two museums began without ceremony on 27 November 1871 instead. Semper moved to Vienna in the sequence. From the beginning, there were considerable personal differences between him and Hasenauer, who finally in 1877 took over sole construction management. 1874, the scaffolds were placed up to the attic and the first floor completed, built in 1878, the first windows installed in 1879, the Attica and the balustrade from 1880 to 1881 and built the dome and the Tabernacle. The dome is topped with a bronze statue of Pallas Athena by Johannes Benk.

The lighting and air conditioning concept with double glazing of the ceilings made ​​the renunciation of artificial light (especially at that time, as gas light) possible, but this resulted due to seasonal variations depending on daylight to different opening times .

Kuppelhalle

Entrance (by clicking the link at the end of the side you can see all the pictures here indicated!)

Grand staircase

Hall

Empire

The Kunsthistorisches Museum was on 17 October 1891 officially opened by Emperor Franz Joseph I. Since 22 October 1891 , the museum is accessible to the public. Two years earlier, on 3 November 1889, the collection of arms, Arms and Armour today, had their doors open. On 1 January 1890 the library service resumed its operations. The merger and listing of other collections of the Highest Imperial Family from the Upper and Lower Belvedere, the Hofburg Palace and Ambras in Tyrol will need another two years.

189, the farm museum was organized in seven collections with three directorates:

Directorate of coins, medals and antiquities collection

The Egyptian Collection

The Antique Collection

The coins and medals collection

Management of the collection of weapons, art and industrial objects

Weapons collection

Collection of industrial art objects

Directorate of Art Gallery and Restaurieranstalt (Restoration Office)

Collection of watercolors, drawings, sketches, etc.

Restoration Office

Library

Very soon the room the Court Museum (Hofmuseum) for the imperial collections was offering became too narrow. To provide temporary help, an exhibition of ancient artifacts from Ephesus in the Theseus Temple was designed. However, additional space had to be rented in the Lower Belvedere.

1914, after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne, his " Estonian Forensic Collection " passed to the administration of the Court Museum. This collection, which emerged from the art collection of the house of d' Este and world travel collection of Franz Ferdinand, was placed in the New Imperial Palace since 1908. For these stocks, the present collection of old musical instruments and the Museum of Ethnology emerged.

The First World War went by, apart from the oppressive economic situation without loss. The farm museum remained during the five years of war regularly open to the public.

Until 1919 the K.K. Art Historical Court Museum was under the authority of the Oberstkämmereramt (head chamberlain office) and belonged to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine. The officials and employees were part of the royal household.

First Republic

The transition from monarchy to republic, in the museum took place in complete tranquility. On 19 November 1918 the two imperial museums on Maria Theresa Square were placed under the state protection of the young Republic of German Austria. Threatening to the stocks of the museum were the claims raised in the following weeks and months of the "successor states" of the monarchy as well as Italy and Belgium on Austrian art collection. In fact, it came on 12th February 1919 to the violent removal of 62 paintings by armed Italian units. This "art theft" left a long time trauma among curators and art historians.

It was not until the Treaty of Saint-Germain of 10 September 1919, providing in Article 195 and 196 the settlement of rights in the cultural field by negotiations. The claims of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Italy again could mostly being averted in this way. Only Hungary, which presented the greatest demands by far, was met by more than ten years of negotiation in 147 cases.

On 3 April 1919 was the expropriation of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine by law and the acquisition of its property, including the "Collections of the Imperial House" , by the Republic. Of 18 June 1920 the then provisional administration of the former imperial museums and collections of Este and the secular and clergy treasury passed to the State Office of Internal Affairs and Education, since 10 November 1920, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Education. A few days later it was renamed the Art History Court Museum in the "Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna State", 1921 "Kunsthistorisches Museum" . Of 1st January 1921 the employees of the museum staff passed to the state of the Republic.

Through the acquisition of the former imperial collections owned by the state, the museum found itself in a complete new situation. In order to meet the changed circumstances in the museum area, designed Hans Tietze in 1919 the "Vienna Museum program". It provided a close cooperation between the individual museums to focus at different houses on main collections. So dominated exchange, sales and equalizing the acquisition policy in the interwar period. Thus resulting until today still valid collection trends. Also pointing the way was the relocation of the weapons collection from 1934 in its present premises in the New Castle, where since 1916 the collection of ancient musical instruments was placed.

With the change of the imperial collections in the ownership of the Republic the reorganization of the internal organization went hand in hand, too. Thus the museum was divided in 1919 into the Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection (with the Oriental coins)

Collection of Classical Antiquities

Collection of ancient coins

Collection of modern coins and medals

Weapons collection

Collection of sculptures and crafts with the Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments

Picture Gallery

The Museum 1938-1945

Count Philipp Ludwig Wenzel Sinzendorf according to Rigaud. Clarisse 1948 by Baroness de Rothschildt "dedicated" to the memory of Baron Alphonse de Rothschildt; restituted to the Rothschilds in 1999, and in 1999 donated by Bettina Looram Rothschild, the last Austrian heiress.

With the "Anschluss" of Austria to the German Reich all Jewish art collections such as the Rothschilds were forcibly "Aryanised". Collections were either "paid" or simply distributed by the Gestapo at the museums. This resulted in a significant increase in stocks. But the KHM was not the only museum that benefited from the linearization. Systematically looted Jewish property was sold to museums, collections or in pawnshops throughout the empire.

After the war, the museum struggled to reimburse the "Aryanised" art to the owners or their heirs. They forced the Rothschild family to leave the most important part of their own collection to the museum and called this "dedications", or "donations". As a reason, was the export law stated, which does not allow owners to perform certain works of art out of the country. Similar methods were used with other former owners. Only on the basis of international diplomatic and media pressure, to a large extent from the United States, the Austrian government decided to make a change in the law (Art Restitution Act of 1998, the so-called Lex Rothschild). The art objects were the Rothschild family refunded only in the 1990s.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum operates on the basis of the federal law on the restitution of art objects from the 4th December 1998 (Federal Law Gazette I, 181 /1998) extensive provenance research. Even before this decree was carried out in-house provenance research at the initiative of the then archive director Herbert Haupt. This was submitted in 1998 by him in collaboration with Lydia Grobl a comprehensive presentation of the facts about the changes in the inventory levels of the Kunsthistorisches Museum during the Nazi era and in the years leading up to the State Treaty of 1955, an important basis for further research provenance.

The two historians Susanne Hehenberger and Monika Löscher are since 1st April 2009 as provenance researchers at the Kunsthistorisches Museum on behalf of the Commission for Provenance Research operating and they deal with the investigation period from 1933 to the recent past.

The museum today

Today the museum is as a federal museum, with 1st January 1999 released to the full legal capacity - it was thus the first of the state museums of Austria, implementing the far-reaching self-financing. It is by far the most visited museum in Austria with 1.3 million visitors (2007).

The Kunsthistorisches Museum is under the name Kunsthistorisches Museum and Museum of Ethnology and the Austrian Theatre Museum with company number 182081t since 11 June 1999 as a research institution under public law of the Federal virtue of the Federal Museums Act, Federal Law Gazette I/115/1998 and the Museum of Procedure of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and Museum of Ethnology and the Austrian Theatre Museum, 3 January 2001, BGBl II 2/ 2001, in force since 1 January 2001, registered.

In fiscal 2008, the turnover was 37.185 million EUR and total assets amounted to EUR 22.204 million. In 2008 an average of 410 workers were employed.

Management

1919-1923: Gustav Glück as the first chairman of the College of science officials

1924-1933: Hermann Julius Hermann 1924-1925 as the first chairman of the College of the scientific officers in 1925 as first director

1933: Arpad Weixlgärtner first director

1934-1938: Alfred Stix first director

1938-1945: Fritz Dworschak 1938 as acting head, from 1938 as a chief in 1941 as first director

1945-1949: August von Loehr 1945-1948 as executive director of the State Art Collections in 1949 as general director of the historical collections of the Federation

1945-1949: Alfred Stix 1945-1948 as executive director of the State Art Collections in 1949 as general director of art historical collections of the Federation

1949-1950: Hans Demel as administrative director

1950: Karl Wisoko-Meytsky as general director of art and historical collections of the Federation

1951-1952: Fritz Eichler as administrative director

1953-1954: Ernst H. Buschbeck as administrative director

1955-1966: Vincent Oberhammer 1955-1959 as administrative director, from 1959 as first director

1967: Edward Holzmair as managing director

1968-1972: Erwin Auer first director

1973-1981: Friderike Klauner first director

1982-1990: Hermann Fillitz first director

1990: George Kugler as interim first director

1990-2008: Wilfried Seipel as general director

2009-2019: Sabine Haag as general director

2019– : Eike Schmidt (art historian, designated)

Collections

To the Kunsthistorisches Museum are also belonging the collections of the New Castle, the Austrian Theatre Museum in Palais Lobkowitz, the Museum of Ethnology and the Wagenburg (wagon fortress) in an outbuilding of Schönbrunn Palace. A branch office is also Ambras in Innsbruck.

Kunsthistorisches Museum (main building)

Picture Gallery

Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection

Collection of Classical Antiquities

Vienna Chamber of Art

Numismatic Collection

Library

New Castle

Ephesus Museum

Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments

Arms and Armour

Archive

Hofburg

The imperial crown in the Treasury

Imperial Treasury of Vienna

Insignia of the Austrian Hereditary Homage

Insignia of imperial Austria

Insignia of the Holy Roman Empire

Burgundian Inheritance and the Order of the Golden Fleece

Habsburg-Lorraine Household Treasure

Ecclesiastical Treasury

Schönbrunn Palace

Imperial Carriage Museum Vienna

Armory in Ambras Castle

Ambras Castle

Collections of Ambras Castle

Major exhibits

Among the most important exhibits of the Art Gallery rank inter alia:

Jan van Eyck: Cardinal Niccolò Albergati, 1438

Martin Schongauer: Holy Family, 1475-80

Albrecht Dürer : Trinity Altar, 1509-16

Portrait Johann Kleeberger, 1526

Parmigianino: Self Portrait in Convex Mirror, 1523/24

Giuseppe Arcimboldo: Summer 1563

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio: Madonna of the Rosary 1606/ 07

Caravaggio: Madonna of the Rosary (1606-1607)

Titian: Nymph and Shepherd to 1570-75

Portrait of Jacopo de Strada, 1567/68

Raffaello Santi: Madonna of the Meadow, 1505 /06

Lorenzo Lotto: Portrait of a young man against white curtain, 1508

Peter Paul Rubens: The altar of St. Ildefonso, 1630-32

The Little Fur, about 1638

Jan Vermeer: The Art of Painting, 1665/66

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Fight between Carnival and Lent, 1559

Kids, 1560

Tower of Babel, 1563

Christ Carrying the Cross, 1564

Gloomy Day (Early Spring), 1565

Return of the Herd (Autumn), 1565

Hunters in the Snow (Winter) 1565

Bauer and bird thief, 1568

Peasant Wedding, 1568/69

Peasant Dance, 1568/69

Paul's conversion (Conversion of St Paul), 1567

Cabinet of Curiosities:

Saliera from Benvenuto Cellini 1539-1543

Egyptian-Oriental Collection:

Mastaba of Ka Ni Nisut

Collection of Classical Antiquities:

Gemma Augustea

Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós

Gallery: Major exhibits

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunsthistorisches_Museum

When we woke up after our house warming party, we discovered that it had been snowing a bit, and here's the result on the edge of our balcony. Snow is still a bit of an issue now as streets are covered with ice. When it actually melts I expect some floods in the areas where it snowed most. As usual, the government blames a meteorology organisation for not giving proper information as the population is pretty angry by the government's passivity. I mean, it's not like it snows every year and sand can't be thrown on the roads and pavements...

No amount of intellectual brilliance can compensate for passivity of attention. It controls perceptual processes. It lets us deceive ourselves and is the source of denial. Iona Miller.

Walking past this protest was a jolt to my conscious. Later on, I was surprised to read that Tel Aviv's Mayor was thumbs-up for the cause. What? Really? He said the housing protest was "justified and worthy" and commented heavily on the general immorality of leaving "housing issues up to the forces of the market." Obviously these are comments from a politician, but I am amazed anyway. I guess I've been steeped in "Bill Gates' Grant Money Will Fix It" passivity for a long long time.

Here's hoping they don't solve the problem with bullshit no-$-down, unregulated adjustable rate mortgages.

Original title: L'Oiseleur accordant sa guitare (a bird catcher tunes his guitar)

 

The painting shows a young The Birdcatcher who, after returning from a hunt, tunes a guitar. The work is full of allusions and hidden meanings. In the iconographic tradition, dating back to the 16th century, the The Birdcatcher surrounded by hunting attributes was understood as an image of a seducer, a lover hunting for a woman's virtue. Greuze quite often showed young women with dead birds, which - according to the then famous writer and art critic Denis Diderot - was a reference to lost virginity and honor. Returning from a successful hunt and tuning the guitar should be interpreted as preparing the seducer for the next love hunt, because the guitar was treated in the modern tradition as one of the attributes of love.

Guitar Player is an exceptional picture in Greuze's work. It was created in the years 1755–1757, during the painter's stay in Rome. Following the example of all the great artists of the modern period, Greuze went on a Grand Tour to Italy to get to know the famous works of art and the places where they were made. The painting was exhibited after the artist's return, at the Paris Salon in 1757, along with a group of works created during this stay. Among the works shown is the painting "The Lazy Italian" (Wadsworth Atheneum of Art, Hartford), which is a pendant to the Warsaw work. Critics at that time included both paintings in the group of bambochades (it. Greuze, in the period preceding his study trip to Rome, got to know Dutch and Flemish art of the 17th century, mainly on the basis of engravings. The message of the Warsaw "Guitar Player" should be considered in the context of the aforementioned composition "Lazy Italian", as both images create an opposition between male and female sexuality, activity and passivity, between the hunter and the victim. Due to the accumulation of symbolic objects, they illustrate two deadly sins: lust and laziness. Throughout his work, Greuze strongly emphasized the function of art as an ethical instruction. He referred to the trend of moral reconstruction of society, which was very popular in painting and French literature in the 18th century, by stigmatizing sins that lead to the loss of human dignity. In his understanding, art was to show people the tragic consequences of bad deeds, awake consciences and ennoble people. [Iwona Danielewicz]

 

Source: Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie

 

cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl/en/catalog/507209

 

Jean Baptiste Greuze was a French painter best known for his portraits, genre scenes, and history paintings. Greuze’s work was known for having sentimental and sometimes titillating subject matter, as well as for its formal combination of Rococo and Dutch Realist styles. Born on August 21, 1725 in Tournus, France, Greuze studied with Charles Grandon in Lyon and later at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris. He would go on to apply to be a member of the Académie in Paris with mixed success, having applied with history paintings but only granted acceptance as a genre painter. Ultimately, Greuze’s marriage proved to be his downfall, since his wife both cheated on him and embezzled his money before their divorce. By the end of his life, Greuze, whose work had commanded some of the highest prices in France during the 1760s and 1770s, was nearly bankrupt. Today, his works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Louvre Museum in Paris, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others. Greuze died on March 4, 1805 in Paris, France.

 

Source: Artnet

 

www.artnet.com/artists/jean-baptiste-greuze/

repetiton or re- enact

 

Repetition compulsion is a psychological phenomenon in which a person repeats a traumatic event or its circumstances over and over again. This includes reenacting the event or putting oneself in situations where the event is likely to happen again. This "re-living" can also take the form of dreams in which memories and feelings of what happened are repeated, and even hallucination.

 

The term can also be used to cover the repetition of behaviour or life patterns more broadly: a 'key component in Freud's understanding of mental life, "repetition compulsion"...describes the pattern whereby people endlessly repeat patterns of behaviour which were difficult or distressing in earlier life'

 

Sigmund Freud's use of the concept was 'articulated...for the first time, in the article of 1914, Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durcharbeiten ('Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through' . Here he noted how 'the patient does not remember anything of what he has forgotten and repressed, he acts it out, without, of course, knowing that he is repeating it....Fot instance, the patient does not say that he remembers that he used to be defiant and critical toward his parents' authority; instead, he behaves in that way to the doctor'.

 

He explored the repetition compulsion further in his 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, describing four aspects of repetitive behavior, all of which seemed to him problematic from the point of view of the mind's quest for pleasure/avoidance of unpleasure.

 

The first was the way 'dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses have the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the patient back into the situation of his accident' rather than, for example, 'show[ing] the patient pictures from his healthy past'.

 

The second came from children's play. Freud reported observing a child throw his favorite toy from his crib, become upset at the loss, then reel the toy back in, only to repeat this action. Freud theorized that the child was attempting to master the sensation of loss 'in allowing his mother to go away without protesting', but asked in puzzlement 'How then does his repetition of this distressing experience as a game fit in with the pleasure principle?'

 

The third was the way (noted in 1914) that the patient, exploring in therapy a repressed past, 'is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of...remembering it as something belonging to the past....the compulsion to repeat the events of his childhood in the transference evidently disreagrds the pleasure principle in every way'.

 

The fourth was the so-called "destiny neurosis", manifested in 'the life-histories of men and women...[as] an essential character-trait which remains always the same and which is compelled to find expression in a repetition of the same experience].

 

All such activities appeared to Freud to contradict the organism's search for pleasure, and therefore 'to justify the hypothesis of a compulsion to repeat - something that seems more primitive, more elementary, more instinctual than the pleasure principle which it over-rides'. Following this line of thought, he would come to stress that ' an instinct is an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things '; and so to arrive eventually at his concept of the death drive.

 

Along the way, however, Freud had in addition considered a variety of more purely psychological explanations for the phenomena of the repetition compulsion which he had observed. Traumatic repetitions could be seen as the result of an attempt to retrospectively "master" the original trauma, a child's play as an attempt to turn passivity into activity: 'At the outset he was in a passive situation...but by repeating it, unpleasurable though it was, as a game, he took on an active part'.

 

At the same time, the repetition of unpleasant experiences in analysis could be considered 'unpleasure for one system [the ego] and simultaneously satisfaction for the other[the id]. In the second edition of 1921, he extended the point, stating explicitly that transference repetitions 'are of course the activities of instincts intended to lead to satisfaction; but no lesson has been learnt from the old experience of these activities having led only to unpleasure'.

 

Five years later, in Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety, he would quietly revise his earlier definition - 'There is no need to be discouraged by these emendations...so long as they enrich rather than invalidate our earlier views' - in his new formula on 'the power of the compulsion to repeat - the attraction exerted by the unconscious prototypes upon the repressed instinctual process'

   

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14-8-03.

All India Students Association (AISA) .

Commuanl 'Tandav' is the Saffron Tradition ! .

On 15 August, Narendra Modi plans a host ofHindu Karmakands, culnUnating in a 'Shlv Tandav Nritya' in Gujarat --in triumphant .

.

assertation that, in Gujarat at least, the 'Hindu Rashtra' is here. No doubt, this 'Independence Day Tandav' is meant to remind us ofthe .

.

RSS-BJP's Tandav ofcommunal devastation that consumed the lives ofthousands ofinnocents last year. .

.

For the RSS-BJP-ABVP, 'nationalism' only means communalism and fascism. We would like to ask the ABVP .

--Whynotbe like the"'Hero Modi, and hoist the "Bhagwa Dhwaj" (Saffron Flag) instead ofthe tricolour on15th August? Is itnot true .

.

-thatthe RSS refused to accept the tricolour as the national flag ? .

--ThatRSS' Guru Golwalkar, in 1949, gave an undertaking to be loyal to the Constitution oflndia, and respect the national flag, only .

.

to get the government to lift the ban on the RSS ? .. .

.

~1'hat, despite this, Golwalkar wrote In 1966 (Bunch of Thoughts), that adopting the tricolour Instead of the Bhagwa .

-Can the ABVP deny that, till 2years back, Itwas the RSS practice to hoistthe Bhagwa Dhwa), not the tricolour on 15 Aug.? 1 .

Dhwajwas a case of"drifting and Imitating" and reflection of "utter void, utter vaccum In our minds"! .

A BriefOverview ofRSS 'Nationalism' .

To the average Indian, British rule symbolised colonial plunder and repression. From 1857 to 1947, the moving spirit ofpatriotism was .

the determined urge to overthrow the imperialist British rule. But wha,t did the RSS think of anti-Imperialist nationalism? .

Golwalkar, in 'Bunch ofThoughts', commented that equatingpatriotism, nationalism, and freedom movement with anti-British .

movements was a "reactionary view (that) bas bad disastrous effects upon the entire course ofthe freedom movement". .

.

Ofcourse, anti-imperialist, secular nationalism does have a ..disastrous" effect on communal Hindu Rashtra ! .

In 1942, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was arrested at a protest in Batcshwar, and, in order to secure his release, stated in writing, that he was .

When the freedom .

elya bystander, not a participant and disclosed the names ofthose who had led the protest to the police. .

.

, .

fightenweredefying British lawsand going to thejails, theHomeDepartment issued the following good conduct .

In 1942 Itself. what did the British have to say about the RSS ? .

certificate to the RSS: " ....The Sangh has, as a general rule, taken care to keep on the right side ofthe law and .

.,.. · .clata with the authority". The ONLY exception to the passivity, according to the same report, was .

Thus, obeying the British colonial laws and attacking minorities--was the essence ofSanghi"nationalism"..

; ..

&· ··IU·il·.iii.

~-~tbeirighly communal nature orthe organisation," due to which " Its members involved in communal riots". .

The same continues today : now the RSS-BJP bow down to imperialist economic policy imposed by the IMF-WB-WTO. They are .

too eager to surrender before Bush and Blair, and, according to a US defence report it is seriously considering ways to allow the US .

to establish military and naval basis ln Indiansoil and oceans rIt sells out India's freedom and sovereignty, and assaults our secular and .

democratic fabric. And, in order to mask such betrayals, it attempts to cash in on and communalise peoples' genuine nationalist urge! .

.

What Is the Real Test ofNationalism? .

IDdia, today, like most former colonies, faces an onslaught ofneo-colonial economic policies, which are starving and pauperising its .

ftl!lfmles aod mortgaging its resounes to foreign MNC's. In our nation, can anyone who fails to resist this onslaupt, and defend -... ' lndla'asoverelpty,deserve tobecalled nationalist? TheBJP, u well as most ruling class parties who welcome rather than resistneo-.

colonial eccmomic polocies, are, by this defmition, anti-national. .

A fe.w days ago, the Indian Expreu carried a alossy arti(:le titled "Freedom From Shortaae" .The article claimed that liberaliation bad usbcred in .

etc....'l'bia lrticla,.~insthe mind.aet ofthe BJP, Congress andthe other ruling parties, is acrueljokeon 'nationalism~andJefelca total .

"'ecowld fie~llom lb'Uagle", iD which Indian consumers were being "freed tiom the shortage" of scooten, can, bikes, mobile phoaes .

-seiattiriiY..Jtmekes no mention that liberalizaton ia killing poor Indians for "shortage" ofjobs, food and water! .

.

crutches, in tattered clothing, strugg~gt() his fee_t to sta~~htattention .

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m-pourmg xam u the adoilalanthem plays on the radio. Some-wmaU boot-poliab boysieelilni.and followbis exmple. Avoice says-.

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.

.

.

Respect for the national anthem, respect for the nation... II .;'atlonaJism only about "respeet" ror symbols? Shouldn't every .

~:.J.'ndlaa uk-"Why, alter 56 yean liace 1947, aretlaoasaada l1ke the old man Ia the ad-ftlm deprived ofdothfnaand .

..........,WhvareDaDchDdraforced to work, IDitead of'.beiD&Iree to.atudy?" .

aDdf!nr· ~erthe pn~entmlinW)i'loflnclia -beitthe BJP orCongnu-with its set ofpro-imperialist .

.

· ·~ .· .

,~,..IJUIIa wu0111 Ia.....the 90% majority oftoWaa mase1 would have a real share Ia the .

;cu,t.h~ 'fiiJo olfCt!ti~-,~~againaelHQa oatdleardl,enclence ofthe country. Trulywe needto infUse BhaptSinah'sspirit .

~_....,.,--'ant¥:1iidillteiOUI'Oa. 11wellu toleCIDariahtfbllhale iD.power_for India's poor ......._ui ~fad'dlatthlll'lllltoceto the bii~9Delauptcaabeonly .

dtothiatuk.

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-···~~ ·'-·~· .. -. -.

Sdi·IDarAJI'in\ttJ. Gem. Sec..AISA. J .

.

 

Living in Transit: The Thinkers of a World in Turmoil

 

War looms over Europe, uncertainty seeps into everyday life, and the weight of history presses upon the present. The world is burning, and yet—there are those who seek understanding, those who bury themselves in the quiet refuge of books, the dim glow of libraries, the solitude of knowledge.

 

This series captures the introspective minds of young academic women—readers, thinkers, seekers. They wander through old university halls, their fingers tracing the spines of forgotten books, pulling out volumes of poetry, philosophy, and psychology. They drink coffee, they drink tea, they stay up late with ink-stained fingers, trying to decipher the world through words.

 

They turn to Simone Weil for moral clarity, Hannah Arendt for political insight, Rilke for existential wisdom. They read Baudrillard to untangle the illusions of modernity, Byung-Chul Han to understand society’s exhaustion, Camus to grasp the absurdity of it all. They devour Celan’s poetry, searching for beauty in catastrophe.

 

But they do not just read—they reflect, they question, they write. Their world is one of quiet resistance, an intellectual sanctuary amidst the chaos. In their solitude, they are not alone. Across time, across history, across the pages they turn, they are in conversation with those who, too, have sought meaning in troubled times.

 

This is a series about thought in transit—about seeking, reading, questioning, about the relentless pursuit of knowledge when the world feels on the brink.

 

Where the Thinkers Go

 

They gather where the dust has settled,

where books whisper in the hush of halls.

Pages thin as breath, torn at the edges,

cradling centuries of questions.

 

They drink coffee like it’s ink,

trace words like constellations,

follow Rilke into the dusk,

where solitude hums softly in the dark.

 

Outside, the world is fraying—

war threading through the seams of cities,

the weight of history pressing forward.

Inside, they turn pages, searching

for answers, for solace, for fire.

 

And somewhere between the lines,

between time-stained margins and fading ink,

they find the ghosts of others who

once sought, once wondered, once read—

and they do not feel alone.

 

Three Haikus

 

Night falls on paper,

books stacked like silent towers,

thoughts burn in the dark.

 

Tea cools in the cup,

a poem lingers on lips,

war rumbles beyond.

 

Footsteps in silence,

the scent of old ink and dust,

pages turn like ghosts.

 

ooOOOoo

 

Reading as Resistance

 

These young women do not read passively. They underline, they take notes, they write in the margins. They challenge the texts and themselves. They read because the world demands it of them—because, in a time of conflict and uncertainty, thought itself is an act of resistance.

 

Their books are worn, their pages stained with coffee, their minds alive with the urgency of understanding.

 

1. Political Thought, Society & Liberation

Essays, theory and critique on democracy, power and resistance.

 

Chantal Mouffe – For a Left Populism (rethinking democracy through radical left-wing populism)

Nancy Fraser – Cannibal Capitalism (an urgent critique of capitalism’s role in the destruction of democracy, the planet, and social justice)

Étienne Balibar – Citizenship (rethinking the idea of citizenship in an era of migration and inequality)

Silvia Federici – Caliban and the Witch (a feminist Marxist analysis of capitalism and gender oppression)

Didier Eribon – Returning to Reims (a deeply personal sociological reflection on class and identity in contemporary Europe)

Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt – Empire (rethinking global capitalism and resistance from a leftist perspective)

Thomas Piketty – Capital and Ideology (a profound analysis of wealth distribution, inequality, and the future of economic justice)

Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism (on why it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism)

2. Feminist & Queer Theory, Gender & Body Politics

Texts that redefine identity, gender, and liberation in the 21st century.

 

Paul B. Preciado – Testo Junkie (an autobiographical, philosophical essay on gender, hormones, and biopolitics)

Judith Butler – The Force of Nonviolence (rethinking ethics and resistance beyond violence)

Virginie Despentes – King Kong Theory (a raw and radical take on sex, power, and feminism)

Amia Srinivasan – The Right to Sex (rethinking sex, power, and feminism for a new generation)

Laurent de Sutter – Narcocapitalism (on how capitalism exploits our bodies, desires, and emotions)

Sara Ahmed – Living a Feminist Life (a deeply personal and political exploration of what it means to be feminist today)

3. Literature & Poetry of Resistance, Liberation & Exile

European novels, poetry and literature that embrace freedom, revolution, and identity.

 

Annie Ernaux – The Years (a groundbreaking memoir that blends personal and collective history, feminism, and social change)

Olga Tokarczuk – The Books of Jacob (an epic novel about alternative histories, belief systems, and European identity)

Édouard Louis – Who Killed My Father (a deeply political and personal exploration of class struggle and masculinity)

Bernardine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other (a polyphonic novel on race, gender, and identity in contemporary Europe)

Maggie Nelson (though American, widely read in European academia) – On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (a poetic, intellectual meditation on freedom and constraint)

Benjamín Labatut – When We Cease to Understand the World (a deeply philosophical novel on science, war, and moral responsibility)

Michel Houellebecq – Submission (controversial but widely read as a dystopian critique of political passivity in Europe)

4. Ecology, Anti-Capitalism & Posthumanism

Texts that explore the intersections of nature, economics, and radical change.

 

Bruno Latour – Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (rethinking ecology and politics in a world of climate crisis)

Andreas Malm – How to Blow Up a Pipeline (on the ethics of radical environmental resistance)

Emanuele Coccia – The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture (rethinking human and non-human coexistence)

Isabelle Stengers – Another Science is Possible (rethinking knowledge and resistance in an era of corporate science)

Kate Raworth – Doughnut Economics (rethinking economic models for social and ecological justice)

Donna Haraway – Staying with the Trouble (rethinking coexistence and posthumanist futures)

 

The Future of Thought

These are not just books; they are weapons, tools, compasses. These women read not for escapism, but for resistance. In a time of political upheaval, climate catastrophe, and rising authoritarianism, they seek alternative visions, radical possibilities, and new ways of imagining the world.

 

Their books are annotated, their margins filled with questions, their reading lists always expanding. Knowledge is not just power—it is revolution.

A huddled mass of naked men, women and children stand cold and afraid, waiting to be locked into an armored vehicle. Outside, watching with the rigidity and passivity of robots, stand an equally huddled mass of men and women in business suits. They stare on as a child lets out a blood-curdling scream.

Bianca Lucas talks to Miniflix!

There was almost total passivity as the extremely unsportlike Olympic Sponsors Coca Cola ( & Lloyds Bank & Samsung) tried to hijack the Brighton leg of the olympic torch relay by making us watch their adverts drive past just ahead of the torch.

Mcdonalds & Heineken didn't even show.

Some of my neighbours had planned to make a poster saying "Corporate Sponsors = Tax Dodgers & Ticket Thieves" after hearing how the corporate sponsors of London 2012 get most of the best seats and manage to avoid their taxes.

(Meanwhile, the rest of us will be paying the bill for years to come)

The more creative cynical commentators have produced this

www.mau-mau.co.uk/#

and this

www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4374290998216&set=a.1...

For coca-cola's side of the story see here

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HjPHj...

 

This is how the show advertises itself:

"Carrières de Lumières, established in 1976 as the Cathédrale d'Images is a permanent fairy and giant slide show in which large bright images are projected on the stone walls of huge galleries dug into the rock of the Val-d'Enfer. The wall surface used extends over 4000 m2. The images are projected in the dark on the limestone walls of the quarry where the viewer is immersed in a visual and musical experience."

 

This is the opinion of art critic Joseph Nechvatal that I agree with:

 

"What I found in this gargantuan light and music spectacle is a nasty bit of metaphorical necrophilia. It degrades the work of the daring dead painter and his expressive, surface-rich paintings while simultaneously underusing the awesome powers of immersive digital technology by displaying on a colossal scale slightly animated high-resolution reproductions of Vincent van Gogh’s better-known paintings.

I was engulfed in a gliding field of spectacularly colored kitsch: projected at an enormous scale onto the walls and floor van Gogh’s paintings, such as “Starry Night” (1888) and “Wheatfield with Crows” (1890), were ridiculously sliding around and morphing into each other. This gaudy digital presentation has the general effect of reducing the public to a complacent “wow” condition. The critical faculties involved in confronting and contemplating complex art are reduced here to a state of infantile passivity."

 

hyperallergic.com/496300/van-gogh-starry-night-culturespa...

 

Les Baux-de-Provence.

France, 2019

The Powerful Event was an interactive theatre piece by Holly Chappell and Tom Eason of Two Productions. “Our idea was to open the audience up through humour, oppress them until they wished to change the world of the show then give them opportunity to do so,” says Holly. “We allowed time and space afterwards to remove the NMG ponchos reflect and talk with the performers out of character. We are interested in asking how we can empower the young people of Christchurch to fight for what they want their world to be.”

 

Christchurch is in a time of redevelopment, decisions are being made and we believe young people need to be a part of that discussion. To put their ideas forward they need to feel their voice has worth. This show encourages innovation and initiative from its audience, not passivity and silence. Therefore the benefit of this piece is that on a large scale Christchurch young people are not only exposed to the concept that their opinions are worthwhile, the usefulness of their innovation is overtly asked of them.

 

The first test season of The Powerful Event was on a vacant space in Christchurch and was constructed entirely out of shipping containers and covered fencing. The roots of this project began with a ten-show test season in Christchurch just before Christmas 2013. The premise was that the international corporation, Nouveau Monde Global, had arrived in Christchurch to capitalise on cheap real estate and to find participants in their latest initiative, ‘The Human Energy Program’.

 

The audience arrived to a press conference led by the two faces of the corporation, then quickly found themselves wearing NMG emblazoned plastic ponchos, separated into shipping containers and undergoing a rigorous group job interview process, where they were graded and divided based on skills. After series of tests and physicals, being led between different containers and witnessing performative moments, they received their scores. The ‘generators’ were locked into a fenced in courtyard to power the NMG hyper-grid by bouncing a large, silver swiss ball into the air as a group. The ‘analysts’, watching through small eyeholes in the fencing, counted arbitrary events such as “how many times the generating sphere touches the ground” and “how many times a generator wipes their forehead”. All the while the disillusioned Australasian Spokeswoman, Jane Chang, found suitable audience members to form a group of rebels to break the generators and analysts out of the now oppressive Human Energy Program. They infiltrate and mobilise the rest of the audience, overthrow the dictator type leader and bolt cutter their way to freedom. Video clips and more photos on Facebook.

Hello psychologist, i've come here to talk

There is a thing i need to figure out

And please don't question me cause then i might walk

And will not make out what it's all about

 

It's my mentality or maybe my heart

And i don't know if i am weak or strong

When someone does me an injustice it starts

Then i turn feeble and my drive is gone

 

What is the reason that I crumble and sigh?

That I don't dare to be the angry one?

The thought of hurting someone just makes me cry

So I avoid opposing anyone

 

I feel like a bull in a big arena

With matadors profiting from my death

I know what's to come is distress and pain

As I feel their agitated breath

 

I'm being scam over and over again

I'm just trying to hide my fright

I know that my passivity will cause me pain

But still I don't dare to fight

 

'Cause I start feeling sorry for the nuisances

And I start feeling sorry for myself

And i start feeling sorry for this stupid situation that appears

When my anger starts to cry, cry

 

Beady Belle - When my anger starts to cry

The frozen bike defies explanation. It could be anything, symbolise anything, and do anything. But right now it just floats there. It could be a pointless piece of conceptual art, or the fulcrum of all creation. The only way to know is to act: examine it, melt the ice, and use it somehow.

 

This is the passivity before action, the readiness potential of the universe.

THE GUARDIAN, RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL

Thursday, Jan 08, 2009, Page 7

Plans to surround a Rio de Janeiro slum with a 650m-long concrete barrier have come under fire from environmentalists and human rights activists.

 

Brazil authorities say the US$436,000 “ecobarrier,” which would encircle part of the famous Dona Marta slum, is intended to protect the nearby Atlantic rainforest from illegal occupation as well as to improve security and living conditions for slum residents.

 

As tenders for construction of the 3m-high wall opened on Monday, critics claimed the project was a form of “social apartheid,” comparing it to Israel’s security barrier.

 

SEGREGATION

 

“This is something that is very similar to what Israel does to the Palestinians and to what happened in South Africa,” said Mauricio Campos, from the Rio human rights organization Network of Communities Against Violence.

 

He said a wall would serve only to “segregate” slum residents from the rest of society.

 

The wall is expected to be completed by the end of this year and, according to reports in the local press, may be followed by similar barriers around Rio’s other slums, known as favelas. In a statement, the state governor, Sergio Cabral, who ordered the “eco-limit” fence to be built, said it was part of moves by his administration to improve living standards and protect residents from the armed gangs that control many of Rio’s 600 or so slums.

 

“What has happened in Rio de Janeiro over the last two decades has been the passivity of authorities in relation to the uncontrolled growth of the slums,” he said.

 

Such walls would, Cabral said, help the city deal with “drug trafficking and vigilantes, [by] putting limits on uncontrolled growth.”

 

FAVELA IN FILM

 

Dona Marta is home to an estimated 7,500 people. The favela was the setting for an award-winning documentary about cocaine by the British film-maker Angus Macqueen, as well as a 1996 Michael Jackson music video directed by Spike Lee.

 

Jackson’s producers were forced to negotiate access with the local drug traffickers. Since last November, however, the shantytown has been under 24-hour police occupation as part of a state government initiative to make Dona Marta a “model favela.”

 

The pilot project aims to rid the favelas of traffickers using a mixture of military force and “hearts and minds” community policing. A soccer pitch was recently opened in Dona Marta as part of a redevelopment program, which includes new houses as well as the controversial wall.

 

Rio’s environmentalists say that unless low-cost housing options are given to the poor who live in the favelas they will continue to encroach on the hillsides of the city and into the surrounding rainforest.

This electrifying inlay from Oslo City Hall does more than adorn the floor—it slices through it like a lightning bolt. Composed of black and white marble, the design hurls itself diagonally across the space with the angular force of a tectonic rupture. Its scale alone is monumental, but what truly sets it apart is its radical visual language: no known palace-sized carpet, whether from Western or Eastern traditions, has ever dared a pattern so bold, so asymmetrical, so aggressively kinetic.

 

Here in a seat of civic dignity, the inlay reads like a declaration. It rejects ornamental passivity in favor of tension, movement, and disruption—an aesthetic lightning strike at the heart of Norwegian modernism. The pattern may evoke geological upheaval, fjord and cliff, or the keel-line of a ship slicing through icy seas. It is chaos harnessed and frozen in stone, echoing a cultural imaginary shaped by extremes of nature and independence.

 

More than decoration, it is momentum set in marble—proof that even the most formal civic architecture in Norway allows room for the wild.

 

This text is a collaboration with Chat GPT.

Eyes

2001

Granite, bronze, and electric light

Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911, Paris, France; d. 2010, Manhattan, NY)

 

The sculptural complex consists of four pairs of eyes and one monumental eye cluster ranging in height from three to seven feet, with some doubling as benches. In turn threatening and charming, Louise Bourgeois’s forms embody dichotomies of male and female, projection and recession, passivity and aggression. At night, colored beams of light emanate from some of the pupils, calling attention to the sculptures’ presence, even in the dark. Always interested in how sculpture relates to environment, Bourgeois worked closely with landscape architects and planners to design the earthen mounds into which the sculptures are nestled and which reflect the shape of the surrounding Berkshire mountains. A common motif in her work, eyes, for Bourgeois, were metaphors for the truth, and as she once said “eyes relate to seduction, flirtation, and voyeurism.”

 

(From the Williams College Museum of Art website)

A goat free time passivity.

Taken in Jílové, about 100m west of town square.