We just finished our hike across Bulgaria—650km following the Stara Planina / Balkan Ridge from Kom Peak in the west to Cape Emine on the Black Sea in the east—which took us 23 days, including one and a half rest days. I have to say, the hike exceeded expectations in every possible respect, and is surely one of the most underrated (and little known) established trails in Europe. We met only one fellow through-hiker on the trail, one non-Bulgarian, and no Americans, but we were treated with great hospitality everywhere we went and made many friends. Much more on the trail later, but for now we have a week of visiting and tourism before one last hike and an unavoidable return to reality in late August. Mrs Orca and friend, Eho Hut, Stara Planina, Kom-Emine Trail, Bulgaria.

im Frühling 2019

 

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Best sticker ever sitting on the back of the sickest E30 M3's carbon wing. This car was a stunner.

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Wet with cool dew drops

fragrant with perfume from the flowers

came the gentle breeze

jasmine and water lily

dance in the spring sunshine

side-long glances

of the golden-hued ladies

stab into my thoughts

heaven itself cannot take my mind

as it has been captivated by one lass

among the five hundred I have seen here.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture

Main article: Commercial graffiti

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

  

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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Knowing you’ve injured a player after a huge hit can be quite scary. Thankfully the youngster made a full recovery and walked off the field. TREVSTAR, (kneeling left) a rising player in this new aged sport walked off the field and knelt down, and was quickly met by a team mate who comforted him. It was surely a scary moment for him as well. It amazes me his strength and equally his professionalism. After this shot he walked over to the opposing team sidelines and gave the player an equally huge hug. I’m pretty sure we will see this kid in professional sports, he is surely feared in the region.

Random shot from SPARKcon Street Art Fest 2009, Raleigh, NC.

 

Now this one touched a nerve....being an Army Vet.....I noticed the chain of the dog tags breaking near the top....or being weaved through the flag, either way, this was a touching piece of Art work for me. My thoughts are always with those that gave "all" for their Country....and those currently serving. Thank You!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MANIFESTO GLEITZEIT 2015

BY STELLY RIESLING

Featured below is another original art work of mine in homage to THE PIONEER OF INVISIBLE ART — PAUL JAISINI. Forget all the copycats that came after him — Master Paul Jaisini was the *FIRST* of a totally original concept and the *BEST*. My favorite thing about him is that he’s a voice, not an echo, which is quite rare.

DISCLAIMER: This is for anyone who is a hater OR wishes to better understand me, what I’m all about, so you can decide whether I’m weird or normal enough for you — a kind of very loose manifesto, rushed and unrevised, full of raw uncut emotion that I don’t like to be evident in my writing as lately I prefer a more professional, formal style, so we can consider this a rough draft of the more polished writing to come when I have extra time. I might return to this text later and clean it up or break it into separate parts. Right now it’s a long-winded hot mess, so if you manage to make any sense of it, BIG PROPS TO YOU. lol …and if you manage to read it ALL, you have my solemn respect!!! in a day when reading has been reduced to just catchy headliners and short captions of images once in a while. The consequence of this one-liner internet culture is non-linear, tunnel thinking, which is baaaaaad.

There lives among us a most enigmatic and charismatic creature named Paul Jaisini who led me into the wonderful world of art, not personally, but through descriptions of his artworks in essays written and published online by his friend, which painted the most fascinating images in my mind. Early on as a kiddo, I experimented with photography, simple point and shoot whatever looked attractive to me. Digital manipulation of my photographs with computer software followed… and somehow I learned useful drawing techniques along the way to combine existing elements with nonexistent ones, which allowed me to elevate the context for my ideas. Later, I started creating my own digital art from scratch for my friends and family as a favorite pastime. They would shower me with praise and repeatedly encouraged me to share my “different” vision with the rest of the world… it took a while and wasn’t easy to overcome the insecurity of not being good enough along with a gripping fear of being harshly criticized, but one day I woman-ed up and started publishing my work on the web, reminding myself that my livelihood didn’t depend on a positive reception.

Paul Jaisini’s role in all this has been to not disgrace myself, even if what I do is just a hobby. And I would never do him and other genius artists the disservice of calling myself a professional because I know I’ll never be as good as any of the GIANTS of pre-modern history. Be the best or be nothing, no middle ground.

People’s jealousy in the past, future and present over my obsessive love of Paul Jaisini, which they are well aware is purely plutonic, has caused them to despise the man and has made many relationships/friendships impossible for me. I refuse to have such people in my life because by harboring any negativity towards Paul, they unknowingly feel that way about me and express it to me. It’s their own problem for not realizing this. Paul’s new art movement, Gleitzeit, shaped me into the allegedly awesome girl I am today, giving my art more edge, more “sexy” because it refined my vision of the world and propelled me to attain the skills necessary to not dishonor my family name through tenacious pursuit of perfection. Since the beginning of my life, I attempted to depict what I saw in visual, musical and literal forms, but continuously failed without adequate training and determination. Paul Jaisini’s Gleitzeit was the answer to my prayers. Who I am today I owe mostly to him and his selfless ideals of the artverse that I’ve given unconditional loyalty to (he has this cool ability for hyper-vision to see whole universes, not itty bitty worlds, hence I call it an artverse instead of art world, with him in mind). So again, anyone who hates Paul Jaisini hates ME because, regardless of what he means to you, he is the most important person in my life for making me ME. The way a famous actor, dancer or singer inspires others to act, dance or sing, Paul inspired me to become a better artist, better writer, better everything. More people would understand if he was a household name because they’re wired to in society. But we’re inspiring each other all the time in our own little communities without being famous, so if someone has the ability to change even ONE person’s life immensely with creativity, it is a massive achievement. And passionate folks like myself are compelled to scream it from the cyber rooftops. So here I am. It’s whatever.

Furthermore, I’d like to address here a few pressing matters in light of some recent drama brought on by both strangers and former friends. To start, I never judge the passions, interests or likes of others, which are often in my face all over the place, so likewise they have no right to judge any of mine. It is quite unfortunate and frustrating how very little understanding and education the majority of people have or want to have. Their logic is as primitive as a chipmunk when it comes to promotion of fine art on the web: “spamming, advertising, report!” It’s their own problem that they fail to understand what it’s about due to the distorted lens through which they see the world or inability to think for themselves; an inherent lack of perception or inquisitiveness. Well, guess what? Every single image, every animation, every video, every post dedicated to Mr. Paul Jaisini and “Gleitziet” (to elaborate: a revolutionary new art movement Paul founded with his partner in crime and personal friend, EYKG, who discovered him and believed in him more than anyone) has an important purpose. Every one of those things you run across is a piece of a puzzle, a move in a game, an inch down a rabbit hole; the deeper you go, the more interesting it gets; the more levels you pass, the more clues unfold, the greater the suspense and nearer the conclusion (yet further). You earn awesome rewards like enlightenment, spiritual revelations, truths, knowledge, wisdom and the most profound reward of all: the drive to improve yourself to the absolute maximum, so an unending, unshakable drive. People often make a wrong turn in this cyber game and go back a few levels or get stuck. Those that keep on pushing, however, will come to find the effort has been worth it. And what awaits you in the end of it all? The greatest challenge to beating the game: YOUR OWN MIND. You will be forced to let go of every belief you held before you had reached the last level, to completely alter your mindset and perception of the world, of life, of yourself. But by the time you’ve gotten to that point, it will be as easy as falling off a cliff! (It is a kind of suicide after all — death and rebirth of spirit.)

Paul Jaisini does NOT, *I repeat* does NOT use mystery and obscurity to his advantage as a clever marketing ploy, no, he’s too next level for that with a consciousness so rich, he should wear a radioactive warning sign (he’ll melt your brain, best wear a tinfoil hat in his presence as I certainly would.) The statement he makes is loud and clear, hidden in plain site for those who take the time to connect the dots and have enough curiosity to fuel their journey into unknown territory (an open mind and flexible perception helps a lot). Actually, anyone with an IQ above 90 is sure to figure it out sooner or later. Hint: You don’t have to SEE an extraordinary thing with your eyes to know it exists, to understand it and realize its greatness — you can only feel it in your bone marrow, your spinal fluid, your heart and soul. The moment you do figure it out, as the skeleton key of the human soul, it will unlock the greatness and massive potential buried deep within, changing the doomed direction humanity is undoubtedly headed. I don’t speak in riddles, I speak in a clear direct way that intelligent humans will understand, so I’m counting on them.

GIG is an international group of artists and writers that support Paul Jaisini’s Gleitzeit. We started off as an unofficial fan club of Jaisini in 1996, comprised of only 6 individuals spanning 3 countries, and eventually escalated in status to an official fan group across the entire globe. A decade later it had grown to hundreds of fans. Nearly another decade later, there are thousands. Let’s not leave out another delightful group of vicious haters that have been around for nearly as long as us since the late 90s and have also grown in impressive numbers. Now, for the record (and please write this one down because I’m sick of repeating myself), Paul Jaisini himself is not part of our group and has nothing to do with us. He loves and hates us equally for butchering his name and making him appear as a narcissistic nut-job in his own words. He casts hexes on us for the blinding flash we layer over the art that members contribute to GIG — “disgusting-police-lights, seizure-inducing-laser-lightshow, bourgeois-myspace-effects retarded-raver shit” in Paul’s words. Ahh, how we love his sweet-talking us. In a desperate attempt to please him, those among us who make the art and animations have spent countless hours and sleepless nights trying to solve a crazy-complex quantum-physics type of equation = how to not create tacky or tasteless content. He does fancy some of it now, we got better, that’s something! In the reason stated below, our mission just got out of hand at some point.

What little is known about Paul Jaisini, even in all this time, is he’s a horrible perfectionist who slaughtered hundreds of innocent babies — I mean — artworks of remarkable beauty created by his own right hand (mostly paintings, some watercolors and drawings). He’s a fierce recluse who wants nothing to do with anyone or anything in life. But those few of us who know of an incredible talent he possesses (one could go as far as calling it a superpower), could not allow him to live his life without the recognition he FUCKING DESERVES more than any artist out there living today and, arguably, yesterday. We use whatever means necessary to reach more people, lots of flash and razzle-dazzle to lure them into our sinister trap of a higher awareness. Mwahaha! The visual boom you’ve witnessed in both cyber and real worlds, that is GIG’s doing — two damn decades of spreading an art virus — IVA. InVisibleArtitis… or a drug as in Intravenous Art. It’s whatever you want it to be, honey.

Our Gleitzeit International Group (GIG) started off innocently enough and gradually spiraled out of control to fight the haters, annoying the hell out of them as much as humanly possible. They don’t like what we do? WE DO MORE AND MORE OF IT. But never without purpose, without a carefully executed plan in mind collectively. If we have to tolerate an endless tidal wave of everyone’s vomit — e.g., idiotic memes and comics; dumbed-down one-liner quotes; selfies; so-called “art photography” passed through one-click app filters; mindless scribbles or random splatters by regular folks who have the nerve to call themselves serious/pro artists; primitive images of pets, babies, landscapes, random objects, etc… then people sure as shit are gonna tolerate what we put out, our animated and non-animated visual art designed for our beloved master, Paul Jaisini, who has shown us the light, the right path to follow, taught us great things and done so much for us — and so in our appreciation of him, we stamp his name on everything, for the sacrifices he has made in the name of art, to save our art verse, he’s a goddamn hero. There’s a book being written in his dedication where little will be left to the imagination about him.

If Paul Jaisini was as famous as Koons or Hirst, for example, people would know it’s not him posting stuff online with his name on it but fans creating fanart like myself among others. But noooooo, such a thing is unfathomable to most people - the promotion of another artist. Like, what’s in it for us? Uhh, nothing?? This is all NON-PROFIT bitches, the way art should be. It’s a passion FIRST, a commodity/commercial product/marketable item LAST and least. Its been that way for us since the early 90s to this day. Not a single member of GIG has sold an art work (neither has Paul Jaisini who’s a true professional) and we want to keep it that way. We do it for reasons far beyond ego. So advertising? Really? How the hell do you advertise or sell thin air, you know, invisible paintings, invisible anything? Ha ha, very funny indeed. The idea here is so simple, your neighbor’s dog can grasp it. Our motives: replace fast food for the mind with fine art, actual fine art. You know, creativity? Conscious thought? Talent? Skill? Knowledge? All that good stuff rolled into one to bring viewers more than a momentary ooohand aaahh reaction. Replace the recycled images ad nauseum; repetitious, worn-out ideas; disposable, gimmicky, money-driven fast art for simpletons. Stick with the highest of ideals and save the whole bloody planet.

Fine art is often confused with craft-making. This often creates bad blood between classically trained artists who put out paintings that leave a lasting impression, that make strong conversation pieces, that are thought-provoking and deep… and trained craftspeople whose skills are adequate to create decorative pieces for homely environments — landscapes, still lifes, animals, pretty fairies, common things of fantasy, and other simplicity. Skills alone are not enough for high art, you need a vision, a purpose, the ability to tell a story with every stroke of your brush that will both fascinate and terrify the viewers, arousing powerful emotions, illuminating. I have yet to see a visible painting in my generation that does anything at all for me, other than evoke sheer outrage and disgust. What a terrible waste of space and valuable resources it all is.

Paul Jaisini leads, we follow. He wishes to remain unknown - so do most of us. I’m next in line, slipping into recluse mode, no longer wanting to attach my face, my human image to my art stuff. I wish to be a nameless, faceless artist as well, invisible like P.J., and in his footsteps I too have destroyed thousands of my own artistic photography and digital art made with tedious, labor-intensive handwork. The whole point of this destruction is achieving the finest results possible by letting go of the imperfect, purging it on a regular basis, to make way for the perfect. I love what I do so it doesn’t matter, I know I’ll keep producing as much as I’m discarding, keeping the balance. Hoarding is an enemy of progress, especially the digital kind as there’s absolutely no limit to it. It’s like carrying a load of bricks on your back you’ll never use or need.

The watering down of creativity that digital pack ratting has caused as observed over the years is most tragic. For the creative individual, relying on terabytes of stock photos or OSFAP as I call them (Once Size Fits All Photos) instead of making your own as you used to when you had no choice, being 100% original, is a splinter in the conscience. It’s not evil to use stock of, say, things you don’t have access to (outer space, deep sea, Antarctica, etc.), but many digital artists I know today can’t take their own shot of a pencil ‘cause they “ain’t got no time for that!” How did they have time before? Did time get so compressed in only a decade?

Ohhhhh, and the edits, textures, filters, plug-ins and what-have-you available out there to everyone and their cats… are responsible for the tidal wave of rubbish that eclipses the magnificent light of the real talents.

I can tell you with utmost sincerity there is no better feeling on earth than knowing your creation is ALL yours, every pixel and dot, from the first to the last. It’s not always possible to make it so, but definitely the most rewarding endeavor. I’m most proud of myself when I can accomplish that.

Back to Paul Jaisini, from the start there have been a number of theories floating around on what his real story is. One of my own theories is that he stands for the unknowns of the world who can’t get representation, can’t get exhibited at a decent gallery because highly gifted/trained artists aren’t good enough - those kind of establishments prefer bananas, balloon dogs, feces, gigantic dicks/cunts, and all kinds of what-the-fucks…

So again, you don’t get the Paul Jaisini thing? That’s your problem. Don’t hate others for getting it. People are good, very good, at making baseless assumptions and impulsively spewing it as truth. They criticize and judge as if they’re high authorities on the subject yet they clearly lack education in fine art or art history and possess little to no talent or skill to back up their bullshit. My little “credibility radar” never fails. When they say I know this or I know that, I reply don’t say “I know” or state things as fact as a general rule of thumb - instead say “I assume/believe” and state the reasons you feel thus to appear less immature, especially about a controversial topic like invisible art. I have zero respect or tolerance for egomaniacs who think they know it all and act accordingly like arrogant pricks. Who can stand those, right? Once again, a good example would be: I, Stelly Riesling, believe everything I’ve written in this little manifesto to be correct based on personal experience and observation from multiple angles, thorough research and sufficient data collected from verifiable sources (and don’t go copying-pasting my own words back at me, be original). Just because you or I say so doesn’t make it so. Just because you or me think or believe so doesn’t make it true or right. I only ask that my opinions are regarded respectfully and whoever opposes them does so in a mature, civilized manner. We should only be entitled to opinions that don’t bring out the worst in us.

I don’t normally take such a position, but the time has come to stand up for what I believe in! It’s quite amusing and comical how haters think calling me names, attacking me or my interests or members of the project I’m part of for years is going to change something. It only makes more evident the importance of what I’m doing so I push on harder still.

Words of advise to those who can identify with me, with my frustrations over people’s reluctance to change their miserable ways, with our declining art world…

DON’T waste time on people who sweat the small stuff, whose actions are consistently inconsistent with their words. DO waste time on people who always keep their eye on the ball—the bigger picture of life.

Paul Jaisini’s invisible paintings are more than hype, more than your lame assumptions. Here’s one I got that’s pure gold: a cult! It started out as A JOKE OF MINE that was used against me. I told a then-good friend that he should come join our little “art cult” in a clearly lighthearted manner, and later he takes this idea I put in his head first and accuses me of being in an (imaginary) cult—the jokes on me eh?. But wait, aren’t cults religious? Our group consists of people around the world of different faiths (or none at all) so how could that ever work? If religion was about making fine (non-pop) art mainstream and bringing awesome, fresh, futuristic concepts to the collective consciousness, the world would not be so fucked up today because talent, creativity, originality and individuality would be the main focus, not superficial poppycock; those things would be praised and encouraged and supported in society by all institutions, not demonized and stigmatized.

Here is one thing I CAN state as solid fact: only one person close to Paul Jaisini knows the TRUE story, or at least some of it: EYKG. Everything else that has ever been said about him is myth, legend, gossip, speculation, the worst of which is said by jealous non-artists (wannabes, clones, posers, hang-ons, unoriginal ppl in general) and anti-artists (religious psychos, squares, losers and -duh- stupid ppl). Sadly, people are unable to see the bigger picture by letting their egos run their lives or repeating after others as parrots.

Commercial art, consumerism, and ignorance of the masses truly makes me want to curl up in a ball, not eat or drink or move until I die, just die in my sleep while dreaming of a better world, a world where real fine artists rule it with real fine art as they used to and life is beautiful once again….

Well I hope that settled THAT for now, or perhaps inadvertently made matters worse. I hope I didn’t sound too pissed from all these issues that keep popping up like penises on ChatRoulette… just got to me already! Can you tell? I had to put my foot down, stomp ‘em all!

To be continued, still lots more ignorance and pettiness to battle… Till then peace out my bambini. MWAH!

  

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MANIFESTO GLEITZEIT 2015

PROLOGUE

Paul Jaisini was like a messiah, as you wish, who saw/understood the impending end and complete degeneration of Fine art or Art become and investment nothing more than that. He predicted the bubble pops art when everybody would eventually become an artist, including dogs cats and horses, because they as kids followed the main rule: express yourself without skills or knowledge or any aesthetic concerns. J. Pollack started pouring paints onto canvases; Julian Schnabel, former cab driver from NY, suddenly decided he could do better than what he saw displayed in galleries, so he started gluing dishes on canvases; A.Warhol, an industrial artist who made commercial silk-screen for the factories he worked in, started to exhibit "Campbell's soup" used for commercial adds... and later the thing that made him an "American Idol": by copying and pasting Hollywood celebrities (same type of posters he made before for movie theaters).

When Paul Jaisini stood out against the Me culture in the US by burning all of his own 120 brilliant paintings (according to the then-new director of Fort Worth MoMa Museum, who offered hin an exhibition of his art in 1992, and later the Metropolitan Museum curator, Phillippe de Montebello, in 1994).Paul probably assumed all fellow true fine artists would join him or stand by him against corruption of the art world.

And after 20 years of his stand-off...the time has finally come today. Many artists and humanitarians around the world took a place beside him. His invisible Paintings became a synonym for the future reincarnation of fine art and long lost harmony. The establishment is in panic! The "moneybags" (as Paul Jaisini named them) are in panic, because they invested BILLIONS of dollars in real crap made by

craftsmen. Now they realize that the reputation of American legends of expressionism was nothing but a copy of Russian avant-garde" Kazimir Malevich, Vasiliy Kandinsky and tens of others from France and Germany.. US tycoon investors were spending billions on "Me more original, than you". "Artist Shit" is a 1061 artwork by the Italian artist Piero Manzoni. The work consists of 90 tin cans, filled with feces. A tin can was sold for £124,000, 180,000 at Sothebys, 2007.

EPILOGUE

Before I resume promoting and admiring a very important art persona on today's international art arena, I'd like to clear up some BIG questions; people ask continuously and subconsciously, directly & indirectly: "Why does the name Paul Jaisini, flood the Internet in such "obnoxious" quantities that it's started suppressing some other activities that my friends might share with the rest of the Internet's Ego Me only Me www society? I can't just answer this... so I'll try to explain why I'm writing this: Jaisini's followers keep posting art and info about,

He IMHO the only hope in quickly decomposing visual fine art. "Paul Jaisini realized many years ago, in 1994, when he declared (at that time to himself only) the start of a New era, a New vision, that he is trying to redirect from the rat race, started by an establishment in post-war New York, long before the Internet culture.

Sub related information: Adolf Gottlieb, Mart Rothko, etc (after visiting Paris France in 1933):

"We must forget analytical art, we must express ourselves, as a 5 year old child would, without a developed consciousness. Forget about results - do what you feel, EXPRESS yourself with your own unique style"

With this statement Mark Rothko starts to teach his students, degeneration of fine art begins, and the generation of war of styles took a start signal of the material race, greatly rewarded by establishment "individual" - eccentric craftsmen - show business clowns.

Sub related Information: In the summer of 1936, Adolf Gottlieb painted more than 800 paintings, which was 20X more than he created in his whole art career as a painter, starting from the time of Gottlieb becomes a founding member of "The Ten" group in NYC "Group of Ten" was a very peculiar, enigmatic group... Based on a religious point of view;(where a human figure was prohibited from being created)

GLOSSARY

IN 1997, Paul Jaisini's best friend Ellen Y.K.Gottlieb started a cyber campaign by promoting on a very young Internet, back then, Paul Jaisini's burned paintings as Invisible Paintings, visible only through poetic essays. She and a handful of people saw his originals and were devastated that nobody could ever see them again. "We, his fans, believe that someday Paul will recreate his 120 burned paintings if he has any decency and moral obligation to his fans, who have dedicated decades to make it happen, for their Phoenix to rise from the ashes and the whole world will witness that all these years we spent to get him back to re-paint the Visuals again were not in vain," - said E.Y.K.Gottlieb in 2014 during the 20th anniversary celebration of Invisible Paintings to GIGroup in NYCity. So now, hopefully, this clears up why I and others do what we do - our "cyber terrorism" of good art, dedicated to Paul Jaisini's return, which is & and was our mission & our goal. We post good art to fight "troll art" which is worthless pics, after being passed through 1-click filters of free web apps. We are, in fact, against this www pops pollution, done with "bubble art" by the out of control masses with 5 billon pics a day: Pics of cats, memes, quotes,national geographic sunsets and waterfalls, not counting their own daily "selfies: and whatever self-indulging Me-ego-Me affairs, sponsored happily by photo gadget companies like Canon, Nikon, Sony...who churn out higher quality madness tools at lower cost.

This way Government taking away attention from the real world crisis of lowest morality & economical devastation. The masses are too easily re-engineered/manipulated by the Establishment PopsStyle delivered to them by pop music and Hollywood "super" stars. In 1992 Paul Jaisini's Gleitzeit theory predict such a massive, pops self-entertain madness, following technologicalexplosion, but not in illusive scales.

Uber Aless @2015 NYC USA

NOTE Date's numbers and events can be slightly inaccurate.

#gleitzeit #paul-jaisini #invisible #painting #art #futurism #art-news,

 

Psalm 119:87

They had almost consumed me upon earth, but I forsook not thy precepts. (KJV)

 

#Respect #Powerful #Lamb #Apologetics #Powerful #PraiseGod #DailyBibleVerse

 

www.bible-sms.com/

Close to 100 years old and still going strong, Tepu' Apung is one of the most direct and outspoken elders I've met in Bario. Always well known for her intelligence and sharpness, quite literally, her other name, Beken Ayu, means "something different" in Kelabit - and she lives up to it. On this particular day she decided to give me a Kelabit name, but her delivery was uniquely serious and classic Tepu' Apung: "Chris is a girl's name. You can't use that name anymore - your new name is Giak!"

 

She spends most of her time at Rumah Labang just spending time around people and the environment - be it relaxing by the fire, making sure everyone has eaten ("Kuman? Kuman!") or sharing stories from the past. Some of her stories are even so detailed and complex she claims she can't even share them with us as they would literally take days to complete.

 

Her spoken Kelabit is very deep with not all words completely understood by younger Kelabits - as parts of her lexicon are not commonly used on a daily basis. Any misunderstanding is usually met with Sarawak Malay to get the point across. Her beads are also of particular importance to her - as they are to most Kelabits (especially in past times where they were highly valued), and if she is not found in the kitchen she can undoubtedly be found beading in her room.

 

Be aware though, If one wishes to engage Tepu' in discussion, they should be commited to discussion. She doesn't joke around and she commands honest respect. For that commitment, however, one will be rewarded with stories of Kelabit past available nowhere else and uniquely Beken Ayu.

 

Rumah Labang, Kelabit Highlands, Sarawak, Malaysia, 2009

A Little Respect

 

Danny wearing my Harry Potter Glasses.

From 2006 to 2023 the Dennis Head Old Beacon was shrouded in scaffolding as part of its restoration and conservation. You see, it's a scheduled monument and worthy of respect.

 

That's why just out of shot all that ratty old scaffolding remains in an untidy pile. They even shovelled out centuries of guano and put in mesh to stop the birds from filling it up again.

 

This whole thing was so mired in bureaucracy that they even needed an application and approval to take down the scaffolding and remove the heritage listing from the keeper's cottage because it was supposed that it was already included in the listing for the tower!

 

These things are why I wonder if that rusty old chair, these pieces of rotting wood, a lobster pot and that blue plastic sandal inside the ruins of the cottage effectively reflect the true respect held for this treasured monument.

 

Oudezijds Achterburgwal 13/10/2020 13h56

Just a reminder to respect social distancing. The battle against COVIS-19 is still going on in October 2020.

 

Corona Crisis in Amsterdam (my special album on Flickr)

 

SOCIAL DISTANCING (1.5 METERS)

AVOID CROWDS – STAY SAFE

MASK YOURSELF WHERE NEEDED

  

Arabic calligraphy - 3d modelisation

Rendered by Zaki Jawhari from Digital-Slaves

www.kaalam.com

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Cover ebook Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen, Haskel Frankel & David Hyde Pierce in ift.tt/1tpXHJf

Carlos,

 

I have the utmost respect for my daughters. I love them very dearly. I trust most of the decisions that they make. You are a decision that Madeline made. This puts you and I in a very curious position. I have a couple rules that I live by when it comes to someone going out with one of my daughters.

  

The rules are:

 

1.Use your hands on my daughter and you'll lose them after.

2.You make her cry, I make you cry.

3.Safe sex is a myth. Anything you try will be hazardous to your health.

4.Bring her home late, there's no next date.

5.If you pull into my driveway and honk, you better be dropping off a package because you're sure not picking anything up.

6.No complaining while you're waiting for her. If you're bored, change my oil.

7.If your pants hang off your hips, I'll gladly secure them with my staple gun.

8.Dates must be in crowded public places. You want romance? Read a book.

 

I hope that this clears any misconceptions about me and my daughters, in your case, Madeline.

 

I am not afraid to go back to Jackson State Pen, I ate better there anyways...

 

Mr Peters

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©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Fifty eight metres at 07:18am just as the light broke through the dawn on an Autumn morning, Saturday Octyober 22nd 2022 off Hythe Avenue and Chessington Avenue in Bexleyheath, Kent.

 

Here we see an adult male Carrion crow (Corvus corone), one of a pair who I have fed for three years now. Nicknamed Russell, he sits on an aerial opposite my front door, calling to Sheryl his wife, and Baboo, thier young'en from this year.

  

AN IN DEPTH LOOK AT CORVUS CORONE

  

LEGEND AND MYTHOLOGY

By Paul Williams

  

Crows appear in the Bible where Noah uses one to search for dry land and to check on the recession of the flood. Crows supposedly saved the prophet, Elijah, from famine and are an Inuit deity. Legend has it that England and its monarchy will end when there are no more crows in the Tower of London. And some believe that the crows went to the Tower attracted by the regular corpses following executions with written accounts of their presence at the executions of Anne Boleyn and Jane Gray.

  

In Welsh mythology, unfortunately Crows are seen as symbolic of evilness and black magic thanks to many references to witches transforming into crows or ravens and escaping. Indian legend tells of Kakabhusandi, a crow who sits on the branches of a wish-fulfilling tree called Kalpataru and a crow in Ramayana where Lord Rama blessed the crow with the power to foresee future events and communicate with the souls.

  

In Native American first nation legend the crow is sometimes considered to be something of a trickster, though they are also viewed positively by some tribes as messengers between this world and the next where they carry messages from the living to those deceased, and even carry healing medicines between both worlds. There is a belief that crows can foresee the future. The Klamath tribe in Oregon believe that when we die, we fly up to heaven as a crow. The Crow can also signify wisdom to some tribes who believe crows had the power to talk and were therefore considered to be one of the wisest of birds. Tribes with Crow Clans include the Chippewa (whose Crow Clan and its totem are called Aandeg), the Hopi (whose Crow Clan is called Angwusngyam or Ungwish-wungwa), the Menominee, the Caddo, the Tlingit, and the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico.

  

The crow features in the Nanissáanah (Ghost dance), popularized by Jerome Crow Dog, a Brulé Lakota sub-chief and warrior born at Horse Stealing Creek in Montana Territory in 1833, the crow symbolizing wisdom and the past, when the crow had became a guide and acted as a pathfinder during hunting. The Ghost dance movement was originally created in 1870 by Wodziwob, or Gray Hair, a prophet and medicine man of the Paiute tribe in an area that became known as Nevada. Ghost dancers wore crow and eagle feathers in their clothes and hair, and the fact that the Crow could talk placed it as one of the sages of the animal kingdom. The five day dances seeking trance,prophecy and exhortations would eventually play a major part in the pathway towards the white man's broken treaties, the infamous battle at Wounded knee and the surrender of Matȟó Wanáȟtaka (Kicking Bear), after officials began to fear the ghost dancers and rituals which seemed to occur prior to battle.

  

Historically the Vikings are the group who made so many references to the crow, and Ragnarr Loðbrók and his sons used this species in his banner as well as appearances in many flags and coats of arms. Also, it had some kind of association with Odin, one of their main deities. Norse legend tells us that Odin is accompanied by two crows. Hugin, who symbolizes thought, and Munin, who represents a memory. These two crows were sent out each dawn to fly the entire world, returning at breakfast where they informed the Lord of the Nordic gods of everything that went on in their kingdoms. Odin was also referred to as Rafnagud (raven-god). The raven appears in almost every skaldic poem describing warfare.Coins dating back to 940's minted by Olaf Cuaran depict the Viking war standard, the Raven and Viking war banners (Gonfalon) depicted the bird also.

  

In Scandinavian legends, crows are a representative of the Goddess of Death, known as Valkyrie (from old Norse 'Valkyrja'), one of the group of maidens who served the Norse deity Odin, visiting battlefields and sending him the souls of the slain worthy of a place in Valhalla. Odin ( also called Wodan, Woden, or Wotan), preferred that heroes be killed in battle and that the most valiant of souls be taken to Valhöll, the hall of slain warriors. It is the crow that provides the Valkyries with important information on who should go. In Hindu ceremonies that are associated to ancestors, the crow has an important place in Vedic rituals. They are seen as messengers of death in Indian culture too.

  

In Germanic legend, Crows are seen as psychonomes, meaning the act of guiding spirits to their final destination, and that the feathers of a crow could cure a victim who had been cursed. And yet, a lone black crow could symbolize impending death, whilst a group symbolizes a lucky omen! Vikings also saw good omens in the crow and would leave offerings of meat as a token.

  

The crow also has sacred and prophetic meaning within the Celtic civilization, where it stood for flesh ripped off due to combat and Morrighan, the warrior goddess, often appears in Celtic mythology as a raven or crow, or else is found to be in the company of the birds. Crow is sacred to Lugdnum, the Celtic god of creation who gave his name to the city of Lug

  

In Greek mythology according to Appolodorus, Apollo is supposedly responsible for the black feathers of the crow, turning them forever black from their pristine white original plumage as a punishment after they brought news that Κορωνις (Coronis) a princess of the Thessalian kingdom of Phlegyantis, Apollo's pregnant lover had left him to marry a mortal, Ischys. In one legend, Apollo burned the crows feathers and then burned Coronis to death, in another Coronis herself was turned into a black crow, and another that she was slain by the arrows of Αρτεμις (Artemis - twin to Apollo). Koronis was later set amongst the stars as the constellation Corvus ("the Crow"). Her name means "Curved One" from the Greek word korônis or "Crow" from the word korônê.A similar Muslim legend allegedly tells of Muhammad, founder of Islam and the last prophet sent by God to Earth, who's secret location was given away by a white crow to his seekers, as he hid in caves. The crow shouted 'Ghar Ghar' (Cave, cave) and thus as punishment, Muhammad turned the crow black and cursed it for eternity to utter only one phrase, 'Ghar, ghar). Native Indian legend where the once rainbow coloured crows became forever black after shedding their colourful plumage over the other animals of the world.

  

In China the Crow is represented in art as a three legged bird on a solar disk, being a creature that helps the sun in its journey. In Japan there are myths of Crow Tengu who were priests who became vain, and turned into this spirit to serve as messengers until they learn the lesson of humility as well as a great Crow who takes part in Shinto creation stories.

  

In animal spirit guides there are general perceptions of what sightings of numbers of crows actually mean:

  

1 Crow Meaning: To carry a message from your near one who died recently.

 

2 Crows Meaning: Two crows sitting near your home signifies some good news is on your way.

 

3 Crows Meaning: An upcoming wedding in your family.

 

4 Crows Meaning: Symbolizes wealth and prosperity.

 

5 Crows Meaning: Diseases or pain.

 

6 Crows Meaning: A theft in your house!

 

7 Crows Meaning: Denotes travel or moving from your house.

 

8 Crows Meaning: Sorrowful events

  

Crows are generally seen as the symbolism when alive for doom bringing, misfortune and bad omens, and yet a dead crow symbolises potentially bringing good news and positive change to those who see it. This wonderful bird certainly gets a mixed bag of contradictory mythology and legend over the centuries and in modern days is often seen as a bit of a nuisance, attacking and killing the babies of other birds such as Starlings, Pigeons and House Sparrows as well as plucking the eyes out of lambs in the field, being loud and noisy and violently attacking poor victims in a 'crow court'....

  

There is even a classic horror film called 'THE CROW' released in 1994 by Miramax Films, directed by Alex Proyas and starring Brandon Lee in his final film appearance as Eric Draven, who is revived by a Crow tapping on his gravestone a year after he and his fiancée are murdered in Detroit by a street gang. The crow becomes his guide as he sets out to avenge the murders. The only son of martial arts expert Bruce Lee, Brandon lee suffered fatal injuries on the set of the film when the crew failed to remove the primer from a cartridge that hit Lee in the abdomen with the same force as a normal bullet. Lee died that day, March 31st 1993 aged 28.

  

The symbolism of the Crow resurrecting the dead star and accompanying him on his quest for revenge was powerful, and in some part based on the history of the carrion crow itself and the original film grossed more than $94 Million dollars with three subsequent sequels following.

  

TAKING A CLOSER LOOK

  

So let's move away from legend, mythology and stories passed down from our parents and grandparents and look at these amazing birds in isolation.

  

Carrion crow are passerines in the family Corvidae a group of Oscine passerine birds including Crows, Ravens, Rooks, Jackdaws, Jays, Magpies, Treepies, Choughs and Nutcrackers. Technically they are classed as Corvids, and the largest of passerine birds. Carrion crows are medium to large in size with rictal bristles and a single moult per year (most passerines moult twice). Carrion crow was one of the many species originally described by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (Carl Von Linne after his ennoblement) in his 1758 and 1759 editions of 'SYSTEMA NATURAE', and it still bears its original name of Corvus corone, derived from the Latin of Corvus, meaning Raven and the Greek κορώνη (korōnē), meaning crow.

  

Carrion crow are of the Animalia kingdom Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Passeriformes Family: Corvidae Genus: Corvus and Species: Corvus corone

  

Corvus corone can reach 45-47cm in length with a 93-104cm wingspan and weigh between 370-650g. They are protected under The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 in the United Kingdom with a Green UK conservation status which means they are of least concern with more than 1,000,000 territories. Breeding occurs in April with fledging of the chicks taking around twenty nine days following an incubation period of around twenty days with 3 to 4 eggs being the average norm. They are abundant in the UK apart from Northwest Scotland and Ireland where the Hooded crow (Corvus cornix) was considered the same species until 2002. They have a lifespan of around four years, whilst Crow species can live to the age of Twenty years old, and the oldest known American crow in the wild was almost Thirty years old. The oldest documented captive crow died at age Fifty nine. They are smaller and have a shorter lifespan than the Raven, which again is used as a symbol in history to live life to the full and not waste a moment!

  

They are often mistaken for the Rook (Corvus frugilegus), a similar bird, though in the UK, the Rook is actually technically smaller than the Carrion crow averaging 44-46cm in length, 81-99cm wingspan and weighing up to 340g. Rooks have white beaks compared to the black beaks of Carrion crow, a more steeply raked ratio from head to beak, and longer straighter beaks as well as a different plumage pattern. There are documented cases in the UK of singular and grouped Rooks attacking and killing Carrion crows in their territory. Rooks nest in colonies unlike Carrion crows. Carrion crows have only a few natural enemies including powerful raptors such as the northern goshawk, the peregrine falcon, the Eurasian eagle-owl and the golden eagle which will all readily hunt them.

  

Regarded as one of the most intelligent birds, indeed creatures on the planet, studies suggest that Corvids cognitive abilities can rival that of primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas and even provide clues to understanding human intelligence. Crows have relatively large brains for their body size, compared to other animals. Their encephalization quotient (EQ) a ratio of brain to body size, adjusted for size because there isn’t a linear relationship is 4.1. That is remarkably close to chimps at 4.2 whilst humans are 8.1. Corvids also have a very high neuronal density, the number of neurons per gram of brain, factoring in the number of cortical neurons, neuron packing density, interneuronal distance and axonal conduction velocity shows that Corvids score high on this measure as well, with humans scoring the highest.

  

A corvid's pallium is packed with more neurons than a great ape's. Corvids have demonstrated the ability to use a combination of mental tools such as imagination, and anticipation of future events. They can craft tools from twigs and branches to hook grubs from deep recesses, they can solve puzzles and intricate methods of gaining access to food set by humans., and have even bent pieces of wire into hooks to obtain food. They have been proven to have a higher cognitive ability level than seven year old humans. Communications wise, their repertoire of wraw-wraw's is not fully understood, but the intensity, rhythm, and duration of caws seems to form the basis of a possible language. They also remember the faces of humans who have hindered or hurt them and pass that information on to their offspring.

  

Aesop's fable of 'The Crow and the Pitcher, tells of a thirsty crow which drops stones into a water pitcher to raise the water level and enable it to take a drink. Scientists have conducted tests to see whether crows really are this intelligent. They placed floating treats in a deep tube and observed the crows indeed dropping dense objects carefully selected into the water until the treat floated within reach. They had the intelligence to pick up, weigh and discount objects that would float in the water, they also did not select ones that were too large for the container.

  

Pet crows develop a unique call for their owners, in effect actually naming them. They also know to sunbathe for a dose of vitamin D, regularly settling on wooden garden fences, opening their mouths and wings and raising their heads to the sun. In groups they warn of danger and communicate vocally. They store a cache of food for later if in abundance and are clever enough to move it if they feel it has been discovered. They leave markers for their cache. They have even learned to place walnuts and similar hard food items under car tyres at traffic lights as a means of cracking them!

  

Crows regularly gather around a dead fellow corvid, almost like a funeral, and it is thought they somehow learn from each death. They can even remember human faces for decades.Crows group together to attack larger predators and even steal their food, and they have different dialects in different areas, with the ability to mimic the dialect of the alpha males when they enter their territory!

  

They have a twenty year life span, the oldest on record reaching the age of Fifty nine. Crows can leave gifts for those who feed them such as buttons or bright shiny objects as a thank you, and they even kiss and make up after an argument, having mated for life.

  

In mythology they are associated with good and bad luck, being the bringers of omens and even witchcraft and are generally reviled for their attacks on baby birds and small mammals. They have an attack method of to stunning smaller birds before consuming them, tearing violently at smaller, less aggressive birds, which is simply down to the fact that they are so highly intelligent, and also the top of the food chain. Their diet includes over a thousand different items: Dead animals (as their name suggests), invertebrates, grain, as well as stealing eggs and chicks from other birds' nests, worms, insects, fruit, seeds, kitchen scraps. They are highly adaptable when food sources grow scarce. I absolutely love them, they are magnificent, bold, beautiful and incredibly interesting to watch and though at times it is hard to witness attacks made by them, I cannot help but adore them for so many other and more important reasons.

  

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PAIR IN MY GARDEN

  

Crows have been in the area for a while, but rarely had strayed into my garden, leaving the Magpies to own the territory. Things changed towards the end of May when a beautiful female Carrion crow appeared and began to take some of the food that I put down for the other birds. Within a few days she began to appear regularly, on occasions stocking up on food, whilst other times placing pieces in the birdbath to soften them. She would stand on the birdbath and eat and drink and come back over the course of the day to eat the softened food.

  

Shortly afterwards she brought along her mate, a tall and handsome fella, much larger than her who was also very vocal if he felt she was getting a little too close to me. By now I had moved from a seated position from the patio as an observer, to laying on a mat just five feet from the birdbath with my Nikon so that I could photograph the pair as they landed, scavenged and fed. She was now confident enough to let me be very close, and she even tolerated and recognized the clicking of the camera. At first I used silent mode to reduce the noise but this only allowed two shooting frame rates of single frame or continuous low frame which meant I was missing shots. I reverted back to normal continuous high frames and she soon got used to the whirring of the mechanisms as the mirror slapped back and forth.

  

The big fella would bark orders at her from the safety of the fence or the rear of the garden, whilst she rarely made a sound. That was until one day when in the sweltering heat she kept opening her beak and sunning on the grass, panting slightly in the heat. I placed the circular water sprayer nearby and had it rotating so that the birdbath and grass was bathed in gentle water droplets and she soon came back, landed and seemed to really like the cooling effect on offer. She then climbed onto the birdbath and opened her wings slightly and made some gentle purring, cooing noises....

  

I swear she was expressing happiness, joy....

  

On another blisteringly hot day when the sprayer was on, she came down, walked towards it and opened her wings up running into the water spray. Not once, but many times.

  

A further revelation into the unseen sides to these beautiful birds came with the male and female on the rear garden fence. They sat together, locked beaks like a kiss and then the male took his time gently preening her head feathers and the back of her neck as she made tiny happy sounds. They stayed together like that for several minutes, showing a gentle, softer side to their nature and demonstrating the deep bond between them. Into July and the pair started to bring their three youngsters to my garden, the nippers learning to use the birdbath for bathing and dipping food, the parents attentive as ever. Two of the youngsters headed off once large enough and strong enough.

  

I was privileged to be in close attendance as the last juvenile was brought down by the pair, taught to take food and then on a night in July, to soar and fly with it's mother in the evening sky as the light faded. She would swoop and twirl, and at regular intervals just touch the juvenile in flight with her wing tip feathers, as if to reassure it that she was close in attendance. What an amazing experience to view. A few days later, the juvenile, though now gaining independence and more than capable of tackling food scraps in the garden, was still on occasions demand feeding from it's mother who was now teaching him to take chicken breast, hotdogs or digestive biscuits and bury them in the garden beds for later delectation. The juvenile also liked to gather up peanuts and bury them in the grass. On one occasion I witnessed a pair of rumbunctious Pica Pica (Magpies), chasing the young crow on rooftops, leaping at him no matter how hard he tried to get away. He defended himself well and survived the attacks, much to my relief.

  

Into August and the last youngster remained with the adults, though now was very independent even though he still spent time with his parents on rooftops, and shared food gathering duties with his mum.Hotdog sausages were their favourite choice, followed by fish fingers and digestive biscuits which the adult male would gather up three at a time. In October, the three Crows were still kings of the area, but my time observing them was pretty much over as I will only put food out now for the birds in the winter months. The two adults are still here in December and now taking the food that I put out to help all birds survive in the winter months. They also have a pair of Magpies to compete with now.

 

Late February 2022 and Cheryl and Russell and their youngster are still with me, still dominant in the area and still taking raw chicken, hotdogs, biscuits and fatballs that I put out for them. Today I saw them mating for the first time this year in the tree and the cycle continues.

 

By October 2022 the pair had successfully reared a new baby who we nicknamed Baboo, and the other youngster flew the coup. The three no recognised our car returning from weekends away, and were enjoying sausages, hotdogs, raw chicken, fish and especially cheese, but life was hard as they aged with daily morning and evening tustles in the air with invaders and intruders hoping to take their land.

  

Corvus Corone.... magnificently misunderstood by some!

  

Paul Williams June 4th 2021 (Updated in October 2022)

  

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Nikon D850 Focal length 550mm Shutter speed: 1/40s Aperture f/11.0 iso640 Hand held with Tamron VC Vibration control set to ON in position 1 14 Bit uncompressed RAW NEF file size L (8256 x 5504 pixels) FX (36 x 24) Focus mode: AF-C AF-Area mode: 3D-tracking AF-C Priority Selection: Release. Nikon Back button focusing enabled 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points Exposure mode: Manual exposure mode Metering mode: Matrix metering ISO Sensitivity: Auto 360 White balance on: Auto1 (5390k) Colour space: RGB Picture control: Standard (Sharpening +3)

  

Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2. Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Lee SW150 MKII filter holder. Lee SW150 95mm screw in adapter ring. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup.Mcoplus professional MB-D850 multi function battery grip 6960.Two Nikon EN-EL15a batteries (Priority to battery in Battery grip). Black Rapid Curve Breathe strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag.

     

LATITUDE: N 51d 28m 28.36s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 8m 10.61s

ALTITUDE: 58.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF FILE: 90.90MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 40.00MB

    

PROCESSING POWER:

 

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.10 (9/05/2019) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (18/02/20) LF 1.00

 

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit Version 1.4.1 (18/02/2020). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.13.5. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

   

©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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CREATIVE RF gty.im/1412163444 MOMENT ROYALTY FREE COLLECTION**

  

This photograph became my 5,649th frame to be selected for sale in the Getty Images collection and I am very grateful to them for this wonderful opportunity.

  

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Photograph taken at an altitude of zero metres, at 06:37am on Sunday 5th September 2019 around sunrise off 1st Street and Bevan Avenue, between the boat jetty and Bevan Avenue Fishing Pier in beautiful Sidney by the sea on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

  

In the distance we see Mt Baker in Washington State, USA . Known to the Lummi First nation people (Lhaq'temish) as Kwelshán ('Shooting place' in Nooksack), to the Halkomelem as Kwelxá:lxw, to Lushootseed speakers along the Skagit River as Teqwúbe7 meaning “snow-capped peak'', to the Nooksack language as Kweq’ Smánit (“white mountain'') and also known as Koma Kulshan, (pronounced kō-ō’mah’ kool-shän’), the name for the Middle Fork which originates from the glaciers such as Deming and Thunder on the western slopes, she is an active glaciated andesitic stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the North Cascades of Washington State in the United States, standing 3,286 metres tall and was first ascended in 1868, her last eruption recorded in 1880.

  

The name Mount Baker first appeared in print in Captain Vancouver’s 1798 narrative of his voyage around Vancouver Island. Legend has it that his third-lieutenant, Joseph Baker, was the first to spot the mountain while they sailed into Dungeness Bay on April 30th, 1792.

  

The Bevan Avenue fishing pier is one of the main focal points in this small but beautiful town where some of my family are so lucky to reside. Work commenced on the pier in 1993 withn Phase one, a 90 metre straight section being completed in 1996. A year later the 110 metre Phase two section was completed.

  

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Nikon D850. Focal length: 24mm Shutter speed: 1/5s Aperture f/14.0 iso64 RAW (14 bit uncompressed) Image size L (8256 x 5504 FX) Focus mode: AF-C focus 51 point with 3D- tracking. AF-Area mode single point & 73 point switchable Exposure mode: Aperture priority exposure Nikon Back button focusing enabled Metering mode: Matrix metering ISO Sensitivity: ON (Normal) White balance: Natural light auto 0, 0 Colour space: Adobe RGB Nikon Auto Distortion control: ON Picture control: (SD) Standard (Sharpening +3/Clarity +1) High ISO NR: ON (Normal) Vignette control: Normal Active D-lighting: Auto.

  

Nikkor AF-S 24-120mm f/4G ED VR. Lee SW150 MKII filter holder. Lee SW150 77mm screw in adapter ring. Lee SW150 0.9 (3 stops) Neutral density graduated soft resin filter. Lee SW150 Filters field pouch.Nikon EN-EL15a battery.Mcoplus professional MB-D850 multi function battery grip 6960. Matin quick release neckstrap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag. Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup.Manfrotto 055XPROB Tripod 3 Sections (Payload: 5.6kgs). Manfrotto 327RC2 Light Duty Grip Ball Magnesium Tripod Head (Payload: 5.5kgs). Manfrotto quick release plate 200PL-14. Jessops Tripod bag.Nikon MC-DC2 remote shutter release cable.

  

LATITUDE: N 48d 38m 52.64s

LONGITUDE: W 123d 23m 36.70s

ALTITUDE: 0.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF: 91.1MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 42.60MB

     

PROCESSING POWER:

  

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.10 (9/05/2019) LD Distortion Data 2.017 (20/3/18) LF 1.00

  

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit (Version 1.3.1 11/07/2019). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit (Version 1.4.7 15/03/2018). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 1.3.2 15/03/2018). Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

   

©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Ten metres at 12:39pm on Thursday 11th November 2021 off the Western Esplanade and West Cliff Road on the shoreline of Louisa Bay in Broadstairs, Kent. The seven bays in Broadstairs consist of: (From south to north) Dumpton Gap, Louisa Bay, Viking Bay, Stone Bay, Joss Bay, Kingsgate Bay and Botany Bay.

  

Here we see an Adult Eurasian Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus) in winter plumage. They are also known as the common pied oystercatcher, or palaearctic oystercatcher,or just oystercatcher in Europe. They are waders with three races in Western Europe, Central Eurosiberia, Kamchatka, China and Korea. A Canary Islands species is now extinct. They are also the national bird of the Faroe Islands.

  

We left around 9am for the hour or so 70 mile drive down the A2 to Viking bay, first stop a full English breakfast at the pub there overlooking the beach. Then time for a stroll along the beach on a cloudy day surrounded by Mother Nature, a tonic for the soul.

  

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Nikon D850 Hand held with Tamron VC Vibration Control set on to normal position 1 Focal length: 600mm Shutter speed: 1/250s Aperture f/10.0 iso250 RAW (14 bit uncompressed) Image size L 8256 x 5504 FX) Focus mode: AF-C focus AF-Area mode: 3D-tracking Exposure mode: Manual exposure Metering mode: Matrix metering White balance: Auto 1, 0, 0 (5760K) Colour space: Adobe RGB Active D-Lighting: Low Picture control: (NL) Neutral +2 sharpening

  

Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2. Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Lee SW150 MKII filter holder. Lee SW150 95mm screw in adapter ring. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch. Nikon EN-EL15a battery. Black Rapid curve breathe sport shoulder strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag. Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Jessops Tripod bag.

  

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LATITUDE: N 51d 21m 16.76s

LONGITUDE: E 1d 26m 38.71s

ALTITUDE: 10.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF FILE SIZE: 91.20MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 36.10MB

  

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PROCESSING POWER:

  

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.01 (16/01/2018) LD Distortion Data 2.017 (20/3/18)

  

HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB SATA storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit (Version 1.2.11 15/03/2018). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit (Version 1.4.7 15/03/2018). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 1.3.2 15/03/2018). Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

     

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©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Fifty metres at 11:51am on a beautiful springtime morning on Saturday 16th April 2022, off Chessington Avenue in Bexleyheath, Kent.

  

Here we see a Male and Female Carrion crow (Corvus corone), a passerine bird of the family Corvidae and the genus Raven (Higher classification: Corvus), which is native to western Europe and eastern Asia. It can grow to twenty inches in length with a wingspan of up to thirty nine inches. In the distance are the contrails of two passing aeroplanes.

  

AN IN DEPTH LOOK AT CORVUS CORONE

  

LEGEND AND MYTHOLOGY

By Paul Williams

  

Crows appear in the Bible where Noah uses one to search for dry land and to check on the recession of the flood. Crows supposedly saved the prophet, Elijah, from famine and are an Inuit deity. Legend has it that England and its monarchy will end when there are no more crows in the Tower of London. And some believe that the crows went to the Tower attracted by the regular corpses following executions with written accounts of their presence at the executions of Anne Boleyn and Jane Gray.

  

In Welsh mythology, unfortunately Crows are seen as symbolic of evilness and black magic thanks to many references to witches transforming into crows or ravens and escaping. Indian legend tells of Kakabhusandi, a crow who sits on the branches of a wish-fulfilling tree called Kalpataru and a crow in Ramayana where Lord Rama blessed the crow with the power to foresee future events and communicate with the souls.

  

In Native American first nation legend the crow is sometimes considered to be something of a trickster, though they are also viewed positively by some tribes as messengers between this world and the next where they carry messages from the living to those deceased, and even carry healing medicines between both worlds. There is a belief that crows can foresee the future. The Klamath tribe in Oregon believe that when we die, we fly up to heaven as a crow. The Crow can also signify wisdom to some tribes who believe crows had the power to talk and were therefore considered to be one of the wisest of birds. Tribes with Crow Clans include the Chippewa (whose Crow Clan and its totem are called Aandeg), the Hopi (whose Crow Clan is called Angwusngyam or Ungwish-wungwa), the Menominee, the Caddo, the Tlingit, and the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico.

  

The crow features in the Nanissáanah (Ghost dance), popularized by Jerome Crow Dog, a Brulé Lakota sub-chief and warrior born at Horse Stealing Creek in Montana Territory in 1833, the crow symbolizing wisdom and the past, when the crow had became a guide and acted as a pathfinder during hunting. The Ghost dance movement was originally created in 1870 by Wodziwob, or Gray Hair, a prophet and medicine man of the Paiute tribe in an area that became known as Nevada. Ghost dancers wore crow and eagle feathers in their clothes and hair, and the fact that the Crow could talk placed it as one of the sages of the animal kingdom. The five day dances seeking trance,prophecy and exhortations would eventually play a major part in the pathway towards the white man's broken treaties, the infamous battle at Wounded knee and the surrender of Matȟó Wanáȟtaka (Kicking Bear), after officials began to fear the ghost dancers and rituals which seemed to occur prior to battle.

  

Historically the Vikings are the group who made so many references to the crow, and Ragnarr Loðbrók and his sons used this species in his banner as well as appearances in many flags and coats of arms. Also, it had some kind of association with Odin, one of their main deities. Norse legend tells us that Odin is accompanied by two crows. Hugin, who symbolizes thought, and Munin, who represents a memory. These two crows were sent out each dawn to fly the entire world, returning at breakfast where they informed the Lord of the Nordic gods of everything that went on in their kingdoms. Odin was also referred to as Rafnagud (raven-god). The raven appears in almost every skaldic poem describing warfare.Coins dating back to 940's minted by Olaf Cuaran depict the Viking war standard, the Raven and Viking war banners (Gonfalon) depicted the bird also.

  

In Scandinavian legends, crows are a representative of the Goddess of Death, known as Valkyrie (from old Norse 'Valkyrja'), one of the group of maidens who served the Norse deity Odin, visiting battlefields and sending him the souls of the slain worthy of a place in Valhalla. Odin ( also called Wodan, Woden, or Wotan), preferred that heroes be killed in battle and that the most valiant of souls be taken to Valhöll, the hall of slain warriors. It is the crow that provides the Valkyries with important information on who should go. In Hindu ceremonies that are associated to ancestors, the crow has an important place in Vedic rituals. They are seen as messengers of death in Indian culture too.

  

In Germanic legend, Crows are seen as psychonomes, meaning the act of guiding spirits to their final destination, and that the feathers of a crow could cure a victim who had been cursed. And yet, a lone black crow could symbolize impending death, whilst a group symbolizes a lucky omen! Vikings also saw good omens in the crow and would leave offerings of meat as a token.

  

The crow also has sacred and prophetic meaning within the Celtic civilization, where it stood for flesh ripped off due to combat and Morrighan, the warrior goddess, often appears in Celtic mythology as a raven or crow, or else is found to be in the company of the birds. Crow is sacred to Lugdnum, the Celtic god of creation who gave his name to the city of Lug

  

In Greek mythology according to Appolodorus, Apollo is supposedly responsible for the black feathers of the crow, turning them forever black from their pristine white original plumage as a punishment after they brought news that Κορωνις (Coronis) a princess of the Thessalian kingdom of Phlegyantis, Apollo's pregnant lover had left him to marry a mortal, Ischys. In one legend, Apollo burned the crows feathers and then burned Coronis to death, in another Coronis herself was turned into a black crow, and another that she was slain by the arrows of Αρτεμις (Artemis - twin to Apollo). Koronis was later set amongst the stars as the constellation Corvus ("the Crow"). Her name means "Curved One" from the Greek word korônis or "Crow" from the word korônê.A similar Muslim legend allegedly tells of Muhammad, founder of Islam and the last prophet sent by God to Earth, who's secret location was given away by a white crow to his seekers, as he hid in caves. The crow shouted 'Ghar Ghar' (Cave, cave) and thus as punishment, Muhammad turned the crow black and cursed it for eternity to utter only one phrase, 'Ghar, ghar). Native Indian legend where the once rainbow coloured crows became forever black after shedding their colourful plumage over the other animals of the world.

  

In China the Crow is represented in art as a three legged bird on a solar disk, being a creature that helps the sun in its journey. In Japan there are myths of Crow Tengu who were priests who became vain, and turned into this spirit to serve as messengers until they learn the lesson of humility as well as a great Crow who takes part in Shinto creation stories.

  

In animal spirit guides there are general perceptions of what sightings of numbers of crows actually mean:

  

1 Crow Meaning: To carry a message from your near one who died recently.

 

2 Crows Meaning: Two crows sitting near your home signifies some good news is on your way.

 

3 Crows Meaning: An upcoming wedding in your family.

 

4 Crows Meaning: Symbolizes wealth and prosperity.

 

5 Crows Meaning: Diseases or pain.

 

6 Crows Meaning: A theft in your house!

 

7 Crows Meaning: Denotes travel or moving from your house.

 

8 Crows Meaning: Sorrowful events

  

Crows are generally seen as the symbolism when alive for doom bringing, misfortune and bad omens, and yet a dead crow symbolises potentially bringing good news and positive change to those who see it. This wonderful bird certainly gets a mixed bag of contradictory mythology and legend over the centuries and in modern days is often seen as a bit of a nuisance, attacking and killing the babies of other birds such as Starlings, Pigeons and House Sparrows as well as plucking the eyes out of lambs in the field, being loud and noisy and violently attacking poor victims in a 'crow court'....

  

There is even a classic horror film called 'THE CROW' released in 1994 by Miramax Films, directed by Alex Proyas and starring Brandon Lee in his final film appearance as Eric Draven, who is revived by a Crow tapping on his gravestone a year after he and his fiancée are murdered in Detroit by a street gang. The crow becomes his guide as he sets out to avenge the murders. The only son of martial arts expert Bruce Lee, Brandon lee suffered fatal injuries on the set of the film when the crew failed to remove the primer from a cartridge that hit Lee in the abdomen with the same force as a normal bullet. Lee died that day, March 31st 1993 aged 28.

  

The symbolism of the Crow resurrecting the dead star and accompanying him on his quest for revenge was powerful, and in some part based on the history of the carrion crow itself and the original film grossed more than $94 Million dollars with three subsequent sequels following.

  

TAKING A CLOSER LOOK

  

So let's move away from legend, mythology and stories passed down from our parents and grandparents and look at these amazing birds in isolation.

  

Carrion crow are passerines in the family Corvidae a group of Oscine passerine birds including Crows, Ravens, Rooks, Jackdaws, Jays, Magpies, Treepies, Choughs and Nutcrackers. Technically they are classed as Corvids, and the largest of passerine birds. Carrion crows are medium to large in size with rictal bristles and a single moult per year (most passerines moult twice). Carrion crow was one of the many species originally described by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (Carl Von Linne after his ennoblement) in his 1758 and 1759 editions of 'SYSTEMA NATURAE', and it still bears its original name of Corvus corone, derived from the Latin of Corvus, meaning Raven and the Greek κορώνη (korōnē), meaning crow.

  

Carrion crow are of the Animalia kingdom Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Passeriformes Family: Corvidae Genus: Corvus and Species: Corvus corone

  

Corvus corone can reach 45-47cm in length with a 93-104cm wingspan and weigh between 370-650g. They are protected under The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 in the United Kingdom with a Green UK conservation status which means they are of least concern with more than 1,000,000 territories. Breeding occurs in April with fledging of the chicks taking around twenty nine days following an incubation period of around twenty days with 3 to 4 eggs being the average norm. They are abundant in the UK apart from Northwest Scotland and Ireland where the Hooded crow (Corvus cornix) was considered the same species until 2002. They have a lifespan of around four years, whilst Crow species can live to the age of Twenty years old, and the oldest known American crow in the wild was almost Thirty years old. The oldest documented captive crow died at age Fifty nine. They are smaller and have a shorter lifespan than the Raven, which again is used as a symbol in history to live life to the full and not waste a moment!

  

They are often mistaken for the Rook (Corvus frugilegus), a similar bird, though in the UK, the Rook is actually technically smaller than the Carrion crow averaging 44-46cm in length, 81-99cm wingspan and weighing up to 340g. Rooks have white beaks compared to the black beaks of Carrion crow, a more steeply raked ratio from head to beak, and longer straighter beaks as well as a different plumage pattern. There are documented cases in the UK of singular and grouped Rooks attacking and killing Carrion crows in their territory. Rooks nest in colonies unlike Carrion crows. Carrion crows have only a few natural enemies including powerful raptors such as the northern goshawk, the peregrine falcon, the Eurasian eagle-owl and the golden eagle which will all readily hunt them.

  

Regarded as one of the most intelligent birds, indeed creatures on the planet, studies suggest that Corvids cognitive abilities can rival that of primates such as chimpanzees and gorillas and even provide clues to understanding human intelligence. Crows have relatively large brains for their body size, compared to other animals. Their encephalization quotient (EQ) a ratio of brain to body size, adjusted for size because there isn’t a linear relationship is 4.1. That is remarkably close to chimps at 4.2 whilst humans are 8.1. Corvids also have a very high neuronal density, the number of neurons per gram of brain, factoring in the number of cortical neurons, neuron packing density, interneuronal distance and axonal conduction velocity shows that Corvids score high on this measure as well, with humans scoring the highest.

  

A corvid's pallium is packed with more neurons than a great ape's. Corvids have demonstrated the ability to use a combination of mental tools such as imagination, and anticipation of future events. They can craft tools from twigs and branches to hook grubs from deep recesses, they can solve puzzles and intricate methods of gaining access to food set by humans., and have even bent pieces of wire into hooks to obtain food. They have been proven to have a higher cognitive ability level than seven year old humans. Communications wise, their repertoire of wraw-wraw's is not fully understood, but the intensity, rhythm, and duration of caws seems to form the basis of a possible language. They also remember the faces of humans who have hindered or hurt them and pass that information on to their offspring.

  

Aesop's fable of 'The Crow and the Pitcher, tells of a thirsty crow which drops stones into a water pitcher to raise the water level and enable it to take a drink. Scientists have conducted tests to see whether crows really are this intelligent. They placed floating treats in a deep tube and observed the crows indeed dropping dense objects carefully selected into the water until the treat floated within reach. They had the intelligence to pick up, weigh and discount objects that would float in the water, they also did not select ones that were too large for the container.

  

Pet crows develop a unique call for their owners, in effect actually naming them. They also know to sunbathe for a dose of vitamin D, regularly settling on wooden garden fences, opening their mouths and wings and raising their heads to the sun. In groups they warn of danger and communicate vocally. They store a cache of food for later if in abundance and are clever enough to move it if they feel it has been discovered. They leave markers for their cache. They have even learned to place walnuts and similar hard food items under car tyres at traffic lights as a means of cracking them!

  

Crows regularly gather around a dead fellow corvid, almost like a funeral, and it is thought they somehow learn from each death. They can even remember human faces for decades.Crows group together to attack larger predators and even steal their food, and they have different dialects in different areas, with the ability to mimic the dialect of the alpha males when they enter their territory!

  

They have a twenty year life span, the oldest on record reaching the age of Fifty nine. Crows can leave gifts for those who feed them such as buttons or bright shiny objects as a thank you, and they even kiss and make up after an argument, having mated for life.

  

In mythology they are associated with good and bad luck, being the bringers of omens and even witchcraft and are generally reviled for their attacks on baby birds and small mammals. They have an attack method of to stunning smaller birds before consuming them, tearing violently at smaller, less aggressive birds, which is simply down to the fact that they are so highly intelligent, and also the top of the food chain. Their diet includes over a thousand different items: Dead animals (as their name suggests), invertebrates, grain, as well as stealing eggs and chicks from other birds' nests, worms, insects, fruit, seeds, kitchen scraps. They are highly adaptable when food sources grow scarce. I absolutely love them, they are magnificent, bold, beautiful and incredibly interesting to watch and though at times it is hard to witness attacks made by them, I cannot help but adore them for so many other and more important reasons.

  

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PAIR IN MY GARDEN

  

Crows have been in the area for a while, but rarely had strayed into my garden, leaving the Magpies to own the territory. Things changed towards the end of May when a beautiful female Carrion crow appeared and began to take some of the food that I put down for the other birds. Within a few days she began to appear regularly, on occasions stocking up on food, whilst other times placing pieces in the birdbath to soften them. She would stand on the birdbath and eat and drink and come back over the course of the day to eat the softened food.

  

Shortly afterwards she brought along her mate, a tall and handsome fella, much larger than her who was also very vocal if he felt she was getting a little too close to me. By now I had moved from a seated position from the patio as an observer, to laying on a mat just five feet from the birdbath with my Nikon so that I could photograph the pair as they landed, scavenged and fed. She was now confident enough to let me be very close, and she even tolerated and recognized the clicking of the camera. At first I used silent mode to reduce the noise but this only allowed two shooting frame rates of single frame or continuous low frame which meant I was missing shots. I reverted back to normal continuous high frames and she soon got used to the whirring of the mechanisms as the mirror slapped back and forth.

  

The big fella would bark orders at her from the safety of the fence or the rear of the garden, whilst she rarely made a sound. That was until one day when in the sweltering heat she kept opening her beak and sunning on the grass, panting slightly in the heat. I placed the circular water sprayer nearby and had it rotating so that the birdbath and grass was bathed in gentle water droplets and she soon came back, landed and seemed to really like the cooling effect on offer. She then climbed onto the birdbath and opened her wings slightly and made some gentle purring, cooing noises....

  

I swear she was expressing happiness, joy....

  

On another blisteringly hot day when the sprayer was on, she came down, walked towards it and opened her wings up running into the water spray. Not once, but many times.

  

A further revelation into the unseen sides to these beautiful birds came with the male and female on the rear garden fence. They sat together, locked beaks like a kiss and then the male took his time gently preening her head feathers and the back of her neck as she made tiny happy sounds. They stayed together like that for several minutes, showing a gentle, softer side to their nature and demonstrating the deep bond between them. Into July and the pair started to bring their three youngsters to my garden, the nippers learning to use the birdbath for bathing and dipping food, the parents attentive as ever. Two of the youngsters headed off once large enough and strong enough.

  

I was privileged to be in close attendance as the last juvenile was brought down by the pair, taught to take food and then on a night in July, to soar and fly with it's mother in the evening sky as the light faded. She would swoop and twirl, and at regular intervals just touch the juvenile in flight with her wing tip feathers, as if to reassure it that she was close in attendance. What an amazing experience to view. A few days later, the juvenile, though now gaining independence and more than capable of tackling food scraps in the garden, was still on occasions demand feeding from it's mother who was now teaching him to take chicken breast, hotdogs or digestive biscuits and bury them in the garden beds for later delectation. The juvenile also liked to gather up peanuts and bury them in the grass. On one occasion I witnessed a pair of rumbunctious Pica Pica (Magpies), chasing the young crow on rooftops, leaping at him no matter how hard he tried to get away. He defended himself well and survived the attacks, much to my relief.

  

Into August and the last youngster remained with the adults, though now was very independent even though he still spent time with his parents on rooftops, and shared food gathering duties with his mum.Hotdog sausages were their favourite choice, followed by fish fingers and digestive biscuits which the adult male would gather up three at a time. In October, the three Crows were still kings of the area, but my time observing them was pretty much over as I will only put food out now for the birds in the winter months. The two adults are still here in December and now taking the food that I put out to help all birds survive in the winter months. They also have a pair of Magpies to compete with now.

Late February 2022 and Cheryl and Russell and their youngster are still with me, still dominant in the area and still taking raw chicken, hotdogs, biscuits and fatballs that I put out for them. Today I saw them mating for the first time this year in the tree and the cycle continues.

  

Corvus Corone.... magnificently misunderstood by some!

  

Paul Williams June 4th 2021 (Updated in April 2022)

  

Nikon D850 Focal length: 460mm Shutter speed: 1/1250s (Electronic front curtain enabled) Aperture: f/6.3 iso160 Hand held with Tamron VC Vibration control set to ON (Position 1) 14 Bit uncompressed RAW NEF file size L (8256 x 5504 pixels) FX (36 x 24) Focus mode: AF-C AF-Area mode: 3D-tracking AF-C Priority Selection: Release. Nikon Back button focusing enabled 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points Exposure mode: Manual exposure mode Metering mode: Matrix metering White balance on: Auto1, 0, 0 (5080k) Colour space: RGB Picture control: Neutral (Sharpening +2) Active D-lighting: Low

  

Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2. Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Lee SW150 MKII filter holder. Lee SW150 95mm screw in adapter ring. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup.Mcoplus professional MB-D850 multi function battery grip 6960.Two Nikon EN-EL15a batteries (Priority to battery in Battery grip). Black Rapid Curve Breathe strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag.

     

LATITUDE: N 51d 28m 28.19s

LONGITUDE: E 0d 8m 10.66s

ALTITUDE: 52.00m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF FILE: 89.4MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 46.10MB

     

PROCESSING POWER:

  

Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.10 (9/05/2019) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (18/02/20) LF 1.00

  

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A586-500

PUZZLE ADULTE

 

Puzzle d'art en bois de 500 pièces, découpé à la main en France respectant l'environnement.

 

Odilon Redon est un peintre symboliste de la fin du XIXe, fasciné par le rêve et le monde spirituel. Les fleurs des champs représentées symbolisent la fragilité de la beauté, et l'harmonie de la nature au printemps. Ce tableau de 1909 appartient à une collection privée. Il fait près de 1 m de long !

  

Dimensions : 28 x 35 cm (environ)

 

plus d'infos sur le produit

 

RL is a respected of her work team. She's also extremely big. She talks of how liberating it is to be the size she wants, how it's a statement of her freedom.

This is a creative commons image, which you may freely use by linking to this page. Please respect the photographer and his work.

 

[There are 9 images in this set] Briery Presbyterian Church in Prince Edward County, Virginia, is just over the Charlotte County boundary line. It is a beautiful Carpenter Gothic church, built about 1855, designed by Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898). Dabney was a professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary (at that time part of Hampden-Sydney College) and the author of a biography of Stonewall Jackson, noted Confederate general in the Civil War. Dabney designed three other churches—College Church at Hampden-Sydney, Farmville Presbyterian Church and Tinkling Spring Church in Augusta County, Virginia, all in Greek Revival style rather than the Gothic Revival style of Briery. He also designed his home in Hampden-Sydney; “Westmerton” is an Italianate house dating from 1856, from the same time period as Briery Church. A set of three images is at www.flickr.com/photos/universalpops/sets/72157628611503173

 

Briery Church is a one-story frame board-and-batten structure with a very noticeable steep gable roof, emphasizing the verticality of lines. Built on a T-shaped plan, the front of the building has three cross gables, which create an impression of great length. The eaves are wide with simple bracketing. Each of the gables is topped with a turned finial. There are four entrances, two on the front (entrances for men and for women) and one at each side. There is no rear entrance. Each entrance is covered with a small canopy porch with barge boarding of simple curved strips of wood. Windows are 1/1 sash except for the fixed central window on the front façade; they have diamond panes. The foundation is masonry, probably brick covered with stucco. The deep swoop of the gables provides a dramatic look to this structure. I’ve not been inside but have been told it has a beautiful interior with pine ceiling. The first church on the site was about 1750 and replaced in 1824; this church replaced the latter building. Briery Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places November 29, 1969 with ID#69000371.

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

  

©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®

  

No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)

  

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Photograph taken at an altitude of Five metres at 11:21am on Wednesday 28th July 2021 at 81 Central Parade, in front of Waltrop Gardens, looking towards the remnants of one of the original piers at Herne Bay on the Thames Estuary, CT6 5JQ, England.

   

This is all that remains of the third pier at Herne Bay, with just the steamer passengers landing stage remaining after a storm January 11th 1978 which wrecked the 3,787ft (1,154m) wooden pier, designed by Wrighton & Co which originally opened in 1899.Further out we see the Kentish Flats Offshore Wind Farm, completed in 2005 and located on a shallow plateau just outside the main Thames shipping lanes. You can also see a cluster of Maunsell sea forts built in 1942 and decommissioned in the 1950's.

  

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I left at 9am for the One hour journey down with the possibility of sun, cloud and rain showers. At Herne Bay it was time for my usual stop at 'Makcari's Coffee Lounge & Ice Cream Parlour' for a slice of cherry and almond gateaux and a lovely latte coffee before a pleasant stroll on a mixed day. With rain off in the distance I headed back to the car, just getting inside before the heavens opened!

 

On the drive home torrential rain and wind made it impossible to see the road ahead at times, before clearing and sunny spells dominating. A typical British summer day, you might say!

  

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Nikon D850 Hand held with Nikkor VR Vibration Reduction enabled on Normal setting Focal length: 190mm Shutter speed: 1/800s Aperture f/9.0 iso160 RAW (14 bit uncompressed) Image size L 8256 x 5504 FX) Focus mode: AF-C focus AF-Area mode: 3-D tracking Exposure mode: Manual exposure Metering mode: Matrix metering White balance: Auto 1, 0, 0 (5710K) Picture control: (NL) Neutral +2 sharpening

  

Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3DG OS HSM SPORTS (Firmware version 1.00 05/11/2019). Lee SW150 MKI filter holder with MK2 light shield and custom made velcro fitting for the Sigma lens. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch. Nikon EN-EL15a battery. Black Rapid curve breathe sport shoulder strap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag. Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Jessops Tripod bag.

  

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LATITUDE: N 51d 22m 19.12s

LONGITUDE: E 1d 7m 9.31s

ALTITUDE: 8.0m

  

RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF FILE SIZE: 91.20MB

PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 43.10MB

  

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HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB SATA storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit (Version 1.2.11 15/03/2018). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit (Version 1.4.7 15/03/2018). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 1.3.2 15/03/2018). Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.

   

Marc Zakharovich Chagall (/ʃəˈɡɑːl/ shə-GAHL;[3][nb 1] born Moishe Zakharovich Shagal;[4] 6 July [O.S. 24 June] 1887 – 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin.[1] An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in virtually every artistic format, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.

 

Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century" (though Chagall saw his work as "not the dream of one people but of all humanity"). According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists". For decades, he "had also been respected as the world's preeminent Jewish artist". Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the UN, and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra.

 

Before World War I, he travelled between Saint Petersburg, Paris and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his idea of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. He spent the wartime years in Soviet Belarus, becoming one of the country's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, founding the Vitebsk Arts College before leaving again for Paris in 1922.

 

He had two basic reputations, writes Lewis: as a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism's "golden age" in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism". Yet throughout these phases of his style "he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk."[5] "When Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is".[6]

 

Contents

 

1 Early life and education

1.1 Early life

1.2 Art education

1.3 Artistic inspiration

2 Art career

2.1 Russia (1906–1910)

2.2 France (1910–1914)

2.3 Russia and Soviet Belarus (1914–1922)

2.4 France (1923–1941)

2.4.1 The Bible illustrations

2.4.2 Nazi campaigns against modern art

2.4.3 Escaping occupied France

2.5 United States (1941–1948)

2.5.1 Aleko ballet (1942)

2.5.2 Coming to grips with World War II

2.5.3 Post-war years

2.6 France (1948–1985)

2.6.1 Ceiling of the Paris Opera (1963)

3 Art styles and techniques

3.1 Color

3.2 Subject matter

3.2.1 From life memories to fantasy

3.2.2 Jewish themes

  

Early life and education

Chagall's Parents

 

Marc Chagall was born Moishe Segal in a Lithuanian Jewish family in Liozna,[7] near the city of Vitebsk (Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire) in 1887.[note][8] At the time of his birth, Vitebsk's population was about 66,000, with half the population being Jewish.[5] A picturesque city of churches and synagogues, it was called "Russian Toledo", after a cosmopolitan city of the former Spanish Empire. As the city was built mostly of wood, little of it survived years of occupation and destruction during World War II.

 

Chagall was the eldest of nine children. The family name, Shagal, is a variant of the name Segal, which in a Jewish community was usually borne by a Levitic family.[9] His father, Khatskl (Zachar) Shagal, was employed by a herring merchant, and his mother, Feige-Ite, sold groceries from their home. His father worked hard, carrying heavy barrels but earning only 20 roubles each month (the average wages across the Russian Empire being 13 roubles a month). Chagall would later include fish motifs "out of respect for his father", writes Chagall biographer, Jacob Baal-Teshuva. Chagall wrote of these early years:

 

Day after day, winter and summer, at six o'clock in the morning, my father got up and went off to the synagogue. There he said his usual prayer for some dead man or other. On his return he made ready the samovar, drank some tea and went to work. Hellish work, the work of a galley-slave. Why try to hide it? How tell about it? No word will ever ease my father's lot... There was always plenty of butter and cheese on our table. Buttered bread, like an eternal symbol, was never out of my childish hands.[10]

 

One of the main sources of income of the Jewish population of the town was from the manufacture of clothing that was sold throughout Russia. They also made furniture and various agricultural tools.[11] From the late 18th century to the First World War, the Russian government confined Jews to living within the Pale of Settlement, which included modern Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, almost exactly corresponding to the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth recently taken over by Imperial Russia. This caused the creation of Jewish market-villages (shtetls) throughout today's Eastern Europe, with their own markets, schools, hospitals, and other community institutions.[12]:14

 

Most of what is known about Chagall's early life has come from his autobiography, My Life. In it, he described the major influence that the culture of Hasidic Judaism had on his life as an artist. Vitebsk itself had been a center of that culture dating from the 1730s with its teachings derived from the Kabbalah. Chagall scholar Susan Tumarkin Goodman describes the links and sources of his art to his early home:

 

Chagall's art can be understood as the response to a situation that has long marked the history of Russian Jews. Though they were cultural innovators who made important contributions to the broader society, Jews were considered outsiders in a frequently hostile society... Chagall himself was born of a family steeped in religious life; his parents were observant Hasidic Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in a life defined by their faith and organized by prayer.[12]:14

 

Chagall was friends with Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, and later with Menachem M. Schneerson.[13]

Art education

Portrait of Chagall by Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, his first art teacher in Vitebsk

 

In Russia at that time, Jewish children were not allowed to attend regular Russian schools or universities. Their movement within the city was also restricted. Chagall therefore received his primary education at the local Jewish religious school, where he studied Hebrew and the Bible. At the age of 13, his mother tried to enroll him in a Russian high school, and he recalled, "But in that school, they don't take Jews. Without a moment's hesitation, my courageous mother walks up to a professor." She offered the headmaster 50 roubles to let him attend, which he accepted.[10]

 

A turning point of his artistic life came when he first noticed a fellow student drawing. Baal-Teshuva writes that for the young Chagall, watching someone draw "was like a vision, a revelation in black and white". Chagall would later say that there was no art of any kind in his family's home and the concept was totally alien to him. When Chagall asked the schoolmate how he learned to draw, his friend replied, "Go and find a book in the library, idiot, choose any picture you like, and just copy it". He soon began copying images from books and found the experience so rewarding he then decided he wanted to become an artist.[11]

 

He eventually confided to his mother, "I want to be a painter", although she could not yet understand his sudden interest in art or why he would choose a vocation that "seemed so impractical", writes Goodman. The young Chagall explained, "There's a place in town; if I'm admitted and if I complete the course, I'll come out a regular artist. I'd be so happy!" It was 1906, and he had noticed the studio of Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, a realist artist who also operated a small drawing school in Vitebsk, which included the future artists El Lissitzky and Ossip Zadkine. Due to Chagall's youth and lack of income, Pen offered to teach him free of charge. However, after a few months at the school, Chagall realized that academic portrait painting did not suit his desires.[11]

Artistic inspiration

Marc Chagall, 1912, Calvary (Golgotha), oil on canvas, 174.6 × 192.4 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Alternative titles: Kreuzigung Bild 2 Christus gewidmet [Golgotha. Crucifixion. Dedicated to Christ]. Sold through Galerie Der Sturm (Herwarth Walden), Berlin to Bernhard Koehler (1849–1927), Berlin, 1913. Exhibited: Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon, Berlin, 1913

 

Goodman notes that during this period in Russia, Jews had two basic alternatives for joining the art world: One was to "hide or deny one's Jewish roots". The other alternative—the one that Chagall chose—was "to cherish and publicly express one's Jewish roots" by integrating them into his art. For Chagall, this was also his means of "self-assertion and an expression of principle."[12]:14

 

Chagall biographer Franz Meyer, explains that with the connections between his art and early life "the hassidic spirit is still the basis and source of nourishment for his art."[14] Lewis adds, "As cosmopolitan an artist as he would later become, his storehouse of visual imagery would never expand beyond the landscape of his childhood, with its snowy streets, wooden houses, and ubiquitous fiddlers... [with] scenes of childhood so indelibly in one's mind and to invest them with an emotional charge so intense that it could only be discharged obliquely through an obsessive repetition of the same cryptic symbols and ideograms... "[5]

 

Years later, at the age of 57 while living in the United States, Chagall confirmed this when he published an open letter entitled, "To My City Vitebsk":

 

Why? Why did I leave you many years ago? ... You thought, the boy seeks something, seeks such a special subtlety, that color descending like stars from the sky and landing, bright and transparent, like snow on our roofs. Where did he get it? How would it come to a boy like him? I don't know why he couldn't find it with us, in the city—in his homeland. Maybe the boy is "crazy", but "crazy" for the sake of art. ...You thought: "I can see, I am etched in the boy's heart, but he is still 'flying,' he is still striving to take off, he has 'wind' in his head." ... I did not live with you, but I didn't have one single painting that didn't breathe with your spirit and reflection.[15]

 

Art career

Russia (1906–1910)

 

In 1906, he moved to Saint Petersburg which was then the capital of Russia and the center of the country's artistic life with its famous art schools. Since Jews were not permitted into the city without an internal passport, he managed to get a temporary passport from a friend. He enrolled in a prestigious art school and studied there for two years.[11] By 1907, he had begun painting naturalistic self-portraits and landscapes.

 

Between 1908 and 1910, Chagall was a student of Léon Bakst at the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting. While in Saint Petersburg, he discovered experimental theater and the work of such artists as Paul Gauguin.[16] Bakst, also Jewish, was a designer of decorative art and was famous as a draftsman designer of stage sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes, and helped Chagall by acting as a role model for Jewish success. Bakst moved to Paris a year later. Art historian Raymond Cogniat writes that after living and studying art on his own for four years, "Chagall entered into the mainstream of contemporary art. ...His apprenticeship over, Russia had played a memorable initial role in his life."[17]:30

 

Chagall stayed in Saint Petersburg until 1910, often visiting Vitebsk where he met Bella Rosenfeld. In My Life, Chagall described his first meeting her: "Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me."[11]:22

France (1910–1914)

Marc Chagall, 1911–12, The Drunkard (Le saoul), 1912, oil on canvas. 85 × 115 cm. Private collection

Marc Chagall, 1912, The Fiddler, an inspiration for the musical Fiddler on the Roof[18]

 

In 1910, Chagall relocated to Paris to develop his artistic style. Art historian and curator James Sweeney notes that when Chagall first arrived in Paris, Cubism was the dominant art form, and French art was still dominated by the "materialistic outlook of the 19th century". But Chagall arrived from Russia with "a ripe color gift, a fresh, unashamed response to sentiment, a feeling for simple poetry and a sense of humor", he adds. These notions were alien to Paris at that time, and as a result, his first recognition came not from other painters but from poets such as Blaise Cendrars and Guillaume Apollinaire.[19]:7 Art historian Jean Leymarie observes that Chagall began thinking of art as "emerging from the internal being outward, from the seen object to the psychic outpouring", which was the reverse of the Cubist way of creating.[20]

 

He therefore developed friendships with Guillaume Apollinaire and other avant-garde luminaries such as Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger.[21] Baal-Teshuva writes that "Chagall's dream of Paris, the city of light and above all, of freedom, had come true."[11]:33 His first days were a hardship for the 23-year-old Chagall, who was lonely in the big city and unable to speak French. Some days he "felt like fleeing back to Russia, as he daydreamed while he painted, about the riches of Russian folklore, his Hasidic experiences, his family, and especially Bella".

 

In Paris, he enrolled at Académie de La Palette, an avant-garde school of art where the painters Jean Metzinger, André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Henri Le Fauconnier taught, and also found work at another academy. He would spend his free hours visiting galleries and salons, especially the Louvre; artists he came to admire included Rembrandt, the Le Nain brothers, Chardin, van Gogh, Renoir, Pissarro, Matisse, Gauguin, Courbet, Millet, Manet, Monet, Delacroix, and others. It was in Paris that he learned the technique of gouache, which he used to paint Belarusian scenes. He also visited Montmartre and the Latin Quarter "and was happy just breathing Parisian air."[11] Baal-Teshuva describes this new phase in Chagall's artistic development:

 

Chagall was exhilarated, intoxicated, as he strolled through the streets and along the banks of the Seine. Everything about the French capital excited him: the shops, the smell of fresh bread in the morning, the markets with their fresh fruit and vegetables, the wide boulevards, the cafés and restaurants, and above all the Eiffel Tower.

 

Another completely new world that opened up for him was the kaleidoscope of colours and forms in the works of French artists. Chagall enthusiastically reviewed their many different tendencies, having to rethink his position as an artist and decide what creative avenue he wanted to pursue.[11]:33

 

During his time in Paris, Chagall was constantly reminded of his home in Vitebsk, as Paris was also home to many painters, writers, poets, composers, dancers, and other émigrés from the Russian Empire. However, "night after night he painted until dawn", only then going to bed for a few hours, and resisted the many temptations of the big city at night.[11]:44 "My homeland exists only in my soul", he once said.[20]:viii He continued painting Jewish motifs and subjects from his memories of Vitebsk, although he included Parisian scenes—- the Eiffel Tower in particular, along with portraits. Many of his works were updated versions of paintings he had made in Russia, transposed into Fauvist or Cubist keys.[5]

Marc Chagall, 1912, Still-life (Nature morte), oil on canvas, private collection

 

Chagall developed a whole repertoire of quirky motifs: ghostly figures floating in the sky, ... the gigantic fiddler dancing on miniature dollhouses, the livestock and transparent wombs and, within them, tiny offspring sleeping upside down.[5] The majority of his scenes of life in Vitebsk were painted while living in Paris, and "in a sense they were dreams", notes Lewis. Their "undertone of yearning and loss", with a detached and abstract appearance, caused Apollinaire to be "struck by this quality", calling them "surnaturel!" His "animal/human hybrids and airborne phantoms" would later become a formative influence on Surrealism.[5] Chagall, however, did not want his work to be associated with any school or movement and considered his own personal language of symbols to be meaningful to himself. But Sweeney notes that others often still associate his work with "illogical and fantastic painting", especially when he uses "curious representational juxtapositions".[19]:10

 

Sweeney writes that "This is Chagall's contribution to contemporary art: the reawakening of a poetry of representation, avoiding factual illustration on the one hand, and non-figurative abstractions on the other". André Breton said that "with him alone, the metaphor made its triumphant return to modern painting".[19]:7

Russia and Soviet Belarus (1914–1922)

 

Because he missed his fiancée, Bella, who was still in Vitebsk—"He thought about her day and night", writes Baal-Teshuva—and was afraid of losing her, Chagall decided to accept an invitation from a noted art dealer in Berlin to exhibit his work, his intention being to continue on to Belarus, marry Bella, and then return with her to Paris. Chagall took 40 canvases and 160 gouaches, watercolors and drawings to be exhibited. The exhibit, held at Herwarth Walden's Sturm Gallery was a huge success, "The German critics positively sang his praises."[11]

People's Art School where the Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art was situated

 

After the exhibit, he continued on to Vitebsk, where he planned to stay only long enough to marry Bella. However, after a few weeks, the First World War began, closing the Russian border for an indefinite period. A year later he married Bella Rosenfeld and they had their first child, Ida. Before the marriage, Chagall had difficulty convincing Bella's parents that he would be a suitable husband for their daughter. They were worried about her marrying a painter from a poor family and wondered how he would support her. Becoming a successful artist now became a goal and inspiration. According to Lewis, "[T]he euphoric paintings of this time, which show the young couple floating balloon-like over Vitebsk—its wooden buildings faceted in the Delaunay manner—are the most lighthearted of his career".[5] His wedding pictures were also a subject he would return to in later years as he thought about this period of his life.[11]:75

Bella with White Collar, 1917

 

In 1915, Chagall began exhibiting his work in Moscow, first exhibiting his works at a well-known salon and in 1916 exhibiting pictures in St. Petersburg. He again showed his art at a Moscow exhibition of avant-garde artists. This exposure brought recognition, and a number of wealthy collectors began buying his art. He also began illustrating a number of Yiddish books with ink drawings. He illustrated I. L. Peretz's The Magician in 1917.[22] Chagall was 30 years old and had begun to become well known.[11]:77

 

The October Revolution of 1917 was a dangerous time for Chagall although it also offered opportunity. By then he was one of the Russia's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, which enjoyed special privileges and prestige as the "aesthetic arm of the revolution".[5] He was offered a notable position as a commissar of visual arts for the country[clarification needed], but preferred something less political, and instead accepted a job as commissar of arts for Vitebsk. This resulted in his founding the Vitebsk Arts College which, adds Lewis, became the "most distinguished school of art in the Soviet Union".

 

It obtained for its faculty some of the most important artists in the country, such as El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich. He also added his first teacher, Yehuda Pen. Chagall tried to create an atmosphere of a collective of independently minded artists, each with their own unique style. However, this would soon prove to be difficult as a few of the key faculty members preferred a Suprematist art of squares and circles, and disapproved of Chagall's attempt at creating "bourgeois individualism". Chagall then resigned as commissar and moved to Moscow.

 

In Moscow he was offered a job as stage designer for the newly formed State Jewish Chamber Theater. It was set to begin operation in early 1921 with a number of plays by Sholem Aleichem. For its opening he created a number of large background murals using techniques he learned from Bakst, his early teacher. One of the main murals was 9 feet (2.7 m) tall by 24 feet (7.3 m) long and included images of various lively subjects such as dancers, fiddlers, acrobats, and farm animals. One critic at the time called it "Hebrew jazz in paint". Chagall created it as a "storehouse of symbols and devices", notes Lewis.[5] The murals "constituted a landmark" in the history of the theatre, and were forerunners of his later large-scale works, including murals for the New York Metropolitan Opera and the Paris Opera.[11]:87

 

Famine spread after the war ended in 1918. The Chagalls found it necessary to move to a smaller, less expensive, town near Moscow, although he now had to commute to Moscow daily using crowded trains. In 1921, he worked as an art teacher in a Jewish boys' shelter in suburban Malakhovka, which housed orphaned refugees from Ukrainian pogroms.[6]:270 While there, he created a series of illustrations for the Yiddish poetry cycle Grief written by David Hofstein, who was another teacher at the Malakhovka shelter.[6]:273

 

After spending the years between 1921 and 1922 living in primitive conditions, he decided to go back to France so that he could develop his art in a more comfortable country. Numerous other artists, writers, and musicians were also planning to relocate to the West. He applied for an exit visa and while waiting for its uncertain approval, wrote his autobiography, My Life.[11]:121

France (1923–1941)

 

In 1923, Chagall left Moscow to return to France. On his way he stopped in Berlin to recover the many pictures he had left there on exhibit ten years earlier, before the war began, but was unable to find or recover any of them. Nonetheless, after returning to Paris he again "rediscovered the free expansion and fulfillment which were so essential to him", writes Lewis. With all his early works now lost, he began trying to paint from his memories of his earliest years in Vitebsk with sketches and oil paintings.[5]

 

He formed a business relationship with French art dealer Ambroise Vollard. This inspired him to begin creating etchings for a series of illustrated books, including Gogol's Dead Souls, the Bible, and the La Fontaine's Fables. These illustrations would eventually come to represent his finest printmaking efforts.[5] In 1924, he travelled to Brittany and painted La fenêtre sur l'Île-de-Bréhat.[23] By 1926 he had his first exhibition in the United States at the Reinhardt gallery of New York which included about 100 works, although he did not travel to the opening. He instead stayed in France, "painting ceaselessly", notes Baal-Teshuva.[11] It was not until 1927 that Chagall made his name in the French art world, when art critic and historian Maurice Raynal awarded him a place in his book Modern French Painters. However, Raynal was still at a loss to accurately describe Chagall to his readers:

 

Chagall interrogates life in the light of a refined, anxious, childlike sensibility, a slightly romantic temperament ... a blend of sadness and gaiety characteristic of a grave view of life. His imagination, his temperament, no doubt forbid a Latin severity of composition.[6]:314

 

During this period he traveled throughout France and the Côte d'Azur, where he enjoyed the landscapes, colorful vegetation, the blue Mediterranean Sea, and the mild weather. He made repeated trips to the countryside, taking his sketchbook.[6]:9 He also visited nearby countries and later wrote about the impressions some of those travels left on him:

 

I should like to recall how advantageous my travels outside France have been for me in an artistic sense—in Holland or in Spain, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, or simply in the south of France. There, in the south, for the first time in my life, I saw that rich greenness—the like of which I had never seen in my own country. In Holland I thought I discovered that familiar and throbbing light, like the light between the late afternoon and dusk. In Italy I found that peace of the museums which the sunlight brought to life. In Spain I was happy to find the inspiration of a mystical, if sometimes cruel, past, to find the song of its sky and of its people. And in the East [Palestine] I found unexpectedly the Bible and a part of my very being.[15]:77

 

The Bible illustrations

"The Prophet Jeremiah" (1968)

 

After returning to Paris from one of his trips, Vollard commissioned Chagall to illustrate the Old Testament. Although he could have completed the project in France, he used the assignment as an excuse to travel to Israel to experience for himself the Holy Land. He arrived there in February 1931 and ended up staying for two months. Chagall felt at home in Israel where many people spoke Yiddish and Russian. According to Jacob Baal-Teshuva, "he was impressed by the pioneering spirit of the people in the kibbutzim and deeply moved by the Wailing Wall and the other holy places".[11]:133

 

Chagall later told a friend that Israel gave him "the most vivid impression he had ever received". Wullschlager notes, however, that whereas Delacroix and Matisse had found inspiration in the exoticism of North Africa, he as a Jew in Israel had different perspective. "What he was really searching for there was not external stimulus but an inner authorization from the land of his ancestors, to plunge into his work on the Bible illustrations".[6]:343 Chagall stated that "In the East I found the Bible and part of my own being."

 

As a result, he immersed himself in "the history of the Jews, their trials, prophecies, and disasters", notes Wullschlager. She adds that beginning the assignment was an "extraordinary risk" for Chagall, as he had finally become well known as a leading contemporary painter, but would now end his modernist themes and delve into "an ancient past".[6]:350 Between 1931 and 1934 he worked "obsessively" on "The Bible", even going to Amsterdam in order to carefully study the biblical paintings of Rembrandt and El Greco, to see the extremes of religious painting. He walked the streets of the city's Jewish quarter to again feel the earlier atmosphere. He told Franz Meyer:

 

I did not see the Bible, I dreamed it. Ever since early childhood, I have been captivated by the Bible. It has always seemed to me and still seems today the greatest source of poetry of all time.[6]:350

 

Chagall saw the Old Testament as a "human story, ... not with the creation of the cosmos but with the creation of man, and his figures of angels are rhymed or combined with human ones", writes Wullschlager. She points out that in one of his early Bible images, "Abraham and the Three Angels", the angels sit and chat over a glass of wine "as if they have just dropped by for dinner".[6]:350

 

He returned to France and by the next year had completed 32 out of the total of 105 plates. By 1939, at the beginning of World War II, he had finished 66. However, Vollard died that same year. When the series was completed in 1956, it was published by Edition Tériade. Baal-Teshuva writes that "the illustrations were stunning and met with great acclaim. Once again Chagall had shown himself to be one of the 20th century's most important graphic artists".[11]:135 Leymarie has described these drawings by Chagall as "monumental" and,

 

...full of divine inspiration, which retrace the legendary destiny and the epic history of Israel to Genesis to the Prophets, through the Patriarchs and the Heroes. Each picture becomes one with the event, informing the text with a solemn intimacy unknown since Rembrandt.[20]:ix

 

Nazi campaigns against modern art

 

Not long after Chagall began his work on the Bible, Adolf Hitler gained power in Germany. Anti-Semitic laws were being introduced and the first concentration camp at Dachau had been established. Wullschlager describes the early effects on art:

 

The Nazis had begun their campaign against modernist art as soon as they seized power. Expressionist, cubist, abstract, and surrealist art—anything intellectual, Jewish, foreign, socialist-inspired, or difficult to understand—was targeted, from Picasso and Matisse going back to Cézanne and van Gogh; in its place traditional German realism, accessible and open to patriotic interpretation, was extolled.[6]:374

 

Beginning during 1937 about twenty thousand works from German museums were confiscated as "degenerate" by a committee directed by Joseph Goebbels.[6]:375 Although the German press had once "swooned over him", the new German authorities now made a mockery of Chagall's art, describing them as "green, purple, and red Jews shooting out of the earth, fiddling on violins, flying through the air ... representing [an] assault on Western civilization".[6]:376

 

After Germany invaded and occupied France, the Chagalls naively remained in Vichy France, unaware that French Jews, with the help of the Vichy government, were being collected and sent to German concentration camps, from which few would return. The Vichy collaborationist government, directed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, immediately upon assuming power established a commission to "redefine French citizenship" with the aim of stripping "undesirables", including naturalized citizens, of their French nationality. Chagall had been so involved with his art, that it was not until October 1940, after the Vichy government, at the behest of the Nazi occupying forces, began approving anti-Semitic laws, that he began to understand what was happening. Learning that Jews were being removed from public and academic positions, the Chagalls finally "woke up to the danger they faced". But Wullschlager notes that "by then they were trapped".[6]:382 Their only refuge could be America, but "they could not afford the passage to New York" or the large bond that each immigrant had to provide upon entry to ensure that they would not become a financial burden to the country.

Escaping occupied France

 

According to Wullschlager, "[T]he speed with which France collapsed astonished everyone: the French army, with British support, capitulated even more quickly than Poland had done" a year earlier. "Shock waves crossed the Atlantic... as Paris had until then been equated with civilization throughout the non-Nazi world."[6]:388 Yet the attachment of the Chagalls to France "blinded them to the urgency of the situation."[6]:389 Many other well-known Russian and Jewish artists eventually sought to escape: these included Chaim Soutine, Max Ernst, Max Beckmann, Ludwig Fulda, author Victor Serge and prize-winning author Vladimir Nabokov, who although not Jewish himself, was married to a Jewish woman.[24]:1181 Russian author Victor Serge described many of the people living temporarily in Marseille who were waiting to emigrate to America:

 

Here is a beggar's alley gathering the remnants of revolutions, democracies and crushed intellects... In our ranks are enough doctors, psychologists, engineers, educationalists, poets, painters, writers, musicians, economists and public men to vitalize a whole great country.[6]:392

 

After prodding by their daughter Ida, who "perceived the need to act fast",[6]:388 and with help from Alfred Barr of the New York Museum of Modern Art, Chagall was saved by having his name added to the list of prominent artists whose lives were at risk and who the United States should try to extricate. Varian Fry, the American journalist, and Hiram Bingham IV, the American Vice-Consul in Marseilles, ran a rescue operation to smuggle artists and intellectuals out of Europe to the US by providing them with forged visas to the US. Chagall was one of over 2,000 who were rescued by this operation. He left France in May 1941, "when it was almost too late", adds Lewis. Picasso and Matisse were also invited to come to America but they decided to remain in France. Chagall and Bella arrived in New York on 23 June 1941, the day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.[11]:150 Ida and her husband Michel followed on the notorious refugee ship SS Navemar with a large case of Chagall's work.[25] A chance post-war meeting in a French café between Ida and intelligence analyst Konrad Kellen led to Kellen carrying more paintings on his return to the United States.[26]

United States (1941–1948)

Photo portrait of Chagall in 1941 by Carl Van Vechten

 

Even before arriving in the United States in 1941, Chagall was awarded the Carnegie Prize third prize in 1939 for "Les Fiancés". After being in America he discovered that he had already achieved "international stature", writes Cogniat, although he felt ill-suited in this new role in a foreign country whose language he could not yet speak. He became a celebrity mostly against his will, feeling lost in the strange surroundings.[17]:57

 

After a while he began to settle in New York, which was full of writers, painters, and composers who, like himself, had fled from Europe during the Nazi invasions. He lived at 4 East 74th Street.[27] He spent time visiting galleries and museums, and befriended other artists including Piet Mondrian and André Breton.[11]:155

 

Baal-Teshuva writes that Chagall "loved" going to the sections of New York where Jews lived, especially the Lower East Side. There he felt at home, enjoying the Jewish foods and being able to read the Yiddish press, which became his main source of information since he did not yet speak English.[11]

 

Contemporary artists did not yet understand or even like Chagall's art. According to Baal-Teshuva, "they had little in common with a folkloristic storyteller of Russo-Jewish extraction with a propensity for mysticism." The Paris School, which was referred to as 'Parisian Surrealism,' meant little to them.[11]:155 Those attitudes would begin to change, however, when Pierre Matisse, the son of recognized French artist Henri Matisse, became his representative and managed Chagall exhibitions in New York and Chicago in 1941. One of the earliest exhibitions included 21 of his masterpieces from 1910 to 1941.[11] Art critic Henry McBride wrote about this exhibit for the New York Sun:

 

Chagall is about as gypsy as they come... these pictures do more for his reputation than anything we have previously seen... His colors sparkle with poetry... his work is authentically Russian as a Volga boatman's song...[28]

 

He was offered a commission by choreographer Leonid Massine of the Ballet Theatre of New York to design the sets and costumes for his new ballet, Aleko. This ballet would stage the words of Pushkin's verse narrative The Gypsies with the music of Tchaikovsky. While Chagall had done stage settings before while in Russia, this was his first ballet, and it would give him the opportunity to visit Mexico. While there he quickly began to appreciate the "primitive ways and colorful art of the Mexicans," notes Cogniat. He found "something very closely related to his own nature", and did all the color detail for the sets while there.[17] Eventually, he created four large backdrops and had Mexican seamstresses sew the ballet costumes.

 

When the ballet premiered on 8 September 1942 it was considered a "remarkable success."[11] In the audience were other famous mural painters who came to see Chagall's work, including Diego Rivera and José Orozco. According to Baal-Teshuva, when the final bar of music ended, "there was a tumultuous applause and 19 curtain calls, with Chagall himself being called back onto the stage again and again." The ballet also opened in New York City four weeks later at the Metropolitan Opera and the response was repeated, "again Chagall was the hero of the evening".[11]:158 Art critic Edwin Denby wrote of the opening for the New York Herald Tribune that Chagall's work:

 

has turned into a dramatized exhibition of giant paintings... It surpasses anything Chagall has done on the easel scale, and it is a breathtaking experience, of a kind one hardly expects in the theatre.[29]

 

Coming to grips with World War II

 

After Chagall returned to New York in 1943, however, current events began to interest him more, and this was represented by his art, where he painted subjects including the Crucifixion and scenes of war. He learned that the Germans had destroyed the town where he was raised, Vitebsk, and became greatly distressed.[11]:159 He also learned about the Nazi concentration camps.[11] During a speech in February 1944, he described some of his feelings:

 

Meanwhile, the enemy jokes, saying that we are a "stupid nation." He thought that when he started slaughtering the Jews, we would all in our grief suddenly raise the greatest prophetic scream, and would be joined by the Christian humanists. But, after two thousand years of "Christianity" in the world—say whatever you like—but, with few exceptions, their hearts are silent... I see the artists in Christian nations sit still—who has heard them speak up? They are not worried about themselves, and our Jewish life doesn't concern them.[15]:89

 

In the same speech he credited Soviet Russia with doing the most to save the Jews:

 

The Jews will always be grateful to it. What other great country has saved a million and a half Jews from Hitler's hands, and shared its last piece of bread? What country abolished antisemitism? What other country devoted at least a piece of land as an autonomous region for Jews who want to live there? All this, and more, weighs heavily on the scales of history.[15]:89

 

On 2 September 1944, Bella died suddenly due to a virus infection, which was not treated due to the wartime shortage of medicine. As a result, he stopped all work for many months, and when he did resume painting his first pictures were concerned with preserving Bella's memory.[17] Wullschlager writes of the effect on Chagall: "As news poured in through 1945 of the ongoing Holocaust at Nazi concentration camps, Bella took her place in Chagall's mind with the millions of Jewish victims." He even considered the possibility that their "exile from Europe had sapped her will to live."[6]:419

With Virginia Haggard McNeil

 

After a year of living with his daughter Ida and her husband Michel Gordey, he entered into a romance with Virginia Haggard, daughter of diplomat Sir Godfrey Digby Napier Haggard and great-niece of the author Sir Henry Rider Haggard; their relationship endured seven years. They had a child together, David McNeil, born 22 June 1946.[11] Haggard recalled her "seven years of plenty" with Chagall in her book, My Life with Chagall (Robert Hale, 1986).

 

A few months after the Allies succeeded in liberating Paris from Nazi occupation, with the help of the Allied armies, Chagall published a letter in a Paris weekly, "To the Paris Artists":

 

In recent years I have felt unhappy that I couldn't be with you, my friends. My enemy forced me to take the road of exile. On that tragic road, I lost my wife, the companion of my life, the woman who was my inspiration. I want to say to my friends in France that she joins me in this greeting, she who loved France and French art so faithfully. Her last joy was the liberation of Paris... Now, when Paris is liberated, when the art of France is resurrected, the whole world too will, once and for all, be free of the satanic enemies who wanted to annihilate not just the body but also the soul—the soul, without which there is no life, no artistic creativity.[15]:101

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