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Timotesubani is a medieval Georgian Orthodox Christian monastic complex located at the eponymous village in the Borjomi Gorge.
The complex consists of a series of structures built between the 11th and 18th centuries, of which the Church of the Dormition is the largest and artistically most exquisite edifice constructed during the 'Golden Age' of medieval Georgia under Queen Tamar (r. 1184-1213). A contemporary inscription commemorates the Georgian nobleman Shalva of Akhaltsikhe as a patron of the church.
The church is a domed cross-in-square design built of pink stone, with three apses projecting on the east. Its dome rests upon the two freely standing pillars and ledges of the altar. Later, two – the western and southern – portals were added.
The interior was extensively frescoed in no later than 1220s. The Timotesubani murals are noted for their vivacity and complexity of iconographic program. These frescoes were cleaned and studied by E. Privalova and colleagues in the 1970s and underwent emergency treatment and conservation with aid from the World Monuments Fund and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in the 2000s.
Timotesubani is a medieval Georgian Orthodox Christian monastic complex located at the eponymous village in the Borjomi Gorge.
The complex consists of a series of structures built between the 11th and 18th centuries, of which the Church of the Dormition is the largest and artistically most exquisite edifice constructed during the 'Golden Age' of medieval Georgia under Queen Tamar (r. 1184-1213). A contemporary inscription commemorates the Georgian nobleman Shalva of Akhaltsikhe as a patron of the church.
The church is a domed cross-in-square design built of pink stone, with three apses projecting on the east. Its dome rests upon the two freely standing pillars and ledges of the altar. Later, two – the western and southern – portals were added.
The interior was extensively frescoed in no later than 1220s. The Timotesubani murals are noted for their vivacity and complexity of iconographic program. These frescoes were cleaned and studied by E. Privalova and colleagues in the 1970s and underwent emergency treatment and conservation with aid from the World Monuments Fund and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in the 2000s.
Chuya range, Altai mountains, Siberia
The Shavla lakes are a small series of mountain lakes in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia. They are accessible via a two-day hike and are fairly wild. This picture is taken on the shore of the lower Shalva lake, looking up to the upper one, which is hidden behind the valley in the back.
Timotesubani is a medieval Georgian Orthodox Christian monastic complex located at the eponymous village in the Borjomi Gorge.
The complex consists of a series of structures built between the 11th and 18th centuries, of which the Church of the Dormition is the largest and artistically most exquisite edifice constructed during the 'Golden Age' of medieval Georgia under Queen Tamar (r. 1184-1213). A contemporary inscription commemorates the Georgian nobleman Shalva of Akhaltsikhe as a patron of the church.
The church is a domed cross-in-square design built of pink stone, with three apses projecting on the east. Its dome rests upon the two freely standing pillars and ledges of the altar. Later, two – the western and southern – portals were added.
The interior was extensively frescoed in no later than 1220s. The Timotesubani murals are noted for their vivacity and complexity of iconographic program. These frescoes were cleaned and studied by E. Privalova and colleagues in the 1970s and underwent emergency treatment and conservation with aid from the World Monuments Fund and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in the 2000s.
These days, everybody has to say something about everything. However, this modern world’s constant noise makes it challenging to concentrate on what is essential. As quickly as you can get lost in this distraction, it’s easy also to lose sight of your dreams.
Yet, dreams always stay the fantasy they are if you let them fall into oblivion. Deciding against the first step towards working on their realization will – in most cases – always make you ask yourself why you never did this or that when it’s already too late.
Therefore, it is sometimes essential to get one’s way no matter how loud the noise is because life is too short to devote it to things you dislike.
"Lurjaivaniani" is a historic building located at 34 Shalva Dadiani St. in Tbilisi, Georgia, near Freedom Square. It's also known as the "blue balcony" house and is a recognized historical monument. The Tbilisi Development Fund completed a restoration of the building, which dates back to the mid-nineteenth century.
Georgian National Museum, Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
Niko Pirosmani’s Albertina Museum exhibition
Exhibición de Niko Pirosmani en La Albertina
Niko Pirosmanashvili (georgiano: ნიკო ფიროსმანაშვილი; Mirzaani, Georgia; 5 de mayo de 1862 - 1918), conocido también como Niko Pirosmani, fue un pintor primitivista georgiano.
Niko Pirosmanashvili nació el 5 de mayo de 1862 en el poblado de Mirzaani, provincia de Kajeti, Georgia, hijo de una familia de campesinos, propietarios de un pequeño viñedo. Pronto se encontró huérfano y fue puesto bajo el cuidado de sus dos hermanas mayores. Hacia 1870 se mudó a Tiflis, y en 1872 entró a trabajar como sirviente de familias opulentas. Aprendió a escribir ruso y georgiano. En 1876 regresó a Mirzaani y se empleó como pastor.
Autodidacta, una de sus especialidades fue la pintura directa sobre hule negro. En 1882 abrió un taller en Tbilisi el cual no prosperó. En 1890 trabajó como conductor de trenes, y en 1895 se empleó creando carteles. En 1893 cofundó una granja en Tbilisi que abandonó en 1901. A lo largo de su vida, la cual pasó siempre en la pobreza, se empleó en trabajos comunes que iban desde pintar casas hasta encalar fachadas. A pesar de que sus pinturas lograron una popularidad local su relación con artistas profesionales fue difícil. Ganarse la vida siempre fue una tarea más importante para él que la estética abstracta. En abril de 1918 murió de desnutrición e insuficiencia hepática. Fue enterrado en el cementerio Nino, aunque el lugar exacto se desconoce puesto que no fue registrado.
A inicios del Siglo XX Niko Pirosmanashvili vivió en un pequeño departamento no lejos de la estación de ferrocarriles de Tbilisi. Sus pinturas incluyeron vastas escenas locales y retratos imaginarios de figuras históricas georgianas, como aquellas de Shota Rustaveli y la Reina Tamar, además de retratar georgianos comunes y su quehacer diario.
En 1910 se ganó el entusiasmo crítico del poeta ruso Mijaíl Le-Dantue y del artista Kiril Zdanévich y su hermano Iliá Zdanévich. Éste escribió una carta sobre Pirosmanashvili en el periódico Zakavkázskaia Rech, publicada el 13 de febrero de 1913. También tomó la empresa de publicitar a Piroshmanashvili en Moscú. La edición del 7 de enero del periódico moscovita Moskóvskaia Gazeta contenía una nota sobre la exhibición Mishen en donde se exhibieron algunas obras de pintores autodidactas, entre las cuales se encontraban cuatro de Pirosmanashvili: Retrato de Zdanévich, Naturaleza muerta, Mujer con un jarro de cerveza, y El corzo. Los críticos que escribieron después en el mismo periódico quedaron impresionados por su talento. Ese mismo año se publicó un artículo sobre la obra de Niko Pirosmanashvili en el periódico georgiano Temi.
La Sociedad de Pintores Georgianos, fundada por Dito Shevardnadze en 1916, invitó a Pirosmanashvili a sus reuniones en donde lo acogieron, sin embargo, su relación con la sociedad no fue fácil. A pesar de haber mostrado a la sociedad su pintura Boda georgiana, uno de los miembros publicó una caricatura de él que lo ofendió considerablemente. Su continua pobreza, aunados a los problemas económicos derivados de la Primera Guerra Mundial, provocaron que su vida terminara con su obra sin reconocimiento.
Tras la guerra desarrolló una reputación internacional, al ganarse la admiración como pintor naïf en París y en otros lugares. El primer libro sobre Pirosmanashvili fue publicado en georgiano, ruso y francés en 1926. Inclusive su figura inspiró a Pablo Picasso hacer un esbozo de retrato en 1972. A pesar de que hoy en día han sobrevivido alrededor de 200 pinturas, se han hecho exhibiciones de su obra en diferentes ciudades, desde Kiev (1931), Varsovia (1968), París (1969), Viena (1969), Niza y Marsella (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Turín (2002), Istanbul (2008), y Vilnius (2008-2009).
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niko_Pirosmani
elhurgador.blogspot.com/2018/08/niko-pirosmani-pintura-pa...
Niko Pirosmani (Georgian: ნიკო ფიროსმანი), simply referred to as Nikala (ნიკალა) (1862–1918), was a Georgian naïve painter who posthumously rose to prominence.
Pirosmani was born in the Georgian village of Mirzaani to a peasant family in Kakheti province. His parents, Aslan Pirosmanashvili and Tekle Toklikishvili, were farmers, who owned a small vineyard, with a few cows and oxen. He was later orphaned and left in the care of his two elder sisters, Mariam and Pepe. He moved with them to Tbilisi in 1870. In 1872, while living in a little apartment not far from Tbilisi railway station, he worked as a servant to wealthy families and learned to read and write Russian and Georgian. In 1876, he returned to Mirzaani and worked as a herdsman.
Pirosmani gradually taught himself to paint. One of his specialties was painting directly into black oilcloth. In 1882, with self-taught George Zaziashvili, he opened a painting workshop, where they made signboards. In 1890, he worked as a railroad conductor. In 1893, he co-founded a dairy farm in Tbilisi, which he left in 1901. Throughout his life, Pirosmani, who was poor, was willing to take ordinary jobs including housepainting and whitewashing buildings. He also worked for shopkeepers in Tbilisi, creating signboards, paintings, and portraits, according to their orders. Although his paintings had some local popularity (about 200 survive) his relationship with professional artists remained uneasy; making a living was always more important to him than aesthetic abstractions.
In April 1918, he died in the 1918 flu pandemic resulted from malnutrition and liver failure. He was buried at the Nino cemetery; the exact location was not registered and is unknown.
Pirosmani’s paintings were influenced by the social conditions of his time and place. There are many works about merchants, shopkeepers, workmen, and noblemen groups. Pirosmani was fond of nature and rural life. He rarely employed city landscapes. He made many animal paintings. He was the only Georgian animalist. Pirosmani also was attracted by historical figures and themes such as Shota Rustaveli, Queen Tamar, Giorgi Saakadze, as well as ordinary Georgian people and their everyday lives.
Usually, Pirosmani painted on oilcloth. Unlike other artists, Niko didn’t aim at a pure imitation of the nature and paid no attention to details. Some of his paintings are monochrome. His paintings demonstrate the author's sharp compositional consideration. Placements of the figures are frontal, while faces do not demonstrate a specific mood.
In the 1910s, he won the enthusiasm of the Russian poet Mikhail Le-Dantyu and the artist Kirill Zdanevich and his brother Ilia Zdanevich. Ilia Zhdanevich wrote a letter about Pirosmani to the newspaper Zakavkazskaia Rech, which it published on February 13, 1913. He undertook to publicise Pirosmani's painting in Moscow. The Moscow newspaper Moskovskaia Gazeta of 7 January wrote about the exhibition "Mishen" where self-taught painters exhibited, among them four works by Pirosmani: "Portrait of Zhdanevich", "Still Life", "Woman with a Beer Mug", and "The Roe". Critics writing later in the same newspaper were impressed with his talent.
In the same year, an article about Niko Pirosmani and his art was published in Georgian newspaper Temi.
The Society of Georgian Painters, founded in 1916 by Dito Shevardnadze, invited Pirosmani to its meetings and began to take him up, but his relations with the society were always uneasy. He presented his painting "Georgian Wedding" to the Society. One of the members published a caricature of him, which greatly offended him. His continuing poverty, compounded by the economic problems caused by the First World War, meant that his life ended with his work little recognised.
After his death, Pirosmani gained international reputation when he became admired as a 'naïve' painter in Paris and elsewhere. His paintings were represented at the first big exhibition of Georgian painters in 1918. From 1920 onwards, a number of articles were published about him. The first monograph on Pirosmani was published in 1926 in Georgian, Russian, and French.
Interest in Pirosmani increased in the 1950s.
In 1969, a film about him was made, titled Pirosmani. He inspired a portrait sketch by Pablo Picasso (1972). Pirosmani is also depicted on a Georgian lari bill. A periodic newspaper titled Pirosmani is published in two languages in Istanbul.
Exhibitions of his work have been held in Kiev (1931), Warsaw (1968), Paris (The Louvre) (1969), Vienna (1969), Nice and Marseilles (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Nantes (1999), Turin (2002), Kiev, Istanbul (2008), Minsk, Vézelay and Vilnius (2008–2009), and Vienna again (2018/19).
Today, 146 of his works are shown in the Art Museum of Georgia and sixteen paintings are exhibited in the Historical-Ethnographic Museum of Sighnaghi. A monument was installed in Tbilisi. There is also the Niko Pirosmanashvili Museum in Mirzaani, Georgia, in one of his abodes.
In March 2011, it was discovered that the writing on the door of Qvrivishvilebi’s wine-cellar in Ozaani was made by Pirosmani. On 31 May 2011, during an investigation, experts discovered a painting, which proved to be "Wounded Soldier" by Pirosmani. The painting was given to the National Gallery of Georgia.
Georgian National Museum, Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
Niko Pirosmani’s Albertina Museum exhibition
Exhibición de Niko Pirosmani en La Albertina
Niko Pirosmanashvili (georgiano: ნიკო ფიროსმანაშვილი; Mirzaani, Georgia; 5 de mayo de 1862 - 1918), conocido también como Niko Pirosmani, fue un pintor primitivista georgiano.
Niko Pirosmanashvili nació el 5 de mayo de 1862 en el poblado de Mirzaani, provincia de Kajeti, Georgia, hijo de una familia de campesinos, propietarios de un pequeño viñedo. Pronto se encontró huérfano y fue puesto bajo el cuidado de sus dos hermanas mayores. Hacia 1870 se mudó a Tiflis, y en 1872 entró a trabajar como sirviente de familias opulentas. Aprendió a escribir ruso y georgiano. En 1876 regresó a Mirzaani y se empleó como pastor.
Autodidacta, una de sus especialidades fue la pintura directa sobre hule negro. En 1882 abrió un taller en Tbilisi el cual no prosperó. En 1890 trabajó como conductor de trenes, y en 1895 se empleó creando carteles. En 1893 cofundó una granja en Tbilisi que abandonó en 1901. A lo largo de su vida, la cual pasó siempre en la pobreza, se empleó en trabajos comunes que iban desde pintar casas hasta encalar fachadas. A pesar de que sus pinturas lograron una popularidad local su relación con artistas profesionales fue difícil. Ganarse la vida siempre fue una tarea más importante para él que la estética abstracta. En abril de 1918 murió de desnutrición e insuficiencia hepática. Fue enterrado en el cementerio Nino, aunque el lugar exacto se desconoce puesto que no fue registrado.
A inicios del Siglo XX Niko Pirosmanashvili vivió en un pequeño departamento no lejos de la estación de ferrocarriles de Tbilisi. Sus pinturas incluyeron vastas escenas locales y retratos imaginarios de figuras históricas georgianas, como aquellas de Shota Rustaveli y la Reina Tamar, además de retratar georgianos comunes y su quehacer diario.
En 1910 se ganó el entusiasmo crítico del poeta ruso Mijaíl Le-Dantue y del artista Kiril Zdanévich y su hermano Iliá Zdanévich. Éste escribió una carta sobre Pirosmanashvili en el periódico Zakavkázskaia Rech, publicada el 13 de febrero de 1913. También tomó la empresa de publicitar a Piroshmanashvili en Moscú. La edición del 7 de enero del periódico moscovita Moskóvskaia Gazeta contenía una nota sobre la exhibición Mishen en donde se exhibieron algunas obras de pintores autodidactas, entre las cuales se encontraban cuatro de Pirosmanashvili: Retrato de Zdanévich, Naturaleza muerta, Mujer con un jarro de cerveza, y El corzo. Los críticos que escribieron después en el mismo periódico quedaron impresionados por su talento. Ese mismo año se publicó un artículo sobre la obra de Niko Pirosmanashvili en el periódico georgiano Temi.
La Sociedad de Pintores Georgianos, fundada por Dito Shevardnadze en 1916, invitó a Pirosmanashvili a sus reuniones en donde lo acogieron, sin embargo, su relación con la sociedad no fue fácil. A pesar de haber mostrado a la sociedad su pintura Boda georgiana, uno de los miembros publicó una caricatura de él que lo ofendió considerablemente. Su continua pobreza, aunados a los problemas económicos derivados de la Primera Guerra Mundial, provocaron que su vida terminara con su obra sin reconocimiento.
Tras la guerra desarrolló una reputación internacional, al ganarse la admiración como pintor naïf en París y en otros lugares. El primer libro sobre Pirosmanashvili fue publicado en georgiano, ruso y francés en 1926. Inclusive su figura inspiró a Pablo Picasso hacer un esbozo de retrato en 1972. A pesar de que hoy en día han sobrevivido alrededor de 200 pinturas, se han hecho exhibiciones de su obra en diferentes ciudades, desde Kiev (1931), Varsovia (1968), París (1969), Viena (1969), Niza y Marsella (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Turín (2002), Istanbul (2008), y Vilnius (2008-2009).
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niko_Pirosmani
elhurgador.blogspot.com/2018/08/niko-pirosmani-pintura-pa...
Niko Pirosmani (Georgian: ნიკო ფიროსმანი), simply referred to as Nikala (ნიკალა) (1862–1918), was a Georgian naïve painter who posthumously rose to prominence.
Pirosmani was born in the Georgian village of Mirzaani to a peasant family in Kakheti province. His parents, Aslan Pirosmanashvili and Tekle Toklikishvili, were farmers, who owned a small vineyard, with a few cows and oxen. He was later orphaned and left in the care of his two elder sisters, Mariam and Pepe. He moved with them to Tbilisi in 1870. In 1872, while living in a little apartment not far from Tbilisi railway station, he worked as a servant to wealthy families and learned to read and write Russian and Georgian. In 1876, he returned to Mirzaani and worked as a herdsman.
Pirosmani gradually taught himself to paint. One of his specialties was painting directly into black oilcloth. In 1882, with self-taught George Zaziashvili, he opened a painting workshop, where they made signboards. In 1890, he worked as a railroad conductor. In 1893, he co-founded a dairy farm in Tbilisi, which he left in 1901. Throughout his life, Pirosmani, who was poor, was willing to take ordinary jobs including housepainting and whitewashing buildings. He also worked for shopkeepers in Tbilisi, creating signboards, paintings, and portraits, according to their orders. Although his paintings had some local popularity (about 200 survive) his relationship with professional artists remained uneasy; making a living was always more important to him than aesthetic abstractions.
In April 1918, he died in the 1918 flu pandemic resulted from malnutrition and liver failure. He was buried at the Nino cemetery; the exact location was not registered and is unknown.
Pirosmani’s paintings were influenced by the social conditions of his time and place. There are many works about merchants, shopkeepers, workmen, and noblemen groups. Pirosmani was fond of nature and rural life. He rarely employed city landscapes. He made many animal paintings. He was the only Georgian animalist. Pirosmani also was attracted by historical figures and themes such as Shota Rustaveli, Queen Tamar, Giorgi Saakadze, as well as ordinary Georgian people and their everyday lives.
Usually, Pirosmani painted on oilcloth. Unlike other artists, Niko didn’t aim at a pure imitation of the nature and paid no attention to details. Some of his paintings are monochrome. His paintings demonstrate the author's sharp compositional consideration. Placements of the figures are frontal, while faces do not demonstrate a specific mood.
In the 1910s, he won the enthusiasm of the Russian poet Mikhail Le-Dantyu and the artist Kirill Zdanevich and his brother Ilia Zdanevich. Ilia Zhdanevich wrote a letter about Pirosmani to the newspaper Zakavkazskaia Rech, which it published on February 13, 1913. He undertook to publicise Pirosmani's painting in Moscow. The Moscow newspaper Moskovskaia Gazeta of 7 January wrote about the exhibition "Mishen" where self-taught painters exhibited, among them four works by Pirosmani: "Portrait of Zhdanevich", "Still Life", "Woman with a Beer Mug", and "The Roe". Critics writing later in the same newspaper were impressed with his talent.
In the same year, an article about Niko Pirosmani and his art was published in Georgian newspaper Temi.
The Society of Georgian Painters, founded in 1916 by Dito Shevardnadze, invited Pirosmani to its meetings and began to take him up, but his relations with the society were always uneasy. He presented his painting "Georgian Wedding" to the Society. One of the members published a caricature of him, which greatly offended him. His continuing poverty, compounded by the economic problems caused by the First World War, meant that his life ended with his work little recognised.
After his death, Pirosmani gained international reputation when he became admired as a 'naïve' painter in Paris and elsewhere. His paintings were represented at the first big exhibition of Georgian painters in 1918. From 1920 onwards, a number of articles were published about him. The first monograph on Pirosmani was published in 1926 in Georgian, Russian, and French.
Interest in Pirosmani increased in the 1950s.
In 1969, a film about him was made, titled Pirosmani. He inspired a portrait sketch by Pablo Picasso (1972). Pirosmani is also depicted on a Georgian lari bill. A periodic newspaper titled Pirosmani is published in two languages in Istanbul.
Exhibitions of his work have been held in Kiev (1931), Warsaw (1968), Paris (The Louvre) (1969), Vienna (1969), Nice and Marseilles (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Nantes (1999), Turin (2002), Kiev, Istanbul (2008), Minsk, Vézelay and Vilnius (2008–2009), and Vienna again (2018/19).
Today, 146 of his works are shown in the Art Museum of Georgia and sixteen paintings are exhibited in the Historical-Ethnographic Museum of Sighnaghi. A monument was installed in Tbilisi. There is also the Niko Pirosmanashvili Museum in Mirzaani, Georgia, in one of his abodes.
In March 2011, it was discovered that the writing on the door of Qvrivishvilebi’s wine-cellar in Ozaani was made by Pirosmani. On 31 May 2011, during an investigation, experts discovered a painting, which proved to be "Wounded Soldier" by Pirosmani. The painting was given to the National Gallery of Georgia.
Georgian National Museum, Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
Niko Pirosmani’s Albertina Museum exhibition
Exhibición de Niko Pirosmani en La Albertina
Niko Pirosmanashvili (georgiano: ნიკო ფიროსმანაშვილი; Mirzaani, Georgia; 5 de mayo de 1862 - 1918), conocido también como Niko Pirosmani, fue un pintor primitivista georgiano.
Niko Pirosmanashvili nació el 5 de mayo de 1862 en el poblado de Mirzaani, provincia de Kajeti, Georgia, hijo de una familia de campesinos, propietarios de un pequeño viñedo. Pronto se encontró huérfano y fue puesto bajo el cuidado de sus dos hermanas mayores. Hacia 1870 se mudó a Tiflis, y en 1872 entró a trabajar como sirviente de familias opulentas. Aprendió a escribir ruso y georgiano. En 1876 regresó a Mirzaani y se empleó como pastor.
Autodidacta, una de sus especialidades fue la pintura directa sobre hule negro. En 1882 abrió un taller en Tbilisi el cual no prosperó. En 1890 trabajó como conductor de trenes, y en 1895 se empleó creando carteles. En 1893 cofundó una granja en Tbilisi que abandonó en 1901. A lo largo de su vida, la cual pasó siempre en la pobreza, se empleó en trabajos comunes que iban desde pintar casas hasta encalar fachadas. A pesar de que sus pinturas lograron una popularidad local su relación con artistas profesionales fue difícil. Ganarse la vida siempre fue una tarea más importante para él que la estética abstracta. En abril de 1918 murió de desnutrición e insuficiencia hepática. Fue enterrado en el cementerio Nino, aunque el lugar exacto se desconoce puesto que no fue registrado.
A inicios del Siglo XX Niko Pirosmanashvili vivió en un pequeño departamento no lejos de la estación de ferrocarriles de Tbilisi. Sus pinturas incluyeron vastas escenas locales y retratos imaginarios de figuras históricas georgianas, como aquellas de Shota Rustaveli y la Reina Tamar, además de retratar georgianos comunes y su quehacer diario.
En 1910 se ganó el entusiasmo crítico del poeta ruso Mijaíl Le-Dantue y del artista Kiril Zdanévich y su hermano Iliá Zdanévich. Éste escribió una carta sobre Pirosmanashvili en el periódico Zakavkázskaia Rech, publicada el 13 de febrero de 1913. También tomó la empresa de publicitar a Piroshmanashvili en Moscú. La edición del 7 de enero del periódico moscovita Moskóvskaia Gazeta contenía una nota sobre la exhibición Mishen en donde se exhibieron algunas obras de pintores autodidactas, entre las cuales se encontraban cuatro de Pirosmanashvili: Retrato de Zdanévich, Naturaleza muerta, Mujer con un jarro de cerveza, y El corzo. Los críticos que escribieron después en el mismo periódico quedaron impresionados por su talento. Ese mismo año se publicó un artículo sobre la obra de Niko Pirosmanashvili en el periódico georgiano Temi.
La Sociedad de Pintores Georgianos, fundada por Dito Shevardnadze en 1916, invitó a Pirosmanashvili a sus reuniones en donde lo acogieron, sin embargo, su relación con la sociedad no fue fácil. A pesar de haber mostrado a la sociedad su pintura Boda georgiana, uno de los miembros publicó una caricatura de él que lo ofendió considerablemente. Su continua pobreza, aunados a los problemas económicos derivados de la Primera Guerra Mundial, provocaron que su vida terminara con su obra sin reconocimiento.
Tras la guerra desarrolló una reputación internacional, al ganarse la admiración como pintor naïf en París y en otros lugares. El primer libro sobre Pirosmanashvili fue publicado en georgiano, ruso y francés en 1926. Inclusive su figura inspiró a Pablo Picasso hacer un esbozo de retrato en 1972. A pesar de que hoy en día han sobrevivido alrededor de 200 pinturas, se han hecho exhibiciones de su obra en diferentes ciudades, desde Kiev (1931), Varsovia (1968), París (1969), Viena (1969), Niza y Marsella (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Turín (2002), Istanbul (2008), y Vilnius (2008-2009).
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niko_Pirosmani
elhurgador.blogspot.com/2018/08/niko-pirosmani-pintura-pa...
Niko Pirosmani (Georgian: ნიკო ფიროსმანი), simply referred to as Nikala (ნიკალა) (1862–1918), was a Georgian naïve painter who posthumously rose to prominence.
Pirosmani was born in the Georgian village of Mirzaani to a peasant family in Kakheti province. His parents, Aslan Pirosmanashvili and Tekle Toklikishvili, were farmers, who owned a small vineyard, with a few cows and oxen. He was later orphaned and left in the care of his two elder sisters, Mariam and Pepe. He moved with them to Tbilisi in 1870. In 1872, while living in a little apartment not far from Tbilisi railway station, he worked as a servant to wealthy families and learned to read and write Russian and Georgian. In 1876, he returned to Mirzaani and worked as a herdsman.
Pirosmani gradually taught himself to paint. One of his specialties was painting directly into black oilcloth. In 1882, with self-taught George Zaziashvili, he opened a painting workshop, where they made signboards. In 1890, he worked as a railroad conductor. In 1893, he co-founded a dairy farm in Tbilisi, which he left in 1901. Throughout his life, Pirosmani, who was poor, was willing to take ordinary jobs including housepainting and whitewashing buildings. He also worked for shopkeepers in Tbilisi, creating signboards, paintings, and portraits, according to their orders. Although his paintings had some local popularity (about 200 survive) his relationship with professional artists remained uneasy; making a living was always more important to him than aesthetic abstractions.
In April 1918, he died in the 1918 flu pandemic resulted from malnutrition and liver failure. He was buried at the Nino cemetery; the exact location was not registered and is unknown.
Pirosmani’s paintings were influenced by the social conditions of his time and place. There are many works about merchants, shopkeepers, workmen, and noblemen groups. Pirosmani was fond of nature and rural life. He rarely employed city landscapes. He made many animal paintings. He was the only Georgian animalist. Pirosmani also was attracted by historical figures and themes such as Shota Rustaveli, Queen Tamar, Giorgi Saakadze, as well as ordinary Georgian people and their everyday lives.
Usually, Pirosmani painted on oilcloth. Unlike other artists, Niko didn’t aim at a pure imitation of the nature and paid no attention to details. Some of his paintings are monochrome. His paintings demonstrate the author's sharp compositional consideration. Placements of the figures are frontal, while faces do not demonstrate a specific mood.
In the 1910s, he won the enthusiasm of the Russian poet Mikhail Le-Dantyu and the artist Kirill Zdanevich and his brother Ilia Zdanevich. Ilia Zhdanevich wrote a letter about Pirosmani to the newspaper Zakavkazskaia Rech, which it published on February 13, 1913. He undertook to publicise Pirosmani's painting in Moscow. The Moscow newspaper Moskovskaia Gazeta of 7 January wrote about the exhibition "Mishen" where self-taught painters exhibited, among them four works by Pirosmani: "Portrait of Zhdanevich", "Still Life", "Woman with a Beer Mug", and "The Roe". Critics writing later in the same newspaper were impressed with his talent.
In the same year, an article about Niko Pirosmani and his art was published in Georgian newspaper Temi.
The Society of Georgian Painters, founded in 1916 by Dito Shevardnadze, invited Pirosmani to its meetings and began to take him up, but his relations with the society were always uneasy. He presented his painting "Georgian Wedding" to the Society. One of the members published a caricature of him, which greatly offended him. His continuing poverty, compounded by the economic problems caused by the First World War, meant that his life ended with his work little recognised.
After his death, Pirosmani gained international reputation when he became admired as a 'naïve' painter in Paris and elsewhere. His paintings were represented at the first big exhibition of Georgian painters in 1918. From 1920 onwards, a number of articles were published about him. The first monograph on Pirosmani was published in 1926 in Georgian, Russian, and French.
Interest in Pirosmani increased in the 1950s.
In 1969, a film about him was made, titled Pirosmani. He inspired a portrait sketch by Pablo Picasso (1972). Pirosmani is also depicted on a Georgian lari bill. A periodic newspaper titled Pirosmani is published in two languages in Istanbul.
Exhibitions of his work have been held in Kiev (1931), Warsaw (1968), Paris (The Louvre) (1969), Vienna (1969), Nice and Marseilles (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Nantes (1999), Turin (2002), Kiev, Istanbul (2008), Minsk, Vézelay and Vilnius (2008–2009), and Vienna again (2018/19).
Today, 146 of his works are shown in the Art Museum of Georgia and sixteen paintings are exhibited in the Historical-Ethnographic Museum of Sighnaghi. A monument was installed in Tbilisi. There is also the Niko Pirosmanashvili Museum in Mirzaani, Georgia, in one of his abodes.
In March 2011, it was discovered that the writing on the door of Qvrivishvilebi’s wine-cellar in Ozaani was made by Pirosmani. On 31 May 2011, during an investigation, experts discovered a painting, which proved to be "Wounded Soldier" by Pirosmani. The painting was given to the National Gallery of Georgia.
Georgian National Museum, Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
Niko Pirosmani’s Albertina Museum exhibition
Exhibición de Niko Pirosmani en La Albertina
Niko Pirosmanashvili (georgiano: ნიკო ფიროსმანაშვილი; Mirzaani, Georgia; 5 de mayo de 1862 - 1918), conocido también como Niko Pirosmani, fue un pintor primitivista georgiano.
Niko Pirosmanashvili nació el 5 de mayo de 1862 en el poblado de Mirzaani, provincia de Kajeti, Georgia, hijo de una familia de campesinos, propietarios de un pequeño viñedo. Pronto se encontró huérfano y fue puesto bajo el cuidado de sus dos hermanas mayores. Hacia 1870 se mudó a Tiflis, y en 1872 entró a trabajar como sirviente de familias opulentas. Aprendió a escribir ruso y georgiano. En 1876 regresó a Mirzaani y se empleó como pastor.
Autodidacta, una de sus especialidades fue la pintura directa sobre hule negro. En 1882 abrió un taller en Tbilisi el cual no prosperó. En 1890 trabajó como conductor de trenes, y en 1895 se empleó creando carteles. En 1893 cofundó una granja en Tbilisi que abandonó en 1901. A lo largo de su vida, la cual pasó siempre en la pobreza, se empleó en trabajos comunes que iban desde pintar casas hasta encalar fachadas. A pesar de que sus pinturas lograron una popularidad local su relación con artistas profesionales fue difícil. Ganarse la vida siempre fue una tarea más importante para él que la estética abstracta. En abril de 1918 murió de desnutrición e insuficiencia hepática. Fue enterrado en el cementerio Nino, aunque el lugar exacto se desconoce puesto que no fue registrado.
A inicios del Siglo XX Niko Pirosmanashvili vivió en un pequeño departamento no lejos de la estación de ferrocarriles de Tbilisi. Sus pinturas incluyeron vastas escenas locales y retratos imaginarios de figuras históricas georgianas, como aquellas de Shota Rustaveli y la Reina Tamar, además de retratar georgianos comunes y su quehacer diario.
En 1910 se ganó el entusiasmo crítico del poeta ruso Mijaíl Le-Dantue y del artista Kiril Zdanévich y su hermano Iliá Zdanévich. Éste escribió una carta sobre Pirosmanashvili en el periódico Zakavkázskaia Rech, publicada el 13 de febrero de 1913. También tomó la empresa de publicitar a Piroshmanashvili en Moscú. La edición del 7 de enero del periódico moscovita Moskóvskaia Gazeta contenía una nota sobre la exhibición Mishen en donde se exhibieron algunas obras de pintores autodidactas, entre las cuales se encontraban cuatro de Pirosmanashvili: Retrato de Zdanévich, Naturaleza muerta, Mujer con un jarro de cerveza, y El corzo. Los críticos que escribieron después en el mismo periódico quedaron impresionados por su talento. Ese mismo año se publicó un artículo sobre la obra de Niko Pirosmanashvili en el periódico georgiano Temi.
La Sociedad de Pintores Georgianos, fundada por Dito Shevardnadze en 1916, invitó a Pirosmanashvili a sus reuniones en donde lo acogieron, sin embargo, su relación con la sociedad no fue fácil. A pesar de haber mostrado a la sociedad su pintura Boda georgiana, uno de los miembros publicó una caricatura de él que lo ofendió considerablemente. Su continua pobreza, aunados a los problemas económicos derivados de la Primera Guerra Mundial, provocaron que su vida terminara con su obra sin reconocimiento.
Tras la guerra desarrolló una reputación internacional, al ganarse la admiración como pintor naïf en París y en otros lugares. El primer libro sobre Pirosmanashvili fue publicado en georgiano, ruso y francés en 1926. Inclusive su figura inspiró a Pablo Picasso hacer un esbozo de retrato en 1972. A pesar de que hoy en día han sobrevivido alrededor de 200 pinturas, se han hecho exhibiciones de su obra en diferentes ciudades, desde Kiev (1931), Varsovia (1968), París (1969), Viena (1969), Niza y Marsella (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Turín (2002), Istanbul (2008), y Vilnius (2008-2009).
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niko_Pirosmani
elhurgador.blogspot.com/2018/08/niko-pirosmani-pintura-pa...
Niko Pirosmani (Georgian: ნიკო ფიროსმანი), simply referred to as Nikala (ნიკალა) (1862–1918), was a Georgian naïve painter who posthumously rose to prominence.
Pirosmani was born in the Georgian village of Mirzaani to a peasant family in Kakheti province. His parents, Aslan Pirosmanashvili and Tekle Toklikishvili, were farmers, who owned a small vineyard, with a few cows and oxen. He was later orphaned and left in the care of his two elder sisters, Mariam and Pepe. He moved with them to Tbilisi in 1870. In 1872, while living in a little apartment not far from Tbilisi railway station, he worked as a servant to wealthy families and learned to read and write Russian and Georgian. In 1876, he returned to Mirzaani and worked as a herdsman.
Pirosmani gradually taught himself to paint. One of his specialties was painting directly into black oilcloth. In 1882, with self-taught George Zaziashvili, he opened a painting workshop, where they made signboards. In 1890, he worked as a railroad conductor. In 1893, he co-founded a dairy farm in Tbilisi, which he left in 1901. Throughout his life, Pirosmani, who was poor, was willing to take ordinary jobs including housepainting and whitewashing buildings. He also worked for shopkeepers in Tbilisi, creating signboards, paintings, and portraits, according to their orders. Although his paintings had some local popularity (about 200 survive) his relationship with professional artists remained uneasy; making a living was always more important to him than aesthetic abstractions.
In April 1918, he died in the 1918 flu pandemic resulted from malnutrition and liver failure. He was buried at the Nino cemetery; the exact location was not registered and is unknown.
Pirosmani’s paintings were influenced by the social conditions of his time and place. There are many works about merchants, shopkeepers, workmen, and noblemen groups. Pirosmani was fond of nature and rural life. He rarely employed city landscapes. He made many animal paintings. He was the only Georgian animalist. Pirosmani also was attracted by historical figures and themes such as Shota Rustaveli, Queen Tamar, Giorgi Saakadze, as well as ordinary Georgian people and their everyday lives.
Usually, Pirosmani painted on oilcloth. Unlike other artists, Niko didn’t aim at a pure imitation of the nature and paid no attention to details. Some of his paintings are monochrome. His paintings demonstrate the author's sharp compositional consideration. Placements of the figures are frontal, while faces do not demonstrate a specific mood.
In the 1910s, he won the enthusiasm of the Russian poet Mikhail Le-Dantyu and the artist Kirill Zdanevich and his brother Ilia Zdanevich. Ilia Zhdanevich wrote a letter about Pirosmani to the newspaper Zakavkazskaia Rech, which it published on February 13, 1913. He undertook to publicise Pirosmani's painting in Moscow. The Moscow newspaper Moskovskaia Gazeta of 7 January wrote about the exhibition "Mishen" where self-taught painters exhibited, among them four works by Pirosmani: "Portrait of Zhdanevich", "Still Life", "Woman with a Beer Mug", and "The Roe". Critics writing later in the same newspaper were impressed with his talent.
In the same year, an article about Niko Pirosmani and his art was published in Georgian newspaper Temi.
The Society of Georgian Painters, founded in 1916 by Dito Shevardnadze, invited Pirosmani to its meetings and began to take him up, but his relations with the society were always uneasy. He presented his painting "Georgian Wedding" to the Society. One of the members published a caricature of him, which greatly offended him. His continuing poverty, compounded by the economic problems caused by the First World War, meant that his life ended with his work little recognised.
After his death, Pirosmani gained international reputation when he became admired as a 'naïve' painter in Paris and elsewhere. His paintings were represented at the first big exhibition of Georgian painters in 1918. From 1920 onwards, a number of articles were published about him. The first monograph on Pirosmani was published in 1926 in Georgian, Russian, and French.
Interest in Pirosmani increased in the 1950s.
In 1969, a film about him was made, titled Pirosmani. He inspired a portrait sketch by Pablo Picasso (1972). Pirosmani is also depicted on a Georgian lari bill. A periodic newspaper titled Pirosmani is published in two languages in Istanbul.
Exhibitions of his work have been held in Kiev (1931), Warsaw (1968), Paris (The Louvre) (1969), Vienna (1969), Nice and Marseilles (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Nantes (1999), Turin (2002), Kiev, Istanbul (2008), Minsk, Vézelay and Vilnius (2008–2009), and Vienna again (2018/19).
Today, 146 of his works are shown in the Art Museum of Georgia and sixteen paintings are exhibited in the Historical-Ethnographic Museum of Sighnaghi. A monument was installed in Tbilisi. There is also the Niko Pirosmanashvili Museum in Mirzaani, Georgia, in one of his abodes.
In March 2011, it was discovered that the writing on the door of Qvrivishvilebi’s wine-cellar in Ozaani was made by Pirosmani. On 31 May 2011, during an investigation, experts discovered a painting, which proved to be "Wounded Soldier" by Pirosmani. The painting was given to the National Gallery of Georgia.
Anchiskhati Triptych. 6th c. 12th c. 14th c. 17th c. 19th c. The Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi, Georgia
Later, in about 1308-1334, a special triptych case was created for the venerable image, donated by the powerful aristocratic family of Jakeli, governors of the south-western province of Samtskhe. The inner parts of the lateral wings depict seven scenes from the Great Twelve Feasts executed in repoussé. The Ascension adorns the semi-circular top; the Annunciation, Nativity and Baptism are placed on the left wing; and the Transfiguration, Crucifixion and Anastasis on the right.
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The icon of ancha or anchiskhati, a replica of the holy face of edessa the image of christ not made by human hand, is one of the major relics of the georgian church. This is the earliest preserved copy of the image of christ, which according to christian tradition was miraculously imprinted on cloth during his earthly life. The mandylion is directly connected with orthodox christian teaching, proving the real incarnation of christ. Moreover, the image not made by human hand is also perceived as a legitimation of christian images. During the iconoclastic controversy, the mandylion was one of the most important arguments for the iconophiles (those who venerated images), who claimed the legitimacy of images for the christian church.
Source:
Georgian National Museum, Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
Niko Pirosmani’s Albertina Museum exhibition
Exhibición de Niko Pirosmani en La Albertina
Niko Pirosmanashvili (georgiano: ნიკო ფიროსმანაშვილი; Mirzaani, Georgia; 5 de mayo de 1862 - 1918), conocido también como Niko Pirosmani, fue un pintor primitivista georgiano.
Niko Pirosmanashvili nació el 5 de mayo de 1862 en el poblado de Mirzaani, provincia de Kajeti, Georgia, hijo de una familia de campesinos, propietarios de un pequeño viñedo. Pronto se encontró huérfano y fue puesto bajo el cuidado de sus dos hermanas mayores. Hacia 1870 se mudó a Tiflis, y en 1872 entró a trabajar como sirviente de familias opulentas. Aprendió a escribir ruso y georgiano. En 1876 regresó a Mirzaani y se empleó como pastor.
Autodidacta, una de sus especialidades fue la pintura directa sobre hule negro. En 1882 abrió un taller en Tbilisi el cual no prosperó. En 1890 trabajó como conductor de trenes, y en 1895 se empleó creando carteles. En 1893 cofundó una granja en Tbilisi que abandonó en 1901. A lo largo de su vida, la cual pasó siempre en la pobreza, se empleó en trabajos comunes que iban desde pintar casas hasta encalar fachadas. A pesar de que sus pinturas lograron una popularidad local su relación con artistas profesionales fue difícil. Ganarse la vida siempre fue una tarea más importante para él que la estética abstracta. En abril de 1918 murió de desnutrición e insuficiencia hepática. Fue enterrado en el cementerio Nino, aunque el lugar exacto se desconoce puesto que no fue registrado.
A inicios del Siglo XX Niko Pirosmanashvili vivió en un pequeño departamento no lejos de la estación de ferrocarriles de Tbilisi. Sus pinturas incluyeron vastas escenas locales y retratos imaginarios de figuras históricas georgianas, como aquellas de Shota Rustaveli y la Reina Tamar, además de retratar georgianos comunes y su quehacer diario.
En 1910 se ganó el entusiasmo crítico del poeta ruso Mijaíl Le-Dantue y del artista Kiril Zdanévich y su hermano Iliá Zdanévich. Éste escribió una carta sobre Pirosmanashvili en el periódico Zakavkázskaia Rech, publicada el 13 de febrero de 1913. También tomó la empresa de publicitar a Piroshmanashvili en Moscú. La edición del 7 de enero del periódico moscovita Moskóvskaia Gazeta contenía una nota sobre la exhibición Mishen en donde se exhibieron algunas obras de pintores autodidactas, entre las cuales se encontraban cuatro de Pirosmanashvili: Retrato de Zdanévich, Naturaleza muerta, Mujer con un jarro de cerveza, y El corzo. Los críticos que escribieron después en el mismo periódico quedaron impresionados por su talento. Ese mismo año se publicó un artículo sobre la obra de Niko Pirosmanashvili en el periódico georgiano Temi.
La Sociedad de Pintores Georgianos, fundada por Dito Shevardnadze en 1916, invitó a Pirosmanashvili a sus reuniones en donde lo acogieron, sin embargo, su relación con la sociedad no fue fácil. A pesar de haber mostrado a la sociedad su pintura Boda georgiana, uno de los miembros publicó una caricatura de él que lo ofendió considerablemente. Su continua pobreza, aunados a los problemas económicos derivados de la Primera Guerra Mundial, provocaron que su vida terminara con su obra sin reconocimiento.
Tras la guerra desarrolló una reputación internacional, al ganarse la admiración como pintor naïf en París y en otros lugares. El primer libro sobre Pirosmanashvili fue publicado en georgiano, ruso y francés en 1926. Inclusive su figura inspiró a Pablo Picasso hacer un esbozo de retrato en 1972. A pesar de que hoy en día han sobrevivido alrededor de 200 pinturas, se han hecho exhibiciones de su obra en diferentes ciudades, desde Kiev (1931), Varsovia (1968), París (1969), Viena (1969), Niza y Marsella (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Turín (2002), Istanbul (2008), y Vilnius (2008-2009).
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niko_Pirosmani
elhurgador.blogspot.com/2018/08/niko-pirosmani-pintura-pa...
Niko Pirosmani (Georgian: ნიკო ფიროსმანი), simply referred to as Nikala (ნიკალა) (1862–1918), was a Georgian naïve painter who posthumously rose to prominence.
Pirosmani was born in the Georgian village of Mirzaani to a peasant family in Kakheti province. His parents, Aslan Pirosmanashvili and Tekle Toklikishvili, were farmers, who owned a small vineyard, with a few cows and oxen. He was later orphaned and left in the care of his two elder sisters, Mariam and Pepe. He moved with them to Tbilisi in 1870. In 1872, while living in a little apartment not far from Tbilisi railway station, he worked as a servant to wealthy families and learned to read and write Russian and Georgian. In 1876, he returned to Mirzaani and worked as a herdsman.
Pirosmani gradually taught himself to paint. One of his specialties was painting directly into black oilcloth. In 1882, with self-taught George Zaziashvili, he opened a painting workshop, where they made signboards. In 1890, he worked as a railroad conductor. In 1893, he co-founded a dairy farm in Tbilisi, which he left in 1901. Throughout his life, Pirosmani, who was poor, was willing to take ordinary jobs including housepainting and whitewashing buildings. He also worked for shopkeepers in Tbilisi, creating signboards, paintings, and portraits, according to their orders. Although his paintings had some local popularity (about 200 survive) his relationship with professional artists remained uneasy; making a living was always more important to him than aesthetic abstractions.
In April 1918, he died in the 1918 flu pandemic resulted from malnutrition and liver failure. He was buried at the Nino cemetery; the exact location was not registered and is unknown.
Pirosmani’s paintings were influenced by the social conditions of his time and place. There are many works about merchants, shopkeepers, workmen, and noblemen groups. Pirosmani was fond of nature and rural life. He rarely employed city landscapes. He made many animal paintings. He was the only Georgian animalist. Pirosmani also was attracted by historical figures and themes such as Shota Rustaveli, Queen Tamar, Giorgi Saakadze, as well as ordinary Georgian people and their everyday lives.
Usually, Pirosmani painted on oilcloth. Unlike other artists, Niko didn’t aim at a pure imitation of the nature and paid no attention to details. Some of his paintings are monochrome. His paintings demonstrate the author's sharp compositional consideration. Placements of the figures are frontal, while faces do not demonstrate a specific mood.
In the 1910s, he won the enthusiasm of the Russian poet Mikhail Le-Dantyu and the artist Kirill Zdanevich and his brother Ilia Zdanevich. Ilia Zhdanevich wrote a letter about Pirosmani to the newspaper Zakavkazskaia Rech, which it published on February 13, 1913. He undertook to publicise Pirosmani's painting in Moscow. The Moscow newspaper Moskovskaia Gazeta of 7 January wrote about the exhibition "Mishen" where self-taught painters exhibited, among them four works by Pirosmani: "Portrait of Zhdanevich", "Still Life", "Woman with a Beer Mug", and "The Roe". Critics writing later in the same newspaper were impressed with his talent.
In the same year, an article about Niko Pirosmani and his art was published in Georgian newspaper Temi.
The Society of Georgian Painters, founded in 1916 by Dito Shevardnadze, invited Pirosmani to its meetings and began to take him up, but his relations with the society were always uneasy. He presented his painting "Georgian Wedding" to the Society. One of the members published a caricature of him, which greatly offended him. His continuing poverty, compounded by the economic problems caused by the First World War, meant that his life ended with his work little recognised.
After his death, Pirosmani gained international reputation when he became admired as a 'naïve' painter in Paris and elsewhere. His paintings were represented at the first big exhibition of Georgian painters in 1918. From 1920 onwards, a number of articles were published about him. The first monograph on Pirosmani was published in 1926 in Georgian, Russian, and French.
Interest in Pirosmani increased in the 1950s.
In 1969, a film about him was made, titled Pirosmani. He inspired a portrait sketch by Pablo Picasso (1972). Pirosmani is also depicted on a Georgian lari bill. A periodic newspaper titled Pirosmani is published in two languages in Istanbul.
Exhibitions of his work have been held in Kiev (1931), Warsaw (1968), Paris (The Louvre) (1969), Vienna (1969), Nice and Marseilles (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Nantes (1999), Turin (2002), Kiev, Istanbul (2008), Minsk, Vézelay and Vilnius (2008–2009), and Vienna again (2018/19).
Today, 146 of his works are shown in the Art Museum of Georgia and sixteen paintings are exhibited in the Historical-Ethnographic Museum of Sighnaghi. A monument was installed in Tbilisi. There is also the Niko Pirosmanashvili Museum in Mirzaani, Georgia, in one of his abodes.
In March 2011, it was discovered that the writing on the door of Qvrivishvilebi’s wine-cellar in Ozaani was made by Pirosmani. On 31 May 2011, during an investigation, experts discovered a painting, which proved to be "Wounded Soldier" by Pirosmani. The painting was given to the National Gallery of Georgia.
Georgian National Museum, Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
Niko Pirosmani’s Albertina Museum exhibition
Exhibición de Niko Pirosmani en La Albertina
Niko Pirosmanashvili (georgiano: ნიკო ფიროსმანაშვილი; Mirzaani, Georgia; 5 de mayo de 1862 - 1918), conocido también como Niko Pirosmani, fue un pintor primitivista georgiano.
Niko Pirosmanashvili nació el 5 de mayo de 1862 en el poblado de Mirzaani, provincia de Kajeti, Georgia, hijo de una familia de campesinos, propietarios de un pequeño viñedo. Pronto se encontró huérfano y fue puesto bajo el cuidado de sus dos hermanas mayores. Hacia 1870 se mudó a Tiflis, y en 1872 entró a trabajar como sirviente de familias opulentas. Aprendió a escribir ruso y georgiano. En 1876 regresó a Mirzaani y se empleó como pastor.
Autodidacta, una de sus especialidades fue la pintura directa sobre hule negro. En 1882 abrió un taller en Tbilisi el cual no prosperó. En 1890 trabajó como conductor de trenes, y en 1895 se empleó creando carteles. En 1893 cofundó una granja en Tbilisi que abandonó en 1901. A lo largo de su vida, la cual pasó siempre en la pobreza, se empleó en trabajos comunes que iban desde pintar casas hasta encalar fachadas. A pesar de que sus pinturas lograron una popularidad local su relación con artistas profesionales fue difícil. Ganarse la vida siempre fue una tarea más importante para él que la estética abstracta. En abril de 1918 murió de desnutrición e insuficiencia hepática. Fue enterrado en el cementerio Nino, aunque el lugar exacto se desconoce puesto que no fue registrado.
A inicios del Siglo XX Niko Pirosmanashvili vivió en un pequeño departamento no lejos de la estación de ferrocarriles de Tbilisi. Sus pinturas incluyeron vastas escenas locales y retratos imaginarios de figuras históricas georgianas, como aquellas de Shota Rustaveli y la Reina Tamar, además de retratar georgianos comunes y su quehacer diario.
En 1910 se ganó el entusiasmo crítico del poeta ruso Mijaíl Le-Dantue y del artista Kiril Zdanévich y su hermano Iliá Zdanévich. Éste escribió una carta sobre Pirosmanashvili en el periódico Zakavkázskaia Rech, publicada el 13 de febrero de 1913. También tomó la empresa de publicitar a Piroshmanashvili en Moscú. La edición del 7 de enero del periódico moscovita Moskóvskaia Gazeta contenía una nota sobre la exhibición Mishen en donde se exhibieron algunas obras de pintores autodidactas, entre las cuales se encontraban cuatro de Pirosmanashvili: Retrato de Zdanévich, Naturaleza muerta, Mujer con un jarro de cerveza, y El corzo. Los críticos que escribieron después en el mismo periódico quedaron impresionados por su talento. Ese mismo año se publicó un artículo sobre la obra de Niko Pirosmanashvili en el periódico georgiano Temi.
La Sociedad de Pintores Georgianos, fundada por Dito Shevardnadze en 1916, invitó a Pirosmanashvili a sus reuniones en donde lo acogieron, sin embargo, su relación con la sociedad no fue fácil. A pesar de haber mostrado a la sociedad su pintura Boda georgiana, uno de los miembros publicó una caricatura de él que lo ofendió considerablemente. Su continua pobreza, aunados a los problemas económicos derivados de la Primera Guerra Mundial, provocaron que su vida terminara con su obra sin reconocimiento.
Tras la guerra desarrolló una reputación internacional, al ganarse la admiración como pintor naïf en París y en otros lugares. El primer libro sobre Pirosmanashvili fue publicado en georgiano, ruso y francés en 1926. Inclusive su figura inspiró a Pablo Picasso hacer un esbozo de retrato en 1972. A pesar de que hoy en día han sobrevivido alrededor de 200 pinturas, se han hecho exhibiciones de su obra en diferentes ciudades, desde Kiev (1931), Varsovia (1968), París (1969), Viena (1969), Niza y Marsella (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Turín (2002), Istanbul (2008), y Vilnius (2008-2009).
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niko_Pirosmani
elhurgador.blogspot.com/2018/08/niko-pirosmani-pintura-pa...
Niko Pirosmani (Georgian: ნიკო ფიროსმანი), simply referred to as Nikala (ნიკალა) (1862–1918), was a Georgian naïve painter who posthumously rose to prominence.
Pirosmani was born in the Georgian village of Mirzaani to a peasant family in Kakheti province. His parents, Aslan Pirosmanashvili and Tekle Toklikishvili, were farmers, who owned a small vineyard, with a few cows and oxen. He was later orphaned and left in the care of his two elder sisters, Mariam and Pepe. He moved with them to Tbilisi in 1870. In 1872, while living in a little apartment not far from Tbilisi railway station, he worked as a servant to wealthy families and learned to read and write Russian and Georgian. In 1876, he returned to Mirzaani and worked as a herdsman.
Pirosmani gradually taught himself to paint. One of his specialties was painting directly into black oilcloth. In 1882, with self-taught George Zaziashvili, he opened a painting workshop, where they made signboards. In 1890, he worked as a railroad conductor. In 1893, he co-founded a dairy farm in Tbilisi, which he left in 1901. Throughout his life, Pirosmani, who was poor, was willing to take ordinary jobs including housepainting and whitewashing buildings. He also worked for shopkeepers in Tbilisi, creating signboards, paintings, and portraits, according to their orders. Although his paintings had some local popularity (about 200 survive) his relationship with professional artists remained uneasy; making a living was always more important to him than aesthetic abstractions.
In April 1918, he died in the 1918 flu pandemic resulted from malnutrition and liver failure. He was buried at the Nino cemetery; the exact location was not registered and is unknown.
Pirosmani’s paintings were influenced by the social conditions of his time and place. There are many works about merchants, shopkeepers, workmen, and noblemen groups. Pirosmani was fond of nature and rural life. He rarely employed city landscapes. He made many animal paintings. He was the only Georgian animalist. Pirosmani also was attracted by historical figures and themes such as Shota Rustaveli, Queen Tamar, Giorgi Saakadze, as well as ordinary Georgian people and their everyday lives.
Usually, Pirosmani painted on oilcloth. Unlike other artists, Niko didn’t aim at a pure imitation of the nature and paid no attention to details. Some of his paintings are monochrome. His paintings demonstrate the author's sharp compositional consideration. Placements of the figures are frontal, while faces do not demonstrate a specific mood.
In the 1910s, he won the enthusiasm of the Russian poet Mikhail Le-Dantyu and the artist Kirill Zdanevich and his brother Ilia Zdanevich. Ilia Zhdanevich wrote a letter about Pirosmani to the newspaper Zakavkazskaia Rech, which it published on February 13, 1913. He undertook to publicise Pirosmani's painting in Moscow. The Moscow newspaper Moskovskaia Gazeta of 7 January wrote about the exhibition "Mishen" where self-taught painters exhibited, among them four works by Pirosmani: "Portrait of Zhdanevich", "Still Life", "Woman with a Beer Mug", and "The Roe". Critics writing later in the same newspaper were impressed with his talent.
In the same year, an article about Niko Pirosmani and his art was published in Georgian newspaper Temi.
The Society of Georgian Painters, founded in 1916 by Dito Shevardnadze, invited Pirosmani to its meetings and began to take him up, but his relations with the society were always uneasy. He presented his painting "Georgian Wedding" to the Society. One of the members published a caricature of him, which greatly offended him. His continuing poverty, compounded by the economic problems caused by the First World War, meant that his life ended with his work little recognised.
After his death, Pirosmani gained international reputation when he became admired as a 'naïve' painter in Paris and elsewhere. His paintings were represented at the first big exhibition of Georgian painters in 1918. From 1920 onwards, a number of articles were published about him. The first monograph on Pirosmani was published in 1926 in Georgian, Russian, and French.
Interest in Pirosmani increased in the 1950s.
In 1969, a film about him was made, titled Pirosmani. He inspired a portrait sketch by Pablo Picasso (1972). Pirosmani is also depicted on a Georgian lari bill. A periodic newspaper titled Pirosmani is published in two languages in Istanbul.
Exhibitions of his work have been held in Kiev (1931), Warsaw (1968), Paris (The Louvre) (1969), Vienna (1969), Nice and Marseilles (1983), Tokyo (1986), Zurich (1995), Nantes (1999), Turin (2002), Kiev, Istanbul (2008), Minsk, Vézelay and Vilnius (2008–2009), and Vienna again (2018/19).
Today, 146 of his works are shown in the Art Museum of Georgia and sixteen paintings are exhibited in the Historical-Ethnographic Museum of Sighnaghi. A monument was installed in Tbilisi. There is also the Niko Pirosmanashvili Museum in Mirzaani, Georgia, in one of his abodes.
In March 2011, it was discovered that the writing on the door of Qvrivishvilebi’s wine-cellar in Ozaani was made by Pirosmani. On 31 May 2011, during an investigation, experts discovered a painting, which proved to be "Wounded Soldier" by Pirosmani. The painting was given to the National Gallery of Georgia.
parlementsvoorzitter Shalva Papuashvili. was voor een kort bezoek in Den Haag. Meer info over dit bezoek op.
www.eerstekamer.nl/nieuws/20221205/staten_generaal_ontvangen
Kinderloser Millionär und die arme Frau mit Kindern
Childless Millionaire and the Poor Woman with Children
Öl auf Wachstuch/Oil on wax cloth
Georgisches Nationalmuseum, Schalwa Amiranaschwili
Museum der bildenden Künste, Tiflis
Georgian National Museum, Shalva Amiranashvili
Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
A childless, rich couple takes a newborn from a poor woman. Pirosmani inscribed the two groups of people with "millionaire, childless" and "poor woman with children". He does not present the encounter spatially, but juxtaposes the persons who look like cut-out in parallel to each other. The wealth of the couple is shown by the clothing suit, coat, gold buttons, shoes and jewelry -. The man has a clean trimmed beard, the woman with the conspicuously made-up lips wears an elaborate hairstyle. The bare-footed poor woman is accompanied by her two young children: a widow, alone, without a husband; a baby in her arms, which she still breastfeeds at the moment of delivery. Four colors orchestrate this image: black and white as well as olive green and blue.
Ein kinderloses, reiches Paar nimmt ein Neugeborenes von einer armen Frau entgegen. Pirosmani beschriftet die beiden Personengruppen mit "Millionär, kinderlos" und "Arme Frau mit Kindern". Er stellt die Begegnung nicht räumlich dar, sondern reiht die wie ausgeschnitten wirkenden Personen bildparallel nebeneinander. Der Reichtum des Ehepaars wird durch die Kleidung Anzug, Mantel, Goldknöpfe, Schuhe und Schmuck - gezeigt. Der Mann hat einen sauber gestutzten Bart, die Frau mit den auffällig geschminkten Lippen trägt eine aufwendige Frisur. Die bloßfüßige arme Frau wird von ihren beiden kleinen Kindern begleitet: eine Witwe, allein, ohne Ehemann; im Arm ein Wickelkind, das sie noch im Moment der Übergabe stillt. Vier Farben orchestrieren dieses Bild: Schwarz-Weiß sowie Olivgrün und Blau.
The ALBERTINA devotes a comprehensive solo exhibition to the Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani (1862-1918). The autodidact, whose luminous, vivid works often depict animals or scenes from the life of ancient Georgia and its people, is today a hero of the avant-garde to be discovered. For Niko Pirosmani art is a wide, open field, he himself a vagabond, who consciously chose to move around as a way of life. A wanderer between town and country, restaurants and animal stables, which is at the same time in the center of the community. His commissioned works are not presented in galleries and museums, but in inns, taverns and shops. Niko Pirosmani embodies the artist's vision as a clairvoyant outsider.
The exhibition will be on view from October 26, 2018 to January 27, 2019.
This exhibition is made possible by the Infinitart Foundation.
It is organized by ALBERTINA with the Infinitart Foundation in collaboration with the Georgian National Museum and the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles.
Die ALBERTINA widmet dem georgischen Maler Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918) eine umfassende Personale. Der Autodidakt, dessen leuchtende, eindringliche Werke häufig Tiere oder Szenen aus dem Leben des alten Georgiens und seiner Menschen zeigen, ist heute ein Held der Avantgarde, den es zu entdecken gilt. Kunst ist für Niko Pirosmani ein weites, offenes Feld, er selbst ein Vagabund, der das Herumziehen bewusst als Lebensform gewählt hat. Ein Wanderer zwischen Stadt und Land, Gaststuben und Tierställen, der sich gleichzeitig im Zentrum der Gemeinschaft aufhält. Seine im Auftrag entstandenen Werke werden nicht in Galerien und Museen präsentiert, sondern in Gasthöfen, Tavernen und Läden. Niko Pirosmani verkörpert die Vision des Künstlers als hellsichtigem Außenseiter.
Die Ausstellung ist von 26. Oktober 2018 bis 27. Jänner 2019 zu sehen.
Diese Ausstellung wird durch die Infinitart Foundation ermöglicht.
Sie wird von der ALBERTINA mit der Infinitart Foundation in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Georgischen National Museum und der Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles organisiert.
Tbilisi State University was founded in 1918 owing to the leadership and huge effort of a famous Georgian historian Ivane Javakhishvili and the group of his followers. It was the first and the only educational body of this type in Caucasus by that time.
Georgia has an ancient tradition of education, as evidenced by the functioning of the School of Philosophy and Rhetoric of Phazisi in Colchis (IV c.); as well as the setting up of cultural-enlightenment centers in Palestine (V c.), Syria (VI c.), Greece (X-XV cc.) and Bulgaria (XI c.); Gelati and Iqalto Academies in Georgia (XI-XII cc.); However, as a result of political-economic decrease and at last becoming the colony of Russia, there had been no national higher educational Institution in Georgia for the next few centuries.
Right after Georgia became independent and declared itself a national democratic state, one of the first achievements of Georgian people in the beginning of the 20th century was the foundation of Georgian National University in Tbilisi. Afterwards, through the Bolshevik and Communist period, in spite of the forced ideology and fierce censorship, Tbilisi State University managed to maintain national ardour, devotion to public ideals, raised the best representatives of Georgian intelligentsia, many famous scientific schools in mathematics, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, historiography were also established on the University basis. The foundation of Academy of Science of Georgia and many other higher educational institutions was also encouraged by the University.
A new era took start in the University after the collapse of the Soviet Union and re-establishment of independence of Georgia. Together with Christianity, the historical mission of the spiritual care and deepening of national self-consciousness of the country was set as the goals for the University. At the same time a particularly essential objective of the University is to support the development of a democratic society, culture and science, uninterruptible growth of the national level of civilization. That's why even today with adoration and great respect do Georgian people refer to it a Holy Temple of Science.
The University was solemnly opened on 26 January 1918, the day of remembrance of the Georgian King David the Builder. A church in the University garden, named after the King, has been functioning since 5 September 1995. In 1989 the University was named after its founder - Ivane Javakhishvili.
Petre Melikishvili, a well-known chemist, merited professor, was elected the first rector of the University. At its commencement, the University had only one faculty - that of philosophy. Ivane Javakhishvili, well-known Georgian historian, delivered the first lecture. At the beginning of 1918 the board of professors and lecturers numbered 18, the student body of the university counted 369 students and 89 free listeners.
Today the number of professors involved in tuition and training amounts to 3275, including 55 academicians and corresponding member of the academy, 595 professors and doctors, 1246 assistant professors and candidates of sciences.
Over 35 thousand students are studying at the University and its 8 regional branches. The very important rearrangements at the University began on 25 April 1994, when the scientific council of the University adopted "The Concepts of University Education", according to which since the year 1994 the University has entirely transferred to the two-stage form of study (the step-by-step rearrangements were launched in 1992) and moved forward to the integration in the European educational environment.
At the end of the I stage of the reform implemented, in the beginning of the year 2005, the bodies functioning at TSU were: 22 faculties with 184 chairs, 8 branches with 46 faculties, 3 scientific-research and study-scientific institutes, 81 scientific-research laboratories and centers, 161 study laboratories and rooms, clinical hospitals and diagnostic centers, publishing and editorial houses, the library with 3640693 items, 5 dormitories. 95 educational programs were used at the bachelor's course, 194 - at master's studies and 16 - at the single-step tuition.
Numerous universally recognized scientific schools came into being at Tbilisi University: mathematics (Andria Razmadze, Nikoloz Muskhelishvili, Ilia Vekua, Viktor Kupradze, Andro Bitsadze and others), physics (Elepter Andronikashvili, MateMirianashvili, Vagan Mamasakhlisov, Givi Khutsishvili Albert Tavkhelidze and others), psychology (Dimitri Uznadze and others), physiology (Ivane Beritashvili and others). National scholarly schools of Georgian historiography (Ivane Javakhishvili and others), history of literature (Korneli Kekelidze and others), Georgian philosophy (Shalva Nutsubidze and others), study of art (Giorgi Chubinashvili and others), Georgian and Caucasian linguistics (Akaki Shanidze, Giorgi Akhvlediani, Arnold Chikobava and others), Oriental and Classic philology (Grigol Tsereteli, Simon Qaukhchishvili, Giorgi Tsereteli and others) are worth mentioning particularly. Thanks to their scientific activity Kartvelology (Kartvelian Studies) has turned into the international scholarly discipline.
The relevant chairs and scientific research departments serve for preparation of post-graduate students and scientific degree explorers. 26 qualification councils operate for conferring scientific degrees in almost all fields of science.
Medical education was restored at the university in 1994, the tradition of medical education was revived - originally the specialty of medicine was opened at the faculty of biology and medicine, and the faculty of medicine became an independent unit in 2000. The assembly of University clinics was founded, the educational bases of which are distinguished for their powerful material and technical equipment and highly qualified scientific-intellectual potential, the Center for the Management of Health Care and the Department for Continuous Medical Education were opened, the board of trustees of medicine and medical information service were founded. The University diagnostic center provides the health care of the professors and lecturers and collaborators of the University.
"The Caucasian Business School" was set up in 1999. It trains specialists in business administration within the framework of the Bachelor's and Master's courses, The school was founded by the Consortium whose membership includes the Technical University of Georgia, Tbilisi State Institute of International Economic Relations and the State University of Atlanta, Georgia (USA).
A printing press was set up at the University, in 1923 and a publishing-house in 1933. The University Archive was founded in 1933. The scientific edition "The Proceedings of Tbilisi University" has been publishing since 1919. The program "Textbooks for Students" has been functioning since 1996. The University publishes two weekly newspapers "Tbilisis Universiteti" (since 1927) and "Kartuli Universiteti" (since 1998).
The museums of History, Georgian Emigration, Mineralogy, Geology and Paleontology, Geography, Zoology and Botany are functioning at TSU.
The five dormitories of TSU can accommodate up to 2200 living rooms.
The University has eight branches in the country- in Sukhumi, Meskheti, Ozurgeti, Sighnaghi (kakheti), Zugdidi, Qvemo Qartli (Marneuli), Javakheti and Poti.
The university schools, namely the Ivane Javakhishvili school N53, the N. Muskhelishvili school N55, prof. T. Georgia physical-mathematical boarding school, Tbilisi lyceum, Rustavi gymnasium, Gurjaani college and Khobi school function successfully.
Basic and applied research is successfully conducted at Tbilisi University. Ilia Vekua Institute of Applied Mathematics at TSU performs the computer-based mathematical modeling and digital realization of the problems related to the natural events and social economic issues basing on the theoretical conclusions. The basic directions of the scientific-research performance of The High Energy Institute of Physics are the experimental research of interaction between the elementary particles and the nucleons and nucleus in field of high energy, making the new systems of processing the information on accelerators, theoretical investigations in high energy particle physics and quantum field theory and nuclear physics.
In addition to basic studies, some scientists have focused their attention on applied work over the recent period, achieving substantial progress. Many important projects have been drafted out, recommendations have been developed and concrete results have been obtained. Their implementation will doubtlessly contribute to the advance of Georgian science and scholarship and development of the national economy. Special attention is given to the study of natural resources of Georgia, searching for ways of environmental problems. Regional and national peculiarities, historic traditions and prospects are taken into account in the study of various problems.
Tbilisi State University is the well-known center for development of humanities. The deliveries of lectures by the University Kartvelologists at foreign centers of learning, participation in international symposia and publication of monographs and papers abroad have assumed systematic character. The scholarly journal Georgica (in German), published jointly by Tbilisi University and Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, has been issued annually since 1978. Georgica is is published in Constance (Germany) through the cooperation of four universities - those of Tbilisi, Jena, SaarbrЭcken and Constance since 1991. The international scholarly journal Phasisi has been published since 1999 by the Institute of Classical Philology, Byzantine and New Greek Studies, which was founded in 1997 through the support of the governments of Georgia and Greece, scientific-educational centers and intelligentsia.
Many international conferences and symposia have been held at Tbilisi University. The following are notable: International symposia of psychologists (1979, 1986), symposia on Georgian art (II-1977, IV- 1983, VI- 1989), international symposia on the teaching of the Russian language and literature (1980, 1984, 1988), problems of German literature (1983, 1989), Classical philology (1969, 1975, 1980,1990, 1995, 1996), religion and ethics (1907, international private law (1985), international symposia on Kartvelian Studies (I-1987, II-1988, III-1995).
Caucasian studies is one of the major trends of scholarly research, having inherited rich traditions. "Caucasica", an international scholarly journal, has been published since 1998.
Three international conferences have been held over the recent period on urgent issues such as, "Caucasus in the context of world history" (1996), "Peaceful Caucasus" (1998), "Caucasus at the turn of the millennia".
International conferences dedicated to major problems of the present day have been held at the University: "Caucasus, problems of democratization" (1995), "The law reform in Georgia" (1995), "The University reform in Georgia" (1995), "Hellenistic Studies over the centuries" (2000). Summer schools are regularly held for foreign scientists in Kartvelian studies (Kartvelologists).
Tbilisi University has close contacts with many foreign scientific and educational centres. These are: the University of Saarland and Jena (Germany), Emory University, Georgia State University, Bevard, Mount Holyoke and Williams College (USA), Saint Mary's University (Canada), Warsaw and Lodz Uiversities (Poland), Malaga and Salamanca Universities (Spain), Nantes, Paris 8, Paris 13, Grenoble and Toulon Universities (France), Bristol Polytechnical Institute, Brunel and London Universities (Great Britain), Budapest EЖtvЖs Lorand University (Hungary), Bilkent, Trabzon Black Sea and Ankara Universities (Turkey), Palermo, Rome and Sapienza, Piza and Venice Universities (Italy), Athens, Pirueus, Ioanina and Saloniki Universities (Greece), International Centre of Nuclear Physics, Aarhis University (denmark), Bucharest University (Romania), University of Vienna (Austria), Tehran and Gilan Universities (Ira), Cairo University (Egypt), Universities and scientific centers of the former Soviet Union, namely the Universities of Moscow, st.Petersburg, Kiev, Baku, etc., Association of European Universities, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and other international organizations; Various universities and scientific centers of former Soviet Union, namely, the universities of Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, Yerevan, Baku, etc.
The University has the tradition of electing the foreign scientists and public figures for the honorary doctors of Tbilisi State University.
Students are widely involved in scientific researches at the University. Students' scientific conferences are held on an annual basis.
The University students actively participate in amateur performances. The chamber orchestra, the choir, the people's theatre, song companies of boys and girls, choreographic and modern dance companies, the theatre of one actor and pantomime, the theatre and studio "Mermisi" function at the University centre of culture and art. "Man-San-Kan", the club of the merry and the ready-witted, enjoys wide popularity among the youth.
The achievements of the University students in sports are notable. The students actively participate in various competitions both in Georgia and abroad, upholding the sporting honor of the country and the University; many champions of the world, Europe and Georgia, well-known sportsmen graduated from and are still studying at the University.
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
President Donald J. Trump applauds the Shalva Band, performers at the Israeli American Council National Summit Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019, in Hollywood, Fla. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Kinderloser Millionär und die arme Frau mit Kindern
Childless Millionaire and the Poor Woman with Children
Öl auf Wachstuch/Oil on wax cloth
Georgisches Nationalmuseum, Schalwa Amiranaschwili
Museum der bildenden Künste, Tiflis
Georgian National Museum, Shalva Amiranashvili
Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
A childless, rich couple takes a newborn from a poor woman. Pirosmani inscribed the two groups of people with "millionaire, childless" and "poor woman with children". He does not present the encounter spatially, but juxtaposes the persons who look like cut-out in parallel to each other. The wealth of the couple is shown by the clothing suit, coat, gold buttons, shoes and jewelry -. The man has a clean trimmed beard, the woman with the conspicuously made-up lips wears an elaborate hairstyle. The bare-footed poor woman is accompanied by her two young children: a widow, alone, without a husband; a baby in her arms, which she still breastfeeds at the moment of delivery. Four colors orchestrate this image: black and white as well as olive green and blue.
Ein kinderloses, reiches Paar nimmt ein Neugeborenes von einer armen Frau entgegen. Pirosmani beschriftet die beiden Personengruppen mit "Millionär, kinderlos" und "Arme Frau mit Kindern". Er stellt die Begegnung nicht räumlich dar, sondern reiht die wie ausgeschnitten wirkenden Personen bildparallel nebeneinander. Der Reichtum des Ehepaars wird durch die Kleidung Anzug, Mantel, Goldknöpfe, Schuhe und Schmuck - gezeigt. Der Mann hat einen sauber gestutzten Bart, die Frau mit den auffällig geschminkten Lippen trägt eine aufwendige Frisur. Die bloßfüßige arme Frau wird von ihren beiden kleinen Kindern begleitet: eine Witwe, allein, ohne Ehemann; im Arm ein Wickelkind, das sie noch im Moment der Übergabe stillt. Vier Farben orchestrieren dieses Bild: Schwarz-Weiß sowie Olivgrün und Blau.
The ALBERTINA devotes a comprehensive solo exhibition to the Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani (1862-1918). The autodidact, whose luminous, vivid works often depict animals or scenes from the life of ancient Georgia and its people, is today a hero of the avant-garde to be discovered. For Niko Pirosmani art is a wide, open field, he himself a vagabond, who consciously chose to move around as a way of life. A wanderer between town and country, restaurants and animal stables, which is at the same time in the center of the community. His commissioned works are not presented in galleries and museums, but in inns, taverns and shops. Niko Pirosmani embodies the artist's vision as a clairvoyant outsider.
The exhibition will be on view from October 26, 2018 to January 27, 2019.
This exhibition is made possible by the Infinitart Foundation.
It is organized by ALBERTINA with the Infinitart Foundation in collaboration with the Georgian National Museum and the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles.
Die ALBERTINA widmet dem georgischen Maler Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918) eine umfassende Personale. Der Autodidakt, dessen leuchtende, eindringliche Werke häufig Tiere oder Szenen aus dem Leben des alten Georgiens und seiner Menschen zeigen, ist heute ein Held der Avantgarde, den es zu entdecken gilt. Kunst ist für Niko Pirosmani ein weites, offenes Feld, er selbst ein Vagabund, der das Herumziehen bewusst als Lebensform gewählt hat. Ein Wanderer zwischen Stadt und Land, Gaststuben und Tierställen, der sich gleichzeitig im Zentrum der Gemeinschaft aufhält. Seine im Auftrag entstandenen Werke werden nicht in Galerien und Museen präsentiert, sondern in Gasthöfen, Tavernen und Läden. Niko Pirosmani verkörpert die Vision des Künstlers als hellsichtigem Außenseiter.
Die Ausstellung ist von 26. Oktober 2018 bis 27. Jänner 2019 zu sehen.
Diese Ausstellung wird durch die Infinitart Foundation ermöglicht.
Sie wird von der ALBERTINA mit der Infinitart Foundation in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Georgischen National Museum und der Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles organisiert.
The Mahabharata or Mahābhārata (US /məhɑːˈbɑrətə/; UK /ˌmɑːhəˈbɑːrətə/; Sanskrit: महाभारतम्, Mahābhāratam, pronounced [məɦaːˈbʱaːrət̪əm]) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Ramayana.
Besides its epic narrative of the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pandava princes, the Mahabharata contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or purusharthas (12.161). Among the principal works and stories in the Mahabharata are the Bhagavad Gita, the story of Damayanti, an abbreviated version of the Ramayana, and the Rishyasringa, often considered as works in their own right.
Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa. There have been many attempts to unravel its historical growth and compositional layers. The oldest preserved parts of the text are thought to be not much older than around 400 BCE, though the origins of the epic probably fall between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE. The text probably reached its final form by the early Gupta period (c. 4th century CE). The title may be translated as "the great tale of the Bhārata dynasty". According to the Mahabharata itself, the tale is extended from a shorter version of 24,000 verses called simply Bhārata.
The Mahabharata is the longest known epic poem and has been described as "the longest poem ever written". Its longest version consists of over 100,000 shloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long prose passages. About 1.8 million words in total, the Mahabharata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Ramayana. W. J. Johnson has compared the importance of the Mahabharata to world civilization to that of the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, the works of Homer, Greek drama, or the Qur'an.
TEXTURAL HISTORY AND STRUCTURE
The epic is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyasa, who is also a major character in the epic. Vyasa described it as being itihāsa (history). He also describes the Guru-shishya parampara, which traces all great teachers and their students of the Vedic times.
The first section of the Mahabharata states that it was Ganesha who wrote down the text to Vyasa's dictation. Ganesha is said to have agreed to write it only if Vyasa never paused in his recitation. Vyasa agrees on condition that Ganesha takes the time to understand what was said before writing it down.
The epic employs the story within a story structure, otherwise known as frametales, popular in many Indian religious and non-religious works. It is recited by the sage Vaisampayana, a disciple of Vyasa, to the King Janamejaya who is the great-grandson of the Pandava prince Arjuna. The story is then recited again by a professional storyteller named Ugrasrava Sauti, many years later, to an assemblage of sages performing the 12-year sacrifice for the king Saunaka Kulapati in the Naimisha Forest.
The text has been described by some early 20th-century western Indologists as unstructured and chaotic. Hermann Oldenberg supposed that the original poem must once have carried an immense "tragic force" but dismissed the full text as a "horrible chaos." Moritz Winternitz (Geschichte der indischen Literatur 1909) considered that "only unpoetical theologists and clumsy scribes" could have lumped the parts of disparate origin into an unordered whole.
ACCRETION AND REDACTION
Research on the Mahabharata has put an enormous effort into recognizing and dating layers within the text. Some elements of the present Mahabharata can be traced back to Vedic times. The background to the Mahabharata suggests the origin of the epic occurs "after the very early Vedic period" and before "the first Indian 'empire' was to rise in the third century B.C." That this is "a date not too far removed from the 8th or 9th century B.C." is likely. It is generally agreed that "Unlike the Vedas, which have to be preserved letter-perfect, the epic was a popular work whose reciters would inevitably conform to changes in language and style," so the earliest 'surviving' components of this dynamic text are believed to be no older than the earliest 'external' references we have to the epic, which may include an allusion in Panini's 4th century BCE grammar Ashtādhyāyī 4:2:56. It is estimated that the Sanskrit text probably reached something of a "final form" by the early Gupta period (about the 4th century CE). Vishnu Sukthankar, editor of the first great critical edition of the Mahabharata, commented: "It is useless to think of reconstructing a fluid text in a literally original shape, on the basis of an archetype and a stemma codicum. What then is possible? Our objective can only be to reconstruct the oldest form of the text which it is possible to reach on the basis of the manuscript material available." That manuscript evidence is somewhat late, given its material composition and the climate of India, but it is very extensive.
The Mahabharata itself (1.1.61) distinguishes a core portion of 24,000 verses: the Bharata proper, as opposed to additional secondary material, while the Ashvalayana Grhyasutra (3.4.4) makes a similar distinction. At least three redactions of the text are commonly recognized: Jaya (Victory) with 8,800 verses attributed to Vyasa, Bharata with 24,000 verses as recited by Vaisampayana, and finally the Mahabharata as recited by Ugrasrava Sauti with over 100,000 verses. However, some scholars such as John Brockington, argue that Jaya and Bharata refer to the same text, and ascribe the theory of Jaya with 8,800 verses to a misreading of a verse in Adiparvan (1.1.81). The redaction of this large body of text was carried out after formal principles, emphasizing the numbers 18 and 12. The addition of the latest parts may be dated by the absence of the Anushasana-parva and the Virata parva from the "Spitzer manuscript". The oldest surviving Sanskrit text dates to the Kushan Period (200 CE).
According to what one character says at Mbh. 1.1.50, there were three versions of the epic, beginning with Manu (1.1.27), Astika (1.3, sub-parva 5) or Vasu (1.57), respectively. These versions would correspond to the addition of one and then another 'frame' settings of dialogues. The Vasu version would omit the frame settings and begin with the account of the birth of Vyasa. The astika version would add the sarpasattra and ashvamedha material from Brahmanical literature, introduce the name Mahabharata, and identify Vyasa as the work's author. The redactors of these additions were probably Pancharatrin scholars who according to Oberlies (1998) likely retained control over the text until its final redaction. Mention of the Huna in the Bhishma-parva however appears to imply that this parva may have been edited around the 4th century.
The Adi-parva includes the snake sacrifice (sarpasattra) of Janamejaya, explaining its motivation, detailing why all snakes in existence were intended to be destroyed, and why in spite of this, there are still snakes in existence. This sarpasattra material was often considered an independent tale added to a version of the Mahabharata by "thematic attraction" (Minkowski 1991), and considered to have a particularly close connection to Vedic (Brahmana) literature. The Panchavimsha Brahmana (at 25.15.3) enumerates the officiant priests of a sarpasattra among whom the names Dhrtarashtra and Janamejaya, two main characters of the Mahabharata's sarpasattra, as well as Takshaka, the name of a snake in the Mahabharata, occur.
HISTORICAL REFERENCES
The earliest known references to the Mahabharata and its core Bharata date to the Ashtadhyayi (sutra 6.2.38) of Pāṇini (fl. 4th century BCE) and in the Ashvalayana Grhyasutra (3.4.4). This may suggest that the core 24,000 verses, known as the Bharata, as well as an early version of the extended Mahabharata, were composed by the 4th century BCE.
A report by the Greek writer Dio Chrysostom (c. 40 - c. 120 CE) about Homer's poetry being sung even in India seems to imply that the Iliad had been translated into Sanskrit. However, scholars have, in general, taken this as evidence for the existence of a Mahabharata at this date, whose episodes Dio or his sources identify with the story of the Iliad.
Several stories within the Mahabharata took on separate identities of their own in Classical Sanskrit literature. For instance, Abhijñānashākuntala by the renowned Sanskrit poet Kālidāsa (c. 400 CE), believed to have lived in the era of the Gupta dynasty, is based on a story that is the precursor to the Mahabharata. Urubhanga, a Sanskrit play written by Bhāsa who is believed to have lived before Kālidāsa, is based on the slaying of Duryodhana by the splitting of his thighs by Bhima.
The copper-plate inscription of the Maharaja Sharvanatha (533–534 CE) from Khoh (Satna District, Madhya Pradesh) describes the Mahabharata as a "collection of 100,000 verses" (shatasahasri samhita).
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The historicity of the Kurukshetra War is unclear. Many historians estimate the date of the Kurukshetra war to Iron Age India of the 10th century BCE. The setting of the epic has a historical precedent in Iron Age (Vedic) India, where the Kuru kingdom was the center of political power during roughly 1200 to 800 BCE. A dynastic conflict of the period could have been the inspiration for the Jaya, the foundation on which the Mahabharata corpus was built, with a climactic battle eventually coming to be viewed as an epochal event.
Puranic literature presents genealogical lists associated with the Mahabharata narrative. The evidence of the Puranas is of two kinds. Of the first kind, there is the direct statement that there were 1015 (or 1050) years between the birth of Parikshit (Arjuna's grandson) and the accession of Mahapadma Nanda (400-329 BCE), which would yield an estimate of about 1400 BCE for the Bharata battle. However, this would imply improbably long reigns on average for the kings listed in the genealogies. Of the second kind are analyses of parallel genealogies in the Puranas between the times of Adhisimakrishna (Parikshit's great-grandson) and Mahapadma Nanda. Pargiter accordingly estimated 26 generations by averaging 10 different dynastic lists and, assuming 18 years for the average duration of a reign, arrived at an estimate of 850 BCE for Adhisimakrishna, and thus approximately 950 BCE for the Bharata battle.
B. B. Lal used the same approach with a more conservative assumption of the average reign to estimate a date of 836 BCE, and correlated this with archaeological evidence from Painted Grey Ware sites, the association being strong between PGW artifacts and places mentioned in the epic.
Attempts to date the events using methods of archaeoastronomy have produced, depending on which passages are chosen and how they are interpreted, estimates ranging from the late 4th to the mid-2nd millennium BCE. The late 4th millennium date has a precedent in the calculation of the Kaliyuga epoch, based on planetary conjunctions, by Aryabhata (6th century). Aryabhatta's date of February 18 3102 BCE for Mahabharata war has become widespread in Indian tradition. Coincidentally, this marks the disppearance of Krishna from earth from many source.[36] The Aihole inscription of Pulikeshi II, dated to Saka 556 = 634 CE, claims that 3735 years have elapsed since the Bharata battle, putting the date of Mahabharata war at 3137 BCE. Another traditional school of astronomers and historians, represented by Vriddha-Garga, Varahamihira (author of the Brhatsamhita) and Kalhana (author of the Rajatarangini), place the Bharata war 653 years after the Kaliyuga epoch, corresponding to 2449 BCE.
SYNOPSIS
The core story of the work is that of a dynastic struggle for the throne of Hastinapura, the kingdom ruled by the Kuru clan. The two collateral branches of the family that participate in the struggle are the Kaurava and the Pandava. Although the Kaurava is the senior branch of the family, Duryodhana, the eldest Kaurava, is younger than Yudhisthira, the eldest Pandava. Both Duryodhana and Yudhisthira claim to be first in line to inherit the throne.
The struggle culminates in the great battle of Kurukshetra, in which the Pandavas are ultimately victorious. The battle produces complex conflicts of kinship and friendship, instances of family loyalty and duty taking precedence over what is right, as well as the converse.
The Mahabharata itself ends with the death of Krishna, and the subsequent end of his dynasty and ascent of the Pandava brothers to heaven. It also marks the beginning of the Hindu age of Kali Yuga, the fourth and final age of mankind, in which great values and noble ideas have crumbled, and man is heading towards the complete dissolution of right action, morality and virtue.
THE OLDER GENERATIONS
King Janamejaya's ancestor Shantanu, the king of Hastinapura, has a short-lived marriage with the goddess Ganga and has a son, Devavrata (later to be called Bhishma, a great warrior), who becomes the heir apparent. Many years later, when King Shantanu goes hunting, he sees Satyavati, the daughter of the chief of fisherman, and asks her father for her hand. Her father refuses to consent to the marriage unless Shantanu promises to make any future son of Satyavati the king upon his death. To resolve his father's dilemma, Devavrata agrees to relinquish his right to the throne. As the fisherman is not sure about the prince's children honouring the promise, Devavrata also takes a vow of lifelong celibacy to guarantee his father's promise.
Shantanu has two sons by Satyavati, Chitrāngada and Vichitravirya. Upon Shantanu's death, Chitrangada becomes king. He lives a very short uneventful life and dies. Vichitravirya, the younger son, rules Hastinapura. Meanwhile, the King of Kāśī arranges a swayamvara for his three daughters, neglecting to invite the royal family of Hastinapur. In order to arrange the marriage of young Vichitravirya, Bhishma attends the swayamvara of the three princesses Amba, Ambika and Ambalika, uninvited, and proceeds to abduct them. Ambika and Ambalika consent to be married to Vichitravirya.
The oldest princess Amba, however, informs Bhishma that she wishes to marry king of Shalva whom Bhishma defeated at their swayamvara. Bhishma lets her leave to marry king of Shalva, but Shalva refuses to marry her, still smarting at his humiliation at the hands of Bhishma. Amba then returns to marry Bhishma but he refuses due to his vow of celibacy. Amba becomes enraged and becomes Bhishma's bitter enemy, holding him responsible for her plight. Later she is reborn to King Drupada as Shikhandi (or Shikhandini) and causes Bhishma's fall, with the help of Arjuna, in the battle of Kurukshetra.
THE PANDAVA AND KAURAVA PRINCES
When Vichitravirya dies young without any heirs, Satyavati asks her first son Vyasa to father children with the widows. The eldest, Ambika, shuts her eyes when she sees him, and so her son Dhritarashtra is born blind. Ambalika turns pale and bloodless upon seeing him, and thus her son Pandu is born pale and unhealthy (the term Pandu may also mean 'jaundiced'). Due to the physical challenges of the first two children, Satyavati asks Vyasa to try once again. However, Ambika and Ambalika send their maid instead, to Vyasa's room. Vyasa fathers a third son, Vidura, by the maid. He is born healthy and grows up to be one of the wisest characters in the Mahabharata. He serves as Prime Minister (Mahamantri or Mahatma) to King Pandu and King Dhritarashtra.
When the princes grow up, Dhritarashtra is about to be crowned king by Bhishma when Vidura intervenes and uses his knowledge of politics to assert that a blind person cannot be king. This is because a blind man cannot control and protect his subjects. The throne is then given to Pandu because of Dhritarashtra's blindness. Pandu marries twice, to Kunti and Madri. Dhritarashtra marries Gandhari, a princess from Gandhara, who blindfolds herself so that she may feel the pain that her husband feels. Her brother Shakuni is enraged by this and vows to take revenge on the Kuru family. One day, when Pandu is relaxing in the forest, he hears the sound of a wild animal. He shoots an arrow in the direction of the sound. However the arrow hits the sage Kindama, who curses him that if he engages in a sexual act, he will die. Pandu then retires to the forest along with his two wives, and his brother Dhritarashtra rules thereafter, despite his blindness.
Pandu's older queen Kunti, however, had been given a boon by Sage Durvasa that she could invoke any god using a special mantra. Kunti uses this boon to ask Dharma the god of justice, Vayu the god of the wind, and Indra the lord of the heavens for sons. She gives birth to three sons, Yudhisthira, Bhima, and Arjuna, through these gods. Kunti shares her mantra with the younger queen Madri, who bears the twins Nakula and Sahadeva through the Ashwini twins. However, Pandu and Madri indulge in sex, and Pandu dies. Madri dies on his funeral pyre out of remorse. Kunti raises the five brothers, who are from then on usually referred to as the Pandava brothers.
Dhritarashtra has a hundred sons through Gandhari, all born after the birth of Yudhishtira. These are the Kaurava brothers, the eldest being Duryodhana, and the second Dushasana. Other Kaurava brothers were Vikarna and Sukarna. The rivalry and enmity between them and the Pandava brothers, from their youth and into manhood, leads to the Kurukshetra war.
LAKSHAGRAHA (THE HOUSE OF LAC)
After the deaths of their mother (Madri) and father (Pandu), the Pandavas and their mother Kunti return to the palace of Hastinapur. Yudhisthira is made Crown Prince by Dhritarashtra, under considerable pressure from his kingdom. Dhritarashtra wanted his own son Duryodhana to become king and lets his ambition get in the way of preserving justice.
Shakuni, Duryodhana and Dusasana plot to get rid of the Pandavas. Shakuni calls the architect Purochana to build a palace out of flammable materials like lac and ghee. He then arranges for the Pandavas and the Queen Mother Kunti to stay there, with the intention of setting it alight. However, the Pandavas are warned by their wise uncle, Vidura, who sends them a miner to dig a tunnel. They are able to escape to safety and go into hiding. Back at Hastinapur, the Pandavas and Kunti are presumed dead.
MARRIAGE TO DRAUPADI
Whilst they were in hiding the Pandavas learn of a swayamvara which is taking place for the hand of the Pāñcāla princess Draupadī. The Pandavas enter the competition in disguise as Brahmins. The task is to string a mighty steel bow and shoot a target on the ceiling, which is the eye of a moving artificial fish, while looking at its reflection in oil below. Most of the princes fail, many being unable to lift the bow. Arjuna succeeds however. The Pandavas return home and inform their mother that Arjuna has won a competition and to look at what they have brought back. Without looking, Kunti asks them to share whatever it is Arjuna has won among themselves. On explaining the previous life of Draupadi, she ends up being the wife of all five brothers.
INDRAPRASTHA
After the wedding, the Pandava brothers are invited back to Hastinapura. The Kuru family elders and relatives negotiate and broker a split of the kingdom, with the Pandavas obtaining a new territory. Yudhishtira has a new capital built for this territory at Indraprastha. Neither the Pandava nor Kaurava sides are happy with the arrangement however.
Shortly after this, Arjuna elopes with and then marries Krishna's sister, Subhadra. Yudhishtira wishes to establish his position as king; he seeks Krishna's advice. Krishna advises him, and after due preparation and the elimination of some opposition, Yudhishthira carries out the rājasūya yagna ceremony; he is thus recognised as pre-eminent among kings.
The Pandavas have a new palace built for them, by Maya the Danava. They invite their Kaurava cousins to Indraprastha. Duryodhana walks round the palace, and mistakes a glossy floor for water, and will not step in. After being told of his error, he then sees a pond, and assumes it is not water and falls in. Draupadi laughs at him and ridicules him by saying that this is because of his blind father Dhritrashtra. He then decides to avenge his humiliation.
THE DICE GAME
Shakuni, Duryodhana's uncle, now arranges a dice game, playing against Yudhishtira with loaded dice. Yudhishtira loses all his wealth, then his kingdom. He then even gambles his brothers, himself, and finally his wife into servitude. The jubilant Kauravas insult the Pandavas in their helpless state and even try to disrobe Draupadi in front of the entire court, but her honour is saved by Krishna who miraculously creates lengths of cloth to replace the ones being removed.
Dhritarashtra, Bhishma, and the other elders are aghast at the situation, but Duryodhana is adamant that there is no place for two crown princes in Hastinapura. Against his wishes Dhritarashtra orders for another dice game. The Pandavas are required to go into exile for 12 years, and in the 13th year must remain hidden. If discovered by the Kauravas, they will be forced into exile for another 12 years.
EXILE AND RETURN
The Pandavas spend thirteen years in exile; many adventures occur during this time. They also prepare alliances for a possible future conflict. They spend their final year in disguise in the court of Virata, and are discovered just after the end of the year.
At the end of their exile, they try to negotiate a return to Indraprastha. However, this fails, as Duryodhana objects that they were discovered while in hiding, and that no return of their kingdom was agreed. War becomes inevitable.
THE BATTLE AT KURUKSHETRA
The two sides summon vast armies to their help and line up at Kurukshetra for a war. The kingdoms of Panchala, Dwaraka, Kasi, Kekaya, Magadha, Matsya, Chedi, Pandyas, Telinga, and the Yadus of Mathura and some other clans like the Parama Kambojas were allied with the Pandavas. The allies of the Kauravas included the kings of Pragjyotisha, Anga, Kekaya, Sindhudesa (including Sindhus, Sauviras and Sivis), Mahishmati, Avanti in Madhyadesa, Madra, Gandhara, Bahlika people, Kambojas and many others. Before war being declared, Balarama had expressed his unhappiness at the developing conflict and left to go on pilgrimage; thus he does not take part in the battle itself. Krishna takes part in a non-combatant role, as charioteer for Arjuna.
Before the battle, Arjuna, seeing the opposing army includes many relatives and loved ones, including his great grandfather Bhishma and his teacher Drona, has doubts about the battle and he fails to lift his Gāndeeva bow. Krishna wakes him up to his call of duty in the famous Bhagavad Gita section of the epic.
Though initially sticking to chivalrous notions of warfare, both sides soon adopt dishonourable tactics. At the end of the 18-day battle, only the Pandavas, Satyaki, Kripa, Ashwatthama, Kritavarma, Yuyutsu and Krishna survive.
THE END OF THE PANDAVAS
After "seeing" the carnage, Gandhari, who had lost all her sons, curses Krishna to be a witness to a similar annihilation of his family, for though divine and capable of stopping the war, he had not done so. Krishna accepts the curse, which bears fruit 36 years later.
The Pandavas, who had ruled their kingdom meanwhile, decide to renounce everything. Clad in skins and rags they retire to the Himalaya and climb towards heaven in their bodily form. A stray dog travels with them. One by one the brothers and Draupadi fall on their way. As each one stumbles, Yudhisthira gives the rest the reason for their fall (Draupadi was partial to Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva were vain and proud of their looks, and Bhima and Arjuna were proud of their strength and archery skills, respectively). Only the virtuous Yudhisthira, who had tried everything to prevent the carnage, and the dog remain. The dog reveals himself to be the god Yama (also known as Yama Dharmaraja), and then takes him to the underworld where he sees his siblings and wife. After explaining the nature of the test, Yama takes Yudhishthira back to heaven and explains that it was necessary to expose him to the underworld because (Rajyante narakam dhruvam) any ruler has to visit the underworld at least once. Yama then assures him that his siblings and wife would join him in heaven after they had been exposed to the underworld for measures of time according to their vices.
Arjuna's grandson Parikshit rules after them and dies bitten by a snake. His furious son, Janamejaya, decides to perform a snake sacrifice (sarpasattra) in order to destroy the snakes. It is at this sacrifice that the tale of his ancestors is narrated to him.
THE REUNION
The Mahabharata mentions that Karna, the Pandavas, and Dhritarashtra's sons eventually ascended to svarga and "attained the state of the gods" and banded together — "serene and free from anger."
THEMES
JUST WAR
The Mahabharata offers one of the first instances of theorizing about "just war", illustrating many of the standards that would be debated later across the world. In the story, one of five brothers asks if the suffering caused by war can ever be justified. A long discussion ensues between the siblings, establishing criteria like proportionality (chariots cannot attack cavalry, only other chariots; no attacking people in distress), just means (no poisoned or barbed arrows), just cause (no attacking out of rage), and fair treatment of captives and the wounded.
Versions, translations, and derivative works.
CRITICAL EDITION
Between 1919 and 1966, scholars at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, compared the various manuscripts of the epic from India and abroad and produced the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata, on 13,000 pages in 19 volumes, followed by the Harivamsha in another two volumes and six index volumes. This is the text that is usually used in current Mahabharata studies for reference. This work is sometimes called the "Pune" or "Poona" edition of the Mahabharata.
REGIONAL VERSIONS
Many regional versions of the work developed over time, mostly differing only in minor details, or with verses or subsidiary stories being added. These include the Tamil street theatre, terukkuttu and kattaikkuttu, the plays of which use themes from the Tamil language versions of Mahabharata, focusing on Draupadi.
Outside the Indian subcontinent, in Indonesia, a version was developed in ancient Java as Kakawin Bhāratayuddha in the 11th century under the patronage of King Dharmawangsa (990–1016), and later it spread to neighboring island of Bali where today remains a Hindu majority island, despite today Indonesia is the most populous Muslim majority nation. It has become the fertile source for Javanese literature, dance drama (wayang wong), and wayang shadow puppet performances. This Javanese version differ slightly from the original Indian version. For example Draupadi is only be wed to Yudhisthira, not to the entire Pandavas brothers, this might demonstrate ancient Javanese opposition of polyandry practice. The author later added some female characters to be wed to the Pandavas. Arjuna for example is described as having many wives and consorts next to Subhadra. Another difference is Shikhandi did not undergone sex change and remains as a woman, to be wed to Arjuna, and took the role as a warrior princess during the war. Another twist is Gandhari was described as antagonist character that hates Pandava so much. Her hate was out of jealousy, because during svayambara for the hand of Gandhari, she was actually in love with Pandu, but later being wed to his blind elder brother instead, whom she does not love, as a protest she then blindfold herself. Another notable difference is the inclusion of Punakawans, the clown servants of the main characters in the storyline, which is not found in Indian version. This characters includes Semar, Petruk, Gareng and Bagong, they are much-loved by Indonesian audiences. There are some spin-off episode developed in ancient Java, such as Arjunawiwaha composed in 11th century.
A Kawi version of the Mahabharata, of which eight of the eighteen parvas survive, is found on the Indonesian island of Bali. It has been translated into English by Dr. I. Gusti Putu Phalgunadi.
TRANSLATIONS
A Persian translation of Mahabharta, titled Razmnameh, was produced at Akbar's orders, by Faizi and `Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni in the 18th century.
The first complete English translation was the Victorian prose version by Kisari Mohan Ganguli, published between 1883 and 1896 (Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers) and by M. N. Dutt (Motilal Banarsidass Publishers). Most critics consider the translation by Ganguli to be faithful to the original text. The complete text of Ganguli's translation is in the public domain and is available online.
Another English prose translation of the full epic, based on the Critical Edition, is in progress, published by University Of Chicago Press. It was initiated by Indologist J. A. B. van Buitenen (books 1–5) and, following a 20-year hiatus caused by the death of van Buitenen, is being continued by D. Gitomer of DePaul University (book 6), J. L. Fitzgerald of Brown University (books 11–13) and Wendy Doniger of the University of Chicago (books 14–18).
An early poetry translation by Romesh Chunder Dutt and published in 1898 condenses the main themes of the Mahabharata into English verse. A later poetic "transcreation" (author's own description) of the full epic into English, done by the poet P. Lal is complete, and in 2005 began being published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta. The P. Lal translation is a non-rhyming verse-by-verse rendering, and is the only edition in any language to include all slokas in all recensions of the work (not just those in the Critical Edition). The completion of the publishing project is scheduled for 2010. Sixteen of the eighteen volumes are now available.
A project to translate the full epic into English prose, translated by various hands, began to appear in 2005 from the Clay Sanskrit Library, published by New York University Press. The translation is based not on the Critical Edition but on the version known to the commentator Nīlakaṇṭha. Currently available are 15 volumes of the projected 32-volume edition.
Indian economist Bibek Debroy has also begun an unabridged English translation in ten volumes. Volume 1: Adi Parva was published in March 2010.
Many condensed versions, abridgements and novelistic prose retellings of the complete epic have been published in English, including works by Ramesh Menon, William Buck, R. K. Narayan, C. Rajagopalachari, K. M. Munshi, Krishna Dharma, Romesh C. Dutt, Bharadvaja Sarma, John D. Smith and Sharon Maas.
DERIVATIVE LITERATURE
Bhasa, the 2nd- or 3rd-century CE Sanskrit playwright, wrote two plays on episodes in the Marabharata, Urubhanga (Broken Thigh), about the fight between Duryodhana and Bhima, while Madhyamavyayoga (The Middle One) set around Bhima and his son, Ghatotkacha. The first important play of 20th century was Andha Yug (The Blind Epoch), by Dharamvir Bharati, which came in 1955, found in Mahabharat, both an ideal source and expression of modern predicaments and discontent. Starting with Ebrahim Alkazi it was staged by numerous directors. V. S. Khandekar's Marathi novel, Yayati (1960) and Girish Karnad's debut play Yayati (1961) are based on the story of King Yayati found in the Mahabharat. Bengali writer and playwright, Buddhadeva Bose wrote three plays set in Mahabharat, Anamni Angana, Pratham Partha and Kalsandhya. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni wrote a version from the perspective of Draupadi entitled The Palace of Illusions: A Novel, which was published in 2008.
Amar Chitra Katha published a 1,260 page comic book version of the Mahabharata.
IN FILM AND TELEVISION
In Indian cinema, several film versions of the epic have been made, dating back to 1920. In Telugu film Daana Veera Soora Karna (1977) directed by and starring N. T. Rama Rao depicts Karna as the lead character. The Mahabharata was also reinterpreted by Shyam Benegal in Kalyug. Prakash Jha directed 2010 film Raajneeti was partially inspired by the Mahabharata. A 2013 animated adaptation holds the record for India's most expensive animated film.
In the late 1980s, the Mahabharat TV series, directed by Ravi Chopra, was televised on India's national television (Doordarshan). In the Western world, a well-known presentation of the epic is Peter Brook's nine-hour play, which premiered in Avignon in 1985, and its five-hour movie version The Mahabharata (1989).
Uncompleted projects on the Mahabharata include a ones by Rajkumar Santoshi, and a theaterical adaptation planned by Satyajit Ray.
JAIN VERSION
Jain version of Mahabharata can be found in the various Jain texts like Harivamsapurana (the story of Harivamsa) Trisastisalakapurusa Caritra (Hagiography of 63 Illustrious persons), Pandavacaritra (lives of Pandavas) and Pandavapurana (stories of Pandavas). From the earlier canonical literature, Antakrddaaśāh (8th cannon) and Vrisnidasa (upangagama or secondary canon) contain the stories of Neminatha (22nd Tirthankara), Krishna and Balarama. Prof. Padmanabh Jaini notes that, unlike in the Hindu Puranas, the names Baladeva and Vasudeva are not restricted to Balarama and Krishna in Jain puranas. Instead they serve as names of two distinct class of mighty brothers, who appear nine times in each half of time cycles of the Jain cosmology and rule the half the earth as half-chakravartins. Jaini traces the origin of this list of brothers to the Jinacharitra by Bhadrabahu swami (4th–3rd century BCE). According to Jain cosmology Balarama, Krishna and Jarasandha are the ninth and the last set of Baladeva, Vasudeva, and Partivasudeva. The main battle is not the Mahabharata, but the fight between Krishna and Jarasandha (who is killed by Krishna). Ultimately, the Pandavas and Balarama take renunciation as Jain monks and are reborn in heavens, while on the other hand Krishna and Jarasandha are reborn in hell. In keeping with the law of karma, Krishna is reborn in hell for his exploits (sexual and violent) while Jarasandha for his evil ways. Prof. Jaini admits a possibility that perhaps because of his popularity, the Jain authors were keen to rehabilitate Krishna. The Jain texts predict that after his karmic term in hell is over sometime during the next half time-cycle, Krishna will be reborn as a Jain Tirthankara and attain liberation. Krishna and Balrama are shown as contemporaries and cousins of 22nd Tirthankara, Neminatha. According to this story, Krishna arranged young Neminath’s marriage with Rajamati, the daughter of Ugrasena, but Neminatha, empathizing with the animals which were to be slaughtered for the marriage feast, left the procession suddenly and renounced the world.
CULTURAL INFLUENCE
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna explains to Arjuna his duties as a warrior and prince and elaborates on different Yogic and Vedantic philosophies, with examples and analogies. This has led to the Gita often being described as a concise guide to Hindu philosophy and a practical, self-contained guide to life. In more modern times, Swami Vivekananda, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and many others used the text to help inspire the Indian independence movement.
WIKIPEDIA
The Mahabharata or Mahābhārata (US /məhɑːˈbɑrətə/; UK /ˌmɑːhəˈbɑːrətə/; Sanskrit: महाभारतम्, Mahābhāratam, pronounced [məɦaːˈbʱaːrət̪əm]) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Ramayana.
Besides its epic narrative of the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pandava princes, the Mahabharata contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or purusharthas (12.161). Among the principal works and stories in the Mahabharata are the Bhagavad Gita, the story of Damayanti, an abbreviated version of the Ramayana, and the Rishyasringa, often considered as works in their own right.
Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa. There have been many attempts to unravel its historical growth and compositional layers. The oldest preserved parts of the text are thought to be not much older than around 400 BCE, though the origins of the epic probably fall between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE. The text probably reached its final form by the early Gupta period (c. 4th century CE). The title may be translated as "the great tale of the Bhārata dynasty". According to the Mahabharata itself, the tale is extended from a shorter version of 24,000 verses called simply Bhārata.
The Mahabharata is the longest known epic poem and has been described as "the longest poem ever written". Its longest version consists of over 100,000 shloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long prose passages. About 1.8 million words in total, the Mahabharata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Ramayana. W. J. Johnson has compared the importance of the Mahabharata to world civilization to that of the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, the works of Homer, Greek drama, or the Qur'an.
TEXTURAL HISTORY AND STRUCTURE
The epic is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyasa, who is also a major character in the epic. Vyasa described it as being itihāsa (history). He also describes the Guru-shishya parampara, which traces all great teachers and their students of the Vedic times.
The first section of the Mahabharata states that it was Ganesha who wrote down the text to Vyasa's dictation. Ganesha is said to have agreed to write it only if Vyasa never paused in his recitation. Vyasa agrees on condition that Ganesha takes the time to understand what was said before writing it down.
The epic employs the story within a story structure, otherwise known as frametales, popular in many Indian religious and non-religious works. It is recited by the sage Vaisampayana, a disciple of Vyasa, to the King Janamejaya who is the great-grandson of the Pandava prince Arjuna. The story is then recited again by a professional storyteller named Ugrasrava Sauti, many years later, to an assemblage of sages performing the 12-year sacrifice for the king Saunaka Kulapati in the Naimisha Forest.
The text has been described by some early 20th-century western Indologists as unstructured and chaotic. Hermann Oldenberg supposed that the original poem must once have carried an immense "tragic force" but dismissed the full text as a "horrible chaos." Moritz Winternitz (Geschichte der indischen Literatur 1909) considered that "only unpoetical theologists and clumsy scribes" could have lumped the parts of disparate origin into an unordered whole.
ACCRETION AND REDACTION
Research on the Mahabharata has put an enormous effort into recognizing and dating layers within the text. Some elements of the present Mahabharata can be traced back to Vedic times. The background to the Mahabharata suggests the origin of the epic occurs "after the very early Vedic period" and before "the first Indian 'empire' was to rise in the third century B.C." That this is "a date not too far removed from the 8th or 9th century B.C." is likely. It is generally agreed that "Unlike the Vedas, which have to be preserved letter-perfect, the epic was a popular work whose reciters would inevitably conform to changes in language and style," so the earliest 'surviving' components of this dynamic text are believed to be no older than the earliest 'external' references we have to the epic, which may include an allusion in Panini's 4th century BCE grammar Ashtādhyāyī 4:2:56. It is estimated that the Sanskrit text probably reached something of a "final form" by the early Gupta period (about the 4th century CE). Vishnu Sukthankar, editor of the first great critical edition of the Mahabharata, commented: "It is useless to think of reconstructing a fluid text in a literally original shape, on the basis of an archetype and a stemma codicum. What then is possible? Our objective can only be to reconstruct the oldest form of the text which it is possible to reach on the basis of the manuscript material available." That manuscript evidence is somewhat late, given its material composition and the climate of India, but it is very extensive.
The Mahabharata itself (1.1.61) distinguishes a core portion of 24,000 verses: the Bharata proper, as opposed to additional secondary material, while the Ashvalayana Grhyasutra (3.4.4) makes a similar distinction. At least three redactions of the text are commonly recognized: Jaya (Victory) with 8,800 verses attributed to Vyasa, Bharata with 24,000 verses as recited by Vaisampayana, and finally the Mahabharata as recited by Ugrasrava Sauti with over 100,000 verses. However, some scholars such as John Brockington, argue that Jaya and Bharata refer to the same text, and ascribe the theory of Jaya with 8,800 verses to a misreading of a verse in Adiparvan (1.1.81). The redaction of this large body of text was carried out after formal principles, emphasizing the numbers 18 and 12. The addition of the latest parts may be dated by the absence of the Anushasana-parva and the Virata parva from the "Spitzer manuscript". The oldest surviving Sanskrit text dates to the Kushan Period (200 CE).
According to what one character says at Mbh. 1.1.50, there were three versions of the epic, beginning with Manu (1.1.27), Astika (1.3, sub-parva 5) or Vasu (1.57), respectively. These versions would correspond to the addition of one and then another 'frame' settings of dialogues. The Vasu version would omit the frame settings and begin with the account of the birth of Vyasa. The astika version would add the sarpasattra and ashvamedha material from Brahmanical literature, introduce the name Mahabharata, and identify Vyasa as the work's author. The redactors of these additions were probably Pancharatrin scholars who according to Oberlies (1998) likely retained control over the text until its final redaction. Mention of the Huna in the Bhishma-parva however appears to imply that this parva may have been edited around the 4th century.
The Adi-parva includes the snake sacrifice (sarpasattra) of Janamejaya, explaining its motivation, detailing why all snakes in existence were intended to be destroyed, and why in spite of this, there are still snakes in existence. This sarpasattra material was often considered an independent tale added to a version of the Mahabharata by "thematic attraction" (Minkowski 1991), and considered to have a particularly close connection to Vedic (Brahmana) literature. The Panchavimsha Brahmana (at 25.15.3) enumerates the officiant priests of a sarpasattra among whom the names Dhrtarashtra and Janamejaya, two main characters of the Mahabharata's sarpasattra, as well as Takshaka, the name of a snake in the Mahabharata, occur.
HISTORICAL REFERENCES
The earliest known references to the Mahabharata and its core Bharata date to the Ashtadhyayi (sutra 6.2.38) of Pāṇini (fl. 4th century BCE) and in the Ashvalayana Grhyasutra (3.4.4). This may suggest that the core 24,000 verses, known as the Bharata, as well as an early version of the extended Mahabharata, were composed by the 4th century BCE.
A report by the Greek writer Dio Chrysostom (c. 40 - c. 120 CE) about Homer's poetry being sung even in India seems to imply that the Iliad had been translated into Sanskrit. However, scholars have, in general, taken this as evidence for the existence of a Mahabharata at this date, whose episodes Dio or his sources identify with the story of the Iliad.
Several stories within the Mahabharata took on separate identities of their own in Classical Sanskrit literature. For instance, Abhijñānashākuntala by the renowned Sanskrit poet Kālidāsa (c. 400 CE), believed to have lived in the era of the Gupta dynasty, is based on a story that is the precursor to the Mahabharata. Urubhanga, a Sanskrit play written by Bhāsa who is believed to have lived before Kālidāsa, is based on the slaying of Duryodhana by the splitting of his thighs by Bhima.
The copper-plate inscription of the Maharaja Sharvanatha (533–534 CE) from Khoh (Satna District, Madhya Pradesh) describes the Mahabharata as a "collection of 100,000 verses" (shatasahasri samhita).
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The historicity of the Kurukshetra War is unclear. Many historians estimate the date of the Kurukshetra war to Iron Age India of the 10th century BCE. The setting of the epic has a historical precedent in Iron Age (Vedic) India, where the Kuru kingdom was the center of political power during roughly 1200 to 800 BCE. A dynastic conflict of the period could have been the inspiration for the Jaya, the foundation on which the Mahabharata corpus was built, with a climactic battle eventually coming to be viewed as an epochal event.
Puranic literature presents genealogical lists associated with the Mahabharata narrative. The evidence of the Puranas is of two kinds. Of the first kind, there is the direct statement that there were 1015 (or 1050) years between the birth of Parikshit (Arjuna's grandson) and the accession of Mahapadma Nanda (400-329 BCE), which would yield an estimate of about 1400 BCE for the Bharata battle. However, this would imply improbably long reigns on average for the kings listed in the genealogies. Of the second kind are analyses of parallel genealogies in the Puranas between the times of Adhisimakrishna (Parikshit's great-grandson) and Mahapadma Nanda. Pargiter accordingly estimated 26 generations by averaging 10 different dynastic lists and, assuming 18 years for the average duration of a reign, arrived at an estimate of 850 BCE for Adhisimakrishna, and thus approximately 950 BCE for the Bharata battle.
B. B. Lal used the same approach with a more conservative assumption of the average reign to estimate a date of 836 BCE, and correlated this with archaeological evidence from Painted Grey Ware sites, the association being strong between PGW artifacts and places mentioned in the epic.
Attempts to date the events using methods of archaeoastronomy have produced, depending on which passages are chosen and how they are interpreted, estimates ranging from the late 4th to the mid-2nd millennium BCE. The late 4th millennium date has a precedent in the calculation of the Kaliyuga epoch, based on planetary conjunctions, by Aryabhata (6th century). Aryabhatta's date of February 18 3102 BCE for Mahabharata war has become widespread in Indian tradition. Coincidentally, this marks the disppearance of Krishna from earth from many source.[36] The Aihole inscription of Pulikeshi II, dated to Saka 556 = 634 CE, claims that 3735 years have elapsed since the Bharata battle, putting the date of Mahabharata war at 3137 BCE. Another traditional school of astronomers and historians, represented by Vriddha-Garga, Varahamihira (author of the Brhatsamhita) and Kalhana (author of the Rajatarangini), place the Bharata war 653 years after the Kaliyuga epoch, corresponding to 2449 BCE.
SYNOPSIS
The core story of the work is that of a dynastic struggle for the throne of Hastinapura, the kingdom ruled by the Kuru clan. The two collateral branches of the family that participate in the struggle are the Kaurava and the Pandava. Although the Kaurava is the senior branch of the family, Duryodhana, the eldest Kaurava, is younger than Yudhisthira, the eldest Pandava. Both Duryodhana and Yudhisthira claim to be first in line to inherit the throne.
The struggle culminates in the great battle of Kurukshetra, in which the Pandavas are ultimately victorious. The battle produces complex conflicts of kinship and friendship, instances of family loyalty and duty taking precedence over what is right, as well as the converse.
The Mahabharata itself ends with the death of Krishna, and the subsequent end of his dynasty and ascent of the Pandava brothers to heaven. It also marks the beginning of the Hindu age of Kali Yuga, the fourth and final age of mankind, in which great values and noble ideas have crumbled, and man is heading towards the complete dissolution of right action, morality and virtue.
THE OLDER GENERATIONS
King Janamejaya's ancestor Shantanu, the king of Hastinapura, has a short-lived marriage with the goddess Ganga and has a son, Devavrata (later to be called Bhishma, a great warrior), who becomes the heir apparent. Many years later, when King Shantanu goes hunting, he sees Satyavati, the daughter of the chief of fisherman, and asks her father for her hand. Her father refuses to consent to the marriage unless Shantanu promises to make any future son of Satyavati the king upon his death. To resolve his father's dilemma, Devavrata agrees to relinquish his right to the throne. As the fisherman is not sure about the prince's children honouring the promise, Devavrata also takes a vow of lifelong celibacy to guarantee his father's promise.
Shantanu has two sons by Satyavati, Chitrāngada and Vichitravirya. Upon Shantanu's death, Chitrangada becomes king. He lives a very short uneventful life and dies. Vichitravirya, the younger son, rules Hastinapura. Meanwhile, the King of Kāśī arranges a swayamvara for his three daughters, neglecting to invite the royal family of Hastinapur. In order to arrange the marriage of young Vichitravirya, Bhishma attends the swayamvara of the three princesses Amba, Ambika and Ambalika, uninvited, and proceeds to abduct them. Ambika and Ambalika consent to be married to Vichitravirya.
The oldest princess Amba, however, informs Bhishma that she wishes to marry king of Shalva whom Bhishma defeated at their swayamvara. Bhishma lets her leave to marry king of Shalva, but Shalva refuses to marry her, still smarting at his humiliation at the hands of Bhishma. Amba then returns to marry Bhishma but he refuses due to his vow of celibacy. Amba becomes enraged and becomes Bhishma's bitter enemy, holding him responsible for her plight. Later she is reborn to King Drupada as Shikhandi (or Shikhandini) and causes Bhishma's fall, with the help of Arjuna, in the battle of Kurukshetra.
THE PANDAVA AND KAURAVA PRINCES
When Vichitravirya dies young without any heirs, Satyavati asks her first son Vyasa to father children with the widows. The eldest, Ambika, shuts her eyes when she sees him, and so her son Dhritarashtra is born blind. Ambalika turns pale and bloodless upon seeing him, and thus her son Pandu is born pale and unhealthy (the term Pandu may also mean 'jaundiced'). Due to the physical challenges of the first two children, Satyavati asks Vyasa to try once again. However, Ambika and Ambalika send their maid instead, to Vyasa's room. Vyasa fathers a third son, Vidura, by the maid. He is born healthy and grows up to be one of the wisest characters in the Mahabharata. He serves as Prime Minister (Mahamantri or Mahatma) to King Pandu and King Dhritarashtra.
When the princes grow up, Dhritarashtra is about to be crowned king by Bhishma when Vidura intervenes and uses his knowledge of politics to assert that a blind person cannot be king. This is because a blind man cannot control and protect his subjects. The throne is then given to Pandu because of Dhritarashtra's blindness. Pandu marries twice, to Kunti and Madri. Dhritarashtra marries Gandhari, a princess from Gandhara, who blindfolds herself so that she may feel the pain that her husband feels. Her brother Shakuni is enraged by this and vows to take revenge on the Kuru family. One day, when Pandu is relaxing in the forest, he hears the sound of a wild animal. He shoots an arrow in the direction of the sound. However the arrow hits the sage Kindama, who curses him that if he engages in a sexual act, he will die. Pandu then retires to the forest along with his two wives, and his brother Dhritarashtra rules thereafter, despite his blindness.
Pandu's older queen Kunti, however, had been given a boon by Sage Durvasa that she could invoke any god using a special mantra. Kunti uses this boon to ask Dharma the god of justice, Vayu the god of the wind, and Indra the lord of the heavens for sons. She gives birth to three sons, Yudhisthira, Bhima, and Arjuna, through these gods. Kunti shares her mantra with the younger queen Madri, who bears the twins Nakula and Sahadeva through the Ashwini twins. However, Pandu and Madri indulge in sex, and Pandu dies. Madri dies on his funeral pyre out of remorse. Kunti raises the five brothers, who are from then on usually referred to as the Pandava brothers.
Dhritarashtra has a hundred sons through Gandhari, all born after the birth of Yudhishtira. These are the Kaurava brothers, the eldest being Duryodhana, and the second Dushasana. Other Kaurava brothers were Vikarna and Sukarna. The rivalry and enmity between them and the Pandava brothers, from their youth and into manhood, leads to the Kurukshetra war.
LAKSHAGRAHA (THE HOUSE OF LAC)
After the deaths of their mother (Madri) and father (Pandu), the Pandavas and their mother Kunti return to the palace of Hastinapur. Yudhisthira is made Crown Prince by Dhritarashtra, under considerable pressure from his kingdom. Dhritarashtra wanted his own son Duryodhana to become king and lets his ambition get in the way of preserving justice.
Shakuni, Duryodhana and Dusasana plot to get rid of the Pandavas. Shakuni calls the architect Purochana to build a palace out of flammable materials like lac and ghee. He then arranges for the Pandavas and the Queen Mother Kunti to stay there, with the intention of setting it alight. However, the Pandavas are warned by their wise uncle, Vidura, who sends them a miner to dig a tunnel. They are able to escape to safety and go into hiding. Back at Hastinapur, the Pandavas and Kunti are presumed dead.
MARRIAGE TO DRAUPADI
Whilst they were in hiding the Pandavas learn of a swayamvara which is taking place for the hand of the Pāñcāla princess Draupadī. The Pandavas enter the competition in disguise as Brahmins. The task is to string a mighty steel bow and shoot a target on the ceiling, which is the eye of a moving artificial fish, while looking at its reflection in oil below. Most of the princes fail, many being unable to lift the bow. Arjuna succeeds however. The Pandavas return home and inform their mother that Arjuna has won a competition and to look at what they have brought back. Without looking, Kunti asks them to share whatever it is Arjuna has won among themselves. On explaining the previous life of Draupadi, she ends up being the wife of all five brothers.
INDRAPRASTHA
After the wedding, the Pandava brothers are invited back to Hastinapura. The Kuru family elders and relatives negotiate and broker a split of the kingdom, with the Pandavas obtaining a new territory. Yudhishtira has a new capital built for this territory at Indraprastha. Neither the Pandava nor Kaurava sides are happy with the arrangement however.
Shortly after this, Arjuna elopes with and then marries Krishna's sister, Subhadra. Yudhishtira wishes to establish his position as king; he seeks Krishna's advice. Krishna advises him, and after due preparation and the elimination of some opposition, Yudhishthira carries out the rājasūya yagna ceremony; he is thus recognised as pre-eminent among kings.
The Pandavas have a new palace built for them, by Maya the Danava. They invite their Kaurava cousins to Indraprastha. Duryodhana walks round the palace, and mistakes a glossy floor for water, and will not step in. After being told of his error, he then sees a pond, and assumes it is not water and falls in. Draupadi laughs at him and ridicules him by saying that this is because of his blind father Dhritrashtra. He then decides to avenge his humiliation.
THE DICE GAME
Shakuni, Duryodhana's uncle, now arranges a dice game, playing against Yudhishtira with loaded dice. Yudhishtira loses all his wealth, then his kingdom. He then even gambles his brothers, himself, and finally his wife into servitude. The jubilant Kauravas insult the Pandavas in their helpless state and even try to disrobe Draupadi in front of the entire court, but her honour is saved by Krishna who miraculously creates lengths of cloth to replace the ones being removed.
Dhritarashtra, Bhishma, and the other elders are aghast at the situation, but Duryodhana is adamant that there is no place for two crown princes in Hastinapura. Against his wishes Dhritarashtra orders for another dice game. The Pandavas are required to go into exile for 12 years, and in the 13th year must remain hidden. If discovered by the Kauravas, they will be forced into exile for another 12 years.
EXILE AND RETURN
The Pandavas spend thirteen years in exile; many adventures occur during this time. They also prepare alliances for a possible future conflict. They spend their final year in disguise in the court of Virata, and are discovered just after the end of the year.
At the end of their exile, they try to negotiate a return to Indraprastha. However, this fails, as Duryodhana objects that they were discovered while in hiding, and that no return of their kingdom was agreed. War becomes inevitable.
THE BATTLE AT KURUKSHETRA
The two sides summon vast armies to their help and line up at Kurukshetra for a war. The kingdoms of Panchala, Dwaraka, Kasi, Kekaya, Magadha, Matsya, Chedi, Pandyas, Telinga, and the Yadus of Mathura and some other clans like the Parama Kambojas were allied with the Pandavas. The allies of the Kauravas included the kings of Pragjyotisha, Anga, Kekaya, Sindhudesa (including Sindhus, Sauviras and Sivis), Mahishmati, Avanti in Madhyadesa, Madra, Gandhara, Bahlika people, Kambojas and many others. Before war being declared, Balarama had expressed his unhappiness at the developing conflict and left to go on pilgrimage; thus he does not take part in the battle itself. Krishna takes part in a non-combatant role, as charioteer for Arjuna.
Before the battle, Arjuna, seeing the opposing army includes many relatives and loved ones, including his great grandfather Bhishma and his teacher Drona, has doubts about the battle and he fails to lift his Gāndeeva bow. Krishna wakes him up to his call of duty in the famous Bhagavad Gita section of the epic.
Though initially sticking to chivalrous notions of warfare, both sides soon adopt dishonourable tactics. At the end of the 18-day battle, only the Pandavas, Satyaki, Kripa, Ashwatthama, Kritavarma, Yuyutsu and Krishna survive.
THE END OF THE PANDAVAS
After "seeing" the carnage, Gandhari, who had lost all her sons, curses Krishna to be a witness to a similar annihilation of his family, for though divine and capable of stopping the war, he had not done so. Krishna accepts the curse, which bears fruit 36 years later.
The Pandavas, who had ruled their kingdom meanwhile, decide to renounce everything. Clad in skins and rags they retire to the Himalaya and climb towards heaven in their bodily form. A stray dog travels with them. One by one the brothers and Draupadi fall on their way. As each one stumbles, Yudhisthira gives the rest the reason for their fall (Draupadi was partial to Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva were vain and proud of their looks, and Bhima and Arjuna were proud of their strength and archery skills, respectively). Only the virtuous Yudhisthira, who had tried everything to prevent the carnage, and the dog remain. The dog reveals himself to be the god Yama (also known as Yama Dharmaraja), and then takes him to the underworld where he sees his siblings and wife. After explaining the nature of the test, Yama takes Yudhishthira back to heaven and explains that it was necessary to expose him to the underworld because (Rajyante narakam dhruvam) any ruler has to visit the underworld at least once. Yama then assures him that his siblings and wife would join him in heaven after they had been exposed to the underworld for measures of time according to their vices.
Arjuna's grandson Parikshit rules after them and dies bitten by a snake. His furious son, Janamejaya, decides to perform a snake sacrifice (sarpasattra) in order to destroy the snakes. It is at this sacrifice that the tale of his ancestors is narrated to him.
THE REUNION
The Mahabharata mentions that Karna, the Pandavas, and Dhritarashtra's sons eventually ascended to svarga and "attained the state of the gods" and banded together — "serene and free from anger."
THEMES
JUST WAR
The Mahabharata offers one of the first instances of theorizing about "just war", illustrating many of the standards that would be debated later across the world. In the story, one of five brothers asks if the suffering caused by war can ever be justified. A long discussion ensues between the siblings, establishing criteria like proportionality (chariots cannot attack cavalry, only other chariots; no attacking people in distress), just means (no poisoned or barbed arrows), just cause (no attacking out of rage), and fair treatment of captives and the wounded.
Versions, translations, and derivative works.
CRITICAL EDITION
Between 1919 and 1966, scholars at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, compared the various manuscripts of the epic from India and abroad and produced the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata, on 13,000 pages in 19 volumes, followed by the Harivamsha in another two volumes and six index volumes. This is the text that is usually used in current Mahabharata studies for reference. This work is sometimes called the "Pune" or "Poona" edition of the Mahabharata.
REGIONAL VERSIONS
Many regional versions of the work developed over time, mostly differing only in minor details, or with verses or subsidiary stories being added. These include the Tamil street theatre, terukkuttu and kattaikkuttu, the plays of which use themes from the Tamil language versions of Mahabharata, focusing on Draupadi.
Outside the Indian subcontinent, in Indonesia, a version was developed in ancient Java as Kakawin Bhāratayuddha in the 11th century under the patronage of King Dharmawangsa (990–1016), and later it spread to neighboring island of Bali where today remains a Hindu majority island, despite today Indonesia is the most populous Muslim majority nation. It has become the fertile source for Javanese literature, dance drama (wayang wong), and wayang shadow puppet performances. This Javanese version differ slightly from the original Indian version. For example Draupadi is only be wed to Yudhisthira, not to the entire Pandavas brothers, this might demonstrate ancient Javanese opposition of polyandry practice. The author later added some female characters to be wed to the Pandavas. Arjuna for example is described as having many wives and consorts next to Subhadra. Another difference is Shikhandi did not undergone sex change and remains as a woman, to be wed to Arjuna, and took the role as a warrior princess during the war. Another twist is Gandhari was described as antagonist character that hates Pandava so much. Her hate was out of jealousy, because during svayambara for the hand of Gandhari, she was actually in love with Pandu, but later being wed to his blind elder brother instead, whom she does not love, as a protest she then blindfold herself. Another notable difference is the inclusion of Punakawans, the clown servants of the main characters in the storyline, which is not found in Indian version. This characters includes Semar, Petruk, Gareng and Bagong, they are much-loved by Indonesian audiences. There are some spin-off episode developed in ancient Java, such as Arjunawiwaha composed in 11th century.
A Kawi version of the Mahabharata, of which eight of the eighteen parvas survive, is found on the Indonesian island of Bali. It has been translated into English by Dr. I. Gusti Putu Phalgunadi.
TRANSLATIONS
A Persian translation of Mahabharta, titled Razmnameh, was produced at Akbar's orders, by Faizi and `Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni in the 18th century.
The first complete English translation was the Victorian prose version by Kisari Mohan Ganguli, published between 1883 and 1896 (Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers) and by M. N. Dutt (Motilal Banarsidass Publishers). Most critics consider the translation by Ganguli to be faithful to the original text. The complete text of Ganguli's translation is in the public domain and is available online.
Another English prose translation of the full epic, based on the Critical Edition, is in progress, published by University Of Chicago Press. It was initiated by Indologist J. A. B. van Buitenen (books 1–5) and, following a 20-year hiatus caused by the death of van Buitenen, is being continued by D. Gitomer of DePaul University (book 6), J. L. Fitzgerald of Brown University (books 11–13) and Wendy Doniger of the University of Chicago (books 14–18).
An early poetry translation by Romesh Chunder Dutt and published in 1898 condenses the main themes of the Mahabharata into English verse. A later poetic "transcreation" (author's own description) of the full epic into English, done by the poet P. Lal is complete, and in 2005 began being published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta. The P. Lal translation is a non-rhyming verse-by-verse rendering, and is the only edition in any language to include all slokas in all recensions of the work (not just those in the Critical Edition). The completion of the publishing project is scheduled for 2010. Sixteen of the eighteen volumes are now available.
A project to translate the full epic into English prose, translated by various hands, began to appear in 2005 from the Clay Sanskrit Library, published by New York University Press. The translation is based not on the Critical Edition but on the version known to the commentator Nīlakaṇṭha. Currently available are 15 volumes of the projected 32-volume edition.
Indian economist Bibek Debroy has also begun an unabridged English translation in ten volumes. Volume 1: Adi Parva was published in March 2010.
Many condensed versions, abridgements and novelistic prose retellings of the complete epic have been published in English, including works by Ramesh Menon, William Buck, R. K. Narayan, C. Rajagopalachari, K. M. Munshi, Krishna Dharma, Romesh C. Dutt, Bharadvaja Sarma, John D. Smith and Sharon Maas.
DERIVATIVE LITERATURE
Bhasa, the 2nd- or 3rd-century CE Sanskrit playwright, wrote two plays on episodes in the Marabharata, Urubhanga (Broken Thigh), about the fight between Duryodhana and Bhima, while Madhyamavyayoga (The Middle One) set around Bhima and his son, Ghatotkacha. The first important play of 20th century was Andha Yug (The Blind Epoch), by Dharamvir Bharati, which came in 1955, found in Mahabharat, both an ideal source and expression of modern predicaments and discontent. Starting with Ebrahim Alkazi it was staged by numerous directors. V. S. Khandekar's Marathi novel, Yayati (1960) and Girish Karnad's debut play Yayati (1961) are based on the story of King Yayati found in the Mahabharat. Bengali writer and playwright, Buddhadeva Bose wrote three plays set in Mahabharat, Anamni Angana, Pratham Partha and Kalsandhya. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni wrote a version from the perspective of Draupadi entitled The Palace of Illusions: A Novel, which was published in 2008.
Amar Chitra Katha published a 1,260 page comic book version of the Mahabharata.
IN FILM AND TELEVISION
In Indian cinema, several film versions of the epic have been made, dating back to 1920. In Telugu film Daana Veera Soora Karna (1977) directed by and starring N. T. Rama Rao depicts Karna as the lead character. The Mahabharata was also reinterpreted by Shyam Benegal in Kalyug. Prakash Jha directed 2010 film Raajneeti was partially inspired by the Mahabharata. A 2013 animated adaptation holds the record for India's most expensive animated film.
In the late 1980s, the Mahabharat TV series, directed by Ravi Chopra, was televised on India's national television (Doordarshan). In the Western world, a well-known presentation of the epic is Peter Brook's nine-hour play, which premiered in Avignon in 1985, and its five-hour movie version The Mahabharata (1989).
Uncompleted projects on the Mahabharata include a ones by Rajkumar Santoshi, and a theaterical adaptation planned by Satyajit Ray.
JAIN VERSION
Jain version of Mahabharata can be found in the various Jain texts like Harivamsapurana (the story of Harivamsa) Trisastisalakapurusa Caritra (Hagiography of 63 Illustrious persons), Pandavacaritra (lives of Pandavas) and Pandavapurana (stories of Pandavas). From the earlier canonical literature, Antakrddaaśāh (8th cannon) and Vrisnidasa (upangagama or secondary canon) contain the stories of Neminatha (22nd Tirthankara), Krishna and Balarama. Prof. Padmanabh Jaini notes that, unlike in the Hindu Puranas, the names Baladeva and Vasudeva are not restricted to Balarama and Krishna in Jain puranas. Instead they serve as names of two distinct class of mighty brothers, who appear nine times in each half of time cycles of the Jain cosmology and rule the half the earth as half-chakravartins. Jaini traces the origin of this list of brothers to the Jinacharitra by Bhadrabahu swami (4th–3rd century BCE). According to Jain cosmology Balarama, Krishna and Jarasandha are the ninth and the last set of Baladeva, Vasudeva, and Partivasudeva. The main battle is not the Mahabharata, but the fight between Krishna and Jarasandha (who is killed by Krishna). Ultimately, the Pandavas and Balarama take renunciation as Jain monks and are reborn in heavens, while on the other hand Krishna and Jarasandha are reborn in hell. In keeping with the law of karma, Krishna is reborn in hell for his exploits (sexual and violent) while Jarasandha for his evil ways. Prof. Jaini admits a possibility that perhaps because of his popularity, the Jain authors were keen to rehabilitate Krishna. The Jain texts predict that after his karmic term in hell is over sometime during the next half time-cycle, Krishna will be reborn as a Jain Tirthankara and attain liberation. Krishna and Balrama are shown as contemporaries and cousins of 22nd Tirthankara, Neminatha. According to this story, Krishna arranged young Neminath’s marriage with Rajamati, the daughter of Ugrasena, but Neminatha, empathizing with the animals which were to be slaughtered for the marriage feast, left the procession suddenly and renounced the world.
CULTURAL INFLUENCE
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna explains to Arjuna his duties as a warrior and prince and elaborates on different Yogic and Vedantic philosophies, with examples and analogies. This has led to the Gita often being described as a concise guide to Hindu philosophy and a practical, self-contained guide to life. In more modern times, Swami Vivekananda, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and many others used the text to help inspire the Indian independence movement.
WIKIPEDIA
Weiße Sau mit Ferkeln
White Sow with Piglets
Öl auf Karton/Oil on cardboard
Georgisches Nationalmuseum, Schalwa Amiranaschwili
Museum der bildenden Künste, Tiflis
Georgian National Museum, Shalva Amiranashvili
Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
The history of modernism is for a long time a history of resistance: in Paris and Barcelona, in Munich and Berlin, young artists revolt against the academies and the virtuoso but superficial salon painting.
The goal of this international departure of modernity is an art of authenticity. It is practiced in the art of forlornism, for which the avant-gardes use the child's drawing and the Sunday painting of the dilettante as well as the art of the mentally ill or the alleged primitivism of African and oceanic sculpture.
For the neo-primitivism of the early Russian avant-garde, Niko Pirosmani, born in 1862 in Tbilisi, is the most important obstetrician from the ancestral line of the unskilled.
What the French customs officer and sunday painter Henri Rousseau in Paris is for Picasso, Braque and Modigliani means Pirosmani for the Russian avant-garde: without the deeply felt, simple form of the animals and figures of Pirosmani, always shown frontally or in a strict profile, is the early art of Chagall and Malevich and of Goncharova and Larionov not thinkable.
The monumental and magical poetry of Pirosmani's isolated figures has cast a spell over the pioneers of modernism at their first exhibition in 1913. Pirosmani is hailed as the herald of the authentic art not deformed by the academies. He is the fixed star on the way to the primal simplicity of the folk soul.
Picasso also admires the iconic simplicity and memorable power of Pirosmani's painting. Even in old age, the Spaniard dedicates an etching to the Georgian.
Pirosmani did not live to see the appreciation and success of his art. The lack of understanding in his homeland and the outbreak of the First World War thwart further exhibitions. What Pirosmani sells during his lifetime on shop signs and portraits, he is paid in kind, wine and food.
Impoverished and homeless, Niko Pirosmani dies in 1918 in the damp, cold basement of a tavern in Tbilisi.
Die Geschichte der Moderne ist über weite Strecken eine Geschichte des Widerstands: In Paris und Barcelona, in München und Berlin revoltieren junge Künstler gegen die Akademien und die virtuose, aber oberflächliche Salonmalerei.
Ziel jenes internationalen Aufbruchs der Moderne ist eine Kunst des Authentischen. Man übt sich in der Kunst des Verlernens, wofür die Avantgarden die Kinderzeichnung und die Sonntagsmalerei der Dilettanten ebenso zu Hilfe nehmen wie die Bildnerei von Geisteskranken oder den vermeintlichen Primitivismus der afrikanischen und ozeanischen Skulptur.
Für den Neoprimitivismus der frühen russischen Avantgarde ist der 1862 in Tiflis geborene Niko Pirosmani der bedeutendste Geburtshelfer aus der Ahnenreihe der Ungelernten.
Was der französische Zöllner und Sonntagsmaler Henri Rousseau in Paris für Picasso, Braque und Modigliani ist, bedeutet Pirosmani für die russische Avantgarde: Ohne die tief empfundene, einfache Form der stets frontal oder im strengen Profil gezeigten Tiere und Gestalten Pirosmanis ist die frühe Kunst von Chagall und Malewitsch von Gontscharowa und Larionow nicht zu denken.
Die Monumentalität und magische Poesie von Pirosmanis isolierten Figuren haben die Bahnbrecher der Moderne bereits bei ihrer ersten Ausstellung 1913 in den Bann gezogen. Pirosmani wird als Herold der authentischen, der durch die Akademien nicht verbildeten Kunst gefeiert. Er ist der Fixstern auf dem Weg zur urtümlichen Einfachheit der Volksseele.
Auch Picasso bewundert an Pirosmanis Malerei die ikonische Schlichtheit und einprägsame Kraft. Noch im Alter widmet der Spanier dem Georgier eine Radierung.
Pirosmani sollte die Wertschätzung und den Erfolg seiner Kunst nicht mehr erleben. Das Unverständnis in seiner Heimat und der Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges vereiteln weitere Ausstellungen. Was Pirosmani zu Lebzeiten an Ladenschildern und Porträts verkauft, wird ihm in Naturalien, Wein und Essen, bezahlt.
Verarmt und obdachlos stirbt Niko Pirosmani 1918 im feuchten, kalten Kellerverschlag einer Taverne in Tiflis.
The ALBERTINA devotes a comprehensive solo exhibition to the Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani (1862-1918). The autodidact, whose luminous, vivid works often depict animals or scenes from the life of ancient Georgia and its people, is today a hero of the avant-garde to be discovered. For Niko Pirosmani art is a wide, open field, he himself a vagabond, who consciously chose to move around as a way of life. A wanderer between town and country, restaurants and animal stables, which is at the same time in the center of the community. His commissioned works are not presented in galleries and museums, but in inns, taverns and shops. Niko Pirosmani embodies the artist's vision as a clairvoyant outsider.
The exhibition will be on view from October 26, 2018 to January 27, 2019.
This exhibition is made possible by the Infinitart Foundation.
It is organized by ALBERTINA with the Infinitart Foundation in collaboration with the Georgian National Museum and the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles.
Die ALBERTINA widmet dem georgischen Maler Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918) eine umfassende Personale. Der Autodidakt, dessen leuchtende, eindringliche Werke häufig Tiere oder Szenen aus dem Leben des alten Georgiens und seiner Menschen zeigen, ist heute ein Held der Avantgarde, den es zu entdecken gilt. Kunst ist für Niko Pirosmani ein weites, offenes Feld, er selbst ein Vagabund, der das Herumziehen bewusst als Lebensform gewählt hat. Ein Wanderer zwischen Stadt und Land, Gaststuben und Tierställen, der sich gleichzeitig im Zentrum der Gemeinschaft aufhält. Seine im Auftrag entstandenen Werke werden nicht in Galerien und Museen präsentiert, sondern in Gasthöfen, Tavernen und Läden. Niko Pirosmani verkörpert die Vision des Künstlers als hellsichtigem Außenseiter.
Die Ausstellung ist von 26. Oktober 2018 bis 27. Jänner 2019 zu sehen.
Diese Ausstellung wird durch die Infinitart Foundation ermöglicht.
Sie wird von der ALBERTINA mit der Infinitart Foundation in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Georgischen National Museum und der Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles organisiert.
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Kinderloser Millionär und die arme Frau mit Kindern
Childless Millionaire and the Poor Woman with Children
Öl auf Wachstuch/Oil on wax cloth
Georgisches Nationalmuseum, Schalwa Amiranaschwili
Museum der bildenden Künste, Tiflis
Georgian National Museum, Shalva Amiranashvili
Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
A childless, rich couple takes a newborn from a poor woman. Pirosmani inscribed the two groups of people with "millionaire, childless" and "poor woman with children". He does not present the encounter spatially, but juxtaposes the persons who look like cut-out in parallel to each other. The wealth of the couple is shown by the clothing suit, coat, gold buttons, shoes and jewelry -. The man has a clean trimmed beard, the woman with the conspicuously made-up lips wears an elaborate hairstyle. The bare-footed poor woman is accompanied by her two young children: a widow, alone, without a husband; a baby in her arms, which she still breastfeeds at the moment of delivery. Four colors orchestrate this image: black and white as well as olive green and blue.
Ein kinderloses, reiches Paar nimmt ein Neugeborenes von einer armen Frau entgegen. Pirosmani beschriftet die beiden Personengruppen mit "Millionär, kinderlos" und "Arme Frau mit Kindern". Er stellt die Begegnung nicht räumlich dar, sondern reiht die wie ausgeschnitten wirkenden Personen bildparallel nebeneinander. Der Reichtum des Ehepaars wird durch die Kleidung Anzug, Mantel, Goldknöpfe, Schuhe und Schmuck - gezeigt. Der Mann hat einen sauber gestutzten Bart, die Frau mit den auffällig geschminkten Lippen trägt eine aufwendige Frisur. Die bloßfüßige arme Frau wird von ihren beiden kleinen Kindern begleitet: eine Witwe, allein, ohne Ehemann; im Arm ein Wickelkind, das sie noch im Moment der Übergabe stillt. Vier Farben orchestrieren dieses Bild: Schwarz-Weiß sowie Olivgrün und Blau.
The ALBERTINA devotes a comprehensive solo exhibition to the Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani (1862-1918). The autodidact, whose luminous, vivid works often depict animals or scenes from the life of ancient Georgia and its people, is today a hero of the avant-garde to be discovered. For Niko Pirosmani art is a wide, open field, he himself a vagabond, who consciously chose to move around as a way of life. A wanderer between town and country, restaurants and animal stables, which is at the same time in the center of the community. His commissioned works are not presented in galleries and museums, but in inns, taverns and shops. Niko Pirosmani embodies the artist's vision as a clairvoyant outsider.
The exhibition will be on view from October 26, 2018 to January 27, 2019.
This exhibition is made possible by the Infinitart Foundation.
It is organized by ALBERTINA with the Infinitart Foundation in collaboration with the Georgian National Museum and the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles.
Die ALBERTINA widmet dem georgischen Maler Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918) eine umfassende Personale. Der Autodidakt, dessen leuchtende, eindringliche Werke häufig Tiere oder Szenen aus dem Leben des alten Georgiens und seiner Menschen zeigen, ist heute ein Held der Avantgarde, den es zu entdecken gilt. Kunst ist für Niko Pirosmani ein weites, offenes Feld, er selbst ein Vagabund, der das Herumziehen bewusst als Lebensform gewählt hat. Ein Wanderer zwischen Stadt und Land, Gaststuben und Tierställen, der sich gleichzeitig im Zentrum der Gemeinschaft aufhält. Seine im Auftrag entstandenen Werke werden nicht in Galerien und Museen präsentiert, sondern in Gasthöfen, Tavernen und Läden. Niko Pirosmani verkörpert die Vision des Künstlers als hellsichtigem Außenseiter.
Die Ausstellung ist von 26. Oktober 2018 bis 27. Jänner 2019 zu sehen.
Diese Ausstellung wird durch die Infinitart Foundation ermöglicht.
Sie wird von der ALBERTINA mit der Infinitart Foundation in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Georgischen National Museum und der Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles organisiert.
Oil on oilcloth pasted on canvas. 116×176 cm. Shalva Breus collection, Moscow
Original Georgian Title: ქეიფი, ბეგოს მეგობრები
Rus: Обед тифлисских торговцев с граммофоном.
Exhibition "The Geogian Avant-garde: 1900–1930s." at The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, 2017
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Oil on oilcloth pasted on canvas. 116×176 cm. Shalva Breus collection, Moscow
Original Georgian Title: ქეიფი, ბეგოს მეგობრები
Rus: Обед тифлисских торговцев с граммофоном.
Exhibition "The Geogian Avant-garde: 1900–1930s." at The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, 2017
The Mahabharata or Mahābhārata (US /məhɑːˈbɑrətə/; UK /ˌmɑːhəˈbɑːrətə/; Sanskrit: महाभारतम्, Mahābhāratam, pronounced [məɦaːˈbʱaːrət̪əm]) is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Ramayana.
Besides its epic narrative of the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pandava princes, the Mahabharata contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or purusharthas (12.161). Among the principal works and stories in the Mahabharata are the Bhagavad Gita, the story of Damayanti, an abbreviated version of the Ramayana, and the Rishyasringa, often considered as works in their own right.
Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahabharata is attributed to Vyasa. There have been many attempts to unravel its historical growth and compositional layers. The oldest preserved parts of the text are thought to be not much older than around 400 BCE, though the origins of the epic probably fall between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE. The text probably reached its final form by the early Gupta period (c. 4th century CE). The title may be translated as "the great tale of the Bhārata dynasty". According to the Mahabharata itself, the tale is extended from a shorter version of 24,000 verses called simply Bhārata.
The Mahabharata is the longest known epic poem and has been described as "the longest poem ever written". Its longest version consists of over 100,000 shloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), and long prose passages. About 1.8 million words in total, the Mahabharata is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Ramayana. W. J. Johnson has compared the importance of the Mahabharata to world civilization to that of the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, the works of Homer, Greek drama, or the Qur'an.
TEXTURAL HISTORY AND STRUCTURE
The epic is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyasa, who is also a major character in the epic. Vyasa described it as being itihāsa (history). He also describes the Guru-shishya parampara, which traces all great teachers and their students of the Vedic times.
The first section of the Mahabharata states that it was Ganesha who wrote down the text to Vyasa's dictation. Ganesha is said to have agreed to write it only if Vyasa never paused in his recitation. Vyasa agrees on condition that Ganesha takes the time to understand what was said before writing it down.
The epic employs the story within a story structure, otherwise known as frametales, popular in many Indian religious and non-religious works. It is recited by the sage Vaisampayana, a disciple of Vyasa, to the King Janamejaya who is the great-grandson of the Pandava prince Arjuna. The story is then recited again by a professional storyteller named Ugrasrava Sauti, many years later, to an assemblage of sages performing the 12-year sacrifice for the king Saunaka Kulapati in the Naimisha Forest.
The text has been described by some early 20th-century western Indologists as unstructured and chaotic. Hermann Oldenberg supposed that the original poem must once have carried an immense "tragic force" but dismissed the full text as a "horrible chaos." Moritz Winternitz (Geschichte der indischen Literatur 1909) considered that "only unpoetical theologists and clumsy scribes" could have lumped the parts of disparate origin into an unordered whole.
ACCRETION AND REDACTION
Research on the Mahabharata has put an enormous effort into recognizing and dating layers within the text. Some elements of the present Mahabharata can be traced back to Vedic times. The background to the Mahabharata suggests the origin of the epic occurs "after the very early Vedic period" and before "the first Indian 'empire' was to rise in the third century B.C." That this is "a date not too far removed from the 8th or 9th century B.C." is likely. It is generally agreed that "Unlike the Vedas, which have to be preserved letter-perfect, the epic was a popular work whose reciters would inevitably conform to changes in language and style," so the earliest 'surviving' components of this dynamic text are believed to be no older than the earliest 'external' references we have to the epic, which may include an allusion in Panini's 4th century BCE grammar Ashtādhyāyī 4:2:56. It is estimated that the Sanskrit text probably reached something of a "final form" by the early Gupta period (about the 4th century CE). Vishnu Sukthankar, editor of the first great critical edition of the Mahabharata, commented: "It is useless to think of reconstructing a fluid text in a literally original shape, on the basis of an archetype and a stemma codicum. What then is possible? Our objective can only be to reconstruct the oldest form of the text which it is possible to reach on the basis of the manuscript material available." That manuscript evidence is somewhat late, given its material composition and the climate of India, but it is very extensive.
The Mahabharata itself (1.1.61) distinguishes a core portion of 24,000 verses: the Bharata proper, as opposed to additional secondary material, while the Ashvalayana Grhyasutra (3.4.4) makes a similar distinction. At least three redactions of the text are commonly recognized: Jaya (Victory) with 8,800 verses attributed to Vyasa, Bharata with 24,000 verses as recited by Vaisampayana, and finally the Mahabharata as recited by Ugrasrava Sauti with over 100,000 verses. However, some scholars such as John Brockington, argue that Jaya and Bharata refer to the same text, and ascribe the theory of Jaya with 8,800 verses to a misreading of a verse in Adiparvan (1.1.81). The redaction of this large body of text was carried out after formal principles, emphasizing the numbers 18 and 12. The addition of the latest parts may be dated by the absence of the Anushasana-parva and the Virata parva from the "Spitzer manuscript". The oldest surviving Sanskrit text dates to the Kushan Period (200 CE).
According to what one character says at Mbh. 1.1.50, there were three versions of the epic, beginning with Manu (1.1.27), Astika (1.3, sub-parva 5) or Vasu (1.57), respectively. These versions would correspond to the addition of one and then another 'frame' settings of dialogues. The Vasu version would omit the frame settings and begin with the account of the birth of Vyasa. The astika version would add the sarpasattra and ashvamedha material from Brahmanical literature, introduce the name Mahabharata, and identify Vyasa as the work's author. The redactors of these additions were probably Pancharatrin scholars who according to Oberlies (1998) likely retained control over the text until its final redaction. Mention of the Huna in the Bhishma-parva however appears to imply that this parva may have been edited around the 4th century.
The Adi-parva includes the snake sacrifice (sarpasattra) of Janamejaya, explaining its motivation, detailing why all snakes in existence were intended to be destroyed, and why in spite of this, there are still snakes in existence. This sarpasattra material was often considered an independent tale added to a version of the Mahabharata by "thematic attraction" (Minkowski 1991), and considered to have a particularly close connection to Vedic (Brahmana) literature. The Panchavimsha Brahmana (at 25.15.3) enumerates the officiant priests of a sarpasattra among whom the names Dhrtarashtra and Janamejaya, two main characters of the Mahabharata's sarpasattra, as well as Takshaka, the name of a snake in the Mahabharata, occur.
HISTORICAL REFERENCES
The earliest known references to the Mahabharata and its core Bharata date to the Ashtadhyayi (sutra 6.2.38) of Pāṇini (fl. 4th century BCE) and in the Ashvalayana Grhyasutra (3.4.4). This may suggest that the core 24,000 verses, known as the Bharata, as well as an early version of the extended Mahabharata, were composed by the 4th century BCE.
A report by the Greek writer Dio Chrysostom (c. 40 - c. 120 CE) about Homer's poetry being sung even in India seems to imply that the Iliad had been translated into Sanskrit. However, scholars have, in general, taken this as evidence for the existence of a Mahabharata at this date, whose episodes Dio or his sources identify with the story of the Iliad.
Several stories within the Mahabharata took on separate identities of their own in Classical Sanskrit literature. For instance, Abhijñānashākuntala by the renowned Sanskrit poet Kālidāsa (c. 400 CE), believed to have lived in the era of the Gupta dynasty, is based on a story that is the precursor to the Mahabharata. Urubhanga, a Sanskrit play written by Bhāsa who is believed to have lived before Kālidāsa, is based on the slaying of Duryodhana by the splitting of his thighs by Bhima.
The copper-plate inscription of the Maharaja Sharvanatha (533–534 CE) from Khoh (Satna District, Madhya Pradesh) describes the Mahabharata as a "collection of 100,000 verses" (shatasahasri samhita).
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The historicity of the Kurukshetra War is unclear. Many historians estimate the date of the Kurukshetra war to Iron Age India of the 10th century BCE. The setting of the epic has a historical precedent in Iron Age (Vedic) India, where the Kuru kingdom was the center of political power during roughly 1200 to 800 BCE. A dynastic conflict of the period could have been the inspiration for the Jaya, the foundation on which the Mahabharata corpus was built, with a climactic battle eventually coming to be viewed as an epochal event.
Puranic literature presents genealogical lists associated with the Mahabharata narrative. The evidence of the Puranas is of two kinds. Of the first kind, there is the direct statement that there were 1015 (or 1050) years between the birth of Parikshit (Arjuna's grandson) and the accession of Mahapadma Nanda (400-329 BCE), which would yield an estimate of about 1400 BCE for the Bharata battle. However, this would imply improbably long reigns on average for the kings listed in the genealogies. Of the second kind are analyses of parallel genealogies in the Puranas between the times of Adhisimakrishna (Parikshit's great-grandson) and Mahapadma Nanda. Pargiter accordingly estimated 26 generations by averaging 10 different dynastic lists and, assuming 18 years for the average duration of a reign, arrived at an estimate of 850 BCE for Adhisimakrishna, and thus approximately 950 BCE for the Bharata battle.
B. B. Lal used the same approach with a more conservative assumption of the average reign to estimate a date of 836 BCE, and correlated this with archaeological evidence from Painted Grey Ware sites, the association being strong between PGW artifacts and places mentioned in the epic.
Attempts to date the events using methods of archaeoastronomy have produced, depending on which passages are chosen and how they are interpreted, estimates ranging from the late 4th to the mid-2nd millennium BCE. The late 4th millennium date has a precedent in the calculation of the Kaliyuga epoch, based on planetary conjunctions, by Aryabhata (6th century). Aryabhatta's date of February 18 3102 BCE for Mahabharata war has become widespread in Indian tradition. Coincidentally, this marks the disppearance of Krishna from earth from many source.[36] The Aihole inscription of Pulikeshi II, dated to Saka 556 = 634 CE, claims that 3735 years have elapsed since the Bharata battle, putting the date of Mahabharata war at 3137 BCE. Another traditional school of astronomers and historians, represented by Vriddha-Garga, Varahamihira (author of the Brhatsamhita) and Kalhana (author of the Rajatarangini), place the Bharata war 653 years after the Kaliyuga epoch, corresponding to 2449 BCE.
SYNOPSIS
The core story of the work is that of a dynastic struggle for the throne of Hastinapura, the kingdom ruled by the Kuru clan. The two collateral branches of the family that participate in the struggle are the Kaurava and the Pandava. Although the Kaurava is the senior branch of the family, Duryodhana, the eldest Kaurava, is younger than Yudhisthira, the eldest Pandava. Both Duryodhana and Yudhisthira claim to be first in line to inherit the throne.
The struggle culminates in the great battle of Kurukshetra, in which the Pandavas are ultimately victorious. The battle produces complex conflicts of kinship and friendship, instances of family loyalty and duty taking precedence over what is right, as well as the converse.
The Mahabharata itself ends with the death of Krishna, and the subsequent end of his dynasty and ascent of the Pandava brothers to heaven. It also marks the beginning of the Hindu age of Kali Yuga, the fourth and final age of mankind, in which great values and noble ideas have crumbled, and man is heading towards the complete dissolution of right action, morality and virtue.
THE OLDER GENERATIONS
King Janamejaya's ancestor Shantanu, the king of Hastinapura, has a short-lived marriage with the goddess Ganga and has a son, Devavrata (later to be called Bhishma, a great warrior), who becomes the heir apparent. Many years later, when King Shantanu goes hunting, he sees Satyavati, the daughter of the chief of fisherman, and asks her father for her hand. Her father refuses to consent to the marriage unless Shantanu promises to make any future son of Satyavati the king upon his death. To resolve his father's dilemma, Devavrata agrees to relinquish his right to the throne. As the fisherman is not sure about the prince's children honouring the promise, Devavrata also takes a vow of lifelong celibacy to guarantee his father's promise.
Shantanu has two sons by Satyavati, Chitrāngada and Vichitravirya. Upon Shantanu's death, Chitrangada becomes king. He lives a very short uneventful life and dies. Vichitravirya, the younger son, rules Hastinapura. Meanwhile, the King of Kāśī arranges a swayamvara for his three daughters, neglecting to invite the royal family of Hastinapur. In order to arrange the marriage of young Vichitravirya, Bhishma attends the swayamvara of the three princesses Amba, Ambika and Ambalika, uninvited, and proceeds to abduct them. Ambika and Ambalika consent to be married to Vichitravirya.
The oldest princess Amba, however, informs Bhishma that she wishes to marry king of Shalva whom Bhishma defeated at their swayamvara. Bhishma lets her leave to marry king of Shalva, but Shalva refuses to marry her, still smarting at his humiliation at the hands of Bhishma. Amba then returns to marry Bhishma but he refuses due to his vow of celibacy. Amba becomes enraged and becomes Bhishma's bitter enemy, holding him responsible for her plight. Later she is reborn to King Drupada as Shikhandi (or Shikhandini) and causes Bhishma's fall, with the help of Arjuna, in the battle of Kurukshetra.
THE PANDAVA AND KAURAVA PRINCES
When Vichitravirya dies young without any heirs, Satyavati asks her first son Vyasa to father children with the widows. The eldest, Ambika, shuts her eyes when she sees him, and so her son Dhritarashtra is born blind. Ambalika turns pale and bloodless upon seeing him, and thus her son Pandu is born pale and unhealthy (the term Pandu may also mean 'jaundiced'). Due to the physical challenges of the first two children, Satyavati asks Vyasa to try once again. However, Ambika and Ambalika send their maid instead, to Vyasa's room. Vyasa fathers a third son, Vidura, by the maid. He is born healthy and grows up to be one of the wisest characters in the Mahabharata. He serves as Prime Minister (Mahamantri or Mahatma) to King Pandu and King Dhritarashtra.
When the princes grow up, Dhritarashtra is about to be crowned king by Bhishma when Vidura intervenes and uses his knowledge of politics to assert that a blind person cannot be king. This is because a blind man cannot control and protect his subjects. The throne is then given to Pandu because of Dhritarashtra's blindness. Pandu marries twice, to Kunti and Madri. Dhritarashtra marries Gandhari, a princess from Gandhara, who blindfolds herself so that she may feel the pain that her husband feels. Her brother Shakuni is enraged by this and vows to take revenge on the Kuru family. One day, when Pandu is relaxing in the forest, he hears the sound of a wild animal. He shoots an arrow in the direction of the sound. However the arrow hits the sage Kindama, who curses him that if he engages in a sexual act, he will die. Pandu then retires to the forest along with his two wives, and his brother Dhritarashtra rules thereafter, despite his blindness.
Pandu's older queen Kunti, however, had been given a boon by Sage Durvasa that she could invoke any god using a special mantra. Kunti uses this boon to ask Dharma the god of justice, Vayu the god of the wind, and Indra the lord of the heavens for sons. She gives birth to three sons, Yudhisthira, Bhima, and Arjuna, through these gods. Kunti shares her mantra with the younger queen Madri, who bears the twins Nakula and Sahadeva through the Ashwini twins. However, Pandu and Madri indulge in sex, and Pandu dies. Madri dies on his funeral pyre out of remorse. Kunti raises the five brothers, who are from then on usually referred to as the Pandava brothers.
Dhritarashtra has a hundred sons through Gandhari, all born after the birth of Yudhishtira. These are the Kaurava brothers, the eldest being Duryodhana, and the second Dushasana. Other Kaurava brothers were Vikarna and Sukarna. The rivalry and enmity between them and the Pandava brothers, from their youth and into manhood, leads to the Kurukshetra war.
LAKSHAGRAHA (THE HOUSE OF LAC)
After the deaths of their mother (Madri) and father (Pandu), the Pandavas and their mother Kunti return to the palace of Hastinapur. Yudhisthira is made Crown Prince by Dhritarashtra, under considerable pressure from his kingdom. Dhritarashtra wanted his own son Duryodhana to become king and lets his ambition get in the way of preserving justice.
Shakuni, Duryodhana and Dusasana plot to get rid of the Pandavas. Shakuni calls the architect Purochana to build a palace out of flammable materials like lac and ghee. He then arranges for the Pandavas and the Queen Mother Kunti to stay there, with the intention of setting it alight. However, the Pandavas are warned by their wise uncle, Vidura, who sends them a miner to dig a tunnel. They are able to escape to safety and go into hiding. Back at Hastinapur, the Pandavas and Kunti are presumed dead.
MARRIAGE TO DRAUPADI
Whilst they were in hiding the Pandavas learn of a swayamvara which is taking place for the hand of the Pāñcāla princess Draupadī. The Pandavas enter the competition in disguise as Brahmins. The task is to string a mighty steel bow and shoot a target on the ceiling, which is the eye of a moving artificial fish, while looking at its reflection in oil below. Most of the princes fail, many being unable to lift the bow. Arjuna succeeds however. The Pandavas return home and inform their mother that Arjuna has won a competition and to look at what they have brought back. Without looking, Kunti asks them to share whatever it is Arjuna has won among themselves. On explaining the previous life of Draupadi, she ends up being the wife of all five brothers.
INDRAPRASTHA
After the wedding, the Pandava brothers are invited back to Hastinapura. The Kuru family elders and relatives negotiate and broker a split of the kingdom, with the Pandavas obtaining a new territory. Yudhishtira has a new capital built for this territory at Indraprastha. Neither the Pandava nor Kaurava sides are happy with the arrangement however.
Shortly after this, Arjuna elopes with and then marries Krishna's sister, Subhadra. Yudhishtira wishes to establish his position as king; he seeks Krishna's advice. Krishna advises him, and after due preparation and the elimination of some opposition, Yudhishthira carries out the rājasūya yagna ceremony; he is thus recognised as pre-eminent among kings.
The Pandavas have a new palace built for them, by Maya the Danava. They invite their Kaurava cousins to Indraprastha. Duryodhana walks round the palace, and mistakes a glossy floor for water, and will not step in. After being told of his error, he then sees a pond, and assumes it is not water and falls in. Draupadi laughs at him and ridicules him by saying that this is because of his blind father Dhritrashtra. He then decides to avenge his humiliation.
THE DICE GAME
Shakuni, Duryodhana's uncle, now arranges a dice game, playing against Yudhishtira with loaded dice. Yudhishtira loses all his wealth, then his kingdom. He then even gambles his brothers, himself, and finally his wife into servitude. The jubilant Kauravas insult the Pandavas in their helpless state and even try to disrobe Draupadi in front of the entire court, but her honour is saved by Krishna who miraculously creates lengths of cloth to replace the ones being removed.
Dhritarashtra, Bhishma, and the other elders are aghast at the situation, but Duryodhana is adamant that there is no place for two crown princes in Hastinapura. Against his wishes Dhritarashtra orders for another dice game. The Pandavas are required to go into exile for 12 years, and in the 13th year must remain hidden. If discovered by the Kauravas, they will be forced into exile for another 12 years.
EXILE AND RETURN
The Pandavas spend thirteen years in exile; many adventures occur during this time. They also prepare alliances for a possible future conflict. They spend their final year in disguise in the court of Virata, and are discovered just after the end of the year.
At the end of their exile, they try to negotiate a return to Indraprastha. However, this fails, as Duryodhana objects that they were discovered while in hiding, and that no return of their kingdom was agreed. War becomes inevitable.
THE BATTLE AT KURUKSHETRA
The two sides summon vast armies to their help and line up at Kurukshetra for a war. The kingdoms of Panchala, Dwaraka, Kasi, Kekaya, Magadha, Matsya, Chedi, Pandyas, Telinga, and the Yadus of Mathura and some other clans like the Parama Kambojas were allied with the Pandavas. The allies of the Kauravas included the kings of Pragjyotisha, Anga, Kekaya, Sindhudesa (including Sindhus, Sauviras and Sivis), Mahishmati, Avanti in Madhyadesa, Madra, Gandhara, Bahlika people, Kambojas and many others. Before war being declared, Balarama had expressed his unhappiness at the developing conflict and left to go on pilgrimage; thus he does not take part in the battle itself. Krishna takes part in a non-combatant role, as charioteer for Arjuna.
Before the battle, Arjuna, seeing the opposing army includes many relatives and loved ones, including his great grandfather Bhishma and his teacher Drona, has doubts about the battle and he fails to lift his Gāndeeva bow. Krishna wakes him up to his call of duty in the famous Bhagavad Gita section of the epic.
Though initially sticking to chivalrous notions of warfare, both sides soon adopt dishonourable tactics. At the end of the 18-day battle, only the Pandavas, Satyaki, Kripa, Ashwatthama, Kritavarma, Yuyutsu and Krishna survive.
THE END OF THE PANDAVAS
After "seeing" the carnage, Gandhari, who had lost all her sons, curses Krishna to be a witness to a similar annihilation of his family, for though divine and capable of stopping the war, he had not done so. Krishna accepts the curse, which bears fruit 36 years later.
The Pandavas, who had ruled their kingdom meanwhile, decide to renounce everything. Clad in skins and rags they retire to the Himalaya and climb towards heaven in their bodily form. A stray dog travels with them. One by one the brothers and Draupadi fall on their way. As each one stumbles, Yudhisthira gives the rest the reason for their fall (Draupadi was partial to Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva were vain and proud of their looks, and Bhima and Arjuna were proud of their strength and archery skills, respectively). Only the virtuous Yudhisthira, who had tried everything to prevent the carnage, and the dog remain. The dog reveals himself to be the god Yama (also known as Yama Dharmaraja), and then takes him to the underworld where he sees his siblings and wife. After explaining the nature of the test, Yama takes Yudhishthira back to heaven and explains that it was necessary to expose him to the underworld because (Rajyante narakam dhruvam) any ruler has to visit the underworld at least once. Yama then assures him that his siblings and wife would join him in heaven after they had been exposed to the underworld for measures of time according to their vices.
Arjuna's grandson Parikshit rules after them and dies bitten by a snake. His furious son, Janamejaya, decides to perform a snake sacrifice (sarpasattra) in order to destroy the snakes. It is at this sacrifice that the tale of his ancestors is narrated to him.
THE REUNION
The Mahabharata mentions that Karna, the Pandavas, and Dhritarashtra's sons eventually ascended to svarga and "attained the state of the gods" and banded together — "serene and free from anger."
THEMES
JUST WAR
The Mahabharata offers one of the first instances of theorizing about "just war", illustrating many of the standards that would be debated later across the world. In the story, one of five brothers asks if the suffering caused by war can ever be justified. A long discussion ensues between the siblings, establishing criteria like proportionality (chariots cannot attack cavalry, only other chariots; no attacking people in distress), just means (no poisoned or barbed arrows), just cause (no attacking out of rage), and fair treatment of captives and the wounded.
Versions, translations, and derivative works.
CRITICAL EDITION
Between 1919 and 1966, scholars at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune, compared the various manuscripts of the epic from India and abroad and produced the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata, on 13,000 pages in 19 volumes, followed by the Harivamsha in another two volumes and six index volumes. This is the text that is usually used in current Mahabharata studies for reference. This work is sometimes called the "Pune" or "Poona" edition of the Mahabharata.
REGIONAL VERSIONS
Many regional versions of the work developed over time, mostly differing only in minor details, or with verses or subsidiary stories being added. These include the Tamil street theatre, terukkuttu and kattaikkuttu, the plays of which use themes from the Tamil language versions of Mahabharata, focusing on Draupadi.
Outside the Indian subcontinent, in Indonesia, a version was developed in ancient Java as Kakawin Bhāratayuddha in the 11th century under the patronage of King Dharmawangsa (990–1016), and later it spread to neighboring island of Bali where today remains a Hindu majority island, despite today Indonesia is the most populous Muslim majority nation. It has become the fertile source for Javanese literature, dance drama (wayang wong), and wayang shadow puppet performances. This Javanese version differ slightly from the original Indian version. For example Draupadi is only be wed to Yudhisthira, not to the entire Pandavas brothers, this might demonstrate ancient Javanese opposition of polyandry practice. The author later added some female characters to be wed to the Pandavas. Arjuna for example is described as having many wives and consorts next to Subhadra. Another difference is Shikhandi did not undergone sex change and remains as a woman, to be wed to Arjuna, and took the role as a warrior princess during the war. Another twist is Gandhari was described as antagonist character that hates Pandava so much. Her hate was out of jealousy, because during svayambara for the hand of Gandhari, she was actually in love with Pandu, but later being wed to his blind elder brother instead, whom she does not love, as a protest she then blindfold herself. Another notable difference is the inclusion of Punakawans, the clown servants of the main characters in the storyline, which is not found in Indian version. This characters includes Semar, Petruk, Gareng and Bagong, they are much-loved by Indonesian audiences. There are some spin-off episode developed in ancient Java, such as Arjunawiwaha composed in 11th century.
A Kawi version of the Mahabharata, of which eight of the eighteen parvas survive, is found on the Indonesian island of Bali. It has been translated into English by Dr. I. Gusti Putu Phalgunadi.
TRANSLATIONS
A Persian translation of Mahabharta, titled Razmnameh, was produced at Akbar's orders, by Faizi and `Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni in the 18th century.
The first complete English translation was the Victorian prose version by Kisari Mohan Ganguli, published between 1883 and 1896 (Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers) and by M. N. Dutt (Motilal Banarsidass Publishers). Most critics consider the translation by Ganguli to be faithful to the original text. The complete text of Ganguli's translation is in the public domain and is available online.
Another English prose translation of the full epic, based on the Critical Edition, is in progress, published by University Of Chicago Press. It was initiated by Indologist J. A. B. van Buitenen (books 1–5) and, following a 20-year hiatus caused by the death of van Buitenen, is being continued by D. Gitomer of DePaul University (book 6), J. L. Fitzgerald of Brown University (books 11–13) and Wendy Doniger of the University of Chicago (books 14–18).
An early poetry translation by Romesh Chunder Dutt and published in 1898 condenses the main themes of the Mahabharata into English verse. A later poetic "transcreation" (author's own description) of the full epic into English, done by the poet P. Lal is complete, and in 2005 began being published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta. The P. Lal translation is a non-rhyming verse-by-verse rendering, and is the only edition in any language to include all slokas in all recensions of the work (not just those in the Critical Edition). The completion of the publishing project is scheduled for 2010. Sixteen of the eighteen volumes are now available.
A project to translate the full epic into English prose, translated by various hands, began to appear in 2005 from the Clay Sanskrit Library, published by New York University Press. The translation is based not on the Critical Edition but on the version known to the commentator Nīlakaṇṭha. Currently available are 15 volumes of the projected 32-volume edition.
Indian economist Bibek Debroy has also begun an unabridged English translation in ten volumes. Volume 1: Adi Parva was published in March 2010.
Many condensed versions, abridgements and novelistic prose retellings of the complete epic have been published in English, including works by Ramesh Menon, William Buck, R. K. Narayan, C. Rajagopalachari, K. M. Munshi, Krishna Dharma, Romesh C. Dutt, Bharadvaja Sarma, John D. Smith and Sharon Maas.
DERIVATIVE LITERATURE
Bhasa, the 2nd- or 3rd-century CE Sanskrit playwright, wrote two plays on episodes in the Marabharata, Urubhanga (Broken Thigh), about the fight between Duryodhana and Bhima, while Madhyamavyayoga (The Middle One) set around Bhima and his son, Ghatotkacha. The first important play of 20th century was Andha Yug (The Blind Epoch), by Dharamvir Bharati, which came in 1955, found in Mahabharat, both an ideal source and expression of modern predicaments and discontent. Starting with Ebrahim Alkazi it was staged by numerous directors. V. S. Khandekar's Marathi novel, Yayati (1960) and Girish Karnad's debut play Yayati (1961) are based on the story of King Yayati found in the Mahabharat. Bengali writer and playwright, Buddhadeva Bose wrote three plays set in Mahabharat, Anamni Angana, Pratham Partha and Kalsandhya. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni wrote a version from the perspective of Draupadi entitled The Palace of Illusions: A Novel, which was published in 2008.
Amar Chitra Katha published a 1,260 page comic book version of the Mahabharata.
IN FILM AND TELEVISION
In Indian cinema, several film versions of the epic have been made, dating back to 1920. In Telugu film Daana Veera Soora Karna (1977) directed by and starring N. T. Rama Rao depicts Karna as the lead character. The Mahabharata was also reinterpreted by Shyam Benegal in Kalyug. Prakash Jha directed 2010 film Raajneeti was partially inspired by the Mahabharata. A 2013 animated adaptation holds the record for India's most expensive animated film.
In the late 1980s, the Mahabharat TV series, directed by Ravi Chopra, was televised on India's national television (Doordarshan). In the Western world, a well-known presentation of the epic is Peter Brook's nine-hour play, which premiered in Avignon in 1985, and its five-hour movie version The Mahabharata (1989).
Uncompleted projects on the Mahabharata include a ones by Rajkumar Santoshi, and a theaterical adaptation planned by Satyajit Ray
JAIN VERSION
ain version of Mahabharata can be found in the various Jain texts like Harivamsapurana (the story of Harivamsa) Trisastisalakapurusa Caritra (Hagiography of 63 Illustrious persons), Pandavacaritra (lives of Pandavas) and Pandavapurana (stories of Pandavas). From the earlier canonical literature, Antakrddaaśāh (8th cannon) and Vrisnidasa (upangagama or secondary canon) contain the stories of Neminatha (22nd Tirthankara), Krishna and Balarama. Prof. Padmanabh Jaini notes that, unlike in the Hindu Puranas, the names Baladeva and Vasudeva are not restricted to Balarama and Krishna in Jain puranas. Instead they serve as names of two distinct class of mighty brothers, who appear nine times in each half of time cycles of the Jain cosmology and rule the half the earth as half-chakravartins. Jaini traces the origin of this list of brothers to the Jinacharitra by Bhadrabahu swami (4th–3rd century BCE). According to Jain cosmology Balarama, Krishna and Jarasandha are the ninth and the last set of Baladeva, Vasudeva, and Partivasudeva. The main battle is not the Mahabharata, but the fight between Krishna and Jarasandha (who is killed by Krishna). Ultimately, the Pandavas and Balarama take renunciation as Jain monks and are reborn in heavens, while on the other hand Krishna and Jarasandha are reborn in hell. In keeping with the law of karma, Krishna is reborn in hell for his exploits (sexual and violent) while Jarasandha for his evil ways. Prof. Jaini admits a possibility that perhaps because of his popularity, the Jain authors were keen to rehabilitate Krishna. The Jain texts predict that after his karmic term in hell is over sometime during the next half time-cycle, Krishna will be reborn as a Jain Tirthankara and attain liberation. Krishna and Balrama are shown as contemporaries and cousins of 22nd Tirthankara, Neminatha. According to this story, Krishna arranged young Neminath’s marriage with Rajamati, the daughter of Ugrasena, but Neminatha, empathizing with the animals which were to be slaughtered for the marriage feast, left the procession suddenly and renounced the world.
CULTURAL INFLUENCE
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna explains to Arjuna his duties as a warrior and prince and elaborates on different Yogic and Vedantic philosophies, with examples and analogies. This has led to the Gita often being described as a concise guide to Hindu philosophy and a practical, self-contained guide to life. In more modern times, Swami Vivekananda, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi and many others used the text to help inspire the Indian independence movement.
WIKIPEDIA
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Kuvassa vasemmalta oikealle: Eurooppa- ja omistajaohjausministeri Tytti Tuppurainen, Georgian parlamentin puhemies Shalva Papuashvili ja pääministeri Sanna Marin
Kuvien käyttöehdot - Villkor för att använda bilderna - Use and rights
© Lauri Heikkinen / valtioneuvoston kanslia
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Amme mit Säugling
Nurse with a Child
Öl auf Wachstuch/Oil on wax cloth
Georgisches Nationalmuseum, Schalwa Amiranaschwili
Museum der bildenden Künste, Tiflis
Georgian National Museum, Shalva Amiranashvili
Museum of Fine Arts, Tbilisi
The ALBERTINA devotes a comprehensive solo exhibition to the Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani (1862-1918). The autodidact, whose luminous, vivid works often depict animals or scenes from the life of ancient Georgia and its people, is today a hero of the avant-garde to be discovered. For Niko Pirosmani art is a wide, open field, he himself a vagabond, who consciously chose to move around as a way of life. A wanderer between town and country, restaurants and animal stables, which is at the same time in the center of the community. His commissioned works are not presented in galleries and museums, but in inns, taverns and shops. Niko Pirosmani embodies the artist's vision as a clairvoyant outsider.
The exhibition will be on view from October 26, 2018 to January 27, 2019.
This exhibition is made possible by the Infinitart Foundation.
It is organized by ALBERTINA with the Infinitart Foundation in collaboration with the Georgian National Museum and the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles.
Die ALBERTINA widmet dem georgischen Maler Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918) eine umfassende Personale. Der Autodidakt, dessen leuchtende, eindringliche Werke häufig Tiere oder Szenen aus dem Leben des alten Georgiens und seiner Menschen zeigen, ist heute ein Held der Avantgarde, den es zu entdecken gilt. Kunst ist für Niko Pirosmani ein weites, offenes Feld, er selbst ein Vagabund, der das Herumziehen bewusst als Lebensform gewählt hat. Ein Wanderer zwischen Stadt und Land, Gaststuben und Tierställen, der sich gleichzeitig im Zentrum der Gemeinschaft aufhält. Seine im Auftrag entstandenen Werke werden nicht in Galerien und Museen präsentiert, sondern in Gasthöfen, Tavernen und Läden. Niko Pirosmani verkörpert die Vision des Künstlers als hellsichtigem Außenseiter.
Die Ausstellung ist von 26. Oktober 2018 bis 27. Jänner 2019 zu sehen.
Diese Ausstellung wird durch die Infinitart Foundation ermöglicht.
Sie wird von der ALBERTINA mit der Infinitart Foundation in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Georgischen National Museum und der Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles organisiert.
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem
Independence Day event at ICC Jerusalem. July 2nd 2019.
Photo credit: David Azagury U.S. Embassy Jerusalem