Known for Painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, stage design, writing

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces during the Spanish Civil War.

 

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the slightly older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.

 

Picasso's work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period. Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.

 

Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

Born in Plaza de la Merced 15, Málaga, Spain

 

Orginal photo Franz-Hubmann + Picasso's "The Accordionist Painting" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Accordionist#/media/File:The_Ac...

 

Artwork by TudioJepegii

Siponto, Manfredonia, Puglia , Italia © 2016 All rights reserved by Michele Masiero

 

FotoSketcher: lively

Nikon coolpix p 7100

 

Il Parco archeologico di Siponto, è situato a pochi chilometri dalla città di Manfredonia in Puglia.Nell’area archeologica accanto alla chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore di origine medievale, sono presenti i resti di una basilica paleocristiana del IV sec. d.C. a tre navate con abside centrale e pavimento a mosaico. Al fine di valorizzare tutta l’area archeologica, che comprende anche il restauro del complesso della chiesa di San Leonardo posto nelle vicinanze, e preservare i resti archeologici della basilica paleocristiana, il ministero dei beni culturali e la sopraintendenza archeologica della Puglia utilizzando fondi europei , ha approvato e finanziato il progetto dello scultore lombardo Edoardo Tresoldi.L’opera d’arte a carattere permanente di Edoardo Tresoldi, ricostruisce sui resti archeologici della basilica paleocristiana , i volumi in scala reale della basilica stessa sino ad una altezza di 14 metri ,utilizzando reti in metallo galvanizzato trasparenti. L’Opera d’arte,unica al mondo, ha richiesto l’utilizzo di sette tonnellate di rete metallica leggera e trasparente , e un lavoro protrattosi per circa tre mesi di una equipe di una trentina di persone tra cui archeologi, ingegneri e architetti e il gruppo di giovani creativi che collaborano con Tresoldi da diversi anni.

 

Edoardo Tresoldi

Scultore, pittore e scenografo, Edoardo Tresoldi ha un approccio artistico e di ricerca creativa e libera. Studia design e arti visive all'istituto d'arte di Monza. Nel 2009 si trasferisce a Roma e inizia a lavorare come pittore di scena per vari progetti cinematografici. La scenografia diventa un laboratorio di sperimentazione. Dal 2013 realizza sculture ed installazioni in rete metallica. Edoardo ha 28 anni, è di Cambiago, in provincia di Milano ed è considerato uno dei talenti della street art italiana. Si fa aiutare da una squadra in cui l’età media è 25 anni e anche i responsabili di Sovrintendenze ed Ente Paesaggistici, hanno riconosciuto il valore delle sue opere. A lui sono state affidati luoghi importanti, come le installazioni alla Vigna di Leonardo a Milano e alla Basilica di Siponto a Manfredonia.

 

.The Archaeological Park of Siponto, is located a few kilometers from the town of Manfredonia in the Puglia region. In the archaeological site next to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore of medieval origin, there are the remains of a paleoChristian basilica of the fourth century. after Christ, with three naves and central apse and mosaic floor. In order to enhance the whole archaeological area, which also includes the restoration of the complex of the church of San Leonardo nearby, and preserve the archaeological remains of an early Christian basilica, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and the archaeological superintendence of Puglia using European funds, have approved and funded the project the Lombard sculptor Edoardo Tresoldi. The work of art, unique in the world, a permanent nature by Edoardo Tresoldi, reconstructs on the archaeological ruins of the paleoChristian basilica, the full-scale real volumes of the basilica itself up to a height of 14 meters, using wire mesh galvanized transparent.The Art work required the use of seven tons of transparent metal mesh, and a job that lasted for about three months in a team of thirty people including archaeologists, engineers and architects and the group of young creatives that cooperate with Tresoldi from several years.

 

Edoardo Tresoldi

 

Sculptor, painter and stage designer, Edoardo Tresoldi has an artistic and creative research approach and free. He has studied design and visual arts at the Institute of Art of Monza. In 2009 he moved to Rome and began working as a scene painter for various film projects. The scenery becomes a testing laboratory. From 2013 makes sculptures and installations made of wire mesh. Edoardo is 28 years old, is born at Cambasio, in the province of Milan and is considered one of the talents of the Italian street art. It was helped by a team where the average age is 25 years. To him they were

From facebook and Dailybest

  

Tower of London

  

Evolving installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies will progressively fill the Tower’s famous moat.

Tower of London (marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies progressively fill the Tower’s famous moat until 11 November 2014).

.....Is a major art installation at the Tower of London, marking one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies progressively filled the Tower's famous moat. Each poppy represents a British military fatality during the war.

poppies.hrp.org.uk/about-the-installation

Gouache on paper; 47 x 62 cm.

 

Russian painter, draughtsman and stage designer. He studied at the University of St Petersburg (later Petrograd) in 1908 and in the private studio of Savely Zeidenberg (1862–1924). In 1909–10 he attended the studio of Yan Tsyonglinsky (1850–1914) in St Petersburg, where he became acquainted with the avant-garde artists Yelena Guro (1877–1913), Mikhail Matyushin and Matvey Vol’demar (1878–1914). In 1911–12 he worked in the studios of Maurice Denis and Félix Vallotton in Paris, then in Switzerland (1913) before returning to St Petersburg. As a painter he was a modernist, and his work developed rapidly towards abstraction, although he did not adhere to any particular branch of it. His works of the time use various devices of stylization and decorativeness, and some of them echo the free associations of Marc Chagall, but fundamentally they remain geometrically based compositions. In 1919–20 he made a series of abstract sculptural assemblages and a great number of abstract collages.

 

Annenkov became popular as an illustrator, producing elegant drawings for a number of magazines in Petrograd in 1913–17, including Satirikon, Argus, Lukomor’ye and Solntse Rossii. He designed and illustrated many books for Moscow and Petrograd publishing houses in the 1910s and 1920s. In the early 1920s he designed a great number of book covers in the Constructivist style. He illustrated children’s books, especially for the private publishing house Raduga in Petrograd. But his most important illustrations were those for Aleksandr Blok’s revolutionary poem Dvenadtsat’ (‘The Twelve’; St Petersburg, 1918), which were successful improvisations on the poem’s themes, combining stylization and emotion. He also drew and painted a great number of portraits, especially of cultural and political figures. His monumental Portrait of the Red Army Leader L. Trotsky (1923; Moscow, Cent. Mus. Revolution), which has an urban background in Constructivist style, was particularly successful.

 

From 1913 Annenkov worked as a stage designer. He worked for the Krivoye Zerkalo (Distorting Mirror) Theatre in Petrograd (1914–15) and for the Komissarzhevsky Theatre in Moscow (1914–18). He then worked for a number of theatres in Petrograd, sometimes as designer and producer. He collaborated with Vsevolod Meyerkhold (e.g. Lev Tolstoy’s Pervyy vinokur, ‘First distiller’, Hermitage Theatre, Petrograd, 1919) and with Nikolay Yeureinov. Annenkov’s designs for Bunt mashin (‘Revolt of the machines’, Georg Kaiser adapted by Aleksey Tolstoy, Bol’shoy Dramatic Theatre, Petrograd, 1924) used a Constructivist-inspired mechanized set. Annenkov also designed a number of celebrations and pageants commemorating the Revolution of 1917, including the ambitious re-enactment of the storming of the Winter Palace, which took place in Uritsky (now Dvortsovaya) Square in Petrograd on 7 November 1920 and involved monumental scenery and c. 7000 performers. In 1922–4 he led the revival of the activities of the World of art group and in 1924 worked towards the establishment of the Society of easel painters. The same year he settled in Paris, where he aligned himself with the Ecole de Paris. He continued to design books, stage and film sets in France and Germany, and he exhibited at many joint Russian and French exhibitions. He also became active as an exhibition organizer himself, especially for the USA.

 

V. Rakitin From Grove Art Online

© 2009 Oxford University Press

This art adorns one of the exit tunnels at the Thalkirchen Munich U-Bahn station.

 

The station serves the Tierpark Hellabrunn (Munich Zoo).

 

About the Artist

 

Ricarda Dietz (* 1939 in Munich ) is a German artist. She specializes in facade design and ceiling painting, and her works decorate numerous churches, seven Munich subway stations, (old town) facades, offices and convention centers. The artist lives and works in Munich.

 

The daughter of the sculptor Elmar Dietz and the writer Gertrud Fussenegger studied interior design and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in the 1960s . After graduation, she worked as a stage designer for Bavarian television .

 

Ricarda Dietz received the Munich Water Lily Award for her art in public space . Furthermore, she designed overall artistic concepts for the interior of buildings and was concerned with book illustrations as well as the design of book covers and brochures.

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricarda_Dietz

The libretto of Tannhäuser combines mythological elements characteristic of German Romantische Oper (Romantic opera) and the medieval setting typical of many French Grand Operas. Wagner brings these two together by constructing a plot involving the 14th-century Minnesingers and the myth of Venus and her subterranean realm of Venusberg. Both the historical and the mythological are united in Tannhäuser's personality; although he is a historical poet composer, little is known about him other than myths that surround him.

 

Wagner wove a variety of sources into the opera narrative. According to his autobiography, he was inspired by finding the story in "a Volksbuch (popular book) about the Venusberg", which he claimed "fell into his hands", although he admits knowing of the story from the Phantasus of Ludwig Tieck and E. T. A. Hoffmann's story, Der Kampf der Sänger (The Singers' Contest). Tieck's tale, which names the hero "Tannenhäuser", tells of the minnesinger-knight's amorous adventures in the Venusberg, his travels to Rome as a Pilgrim, and his repudiation by the pope. To this Wagner added material from Hoffmann's story, from Serapions-Brüder (1819), describing a song contest at the Wartburg castle,[1] a castle which featured prominently in Thuringian history. Heinrich Heine had provided Wagner with the inspiration for Der fliegende Holländer and Wagner again drew on Heine for Tannhäuser. In Heine's sardonic essay Elementargeister (Elemental spirits), there appears a poem about Tannhäuser and the lure of the grotto of Venus, published in 1837 in the third volume of Der Salon.[1] Other possible sources include Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's play Der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg and Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild (The Marble Statue, 1819).[1][2]

 

The legend of Tannhäuser, the amorous crusading Franconian knight, and that of the song contest on the Wartburg (which did not involve Tannhäuser, but the semi-mythical minnesinger Heinrich von Ofterdingen), came from quite separate traditions. Ludwig Bechstein wove together the two legends in the first volume of his collection of Thuringian legends, Der Sagenschatz und die Sagenkreise des Thüringerlandes (A treasury of the tales of Thuringian legends and legend cycles, 1835), which was probably the Volksbuch to which Wagner refers to in his autobiography.[3][1] Wagner also knew of the work of another contemporary, Christian Theodor Ludwig Lucas, whose Über den Krieg von Wartburg of 1838 also conflated the two legends.[4][5] This confusion (which explains why Tannhäuser is referred to as 'Heinrich' in the opera) does not fit with the historical timeline of the events in the opera, since the Singers' Contest involving von Ofterdingen is said to have taken place around 1207, while Tannhäuser's poetry appeared much later (1245–1265). The sources used by Wagner therefore reflected a nineteenth century romantic view of the medieval period, with concerns about artistic freedom and the constraints of organised religion typical of the period of Romanticism.[6]

 

During Wagner's first stay in Paris (1839–1842) he read a paper by Ludwig Lucas on the Sängerkrieg which sparked his imagination, and encouraged him to return to Germany, which he reached on 7 April 1842.[7] Having crossed the Rhine, the Wagners drove towards Thuringia, and saw the early rays of sun striking the Wartburg; Wagner immediately began to sketch the scenery that would become the stage sets.[8] Wagner wrote the prose draft of Tannhäuser between June and July 1842 and the libretto in April 1843.[9]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannhäuser_(opera)

Neuschwanstein Castle (German: Schloss Neuschwanstein, pronounced [ˈʃlɔs nɔʏˈʃvaːnʃtaɪn], Southern Bavarian: Schloss Neischwanstoa) is a 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and in honour of Richard Wagner. Ludwig paid for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing, rather than Bavarian public funds.

 

The castle was intended as a home for the King, until he died in 1886. It was open to the public shortly after his death.[1] Since then more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle.[2] More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer.[3]

  

Contents

1Location

2History

2.1Inspiration and design

2.2Construction

2.3Funding

2.4Simplified completion

2.5World War II

3Architecture

3.1Exterior

3.2Interior

4Tourism

5In culture, art, and science

5.1World Heritage candidature

6Panoramas

7Notes

8Citations

9General sources

10External links

Location[edit]

 

A northward view of Neuschwanstein Castle from Mount Säuling (2,047 m or 6,716 ft) on the border between Bavaria and Tyrol: Schwangau between large Forggensee reservoir (1952) and Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein palaces

The municipality of Schwangau lies at an elevation of 800 m (2,620 ft) at the southwest border of the German state of Bavaria. Its surroundings are characterised by the transition between the Alpine foothills in the south (toward the nearby Austrian border) and a hilly landscape in the north that appears flat by comparison.

 

In the Middle Ages, three castles overlooked the villages. One was called Schwanstein Castle.[nb 1] In 1832, Ludwig's father King Maximilian II of Bavaria bought its ruins to replace them with the comfortable neo-Gothic palace known as Hohenschwangau Castle. Finished in 1837, the palace became his family's summer residence, and his elder son Ludwig (born 1845) spent a large part of his childhood here.[4]

 

Vorderhohenschwangau Castle and Hinterhohenschwangau Castle[nb 2] sat on a rugged hill overlooking Schwanstein Castle, two nearby lakes (Alpsee and Schwansee), and the village. Separated by only a moat, they jointly consisted of a hall, a keep, and a fortified tower house.[5] In the nineteenth century only ruins remained of the twin medieval castles, but those of Hinterhohenschwangau served as a lookout place known as Sylphenturm.[6]

 

The ruins above the family palace were known to the crown prince from his excursions. He first sketched one of them in his diary in 1859.[7] When the young king came to power in 1864, the construction of a new palace in place of the two ruined castles became the first in his series of palace building projects.[8] Ludwig called the new palace New Hohenschwangau Castle; only after his death was it renamed Neuschwanstein.[9] The confusing result is that Hohenschwangau and Schwanstein have effectively swapped names: Hohenschwangau Castle replaced the ruins of Schwanstein Castle, and Neuschwanstein Castle replaced the ruins of the two Hohenschwangau Castles.

 

History[edit]

Inspiration and design[edit]

Neuschwanstein embodies both the contemporaneous architectural fashion known as castle romanticism (German: Burgenromantik), and King Ludwig II's enthusiasm for the operas of Richard Wagner.

 

In the 19th century, many castles were constructed or reconstructed, often with significant changes to make them more picturesque. Palace-building projects similar to Neuschwanstein had been undertaken earlier in several of the German states and included Hohenschwangau Castle, Lichtenstein Castle, Hohenzollern Castle, and numerous buildings on the River Rhine such as Stolzenfels Castle.[10] The inspiration for the construction of Neuschwanstein came from two journeys in 1867—one in May to the reconstructed Wartburg near Eisenach,[11] another in July to the Château de Pierrefonds, which Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was transforming from a ruined castle into a historistic palace.[12][nb 3]

  

Neuschwanstein project drawing (Christian Jank 1869)

The King saw both buildings as representatives of a romantic interpretation of the Middle Ages, as well as the musical mythology of his friend Wagner, whose operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin had made a lasting impression on him.[13]

 

In February 1868, Ludwig's grandfather King Ludwig I died, freeing the considerable sums that were previously spent on the abdicated King's appanage.[8][nb 4] This allowed Ludwig II to start the architectural project of building a private refuge in the familiar landscape far from the capital Munich, so that he could live out his idea of the Middle Ages.

 

It is my intention to rebuild the old castle ruin of Hohenschwangau near the Pöllat Gorge in the authentic style of the old German knights' castles, and I must confess to you that I am looking forward very much to living there one day [...]; you know the revered guest I would like to accommodate there; the location is one of the most beautiful to be found, holy and unapproachable, a worthy temple for the divine friend who has brought salvation and true blessing to the world. It will also remind you of "Tannhäuser" (Singers' Hall with a view of the castle in the background), "Lohengrin'" (castle courtyard, open corridor, path to the chapel) ...

 

— Ludwig II, Letter to Richard Wagner, May 1868[14]

The building design was drafted by the stage designer Christian Jank and realised by the architect Eduard Riedel.[15] For technical reasons, the ruined castles could not be integrated into the plan. Initial ideas for the palace drew stylistically on Nuremberg Castle and envisaged a simple building in place of the old Vorderhohenschwangau Castle, but they were rejected and replaced by increasingly extensive drafts, culminating in a bigger palace modelled on the Wartburg.[16] The king insisted on a detailed plan and on personal approval of each and every draft.[17] Ludwig's control went so far that the palace has been regarded as his own creation, rather than that of the architects involved.[18]

 

Whereas contemporary architecture critics derided Neuschwanstein, one of the last big palace building projects of the nineteenth century, as kitsch, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig II's other buildings are now counted among the major works of European historicism.[19][20] For financial reasons, a project similar to Neuschwanstein – Falkenstein Castle – never left the planning stages.[21]

 

The palace can be regarded as typical for nineteenth-century architecture. The shapes of Romanesque (simple geometric figures such as cuboids and semicircular arches), Gothic (upward-pointing lines, slim towers, delicate embellishments) and Byzantine architecture and art (the Throne Hall décor) were mingled in an eclectic fashion and supplemented with 19th-century technical achievements. The Patrona Bavariae and Saint George on the court face of the Palas (main building) are depicted in the local Lüftlmalerei style, a fresco technique typical for Allgäu farmers' houses, while the unimplemented drafts for the Knights' House gallery foreshadow elements of Art Nouveau.[22] Characteristic of Neuschwanstein's design are theatre themes: Christian Jank drew on coulisse drafts from his time as a scenic painter.[23]

 

The basic style was originally planned to be neo-Gothic but the palace was primarily built in Romanesque style in the end. The operatic themes moved gradually from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin to Parsifal.[24]

 

Construction[edit]

 

Neuschwanstein under construction: Bower still missing, Rectangular Tower under construction (photograph c. 1882–85)

 

Neuschwanstein under construction: upper courtyard (photograph c. 1886)

In 1868, the ruins of the medieval twin castles were completely demolished; the remains of the old keep were blown up.[25] The foundation stone for the palace was laid on 5 September 1869; in 1872 its cellar was completed and in 1876, everything up to the first floor, the gatehouse being finished first. At the end of 1882 it was completed and fully furnished, allowing Ludwig to take provisional lodgings there and observe the ongoing construction work.[24] In 1874, management of the civil works passed from Eduard Riedel to Georg von Dollmann.[26] The topping out ceremony for the Palas was in 1880, and in 1884, the King was able to move in to the new building. In the same year, the direction of the project passed to Julius Hofmann, after Dollmann had fallen from the King's favour.

 

The palace was erected as a conventional brick construction and later encased in various types of rock. The white limestone used for the fronts came from a nearby quarry.[27]

 

The sandstone bricks for the portals and bay windows came from Schlaitdorf in Württemberg. Marble from Untersberg near Salzburg was used for the windows, the arch ribs, the columns and the capitals. The Throne Hall was a later addition to the plans and required a steel framework.

 

The transport of building materials was facilitated by scaffolding and a steam crane that lifted the material to the construction site. Another crane was used at the construction site. The recently founded Dampfkessel-Revisionsverein (Steam Boiler Inspection Association) regularly inspected both boilers.

 

For about two decades the construction site was the principal employer in the region.[28] In 1880, about 200 craftsmen were occupied at the site,[29] not counting suppliers and other persons indirectly involved in the construction. At times when the King insisted on particularly close deadlines and urgent changes, reportedly up to 300 workers per day were active, sometimes working at night by the light of oil lamps. Statistics from the years 1879/1880 support an immense amount of building materials: 465 tonnes (513 short tons) of Salzburg marble, 1,550 t (1,710 short tons) of sandstone, 400,000 bricks and 2,050 cubic metres (2,680 cu yd) of wood for the scaffolding.

 

In 1870, a society was founded for insuring the workers, for a low monthly fee, augmented by the King. The heirs of construction casualties (30 cases are mentioned in the statistics) received a small pension.

 

In 1884, the King was able to move into the (still unfinished) Palas,[30] and in 1885, he invited his mother Marie to Neuschwanstein on the occasion of her 60th birthday.[nb 5] By 1886, the external structure of the Palas (hall) was mostly finished.[30] In the same year, Ludwig had the first, wooden Marienbrücke over the Pöllat Gorge replaced by a steel construction.

 

Despite its size, Neuschwanstein did not have space for the royal court, but contained only the King's private lodging and servants' rooms. The court buildings served decorative, rather than residential purposes:[9] The palace was intended to serve King Ludwig II as a kind of inhabitable theatrical setting.[30] As a temple of friendship it was also dedicated to the life and work of Richard Wagner, who died in 1883 before he had set foot in the building.[31] In the end, Ludwig II lived in the palace for a total of only 172 days.[32]

 

Funding[edit]

 

Neuschwanstein in 1886

The King's wishes and demands expanded during the construction of Neuschwanstein, and so did the expenses. Drafts and estimated costs were revised repeatedly.[33] Initially a modest study was planned instead of the great throne hall, and projected guest rooms were struck from the drafts to make place for a Moorish Hall, which could not be realised due to lack of resources. Completion was originally projected for 1872, but deferred repeatedly.[33]

 

Neuschwanstein, the symbolic medieval knight's castle, was not King Ludwig II's only huge construction project. It was followed by the rococo style Lustschloss of Linderhof Palace and the baroque palace of Herrenchiemsee, a monument to the era of absolutism.[8] Linderhof, the smallest of the projects, was finished in 1886, and the other two remain incomplete. All three projects together drained his resources. The King paid for his construction projects by private means and from his civil list income. Contrary to frequent claims, the Bavarian treasury was not directly burdened by his buildings.[30][34] From 1871, Ludwig had an additional secret income in return for a political favour given to Otto von Bismarck.[nb 6]

 

The construction costs of Neuschwanstein in the King's lifetime amounted to 6.2 million marks (equivalent to 40 million 2009 €),[35] almost twice the initial cost estimate of 3.2 million marks.[34] As his private means were insufficient for his increasingly escalating construction projects, the King continuously opened new lines of credit.[36] In 1876, a court counselor was replaced after pointing out the danger of insolvency.[37] By 1883 he already owed 7 million marks,[38] and in spring 1884 and August 1885 debt conversions of 7.5 million marks and 6.5 million marks, respectively, became necessary.[36]

 

Even after his debts had reached 14 million marks, King Ludwig II insisted on continuation of his architectural projects; he threatened suicide if his creditors seized his palaces.[37] In early 1886, Ludwig asked his cabinet for a credit of 6 million marks, which was denied. In April, he followed Bismarck's advice to apply for the money to his parliament. In June the Bavarian government decided to depose the King, who was living at Neuschwanstein at the time. On 9 June he was incapacitated, and on 10 June he had the deposition commission arrested in the gatehouse.[39] In expectation of the commission, he alerted the gendarmerie and fire brigades of surrounding places for his protection.[36] A second commission headed by Bernhard von Gudden arrived on the next day, and the King was forced to leave the palace that night. Ludwig was put under the supervision of von Gudden. On 13 June, both died under mysterious circumstances in the shallow shore water of Lake Starnberg near Berg Castle.

 

Simplified completion[edit]

 

Neuschwanstein front façade and surroundings (photochrom print, c. 1900)

 

A 1901 postcard of Berg Castle

At the time of King Ludwig's death the palace was far from complete. He slept only 11 nights in the castle. The external structures of the Gatehouse and the Palas were mostly finished but the Rectangular Tower was still scaffolded. Work on the Bower had not started, but was completed in a simplified form by 1892 without the planned figures of the female saints. The Knights' House was also simplified. In King Ludwig's plans the columns in the Knights' House gallery were held as tree trunks and the capitals as the corresponding crowns. Only the foundations existed for the core piece of the palace complex: a keep of 90 metres (300 ft) height planned in the upper courtyard, resting on a three-nave chapel. This was not realised,[17] and a connection wing between the Gatehouse and the Bower saw the same fate.[40] Plans for a castle garden with terraces and a fountain west of the Palas were also abandoned after the King's death.

 

The interior of the royal living space in the palace was mostly completed in 1886; the lobbies and corridors were painted in a simpler style by 1888.[41] The Moorish Hall desired by the King (and planned below the Throne Hall) was not realised any more than the so-called Knights' Bath, which, modelled after the Knights' Bath in the Wartburg, was intended to render homage to the knights' cult as a medieval baptism bath. A Bride Chamber in the Bower (after a location in Lohengrin),[23] guest rooms in the first and second floor of the Palas and a great banquet hall were further abandoned projects.[33] In fact, a complete development of Neuschwanstein had never even been planned, and at the time of the King's death there was not a utilisation concept for numerous rooms.[29]

 

Neuschwanstein was still incomplete when Ludwig II died in 1886. The King never intended to make the palace accessible to the public.[30] No more than six weeks after the King's death, however, the Prince-Regent Luitpold ordered the palace opened to paying visitors. The administrators of King Ludwig's estate managed to balance the construction debts by 1899.[42] From then until World War I, Neuschwanstein was a stable and lucrative source of revenue for the House of Wittelsbach, indeed King Ludwig's castles were probably the single largest income source earned by the Bavarian royal family in the last years prior to 1914. To guarantee a smooth course of visits, some rooms and the court buildings were finished first. Initially the visitors were allowed to move freely in the palace, causing the furniture to wear quickly.

 

When Bavaria became a republic in 1918, the government socialised the civil list. The resulting dispute with the House of Wittelsbach led to a split in 1923: King Ludwig's palaces including Neuschwanstein fell to the state and are now managed by the Bavarian Palace Department, a division of the Bavarian finance ministry. Nearby Hohenschwangau Castle fell to the Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds, whose revenues go to the House of Wittelsbach.[43] The visitor numbers continued to rise, reaching 200,000 in 1939.[43]

 

World War II[edit]

Due to its secluded location, the palace survived the destruction of two World Wars. Until 1944, it served as a depot for Nazi plunder that was taken from France by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Institute for the Occupied Territories (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die besetzten Gebiete), a suborganisation of the Nazi Party.[44] The castle was used to catalogue the works of arts. (After World War II 39 photo albums were found in the palace documenting the scale of the art seizures. The albums are now stored in the United States National Archives.[45])

 

In April 1945, the SS considered blowing up the palace to prevent the building itself and the artwork it contained from falling to the enemy.[46] The plan was not realised by the SS-Gruppenführer who had been assigned the task, however, and at the end of the war the palace was surrendered undamaged to representatives of the Allied forces.[46] Thereafter the Bavarian archives used some of the rooms as a provisional store for salvaged archivalia, as the premises in Munich had been bombed.[47]

 

Architecture[edit]

The effect of the Neuschwanstein ensemble is highly stylistic, both externally and internally. The king's influence is apparent throughout, and he took a keen personal interest in the design and decoration. An example can be seen in his comments, or commands, regarding a mural depicting Lohengrin in the Palas; "His Majesty wishes that ... the ship be placed further from the shore, that Lohengrin's neck be less tilted, that the chain from the ship to the swan be of gold and not of roses, and finally that the style of the castle shall be kept medieval."[48]

 

The suite of rooms within the Palas contains the Throne Room, King Ludwig's suite, the Singers' Hall, and the Grotto. The interior and especially the throne room Byzantine-Arab construction resumes to the chapels and churches of the royal Sicilian Norman-Swabian period in Palermo related to the Kings of Germany House of Hohenstaufen. Throughout, the design pays homage to the German legends of Lohengrin, the Swan Knight. Hohenschwangau, where King Ludwig spent much of his youth, had decorations of these sagas. These themes were taken up in the operas of Richard Wagner. Many rooms bear a border depicting the various operas written by Wagner, including a theatre permanently featuring the set of one such play. Many of the interior rooms remain undecorated, with only 14 rooms finished before Ludwig's death. With the palace under construction at the King's death, one of the major features of the palace remained unbuilt. A massive keep, which would have formed the highest point and central focus of the ensemble, was planned for the middle of the upper courtyard but was never built, at the decision of the King's family. The foundation for the keep is visible in the upper courtyard.[49]

 

Neuschwanstein Castle consists of several individual structures which were erected over a length of 150 metres on the top of a cliff ridge. The elongate building is furnished with numerous towers, ornamental turrets, gables, balconies, pinnacles and sculptures. Following Romanesque style, most window openings are fashioned as bi- and triforia. Before the backdrop of the Tegelberg and the Pöllat Gorge in the south and the Alpine foothills with their lakes in the north, the ensemble of individual buildings provides varying picturesque views of the palace from all directions. It was designed as the romantic ideal of a knight's castle. Unlike "real" castles, whose building stock is in most cases the result of centuries of building activity, Neuschwanstein was planned from the inception as an intentionally asymmetric building, and erected in consecutive stages.[33] Typical attributes of a castle were included, but real fortifications – the most important feature of a medieval aristocratic estate – were dispensed with.

 

Exterior[edit]

 

Palace roof

 

Overview of palace complex; position of the planned chapel marked in yellow

 

View from location of unrealised chapel along upper courtyard level: Bower (left), palace front, and Knights' House (right)

The palace complex is entered through the symmetrical Gatehouse flanked by two stair towers. The eastward-pointing gate building is the only structure of the palace whose wall area is fashioned in high-contrast colours; the exterior walls are cased with red bricks, the court fronts with yellow limestone. The roof cornice is surrounded by pinnacles. The upper floor of the Gatehouse is surmounted by a crow-stepped gable and held King Ludwig II's first lodging at Neuschwanstein, from which he occasionally observed the building work before the hall was completed. The ground floors of the Gatehouse were intended to accommodate the stables.

 

The passage through the Gatehouse, crowned with the royal Bavarian coat of arms, leads directly into the courtyard. The courtyard has two levels, the lower one being defined to the east by the Gatehouse and to the north by the foundations of the so-called Rectangular Tower and by the gallery building. The southern end of the courtyard is open, imparting a view of the surrounding mountain scenery. At its western end, the courtyard is delimited by a bricked embankment, whose polygonally protracting bulge marks the choir of the originally projected chapel; this three-nave church, never built, was intended to form the base of a 90-metre (295-ft) keep, the planned centrepiece of the architectural ensemble. A flight of steps at the side gives access to the upper level.

  

Saint George

 

Gatehouse

Today, the foundation plan of the chapel-keep is marked out in the upper-courtyard pavement. The most striking structure of the upper court level is the so-called Rectangular Tower (45 metres or 148 feet). Like most of the court buildings, it mostly serves a decorative purpose as part of the ensemble. Its viewing platform provides a vast view over the Alpine foothills to the north. The northern end of the upper courtyard is defined by the so-called Knights' House. The three-storey building is connected to the Rectangular Tower and the Gatehouse by means of a continuous gallery fashioned with a blind arcade. From the point of view of castle romanticism the Knights' House was the abode of a stronghold's menfolk; at Neuschwanstein, estate and service rooms were envisioned here. The Bower, which complements the Knights' House as the "ladies' house" but was never used as such, defines the south side of the courtyard. Both structures together form the motif of the Antwerp Castle featuring in the first act of Lohengrin. Embedded in the pavement is the floor plan of the planned palace chapel.

 

The western end of the courtyard is delimited by the Palas (hall). It constitutes the real main and residential building of the castle and contains the King's stateroom and the servants' rooms. The Palas is a colossal five-story structure in the shape of two huge cuboids that are connected in a flat angle and covered by two adjacent high gable roofs. The building's shape follows the course of the ridge. In its angles there are two stair towers, the northern one surmounting the palace roof by several storeys with its height of 65 metres (213 ft). With their polymorphic roofs, both towers are reminiscent of the Château de Pierrefonds. The western Palas front supports a two-storey balcony with view on the Alpsee, while northwards a low chair tower and the conservatory protract from the main structure. The entire Palas is spangled with numerous decorative chimneys and ornamental turrets, the court front with colourful frescos. The court-side gable is crowned with a copper lion, the western (outward) gable with the likeness of a knight.

 

Interior[edit]

 

Floor plan of third floor, position of fourth-floor Hall of the Singers marked in red

 

Corridor

 

Throne Hall detail

Had it been completed, the palace would have had more than 200 interior rooms, including premises for guests and servants, as well as for service and logistics. Ultimately, no more than about 15 rooms and halls were finished.[50] In its lower stories the Palas accommodates administrative and servants' rooms and the rooms of today's palace administration. The King's staterooms are situated in the upper stories: The anterior structure accommodates the lodgings in the third floor, above them the Hall of the Singers. The upper floors of the west-facing posterior structure are filled almost completely by the Throne Hall. The total floor space of all floors amounts to nearly 6,000 square metres (65,000 sq ft).[50]

 

Neuschwanstein houses numerous significant interior rooms of German historicism. The palace was fitted with several of the latest technical innovations of the late 19th century.[22][51] Among other things it had a battery-powered bell system for the servants and telephone lines. The kitchen equipment included a Rumford oven that turned the skewer with its heat and so automatically adjusted the turning speed. The hot air was used for a calorifère central heating system.[52] Further novelties for the era were running warm water and toilets with automatic flushing.

 

The largest room of the palace by area is the Hall of the Singers, followed by the Throne Hall. The 27-by-10-metre (89 by 33 ft)[53] Hall of the Singers is located in the eastern, court-side wing of the Palas, in the fourth floor above the King's lodgings. It is designed as an amalgamation of two rooms of the Wartburg: The Hall of the Singers and the Ballroom. It was one of the King's favourite projects for his palace.[54] The rectangular room was decorated with themes from Lohengrin and Parzival. Its longer side is terminated by a gallery that is crowned by a tribune, modelled after the Wartburg. The eastern narrow side is terminated by a stage that is structured by arcades and known as the Sängerlaube. The Hall of the Singers was never designed for court festivities of the reclusive King.[citation needed] Rather, like the Throne Hall it served as a walkable monument in which the culture of knights and courtly love of the Middle Ages was represented. The first performance in this hall took place in 1933: A concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of Richard Wagner's death.[34]

 

The Throne Hall, 20 by 12 metres (66 by 39 ft),[55] is situated in the west wing of the Palas. With its height of 13 metres (43 ft)[55] it occupies the third and fourth floors. Julius Hofmann modelled it after the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche in the Munich Residenz. On three sides it is surrounded by colorful arcades, ending in an apse that was intended to hold King Ludwig's throne – which was never completed. The throne dais is surrounded by paintings of Jesus, the Twelve Apostles and six canonised kings. The mural paintings were created by Wilhelm Hauschild. The floor mosaic was completed after the king's death. The chandelier is fashioned after a Byzantine crown. The Throne Hall makes a sacral impression. Following the king's wish, it amalgamated the Grail Hall from Parzival with a symbol of the divine right of kings,[19] an incorporation of unrestricted sovereign power, which King Ludwig as the head of a constitutional monarchy no longer held. The union of the sacral and regal is emphasised by the portraits in the apse of six canonised Kings: Saint Louis of France, Saint Stephen of Hungary, Saint Edward the Confessor of England, Saint Wenceslaus of Bohemia, Saint Olaf of Norway and Saint Henry, Holy Roman Emperor.

 

Palace rooms (late 19th century Photochrom prints)

 

Hall of the Singers

  

Throne Hall

  

Drawing room

  

Study room

  

Dining room

  

Bedroom

Apart from the large ceremonial rooms several smaller rooms were created for use by King Ludwig II.[41] The royal lodging is on the third floor of the palace in the east wing of the Palas. It consists of eight rooms with living space and several smaller rooms. In spite of the gaudy décor, the living space with its moderate room size and its sofas and suites makes a relatively modern impression on today's visitors. King Ludwig II did not attach importance to representative requirements of former times, in which the life of a monarch was mostly public. The interior decoration with mural paintings, tapestry, furniture and other handicraft generally refers to the King's favourite themes: the grail legend, the works of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and their interpretation by Richard Wagner.

  

Grotto

The eastward drawing room is adorned with themes from the Lohengrin legend. The furniture – sofa, table, armchairs and seats in a northward alcove – is comfortable and homelike. Next to the drawing room is a little artificial grotto that forms the passage to the study. The unusual room, originally equipped with an artificial waterfall and a so-called rainbow machine, is connected to a little conservatory. Depicting the Hörselberg grotto, it relates to Wagner's Tannhäuser, as does the décor of the adjacent study. In the park of Linderhof Palace the King had installed a similar grotto of greater dimensions. Opposite the study follows the dining room, adorned with themes of courtly love. Since the kitchen in Neuschwanstein is situated three stories below the dining room, it was impossible to install a wishing table (dining table disappearing by means of a mechanism) as at Linderhof Palace and Herrenchiemsee. Instead, the dining room was connected with the kitchen by means of a service lift.

  

Kitchen

The bedroom adjacent to the dining room and the subsequent house chapel are the only rooms of the palace that remain in neo-Gothic style. The King's bedroom is dominated by a huge bed adorned with carvings. Fourteen carvers worked more than four years on the bed canopy with its numerous pinnacles and on the oaken panellings.[56] It was in this room that Ludwig was arrested in the night from 11 to 12 June 1886. The adjacent little house chapel is consecrated to Saint Louis, after whom the owner was named.

 

The servants' rooms in the basement of the Palas are quite scantily equipped with massive oak furniture. Besides one table and one cabinet there are two beds of 1.80 metres (5 ft 11 in) length each. Opaque glass windows separated the rooms from the corridor that connects the exterior stairs with the main stairs, so that the King could enter and leave unseen. The servants were not allowed to use the main stairs, but were restricted to the much narrower and steeper servants' stairs.

 

Tourism[edit]

Neuschwanstein welcomes almost 1.5 million visitors per year making it one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe.[3][57] For security reasons the palace can only be visited during a 35-minute guided tour, and no photography is allowed inside the castle. There are also special guided tours that focus on specific topics. In the peak season from June until August, Neuschwanstein has as many as 6,000 visitors per day, and guests without advance reservation may have to wait several hours. Those without tickets may still walk the long driveway from the base to the top of the mountain and visit the grounds and courtyard without a ticket, but will not be admitted to the interior of the castle. Ticket sales are processed exclusively via the ticket centre in Hohenschwangau.[58] As of 2008, the total number of visitors was more than 60 million.[2] In 2004, the revenues were booked as €6.5 million.[1]

 

In culture, art, and science[edit]

Neuschwanstein is a global symbol of the era of Romanticism. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies such as Helmut Käutner's Ludwig II (1955) and Luchino Visconti's Ludwig (1972), both biopics about the King; the musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and the war drama The Great Escape (1963). It served as the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle, Cameran Palace in Lucario and The Mystery of Mew, and later similar structures.[59][60] It is also visited by the character Grace Nakimura alongside Herrenchiemsee in the game The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (1996).

 

In 1977, Neuschwanstein Castle became the motif of a West German definitive stamp, and it appeared on a €2 commemorative coin for the German Bundesländer series in 2012. In 2007, it was a finalist in the widely publicised on-line selection of the New Seven Wonders of the World.[61]

 

A meteorite that reached Earth spectacularly on 6 April 2002, at the Austrian border near Hohenschwangau was named Neuschwanstein after the palace. Three fragments were found: Neuschwanstein I (1.75 kg (3.9 lb), found July 2002) and Neuschwanstein II (1.63 kg (3.6 lb), found May 2003) on the German side, and Neuschwanstein III (2.84 kg (6.3 lb), found June 2003) on the Austrian side near Reutte.[62] The meteorite is classified as an enstatite chondrite with unusually large proportions of pure iron (29%), enstatite and the extremely rare mineral sinoite (Si2N2O).[63]

 

World Heritage candidature[edit]

Since 2015, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig's Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee palaces are on the German tentative list for a future designation as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A joint candidature with other representative palaces of the romantic historicism is discussed (including Schwerin Palace, for example).[64]

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein_Castle

 

Synopsis[edit]

Background[edit]

In Eisenach, Germany, in the early 13th century, the landgraves of the Thuringian Valley ruled the area of Germany around the Wartburg. They were great patrons of the arts, particularly music and poetry, holding contests between the minnesingers at the Wartburg. Across the valley towered the Venusberg, in whose interior, according to legend, dwelt Holda, the Goddess of Spring. In time, Holda became identified with Venus, the pagan Goddess of Love, whose grotto was the home of sirens and nymphs. It was said that the Goddess would lure the Wartburg minnesinger-knights to her lair where her beauty would captivate them. The minnesinger-knight Heinrich von Ofterdingen, known as Tannhäuser, left the court of the Landgrave of Thuringia a year ago after a disagreement with his fellow knights. Since then he has been held as a willing captive through his love for Venus, in her grotto in the Venusberg.[27][incomplete short citation][17]

 

Overture[edit]

The substantial overture commences with the theme of the 'Pilgrim's Chorus' from Act 3, Scene 1, and also includes elements of the 'Venusberg' music from Act 1, Scene 1. The overture is frequently performed as a separate item in orchestral concerts, the first such performance having been given by Felix Mendelssohn conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in February 1846.[28] Wagner later gave the opinion that perhaps it would be better to cut the overture at opera performances to the Pilgrim's Chorus alone – "the remainder – in the fortunate event of its being understood – is, as a prelude to the drama, too much; in the opposite event, too little."[29] In the original, "Dresden" version, the overture comes to a traditional concert close (the version heard in concert performances). For the "Paris" version the music leads directly into the first scene, without pausing.

 

Act 1[edit]

The Venusberg, (the Hörselberg of "Frau Holda" in Thuringia, in the vicinity of Eisenach), and a valley between the Venusberg and Wartburg

 

Scene 1. Wagner's stage directions state: "The stage represents the interior of the Venusberg...In the distant background is a bluish lake; in it one sees the bathing figures of naiads; on its elevated banks are sirens. In the extreme left foreground lies Venus bearing the head of the half kneeling Tannhäuser in her lap. The whole cave is illuminated by rosy light. – A group of dancing nymphs appears, joined gradually by members of loving couples from the cave. – A train of Bacchantes comes from the background in wild dance... – The ever-wilder dance answers as in echo the Chorus of Sirens": "Naht euch dem Strande" (Come to the shore).[30] In the "Paris" version this orgiastic ballet is greatly extended.

 

Scene 2. Following the orgy of the ballet, Tannhäuser's desires are finally satiated, and he longs for freedom, spring and the sound of church bells. He takes up his harp and pays homage to the goddess in a passionate love song, "Dir töne Lob!" (Let your praises be heard), which he ends with an earnest plea to be allowed to depart, "Aus deinem Reiche, muss ich fliehn! O Königin! Göttin! Lass mich ziehn!" (From your kingdom must I flee! O Queen! O Goddess, set me free). Surprised, Venus offers him further charms, but eventually his repeated pleas arouse her fury and she curses his desire for salvation. (In the "Paris" version Venus's inveighing against Tannhäuser is significantly expanded).[31] Eventually Tannhäuser declares: "Mein Heil ruht in Maria" (My salvation rests in Mary). These words break the unholy spell. Venus and the Venusberg disappear.

 

Scene 3. According to Wagner's stage directions, "Tannhäuser...finds himself a beautiful valley… To the left one sees the Hörselberg. To the right...a mountain path from the direction of the Wartburg ...; in the foreground, led to by a low promontory, an image of the Virgin Mary – From above left one hears the ringing of herder’s bells; on a high projection sits a young shepherd with pipes facing the valley".[32] It is May. The shepherd sings an ode to the pagan goddess Holda, "Frau Holda kam aus dem Berg hervor" (Lady Holda, come forth from the hill). A hymn "Zu dir wall ich, mein Jesus Christ" (To thee I turn, my Jesus Christ) can be heard, as Pilgrims are seen approaching from the Wartburg, and the shepherd stops playing. The pilgrims pass Tannhäuser as he stands motionless, and then, praising God, ("Allmächt'ger, dir sei Preis!" (Almighty God, to you be praise!)) he sinks to his knees, overcome with gratitude. At that moment the sound of hunting-horns can be heard, drawing ever nearer.

 

Scene 4. The Landgrave's hunting party appears. The minnesingers (Wolfram, Walther, Biterolf, Reinmar, and Heinrich) recognise Tannhäuser, still deep in prayer, and greet him ("Heinrich! Heinrich! Seh ich recht?" (Heinrich! Heinrich! Do I see right?)) cautiously, recalling past feuds. They question him about his recent whereabouts, to which he gives vague answers. The minnesingers urge Tannhäuser to rejoin them, which he declines until Wolfram mentions Elisabeth, the Landgrave's niece, "Bleib bei Elisabeth!" (Stay, for Elisabeth!). Tannhäuser is visibly moved, "Elisabeth! O Macht des Himmels, rufst du den süssen Namen mir?" (Elisabeth! O might of heaven, do you cry out the sweet name to me?). The minnesingers explain to Tannhäuser how he had enchanted Elisabeth, but when he had left she withdrew from their company and lost interest in music, expressing the hope that his return will also bring her back, "Auf's Neue leuchte uns ihr Stern!" (Let her star once more shine upon us). Tannhäuser begs them to lead him to her, "Zu ihr! Zu ihr!" (To her! To her!). The rest of the hunting party gathers, blowing horns.

 

Act 2[edit]

 

The Wartburg in Eisenach

The minnesingers' hall in the Wartburg castle

 

Introduction – Scene 1. Elisabeth enters, joyfully. She sings, to the hall, of how she has been beset by sadness since Tannhäuser's departure but now lives in hope that his songs will revive both of them, "Dich, teure Halle, grüss ich wieder" (Dear hall, I greet thee once again). Wolfram leads Tannhäuser into the hall.

 

Scene 2. Tannhäuser flings himself at Elisabeth's feet. He exclaims "O Fürstin!" (O Princess!). At first, seemingly confused, she questions him about where he has been, which he avoids answering. She then greets him joyfully ("Ich preise dieses Wunder aus meines Herzens Tiefe!" (I praise this miracle from my heart's depths!)), and they join in a duet, "Gepriesen sei die Stunde" (Praise be to this hour). Tannhäuser then leaves with Wolfram.

 

Scene 3. The Landgrave enters, and he and Elisabeth embrace. The Landgrave sings of his joy, "Dich treff ich hier in dieser Halle" (Do I find you in this hall) at her recovery and announces the upcoming song contest, at which she will preside, "dass du des Festes Fürstin seist" (that you will be the Princess of the Festival).

 

Scene 4 and Sängerkrieg (Song Contest). Elisabeth and the Landgrave watch the guests arrive. The guests assemble greeting the Landgrave and singing "Freudig begrüssen wir edle Halle" (With joy we greet the noble hall), take their places in a semicircle, with Elisabeth and the Landgrave in the seats of honour in the foreground. The Landgrave announces the contest and the theme, which shall be "Könnt ihr der Liebe Wesen mir ergründen?" (Can you explain the nature of Love?), and that the prize will be whatever the winner asks of Elisabeth. The knights place their names in a cup from which Elisabeth draws the first singer, Wolfram. Wolfram sings a trite song of courtly love and is applauded, but Tannhäuser chides him for his lack of passion. There is consternation, and once again Elisabeth appears confused, torn between rapture and anxiety. Biterolf accuses him of blasphemy and speaks of "Frauenehr und hohe Tugend" (women's virtue and honour). The knights draw their swords as Tannhäuser mocks Biterolf, but the Landgrave intervenes to restore order. However, Tannhäuser, as if in a trance, rises to his feet and sings a song of ecstatic love to Venus, "Dir Göttin der Liebe, soll mein Lied ertönen" (To thee, Goddess of Love, should my song resound). There is general horror as it is realised he has been in the Venusberg; the women, apart from Elisabeth, flee. She appears pale and shocked, while the knights and the Landgrave gather together and condemn Tannhäuser to death. Only Elisabeth, shielding him with her body, saves him, "Haltet ein!" (Stop!). She states that God's will is that a sinner shall achieve salvation through atonement. Tannhäuser collapses as all hail Elisabeth as an angel, "Ein Engel stieg aus lichtem Äther" (An angel rose out of the bright ether). He promises to seek atonement, the Landgrave exiles him and orders him to join another younger band of pilgrims then assembling. All depart, crying Nach Rom! (To Rome!).

 

In the "Paris" version, the song contest is somewhat shortened, possibly because of the lack of suitable soloists for the Paris production.[citation needed]

 

Act 3[edit]

The valley of the Wartburg, in autumn. Elisabeth is kneeling, praying before the Virgin as Wolfram comes down the path and notices her

 

Scene 1. Orchestral music describes the pilgrimage of Tannhäuser. It is evening. Wolfram muses on Elisabeth's sorrow during Tannhäuser's second absence, "Wohl wusst' ich hier sie im Gebet zu finden" (I knew well I might find her here in prayer) and her longing for the return of the pilgrims, and expresses concerns that he may not have been absolved. As he does so he hears a pilgrims' prayer in the distance, "Beglückt darf nun dich, O Heimat, ich schauen" (Joyfully may I now you, O homeland, behold). Elisabeth rises and she and Wolfram listen to the hymn, watching the pilgrims approach and pass by. She anxiously searches the procession, but in vain, realising sorrowfully he is not amongst them, "Er kehret nicht züruck!" (He has not returned). She again kneels with a prayer to the Virgin that appears to foretell her death, "Allmächt'ge Jungfrau! Hör mein Flehen" (Almighty Virgin, hear my plea!). On rising she sees Wolfram but motions him not to speak. He offers to escort her back to the Wartburg, but she again motions him to be still, and gestures that she is grateful for his devotion but her path leads to heaven. She slowly makes her way up the path alone.

 

Scene 2. Wolfram, left alone as darkness draws on and the stars appear, begins to play and sings a hymn to the evening star that also hints at Elisabeth's approaching death, "Wie Todesahnung Dämmrung deckt die Lande...O du mein holder Abendstern" (Like a premonition of death the twilight shrouds the earth... O thou my fair evening star).

 

Scene 3. It is now night. Tannhäuser appears, ragged, pale and haggard, walking feebly leaning on his staff. Wolfram suddenly recognises Tannhäuser, and startled challenges him, since he is exiled. To Wolfram's horror, Tannhäuser explains he is once again seeking the company of Venus. Wolfram tries to restrain him, at the same time expressing compassion and begging him to tell the story of his pilgrimage. Tannhäuser urges Wolfram to listen to his story, "Nun denn, hör an! Du, Wolfram, du sollst es erfahren" (Now then, listen! You, Wolfram, shall learn all that has passed). Tannhäuser sings of his penitence and suffering, all the time thinking of Elisabeth's gesture and pain, "Inbrunst im Herzen, wie kein Büsser noch" (With a flame in my heart, such as no penitent has known). He explains how he reached Rome, and the "Heiligtumes Schwelle" (Holy shrine), and witnessed thousands of pilgrims being absolved. Finally he approaches "ihn, durch den sich Gott verkündigt'" (he, through whom God speaks)[a] and tells his story. However, rather than finding absolution, he is cursed, "bist nun ewig du verdammt!" (you are forever damned!), and is told by the pope that "Wie dieser Stab in meiner Hand, nie mehr sich schmückt mit frischem Grün, kann aus der Hölle heissem Brand, Erlösung nimmer dir erblühn!" (As this staff in my hand, no more shall bear fresh leaves, from the hot fires of hell, salvation never shall bloom for thee). Whereupon, absolutely crushed, he fled, seeking his former source of bliss.

 

Having completed his tale, Tannhäuser calls out to Venus to take him back, "Zu dir, Frau Venus, kehr ich wieder" (To you, Lady Venus, I return). The two men struggle as a faint image of dancing becomes apparent. As Tannhäuser repeatedly calls on Venus, she suddenly appears and welcomes him back, "Willkommen, ungetreuer Mann!" (Welcome, faithless man!). As Venus continues to beckon, "Zu mir! Zu mir!" (To me!, To me!), in desperation, Wolfram suddenly remembers there is one word that can change Tannhäuser's heart, and exclaims "Elisabeth!" Tannhäuser, as if frozen in time, repeats the name. As he does so, torches are seen, and a funeral hymn is heard approaching, "Der Seele Heil, die nun entflohn" (Hail, the soul that now is flown). Wolfram realises it must be Elisabeth's body that is being borne, and that in her death lies Tannhäuser's redemption, "Heinrich, du bist erlöst!" (Heinrich, you are saved). Venus cries out, "Weh! Mir verloren" (Alas! Lost to me!) and vanishes with her kingdom. As dawn breaks the procession appears bearing Elisabeth's body on a bier. Wolfram beckons to them to set it down, and as Tannhäuser bends over the body uttering, "Heilige Elisabeth, bitte für mich!" (Holy Elisabeth!, pray for me!) he dies. As the growing light bathes the scene the younger pilgrims arrive bearing the pope's staff sprouting new leaves, and proclaiming a miracle, "Heil! Heil! Der Gnade Wunder Heil!" (Hail!, Hail! To this miracle of grace, Hail!). All then sing "Der Gnade Heil ist dem Büsser beschieden, er geht nun ein in der Seligen Frieden!" (The Holy Grace of God is to the penitent given, who now enters into the joy of Heaven!).[27][incomplete short citation][25][30]

 

After Wagner[edit]

Productions[edit]

Wagner died in 1883. The first production of the opera at Wagner's Bayreuth Festspielhaus (originally constructed for the performance of his Ring Cycle), was undertaken under the supervision of Cosima in 1891, and adhered closely to the 'Vienna' version. Later performances at Bayreuth included one conducted by Richard Strauss (1894), and one where the Bacchanal was choreographed by Isadora Duncan (1904).[33] Duncan envisaged the Bacchanal as a fantasy of Tannhäuser's fevered brain, as Wagner had written to Mathilde Wesendonck in 1860.[34] Arturo Toscanini conducted the opera at Bayreuth in the 1930/31 season.[35][incomplete short citation]

 

In the words of the Wagner scholar Thomas S. Grey, "The Bacchanal remained a defining focus of many ...productions, as a proving ground for changing conceptions of the psychosexual symbolism of the Venusberg." Productions including those of Götz Friedrich at Bayreuth (1972) and Otto Schenk at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, (1977) "routinely offer quantities of simulated copulation and post-coital langour, for which the Paris score offers ample encouragement".[33] A Munich production (1994) included as part of Tannhäuser's fantasies "creatures out of Hieronymus Bosch crawl[ing] around the oblivious protagonist".[36]

 

The Operabase website indicates that in the two calendar years 2014/2015, there were 163 performances of 41 productions of Tannhäuser in 30 cities throughout the world.[37]

 

Literature[edit]

Many scholars and writers on opera have advanced theories to explain the motives and behaviour of the characters,[9] including Jungian psychoanalysis,[1] in particular as regards Tannhäuser's apparently self-destructive behaviour. In 2014 an analysis suggested that his apparently inconsistent behaviour, when analysed by game theory, is actually consistent with a redemption strategy. Only by public disclosure can Tannhäuser force a resolution of his inner conflict.[38]

Major art installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London, marking one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies will progressively fill the Tower's famous moat over the summer. Each poppy represents a British military fatality during the war.

www.grahamcustance.com

Hope you enjoyed my whole photographic journey.

  

Naggar

(See google map : www.google.co.in/maps/@32.1120521,77.1645892,15z)

  

Situated on the east side of the Kullu Valley and on the left bank of river Beas at an altitude of 1851m, Naggar - an ancient town commands extensive views, especially to the North West of the valley. It is perhaps the most charming village in the valley today. Naggar was the former capital of Kullu. It was founded by Raja Visudhpal and continued as a headquarters of the State until the capital was transferred to Sultanpur (Kullu) by Jagat Singh in 1460 A.D. Today this ancient and beautiful Palace is a popular tourist spot.

It's an easy day trip from Manali. It is 26 km from Kulu (main town) and 22 km from Manali. For interesting sights and some good guesthouses and restaurants, it's a fine place for a few days' relaxing stay.

Russian painter and explorer Nicholas Roerich (Nikolai Rerikh) liked it so much he settled here in the early 20th century.

  

Naggar Castle :

 

Naggar castle was built by the Raja Sidh Singh in the 16th century and was used as the Royal residence and latter as the state head quarters of the kingdom till the middle of the 17th century. Stones used in the construction of the fort were brought fro the fort situated on the other side of the Naggar. The Castle was converted into a rest house, a hundred year back and in 1978 this ancient building was handed over to HPTDC to run as a heritage hotel. It has a flavour of authentic western Himalayan architecture. The major attraction is the small wooden temple inside the castle called Jagati Patt temple. Now the castle has been converted into the Tourism Department Hotel. It provides the magnificent view of the Kullu valley.

 

Temples in Naggar Village :

Tourists can make a visit to the beautiful Gauri Shankar mandir. The temple was built in the 11th and 12th century and according to the historical evidences it is the last great monuments of the Gurjara – Pratihara traditions. Apart from the Gauri Shankar mandir there are other famous temples in the area namely Vishnu, Chatar Bhuj temple, Tripura Sundri Devi, Tripura Sundari and Lord Krishna. Rich in wood and stone carvings these temples are constructed in the Shikhara and Pagoda style.

 

Roerich art gallery :

Another most famous attraction in the Naggar village is the Roerich art gallery, which houses the paintings of Nicholas Roerich as well as his scriptures.

 

Trekking : The valley is a nucleus to several trek routes. Some major ones are over the Chanderkhani Pass to Malana village, over the Jalori Pass to Shimla, and over the Pin Parvati Pass to Sarahan. The river Beas offers excellent opportunities for white water rafting.

 

Naggar Fairs and Festivals :

You can also be a part of the famous Naggar fair held at the amphitheater site in the month of April. Local villagers set up their shop on the fair site. All the families of the village and tourists from outside make a visit to this fair.

  

Nicholas Roerich

  

Nicholas Roerich was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, perceived by some in Russia as an enlightener, philosopher, and public figure, who in his youth was influenced by a movement in Russian society around the occult. He was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices and his paintings are said to have hypnotic expression.

Born in Saint Petersburg, he lived in various places around the world until his death in Naggar. Trained as an artist and a lawyer, his main interests were literature, philosophy, archaeology, and especially art. Roerich was a dedicated activist for the cause of preserving art and architecture during times of war. He earned several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize long list. The so-called Roerich Pact was signed into law by the United States and most nations of the Pan-American Union during April 1935.

  

Guests from Overseas, 1901 (Varangians in Rus').

Raised in late 19th century St. Petersburg, Roerich matriculated simultaneously at St. Petersburg University and the Imperial Academy of Arts during 1893. He received the title of "artist" during 1897 and a degree in law the next year. He found early employment with the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, whose school he directed from 1906 to 1917. Despite early tensions with the group, he became a member of Sergei Diaghilev's "World of Art" society; he was president of the society from 1910 to 1916.

Artistically, he became known as his generation's most talented painter of Russia's ancient past, a topic that was compatible with his lifelong interest in archaeology. He also succeeded as a stage designer, achieving his greatest fame as one of the designers for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. His best-known designs were for Borodin's Prince Igor (1909 and later productions), and costumes and set for The Rite of Spring (1913), composed by Igor Stravinsky.

Another of Roerich's passions was architecture. His acclaimed publication "Architectural Studies" (1904–1905) – the dozens of paintings he completed of fortresses, monasteries, churches, and other monuments during two long trips through Russia—- inspired his decades-long career as an activist on behalf of artistic and architectural preservation.

During the first decade of the 1900s and in the early 1910s, Roerich, largely due to the influence of his wife Helena, developed an interest in eastern religions, as well as alternative (to Christianity) belief systems such as Theosophy. Both Roerichs became avid readers of the Vedantist essays of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda, the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, and the Bhagavad Gita. The Roerichs' commitment to occult mysticism increased steadily. It was especially intense during World War I and the Russian revolutions of 1917, to which the couple, like many Russian intellectuals, accorded apocalyptic significance. The influence of Theosophy, Vedanta, Buddhism, and other mystical topics can be detected not only in many of his paintings, but in the many short stories and poems Roerich wrote before and after the 1917 revolutions, including the Flowers of Morya cycle, begun during 1907 and completed 1921.

 

Asian Expedition (1925–1929)

Roerich's family. (Kullu valley, India).

After leaving New York, the Roerichs – together with their son George and six friends – began the five-year-long 'Roerich Asian Expedition' that, in Roerich's own words: "started from Sikkim through Punjab, Kashmir, Ladakh, the Karakoram Mountains, Khotan, Kashgar, Qara Shar, Urumchi, Irtysh, the Altai Mountains, the Oyrot region of Mongolia, the Central Gobi, Kansu, Tsaidam, and Tibet" with a detour through Siberia to Moscow during 1926. Roerichs' Asian expedition attracted attention from the foreign services and intelligence agencies of the USSR, the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. In fact, prior to this expedition, Roerich himself solicited help of Soviet government and Bolshevik secret police to assist him in his expedition, promising in return to monitor British activities in the area, but received only a lukewarm response from Meer Trilisser, chief of the Soviet foreign intelligence at that time. On the one hand, the Bolsheviks assisted him with logistics when Roerich was traveling through Siberia and Mongolia. Yet, on the other hand, they refused to totally commit themselves to his reckless utopian project of the Sacred Union of the East – a spiritual utopia that boiled down to Roerich ambitious attempts to stir the Buddhist masses of inner Asia to create a highly spiritual cooperative commonwealth under the patronage of Bolshevik Russia. The official mission of this expedition, as Roerich put it, was to act as the embassy of Western Buddhism to Tibet. However, for Western media his expedition was presented as an artistic and scientific enterprise; Between the summer of 1927 and June 1928 the expedition was thought to be lost, since communication with them ceased for a year. They had been attacked in Tibet and only the "superiority of our firearms prevented bloodshed... In spite of our having Tibet passports, the expedition was forcibly stopped by Tibetan authorities." The expedition was detained by the government for five months, and forced to live in tents in sub-zero conditions and to subsist on meagre rations. Five men of the expedition died during this time. During March 1928 they were allowed to leave Tibet, and trekked south to settle in India, where they initiated a research center, the Himalayan Research Institute.

During 1929 Nicholas Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the University of Paris. He received two more nominations during 1932 and 1935. His concern for peace resulted in his creation of the Pax Cultura, the "Red Cross" of art and culture. His work for this cause also resulted in the United States and the twenty other nations of the Pan-American Union signing the Roerich Pact on April 15, 1935 at the White House. The Roerich Pact is an early international instrument protecting cultural property.

  

Roerich was in India during the Second World War, where he painted Russian epic heroic and saintly themes, including: Alexander Nevsky, The Fight of Mstislav and Rededia and Boris and Gleb.[12]

During 1942, Roerich received Jawaharlal Nehru at his house in Kullu and Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi.Together they discussed the fate of the new world: "We spoke about Indian-Russian cultural association, – Roerich wrote, – it is time to think about useful and creative cooperation ...”.

Gandhi would later recall about several days spent together with Roerich's family: "That was a memorable visit to a surprising and gifted family where each member was a remarkable figure in himself, with a well-defined range of interests." ..."Roerich himself stays in my memory. He was a man with extensive

Roerich died on December 13, 1947.

  

Cultural legacy

Vice President of the United States Henry A. Wallace was a frequent correspondent and sometime advocate of Nicholas Roerich's teachings. Wallace became attracted to the idea of Sacred Union of the East, a spiritual and geopolitical utopia Nicholas and Helena Roerich contemplated to establish in the heart of Asia. Based on spiritual ideas, which the Roerichs claimed they received from otherworld masters, this utopia was to show the humankind a blueprint of ideal society. As the US Secretary of Agriculture, Wallace became so much interested in the whole project that he decided to sponsor the second Roerich expedition to Asia in 1933–1934. In the meantime, Helena Roerich was corresponding with US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was intrigued by her "fiery letters." The whole project ended in a disaster and resulted in energetic efforts by Wallace and FDR to cut their ties with the Roerichs. The whole incident later partially resurfaced and became controversial when Wallace campaigned for President during 1948 and portions of the correspondence were printed by columnist Westbrook Pegler, becoming known as the Guru Letters,[16]

 

The minor planet 4426 Roerich in Solar System

Presently, the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City is a major institution for Roerich's artistic work. Numerous Roerich societies continue to promote his theosophical teachings worldwide. His paintings can be seen in several museums including the Roerich Department of the State Museum of Oriental Arts in Moscow; the Roerich Museum at the International Centre of the Roerichs in Moscow; the Russian State Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; a collection in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; a collection in the Art Museum in Novosibirsk, Russia; an important collection in the National Gallery for Foreign Art in Sofia, Bulgaria; a collection in the Art Museum in Nizhny Novgorod Russia; National Museum of Serbia ; the Roerich Hall Estate in Nagar village in Kullu Valley, India; the Sree Chitra Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram, India; in various art museums in India; and a selection featuring several of his larger works in The Latvian National Museum of Art.

The minor planet 4426 Roerich in the Solar System was named in honor of Roerich.

During June 2013 during Russian Art Week in London, Roerich's Madonna Laboris sold at auction at Bonhams shop for £7,881,250 inc. buyer's premium, making it the most valuable painting ever sold at a Russian art auction.

 

Source : Wikipedia and others.

 

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies, each poppy represents a British military fatality during the war.

 

EXPLORED November 9th 2014

Visual artist and stage designer Mathilde Morant from France is now traveling (and sleeping) in her 18 years old Toyota Rav on her Viti project, where she is aiming to draw every lighthouse in Iceland. She has already covered half of the country and was at Sauðanes lighthouse near Siglufjörður today. Mathilde has been living in Iceland for two years and has been working at theaters and on movies as well as doing other tasks.

 

Franska listakonan Mathilde Morant er nú á ferð um landið til að mála/teikna sem flesta af þeim rúmlega eitthundrað vitum sem eru við strendur landsins. Hún byrjaði á verkefninu fyrir rúmu ári og er nú á hringferð, búin að fara um vesturhluta landsins og var í morgun á Sauðanesvita við Siglufjörð. Mathilde ferðast um og gistir í 18 ára gamalli Toyotu Rav sem merkt er “Viti Project”. Hún er lærður sviðshönnuður, hefur búið hér á landi í tvö ár og m.a. unnið í Þjóðleikshúsinu og Borgarleikhúsinu auk þess sem hún vann við kvikmyndina Lof mér að falla. Visual artist and stage designer Mathilde Morant from France is now traveling (and sleeping) in her 18 years old Toyota Rav on her Viti project, where she is aiming to draw every lighthouse in Iceland. She has already covered half of the country and was at Sauðanes lighthouse near Siglufjörður today. Mathilde has been living in Iceland for two years and has been working at theaters and on movies as well as doing other tasks.

A high-value stamp from 1991 showing Drottningholm palace, home to the Royal family.

 

Piotr Jerzy Naszarkowski is a Polish engraver. He has been living in Sweden since 1989. He has engraved on many supports: book illustrations, banknotes, postage stamps, etc.

 

Born in 1952 in Warsaw, Poland, he graduated in 1980 from the Fine Art school of Warsaw. From 1978 to 1980, he worked as stage designer for the Guliwer puppet theatre. In 1980 he started working for the Polish television. He quit it next year with another artists to protest the proclamation of the martial law after Solidarność union's strike.

 

Naszarkowski found a place at the Polish Banknote Printing House where he was taught the art of engraving on copper and steel. He became well-known when his ex-libris Lucas Cranach was printed in Belgium.

 

His first engraved postage stamp was issued in 1985. His 99th and 100th stamps were issued in September 2005 for the Greta Garbo joint issue between Sweden and the United States.

 

Source: Wikipedia

 

Catalog numbers:

Facit # 1679

Scott # 1877

 

Also a photo of mine of the same palace.

Tower of London "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red" marking one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies will progressively fill the Tower's famous moat over the summer. Each poppy represents a British military fatality during the war.

The Tower Of London remembers the First World War 1914-1918

 

The major art installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London, marked one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies progressively filled the Tower's famous moat between 17 July and 11 November 2014. Each poppy represented a British military fatality during the war.

 

The poppies encircled the iconic landmark, creating not only a spectacular display visible from all around the Tower but also a location for personal reflection. The scale of the installation was intended to reflect the magnitude of such an important centenary and create a powerful visual commemoration.

 

All of the poppies that made up the installation were sold, raising millions of pounds which were shared equally amongst six service charities.

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture,[2][3] the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

 

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.[4][5][6][7]

 

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortune, making him one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

The art installation "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red" at the Tower of London, marks one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies will progressively fill the Tower's famous moat over the summer. Each poppy represents a British military fatality during the war.

 

The poppies will encircle the iconic landmark, creating not only a spectacular display visible from all around the Tower but also a location for personal reflection. The scale of the installation intends to reflect the magnitude of such an important centenary creating a powerful visual commemoration.

Cricoteka‚ the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor‚ is one of these recently opened contemporary cultural institutions and a powerful reminder that conservative Krakow once had a spectacular portfolio of innovative artists. Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990) called himself a “total artist”‚ and he was certainly an all rounder:painter‚ poet‚ actor‚ “happener”‚ stage designer, theatre reformer‚ he was to Polish art what Joseph Beuys was to German art and Andy Warhol to American art.

  

Situated on the banks of the Vistula‚ just above the embankment wall‚ Cricoteka does not try to blend in with its neighbourhood nor gently catch the eye of passers-by. Indeed‚ it stands out like a strange theatrical prop that’s landed on the riverbank as part of a performance. One prerequisite of the original architectural competition was that an existing power station on the site should be adapted and integrated with the new structure. So the architects designed their new building to stretch over the old‚ like a table on two legs‚ with a hole cut through it for the latter’s chimney to poke through. This design was inspired both by Kantor’s drawing of a bent man carrying a table on his back and his idea of an object or work of art integrated with a human body – a so-called “bio-object”. As such it reflects the architects’ ambitions to draw on the artist’s oeuvre in the design of the building, rather than it just being a reflection of formal or fashionable architectural gymnastics dictated by the confines of a narrow plot. They wanted the building to be an interpretation of Kantor’s artistic programme‚ in which novelty‚ bold image‚ experiment‚ risk‚ and the invitation to take part in a spectacle‚ all play a prominent role.

  

www.uncubemagazine.com/blog/15010779

 

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Kantor

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture,[2][3] the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

 

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.[4][5][6][7]

 

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortune, making him one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

Artist Paul Cummins with setting by stage designer Tom Piper.

In commemoration of British and Colonial servicemen who lost their lives in World War I. Find out more about this moving installation here

Siponto ,Manfredonia, Foggia, Puglia, Italia © 2016 All rights reserved by Michele Masiero

 

FotoSketcher: lively

Nikon coolpix p 7100

  

Il Parco archeologico di Siponto, è situato a pochi chilometri dalla città di Manfredonia in Puglia.

Nell’area archeologica accanto alla chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore di origine medievale, sono presenti i resti di una basilica paleocristiana del IV sec. d.C. a tre navate con abside centrale e pavimento a mosaico. Al fine di valorizzare tutta l’area archeologica, che comprende anche il restauro del complesso della chiesa di San Leonardo posto nelle vicinanze, e preservare i resti archeologici della basilica paleocristiana, il ministero dei beni culturali e la sopraintendenza archeologica della Puglia utilizzando fondi europei , ha approvato e finanziato il progetto dello scultore lombardo Edoardo Tresoldi.L’opera d’arte a carattere permanente di Edoardo Tresoldi, ricostruisce sui resti archeologici della basilica paleocristiana , i volumi in scala reale della basilica stessa sino ad una altezza di 14 metri ,utilizzando reti in metallo galvanizzato trasparenti. L’Opera d’arte,unica al mondo, ha richiesto l’utilizzo di sette tonnellate di rete metallica leggera e trasparente , e un lavoro protrattosi per circa tre mesi di una equipe di una trentina di persone tra cui archeologi, ingegneri e architetti e il gruppo di giovani creativi che collaborano con Tresoldi da diversi anni.

  

Edoardo Tresoldi

  

Scultore, pittore e scenografo, Edoardo Tresoldi ha un approccio artistico e di ricerca creativa e libera. Studia design e arti visive all'istituto d'arte di Monza. Nel 2009 si trasferisce a Roma e inizia a lavorare come pittore di scena per vari progetti cinematografici. La scenografia diventa un laboratorio di sperimentazione. Dal 2013 realizza sculture ed installazioni in rete metallica. Edoardo ha 28 anni, è di Cambiago, in provincia di Milano ed è considerato uno dei talenti della street art italiana. Si fa aiutare da una squadra in cui l’età media è 25 anni e anche i responsabili di Sovrintendenze ed Ente Paesaggistici, hanno riconosciuto il valore delle sue opere. A lui sono state affidati luoghi importanti, come le installazioni alla Vigna di Leonardo a Milano e alla Basilica di Siponto a Manfredonia.

  

.The Archaeological Park of Siponto, is located a few kilometers from the town of Manfredonia in the Puglia region. In the archaeological site next to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore of medieval origin, there are the remains of a paleoChristian basilica of the fourth century. after Christ, with three naves and central apse and mosaic floor. In order to enhance the whole archaeological area, which also includes the restoration of the complex of the church of San Leonardo nearby, and preserve the archaeological remains of an early Christian basilica, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and the archaeological superintendence of Puglia using European funds, have approved and funded the project the Lombard sculptor Edoardo Tresoldi. The work of art, unique in the world, a permanent nature by Edoardo Tresoldi, reconstructs on the archaeological ruins of the paleoChristian basilica, the full-scale real volumes of the basilica itself up to a height of 14 meters, using wire mesh galvanized transparent.The Art work required the use of seven tons of transparent metal mesh, and a job that lasted for about three months in a team of thirty people including archaeologists, engineers and architects and the group of young creatives that cooperate with Tresoldi from several years.

 

Edoardo Tresoldi

 

Sculptor, painter and stage designer, Edoardo Tresoldi has an artistic and creative research approach and free. He has studied design and visual arts at the Institute of Art of Monza. In 2009 he moved to Rome and began working as a scene painter for various film projects. The scenery becomes a testing laboratory. From 2013 makes sculptures and installations made of wire mesh. Edoardo is 28 years old, is born at Cambasio, in the province of Milan and is considered one of the talents of the Italian street art. It was helped by a team where the average age is 25 years. To him they were

  

From facebook and Dailybest

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture,[2][3] the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

 

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.[4][5][6][7]

 

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortune, making him one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

The Tower of London Poppies an evolving installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies will progressively fill the Tower’s famous moat.

Five robotic avatars moving on the stage in different formations, unite and fan out. The light changes, shadows show up in the background. A fantastic staging of the biomechanics of Vsevolod Meyerhold realized by Jo Ellsmere. A must see:

 

I quote Ziki Questi: (zikiquesti.blogspot.de):

 

"It's Jo Ellsmere who steals the show. Still images cannot begin to convey what she has created, and even the brief video above will only provide a glimpse. By carefully scripting five avatars in elegant synchronized movement, she has not only explored biomechanics — a system of actor training introduced in the early 1920s by Russian actor, director and teacher, Vsevolod Meyerhold — she has created a stunning display of technical virtuosity with profound implications for dance, performance art and choreography in virtual spaces. Her human forms are at times one — although the overlapping textures remind us of the multiplicity within — and then unfold into five forms, whether slowly rippling apart or simply diverging, with breathtaking attention to detail and timing."

 

link to the destination

  

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From the LEA announcement:

 

"On Sunday the 27th of April at 1pm second life time, a collaborative Second Life work will open which is part of a larger exhibition being held in the main exhibition hall of Moscow’s Manege Museum. Peter Greenaway (UK) and Saskia Boddeke/Rose Borchovski (Holland) supported by the British Council have created a unique experience fusing a variety of visual forms. The virtual world exhibition is featured on four interactive viewing stations within the Museum and was created by Alpha Auer (Turkey), Bryn Oh (Canada), Caer Balogh (USA), Eupalinos Ugajin, Jo Ellsmere (USA), Nessuno Myoo (Italy) and Soror Nishi (UK). The virtual world region is provided by the Linden Endowment for the Arts.

 

More than 1,000 artworks, borrowed from galleries and private collections around the world, are being displayed as part of the exhibit. The exhibition will spread across 5000 square metres. It will include polyscreen installations made with the help of the most up-to-date projection, light and sound equipment. It will represent a new approach to the history of art, combining film and painting, animation and 3D virtual world technology helping to create a unified atmospheric work, drawing the viewer into the space of Russian avant-garde.

 

Constructivism was an artistic and architectural movement in Russia from 1914 to 1924 which dismissed "pure" art in favour of art used as an instrument for social purposes, namely, the construction of the socialist system. The term Construction Art was first used as a derisive term by the painter Kazimir Malevich to describe the work of artist/graphic designer Alexander Rodchenko in 1917, first appearing as a positive term in Naum Gabo's Realistic Manifesto of 1920. Kazimir Malevich also worked in the constructivist style, though he is better known for his earlier suprematism. Some other important artists and designers of the movement are El Lissitzky (art, architecture and graphic design), Sergei Eisenstein (cinema), Wassily Kandinsky (artist - painter), Valdimir Tatlin (artist/architect), Lyubov Popova (artist/stage designer), Alexander Vesnin (architect) and Varvara Stepanova (artist/designer).“

 

Read and see more at: lindenarts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/opening-tomorrow-golden...

  

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The "Somewhere in sl" picture series (or "The Adventures of WuWai in Second Life") is my guide and bookmark folder to wonderful, artful, curious or in other way remarkably sims of second life with travel guide WuWai Chun.

 

(More pictures of WuWai's adventures: Follow this link)

 

You can find and buy some of the pictures inworld at my “Gallery"

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The Alpsee (in English: "Alp Lake") in the immediate vicinity of both Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castle at mucky weather, Swabia, Bavaria, Germany

 

Some background information:

 

The Alpsee, which you can see on this picture, is a lake in the Ostallgäu, located about 4 kilometres southeast of the town of Füssen. It has a shoreline of about five kilometres (3.1 miles) and a depth of up to 62 metres. The German-Austrian border is situated just 450 metres south of the Alpsee. Also south of the Alpsee there’s a spring that feeds the lake. A little subsurface stream drains out of the Alpsee at the north shore, feeding the smaller Schwansee 400 metres north of the Alpsee as well.

 

Neuschwanstein Castle and neighbouring Hohenschwangau Castle are definitely one of the highest attended visitor attractions throughout Germany. While Hohenschwangau Castle is visited by more than 300,000 visitors from all over the world each year, Neuschwanstein Castle is even visited by 1.3 million people annually. Hence, both Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castle have really become a big business. The tourist infrastructure around both castles leaves no touristic wishes to be desired and hence is well-prepared for the rush of visitors that arrives here every day. Well, compulsory visit made, but I for one definitely prefer the hidden gems.

 

Probably the most spectacular and also most famous view of Neuschwanstein Castle is the one from the so-called Marienbrücke (in English "Mary’s Bridge") overlooking both palace and the surrounding landscape. The Marienbrücke crosses Poellat Gorge right behind Neuschwanstein Castle in a distance of about 100 metres. Usually it’s crowded with tourists and visitors have to queue up to be able to cross the bridge and get a view of the building from there. However, at the time we were there, the Marienbrücke was closed due to problems with its statics. The necessary construction works won’t be completed before autumn 2022, just in case you plan a visit.

 

Neuschwanstein Castle is a 19th-century historicist palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near the town of Fuessen in southwest Bavaria. Like its neighbour Hohenschwangau Castle, it is situated in the Ostallgäu area in the Bavarian region of southern Swabia, directly bordering the Austrian state of Tyrol. The term Allgäu is applied to the northern part of the Alps and their foothills located in southwestern Bavaria. Both castles overlook the Alpsee (in English: "Alp Lake") and the Schwansee (in English: "Swan Lake") with a distant view into the Tyrolean Alps.

 

The palace of Neuschwanstein was commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria (the so-called "Fairy Tale King") from the House of Wittelsbach as a retreat and in honour of Richard Wagner. While Hohenschwangau Castle was the childhood residence of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Neuschwanstein Castle was intended to be his private residence, until he died in 1886. It was opened to the public shortly after his death. Since then more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle.

 

Hence, the older one of both castles is Hohenschwangau Castle, which was designed by Ludwig’s father, King Maximilian II of Bavaria, in the first half of the 19th century. Neuschwanstein as well as Hohenschwangau Castle have predecessor buildings on the same spots, which had become ruins. The stronghold on the spot of Neuschwanstein Castle was first mentioned in a document in 1090 under the name of "Schwangau", while the stronghold on the spot of Hohenschwangau Castle was first mentioned in 1397 under the name of "Schwanstein". Only in the 19th century, the names of both castles switched.

 

Neuschwanstein Castle embodies both the contemporaneous architectural fashion known as castle romanticism, and King Ludwig II's enthusiasm for the operas of Richard Wagner. The King saw both buildings as representatives of a romantic interpretation of the Middle Ages, as well as the musical mythology of his friend Wagner, whose operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin had made a lasting impression on him.

 

The building design of Neuschwanstein was drafted by the stage designer Christian Jank and realised by the architect Eduard Riedel. For technical reasons, the ruined castle could not be integrated into the plan. Before and during the construction phase, the King insisted on a detailed plan and on personal approval of each and every draft. Ludwig's control even went so far that the palace has been regarded as his own creation, rather than that of the architects involved.

 

The construction of Neuschwanstein took a rather long time. It began in 1868, but King Ludwig II wasn’t able to move into the palace until 1880. The construction costs in the King's lifetime amounted to 6.2 million marks (an equivalent to 45 million € today), almost twice the initial cost estimate of 3.2 million marks. As his private means were insufficient for his increasingly escalating construction projects, the King continuously opened new lines of credit. Even after his debts had reached 14 million marks, King Ludwig II insisted on continuation of his different private architectural projects, to which also the palaces of Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee belonged.

 

To realise all his projects, Ludwig was also able to draw on an additional secret income, which he received in return for a political favour given to Otto von Bismarck. This favour was his approval of the imperial coronation of William I, King of Prussia, who was acclaimed German emperor at the Palace of Versailles in January 1871. By doing that, he had to divest himself of many of his royal prerogatives.

 

Despite its size, Neuschwanstein did not have space for the royal court, but contained only the King's private lodging and servants' rooms. The court buildings served decorative, rather than residential purposes. The palace was intended to serve King Ludwig II exclusively (who never had a wife or children) as a kind of inhabitable theatrical setting. However, it was also dedicated to the life and work of Richard Wagner, who died in 1883 before he had set foot in the building. In the end, Ludwig II lived in the palace for a total of only 172 days.

 

In 1886, while Ludwig II stayed in Neuschwanstein Palace, the Bavarian government decided to depose the King, who had become more and more divorced from reality. Shortly afterwards, he was also incapacitated and forced to leave his palace. Ludwig was then put under the supervision of Benhard von Gudden, a German neuroanatomist and psychiatrist. On 13th June 1886, both died under mysterious circumstances in the shallow shore water of Lake Starnberg near Berg Castle. Hence, his life ended tragically and the mystery of his death may also have contributed to the personality cult and the popularity, Ludwig has received after his demise.

 

Today, Neuschwanstein Castle has become a global symbol of the era of Romanticism. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies and has also served as the inspiration for Disneyland's "Sleeping Beauty Castle". In 1977, it became the motif of a West German definitive stamp. And in 2007, it was a finalist in the widely publicised on-line selection of the" New Seven Wonders of the World". Even a meteorite that reached Earth spectacularly in 2002 was named "Neuschwanstein". Since 2015, Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee palaces are on the German tentative list for a future designation as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A joint candidature with other representative palaces of the romantic historicism is discussed.

Bloodswept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London, marking one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies will progressively fill the Tower's famous moat over the summer. Each poppy represents a British military fatality during the war.

The Tower Of London remembers the First World War 1914-1918

 

The major art installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London, marked one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies progressively filled the Tower's famous moat between 17 July and 11 November 2014. Each poppy represented a British military fatality during the war.

 

The poppies encircled the iconic landmark, creating not only a spectacular display visible from all around the Tower but also a location for personal reflection. The scale of the installation was intended to reflect the magnitude of such an important centenary and create a powerful visual commemoration.

 

All of the poppies that made up the installation were sold, raising millions of pounds which were shared equally amongst six service charities.

The Tower Of London remembers the First World War 1914-1918

 

The major art installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London, marked one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies progressively filled the Tower's famous moat between 17 July and 11 November 2014. Each poppy represented a British military fatality during the war.

 

The poppies encircled the iconic landmark, creating not only a spectacular display visible from all around the Tower but also a location for personal reflection. The scale of the installation was intended to reflect the magnitude of such an important centenary and create a powerful visual commemoration.

 

All of the poppies that made up the installation were sold, raising millions of pounds which were shared equally amongst six service charities.

Galería Estatal Tretiakov - State Tretyakov Gallery - Государственная Третьяковская галерея

 

Borís Mijáilovich Kustódiev (ruso, Борис Михайлович Кустодиев; 7 de marzo de 1878–28 de mayo de 1927) fue un pintor y escenógrafo ruso.

Borís Kustódiev nació en Astrakán en la familia de un profesor de filosofía, historia de la literatura, y lógica en el seminario teológico local. Entre 1893 y 1896, Borís estudió en el seminario teológico y recibió clases privadas de arte en Astrakán de Pável Vlásov, un alumno de Vasili Perov.3 Posteriormente, desde 1896 hasta 1903, acudió al taller de Iliá Repin en la Academia Imperial de las Artes en San Petersburgo, colaborando posteriormente con él como ayudante. Expuso por vez primera en 1896.

Realizó visitas a Francia y España gracias a una beca de la Academia Imperial en 1904; luego, en 1907, estuvo en Italia, y en 1909 visitó Austria y Alemania, y de nuevo Francia e Italia. En esta época pintó sobre todo retratos y trabajos de género.

En 1905, Kustódiev se dedicó por vez primera a la ilustración de libros, un género que cultivaría el resto de su vida. Ilustró muchas obras de la literatura clásica rusa. Debido a una enfermedad, tuvo que marchar a Suiza, donde pasó un año en tratamiento en una clínica privada. Quedó parapléjico en 1916, estando a partir de entonces confinado en su habitación.

El artista también estuvo interesado en diseño de escenarios. Primero empezó a trabajar en el teatro en 1911, cuando diseñó decorados para la obra de Aleksandr Ostrovski Un corazón ardiente. Fue tal su éxito que le llegaron nuevos encargos. En 1913, diseñó escenario y vestuario para La muerte de Pázujin en el Teatro del Arte de Moscú. Demostró su talento en otras obras de Ostrovski.

En 1923, Kustódiev se unió a la Asociación de Artistas de la Rusia Revolucionaria. Siguió pintando, haciendo grabados, ilustrando libros y diseñando para el teatro hasta su muerte el 28 de mayo de 1927, en Leningrado.

 

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borís_Kustódiev

 

Boris Mikhaylovich Kustodiev (Russian: Бори́с Миха́йлович Кусто́диев; 7 March [O.S. 23 February] 1878 – 28 May 1927) was a Russian painter and stage designer.

Boris Kustodiev was born in Astrakhan into the family of a professor of philosophy, history of literature, and logic at the local theological seminary.[1] His father died young, and all financial and material burdens fell on his mother's shoulders. The Kustodiev family rented a small wing in a rich merchant's house. It was there that the boy's first impressions were formed of the way of life of the provincial merchant class. The artist later wrote, "The whole tenor of the rich and plentiful merchant way of life was there right under my nose... It was like something out of an Ostrovsky play." The artist retained these childhood observations for years, recreating them later in oils and water-colours.

Between 1893 and 1896, Kustodiev studied in theological seminary and took private art lessons in Astrakhan from Pavel Vlasov, a pupil of Vasily Perov. Subsequently, from 1896 to 1903, he attended Ilya Repin’s studio at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Concurrently, he took classes in sculpture under Dmitry Stelletsky and in etching under Vasiliy Mate. He first exhibited in 1896.

"I have great hopes for Kustodiev," wrote Repin. "He is a talented artist and a thoughtful and serious man with a deep love of art; he is making a careful study of nature..." When Repin was commissioned to paint a large-scale canvas to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the State Council, he invited Kustodiev to be his assistant. The painting was extremely complex and involved a great deal of hard work. Together with his teacher, the young artist made portrait studies for the painting, and then executed the right-hand side of the final work. Also at this time, Kustodiev made a series of portraits of contemporaries whom he felt to be his spiritual comrades. These included the artist Ivan Bilibin (1901, Russian Museum), Moldovtsev (1901, Krasnodar Regional Art Museum), and the engraver Mate (1902, Russian Museum). Working on these portraits considerably helped the artist, forcing him to make a close study of his model and to penetrate the complex world of the human soul.

In 1903, he married Julia Proshinskaya (1880–1942).

He visited France and Spain on a grant from the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1904. Also in 1904, he attended the private studio of René Ménard in Paris. After that he traveled to Spain, then, in 1907, to Italy, and in 1909 he visited Austria and Germany, and again France and Italy. During these years he painted many portraits and genre pieces. However, no matter where Kustodiev happened to be – in sunny Seville or in the park at Versailles – he felt the irresistible pull of his motherland. After five months in France he returned to Russia, writing with evident joy to his friend Mate that he was back once more "in our blessed Russian land".

The Russian Revolution of 1905, which shook the foundations of society, evoked a vivid response in the artist's soul. He contributed to the satirical journals Zhupel (Bugbear) and Adskaya Pochta (Hell’s Mail). At that time, he first met the artists of Mir Iskusstva (World of Art), the group of innovative Russian artists. He joined their association in 1910 and subsequently took part in all their exhibitions.

In 1905, Kustodiev first turned to book illustrating, a genre in which he worked throughout his entire life. He illustrated many works of classical Russian literature, including Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, The Carriage, and The Overcoat; Mikhail Lermontov's The Lay of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, His Young Oprichnik and the Stouthearted Merchant Kalashnikov; and Leo Tolstoy's How the Devil Stole the Peasants Hunk of Bread and The Candle.[2]

n 1909, he was elected into Imperial Academy of Arts. He continued to work intensively, but a grave illness—tuberculosis of the spine—required urgent attention. On the advice of his doctors he went to Switzerland, where he spent a year undergoing treatment in a private clinic. He pined for his distant homeland, and Russian themes continued to provide the basic material for the works he painted during that year. In 1918, he painted The Merchant's Wife, which became the most famous of his paintings.

In 1916, he became paraplegic. "Now my whole world is my room", he wrote. His ability to remain joyful and lively despite his paralysis amazed others. His colourful paintings and joyful genre pieces do not reveal his physical suffering, and on the contrary give the impression of a carefree and cheerful life.

His Pancake Tuesday/Maslenitsa (1916) and Fontanka (1916) are all painted from his memories. He meticulously restores his own childhood in the busy city on the Volga banks.

In the first years after the Russian Revolution of 1917 the artist worked with great inspiration in various fields. Contemporary themes became the basis for his work, being embodied in drawings for calendars and book covers, and in illustrations and sketches of street decorations, as well as some portraits (Portrait of Countess Grabowska)

His covers for the journals The Red Cornfield and Red Panorama attracted attention because of their vividness and the sharpness of their subject matter. Kustodiev also worked in lithography, illustrating works by Nekrasov. His illustrations for Leskov's stories The Darner and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District were landmarks in the history of Russian book designing, so well did they correspond to the literary images.

The artist was also interested in designing stage scenery. He first started work in the theatre in 1911, when he designed the sets for Alexander Ostrovsky's An Ardent Heart. Such was his success that further orders came pouring in. In 1913, he designed the sets and costumes for The Death of Pazukhin at the Moscow Art Theatre.

His talent in this sphere was especially apparent in his work for Ostrovsky's plays; It's a Family Affair, A Stroke of Luck, Wolves and Sheep, and The Storm. The milieu of Ostrovsky's plays—provincial life and the world of the merchant class—was close to Kustodiev's own genre paintings, and he worked easily and quickly on the stage sets.

In 1923, Kustodiev joined the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. He continued to paint, make engravings, illustrate books, and design for the theater up until his death of tuberculosis on 28 May 1927, in Leningrad.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Kustodiev

  

La Galería Estatal Tretiakov (en ruso: Государственная Третьяковская галерея [Gosudárstvennaya Tret'yakóvskaya galereya]) es una galería de arte ubicada en Moscú, Rusia, considerada el principal depositario de bellas artes rusas en el mundo.

Fue fundada en (1856) por el comerciante moscovita Pável Tretiakov (1832-1898), quien adquirió varias obras de artistas rusos contemporáneos, con el objetivo de crear una colección artística, que devino finalmente en este museo de arte nacional. En 1892, Tretiakov presentó su ya famoso repertorio a la nación rusa.

La fachada del edificio que alberga la galería, fue diseñada por el pintor Víktor Vasnetsov, al estilo típico de un cuento de hadas ruso. Fue construido entre 1902 y 1904 al sur del Kremlin de Moscú. Durante el siglo XX, la galería se extendió hacia varios inmuebles adyacentes, incluyendo la Iglesia de San Nicolás en Jamóvniki. Una edificación nueva, localizada en el Krymski Val, es usada para la promoción de arte ruso moderno.

La colección está conformada por más de 130 000 obras de arte, del rango de la Virgen de Vladímir y la Trinidad de Andréi Rubliov, hasta la monumental Composición VII de Vasili Kandinski y el Cuadrado Negro de Kazimir Malévich. En 1977, la galería contenía una significativa parte de la colección de George Costakis. Además, figuran otras obras igualmente importantes de los artistas Iván Aivazovski, Iván Argunov, Vasili Súrikov, Abram Arkhipov, Andréi Kolkutin, Orest Kiprenski, Valentín Serov, Vasili Polénov, Dmitri Levitski, Iliá Repin, Mijaíl Nésterov, Iván Shishkin y Marc Chagall.

 

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galería_Tretiakov

  

The State Tretyakov Gallery (Russian: Государственная Третьяковская Галерея, Gosudarstvennaya Tretyâkovskaya Galereya; abbreviated ГТГ, GTG) is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.

The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection, which might later grow into a museum of national art. In 1892, Tretyakov presented his already famous collection of approximately 2,000 works (1,362 paintings, 526 drawings, and 9 sculptures) to the Russian nation.

The façade of the gallery building was designed by the painter Viktor Vasnetsov in a peculiar Russian fairy-tale style. It was built in 1902–04 to the south from the Moscow Kremlin. During the 20th century, the gallery expanded to several neighboring buildings, including the 17th-century church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi.

The collection contains more than 130,000 exhibits, ranging from Theotokos of Vladimir and Andrei Rublev's Trinity to the monumental Composition VII by Wassily Kandinsky and the Black Square by Kazimir Malevich.

In 1977 the Gallery kept a significant part of the George Costakis collection.

In May 2012, the Tretyakov Art Gallery played host to the prestigious FIDE World Chess Championship between Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand as the organizers felt the event would promote both chess and art at the same time.

Pavel Tretyakov started collecting art in the middle of 1850. The founding year of the Tretyakov Gallery is considered to be 1856, when Tretyakov purchased two paintings of Russian artists: Temptation by N. G. Schilder and Skirmish with Finnish Smugglers by V. G. Kudyakov, although earlier, in 1854–1855, he had bought 11 drawings and nine pictures by Dutch Old Masters. In 1867 the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov was opened. The Gallery’s collection consisted of 1,276 paintings, 471 sculptures and 10 drawings by Russian artists, as well as 84 paintings by foreign masters.

In August 1892 Tretyakov presented his art gallery to the city of Moscow as a gift. In the collection at this time, there were 1,287 paintings and 518 graphic works of the Russian school, 75 paintings and eight drawings of European schools, 15 sculptures and a collection of icons. The official opening of the museum called the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov took place on August 15, 1893.

The gallery was located in a mansion that the Tretykov family had purchased in 1851. As the Tretyakov collection of art grew, the residential part of the mansion filled with art and it became necessary to make additions to the mansion in order to store and display the works of art. Additions were made in 1873, 1882, 1885, 1892 and 1902–1904, when there was the famous façade, designed in 1900–1903 by architect V. Bashkirov from the drawings of the artist Viktor Vasnetsov. Construction of the façade was managed by the architect A. M. Kalmykov.

In early 1913, the Moscow City Duma elected Igor Grabar as a trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery

On June 3, 1918, the Tretyakov Gallery was declared owned by Russian Federated Soviet Republic and was named the State Tretyakov Gallery. Igor Grabar was again appointed director of the museum. With Grabar’s active participation in the same year, the State Museum Fund was created, which up until 1927 remained one of the most important sources of replenishment of the gallery's collection.

In 1926 architect and academician A. V. Shchusev became the director of the gallery. In the following year the gallery acquired the neighboring house on Maly Tolmachevsky Lane (the house was the former home of the merchant Sokolikov). After restructuring in 1928, it housed the gallery's administration, academic departments, library, manuscripts department, and funds and graphics staffs. In 1985–1994, an administrative building was built from the design of architect A. L. Bernstein with two floors and height equal to that of the exposition halls.

In 1928 serious renovations were made to the gallery to provide heating and ventilation. In 1929 electricity was installed.

In 1929 the church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi was closed, and in 1932 the building was given to the gallery and became a storage facility for paintings and sculptures. Later, the church was connected to the exposition halls and a top floor was built which was specially designed for exhibiting a painting by A. A. Ivanov,The Appearance of Christ to the People (1837–1857). A transition space was built between rooms located on either side of the main staircase. This ensured the continuity of the view of exposure. The gallery began to develop a new concept of accommodating exhibits.

In 1936, a new two floor building was constructed which is located on the north side of the main building – it is known as the Schusevsky building. These halls were first used for exhibitions, and since 1940 have been included in the main route of exposure.

From the first days of the Great War, the gallery's personnel began dismantling the exhibition, as well as those of other museums in Moscow, in preparation for evacuating during wartime. Paintings were rolled on wooden shafts, covered with tissue paper, placed in boxes, and sheathed with waterproof material. In the middle of the summer of 1941 a train of 17 wagons traveled from Moscow and brought the collection to Novosibirsk. The gallery was not reopened in Moscow until May 17, 1945, upon the conclusion of the Great War.

In 1956, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Tretyakov Gallery, the Alexander Ivanov Hall was completed.

From 1980 to 1992, the director of the Tretyakov Gallery was Y. K. Korolev. Because of the increased number of visitors, Korolev was actively engaged in expanding the area of exposition. In 1983, construction work began to expand the gallery. In 1985 the Depository, a repository of works of art and restoration workshops, was commissioned. In 1986 renovations began on the main building of the Tretyakov Gallery. The architects I. M. Vinogradsky, G. V. Astafev, B. A. Klimov and others were retained to perform this project. In 1989, on the south side of the main building, a new building was designed and constructed to house a conference hall, a computer and information center, children's studio and exhibition halls. The building was named the "Corps of Engineers", because it housed engineering systems and services.

From 1986 to 1995, the Tretyakov Gallery in Lavrushinsky Lane was closed to visitors to accommodate a major renovation project to the building. At the time, the only museum in the exhibition area of this decade was the building on the Crimean Val, 10, which in 1985 was merged with the Tretyakov Gallery.

In 1985, the Tretyakov Gallery was administratively merged with a gallery of contemporary art, housed in a large modern building along the Garden Ring, immediately south of the Krymsky Bridge. The grounds of this branch of the museum contain a collection of Socialist Realism sculpture, including such highlights as Yevgeny Vuchetich's iconic statue Iron Felix (which was removed from Lubyanka Square in 1991), the Swords Into Plowshares sculpture representing a nude worker forging a plough out of a sword, and the Young Russia monument. Nearby is Zurab Tsereteli's 86-metre-tall statue of Peter the Great, one of the tallest outdoor statues in the world.

Near the gallery of modern art there is a sculpture garden called "the graveyard of fallen monuments" that displays statues of former Soviet Union that were relocated.

There are plans to demolish the gallery constructed in the late Soviet modernism style, though public opinion is strongly against this.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tretyakov_Gallery

 

www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/

 

The Garrick Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Charing Cross Road, in the City of Westminster, named for the stage actor David Garrick. It opened in 1889 with The Profligate, a play by Arthur Wing Pinero, and another Pinero play, The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, was an early success at the theatre. In its early years, the Garrick appears to have specialised in the performance of melodrama. The theatre later became associated with comedies, including No Sex Please, We're British, which played for four years from 1982 to 1986.

There was previously another theatre that was sometimes called the Garrick in London, on Leman Street, opened in 1831 and demolished in 1881. The new Garrick Theatre was financed in 1889 by the playwright W. S. Gilbert, the author of over 75 plays, including the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. It was designed by Walter Emden, with C. J. Phipps brought in as a consultant to help with the planning on the difficult site after an underground river was discovered in the excavation. Originally the theatre had 800 seats on four levels, but the gallery (top) level has since been closed and the seating capacity reduced to 656.

 

The theatre's first manager was Gilbert's friend John Hare. The first play at the theatre, The Profligate, by Arthur Wing Pinero and starring Hare, opened on 24 April 1889. Sydney Grundy's long-running French-style comedy A Pair of Spectacles opened here in February 1890. Mrs Patrick Campbell starred five years later in Pinero's The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith. Afterwards, the theatre suffered a short period of decline until it was leased by Arthur Bourchier for six years, whose wife, Violet Vanbrugh, starred in a series of successful productions ranging from farce to Shakespeare. In 1900, the theatre hosted J. M. Barrie's The Wedding Guest. Rutland Barrington presented several stage works at the Garrick, including his popular "fairy play" called Water Babies in 1902, based on Charles Kingsley's book, with music by Alfred Cellier, among others. The only piece actually premiered by W. S. Gilbert here was Harlequin and the Fairy's Dilemma (retitled The Fairy's Dilemma after a few days), a "Domestic Pantomime" (1904). In 1921, Basil Rathbone played Dr. Lawson in The Edge o' Beyond at the Garrick, and the following year Sir Seymour Hicks appeared in his own play, The Man in Dress Clothes. In 1925 Henry Daniell played there as Jack Race in Cobra and appeared there again as Paul Cortot in Marriage by Purchase in March 1932.

 

A proposed redevelopment of Covent Garden by the GLC in 1968 saw the theatre under threat, together with the nearby Vaudeville, Adelphi, Lyceum and Duchess theatres. An active campaign by Equity, the Musicians' Union, and theatre owners under the auspices of the Save London Theatres Campaign led to the abandonment of the scheme. The gold-leaf auditorium was restored in 1986 by the stage designer Carl Toms, and in 1997 the front façade was renovated.

 

The theatre has mostly been associated with comedies or comedy-dramas. More recent productions are listed below and include No Sex Please, We're British (1982), which played for four years at the theatre before transferring to the Duchess Theatre in 1986. In 1995, the Royal National Theatre's multi-award winning production of J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls opened here, having played successful seasons at the Royal National Theatre's Lyttelton and Olivier theatres as well as the Aldwych Theatre and a season on Broadway.

 

In 1986, the Garrick was acquired by the Stoll Moss Group, and, in 2000, it became a Really Useful Theatre when Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group and Bridgepoint Capital purchased Stoll Moss Theatres Ltd. In October 2005, Nica Burns and Max Weitzenhoffer purchased the Garrick Theatre, and it became one of five playhouses operating under their company name of Nimax Theatres Ltd, alongside the Lyric Theatre, Apollo Theatre, Vaudeville Theatre and Duchess Theatre.

 

The interior retains many of its original features, and was Grade II listed by English Heritage in September 1960. [Wikipedia]

Deutschland / Bayern - Schloss Neuschwanstein

 

Neuschwanstein Castle (German: Schloss Neuschwanstein, pronounced [nɔʏˈʃvaːnʃtaɪn], Southern Bavarian: Schloss Neischwanstoa) is a 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and in honour of Richard Wagner. Ludwig paid for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing, rather than Bavarian public funds.

 

The castle was intended as a home for the king, until he died in 1886. It was open to the public shortly after his death. Since then more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle. More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer.

 

The municipality of Schwangau lies at an elevation of 800 m (2,620 ft) at the southwest border of the German state of Bavaria. Its surroundings are characterised by the transition between the Alpine foothills in the south (toward the nearby Austrian border) and a hilly landscape in the north that appears flat by comparison.

 

In the Middle Ages, three castles overlooked the villages. One was called Schwanstein Castle. In 1832, Ludwig's father King Maximilian II of Bavaria bought its ruins to replace them with the comfortable neo-Gothic palace known as Hohenschwangau Castle. Finished in 1837, the palace became his family's summer residence, and his elder son Ludwig (born 1845) spent a large part of his childhood here.

 

Vorderhohenschwangau Castle and Hinterhohenschwangau Castle sat on a rugged hill overlooking Schwanstein Castle, two nearby lakes (Alpsee and Schwansee), and the village. Separated by only a moat, they jointly consisted of a hall, a keep, and a fortified tower house. In the nineteenth century only ruins remained of the twin medieval castles, but those of Hinterhohenschwangau served as a lookout place known as Sylphenturm.

 

The ruins above the family palace were known to the crown prince from his excursions. He first sketched one of them in his diary in 1859. When the young king came to power in 1864, the construction of a new palace in place of the two ruined castles became the first in his series of palace building projects. Ludwig called the new palace New Hohenschwangau Castle; only after his death was it renamed Neuschwanstein.[9] The confusing result is that Hohenschwangau and Schwanstein have effectively swapped names: Hohenschwangau Castle replaced the ruins of Schwanstein Castle, and Neuschwanstein Castle replaced the ruins of the two Hohenschwangau Castles.

 

Neuschwanstein embodies both the contemporaneous architectural fashion known as castle romanticism (German: Burgenromantik), and Ludwig II's immoderate enthusiasm for the operas of Richard Wagner.

 

In the 19th century, many castles were constructed or reconstructed, often with significant changes to make them more picturesque. Palace-building projects similar to Neuschwanstein had been undertaken earlier in several of the German states and included Hohenschwangau Castle, Lichtenstein Castle, Hohenzollern Castle, and numerous buildings on the River Rhine such as Stolzenfels Castle. The inspiration for the construction of Neuschwanstein came from two journeys in 1867 — one in May to the reconstructed Wartburg near Eisenach, another in July to the Château de Pierrefonds, which Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was transforming from a ruined castle into a historistic palace.

 

The king saw both buildings as representatives of a romantic interpretation of the Middle Ages, as well as the musical mythology of his friend Wagner, whose operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin had made a lasting impression on him.

 

In February 1868, Ludwig's grandfather Ludwig I died, freeing the considerable sums that were previously spent on the abdicated king's appanage. This allowed Ludwig II to start the architectural project of building a private refuge in the familiar landscape far from the capital Munich, so that he could live out his idea of the Middle Ages.

 

It is my intention to rebuild the old castle ruin of Hohenschwangau near the Pöllat Gorge in the authentic style of the old German knights' castles, and I must confess to you that I am looking forward very much to living there one day [...]; you know the revered guest I would like to accommodate there; the location is one of the most beautiful to be found, holy and unapproachable, a worthy temple for the divine friend who has brought salvation and true blessing to the world. It will also remind you of "Tannhäuser" (Singers' Hall with a view of the castle in the background), "Lohengrin'" (castle courtyard, open corridor, path to the chapel) ...

— Ludwig II, Letter to Richard Wagner, May 1868

 

The building design was drafted by the stage designer Christian Jank and realised by the architect Eduard Riedel. For technical reasons, the ruined castles could not be integrated into the plan. Initial ideas for the palace drew stylistically on Nuremberg Castle and envisaged a simple building in place of the old Vorderhohenschwangau Castle, but they were rejected and replaced by increasingly extensive drafts, culminating in a bigger palace modelled on the Wartburg. The king insisted on a detailed plan and on personal approval of each and every draft. Ludwig's control went so far that the palace has been regarded as his own creation, rather than that of the architects involved.

 

Whereas contemporary architecture critics derided Neuschwanstein, one of the last big palace building projects of the nineteenth century, as kitsch, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig II's other buildings are now counted among the major works of European historicism. For financial reasons, a project similar to Neuschwanstein – Falkenstein Castle – never left the planning stages.

 

The palace can be regarded as typical for nineteenth-century architecture. The shapes of Romanesque (simple geometric figures such as cuboids and semicircular arches), Gothic (upward-pointing lines, slim towers, delicate embellishments) and Byzantine architecture and art (the Throne Hall décor) were mingled in an eclectic fashion and supplemented with 19th-century technical achievements. The Patrona Bavariae and Saint George on the court face of the Palas (main building) are depicted in the local Lüftlmalerei style, a fresco technique typical for Allgäu farmers' houses, while the unimplemented drafts for the Knights' House gallery foreshadow elements of Art Nouveau. Characteristic of Neuschwanstein's design are theatre themes: Christian Jank drew on coulisse drafts from his time as a scenic painter.

 

The basic style was originally planned to be neo-Gothic but the palace was primarily built in Romanesque style in the end. The operatic themes moved gradually from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin to Parsifal.

 

In 1868, the ruins of the medieval twin castles were completely demolished; the remains of the old keep were blown up. The foundation stone for the palace was laid on 5 September 1869; in 1872 its cellar was completed and in 1876, everything up to the first floor, the gatehouse being finished first. At the end of 1882 it was completed and fully furnished, allowing Ludwig to take provisional lodgings there and observe the ongoing construction work. In 1874, management of the civil works passed from Eduard Riedel to Georg von Dollmann. The topping out ceremony for the Palas was in 1880, and in 1884, the king was able to move in to the new building. In the same year, the direction of the project passed to Julius Hofmann, after Dollmann had fallen from the King's favour.

 

The palace was erected as a conventional brick construction and later encased in various types of rock. The white limestone used for the fronts came from a nearby quarry. The sandstone bricks for the portals and bay windows came from Schlaitdorf in Württemberg. Marble from Untersberg near Salzburg was used for the windows, the arch ribs, the columns and the capitals. The Throne Hall was a later addition to the plans and required a steel framework.

 

The transport of building materials was facilitated by scaffolding and a steam crane that lifted the material to the construction site. Another crane was used at the construction site. The recently founded Dampfkessel-Revisionsverein (Steam Boiler Inspection Association) regularly inspected both boilers.

 

For about two decades the construction site was the principal employer in the region. In 1880, about 200 craftsmen were occupied at the site, not counting suppliers and other persons indirectly involved in the construction. At times when the king insisted on particularly close deadlines and urgent changes, reportedly up to 300 workers per day were active, sometimes working at night by the light of oil lamps. Statistics from the years 1879/1880 support an immense amount of building materials: 465 tonnes (513 short tons) of Salzburg marble, 1,550 t (1,710 short tons) of sandstone, 400,000 bricks and 2,050 cubic metres (2,680 cu yd) of wood for the scaffolding.

 

In 1870, a society was founded for insuring the workers, for a low monthly fee, augmented by the king. The heirs of construction casualties (30 cases are mentioned in the statistics) received a small pension.

 

In 1884, the king was able to move into the (still unfinished) Palas, and in 1885, he invited his mother Marie to Neuschwanstein on the occasion of her 60th birthday. By 1886, the external structure of the Palas (hall) was mostly finished. In the same year, Ludwig had the first, wooden Marienbrücke over the Pöllat Gorge replaced by a steel construction.

 

Despite its size, Neuschwanstein did not have space for the royal court, but contained only the king's private lodging and servants' rooms. The court buildings served decorative, rather than residential purposes: The palace was intended to serve Ludwig II as a kind of inhabitable theatrical setting. As a temple of friendship it was also dedicated to the life and work of Richard Wagner, who died in 1883 before he had set foot in the building. In the end, Ludwig II lived in the palace for a total of only 172 days.

 

Neuschwanstein welcomes almost 1.5 million visitors per year making it one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe. For security reasons the palace can only be visited during a 35-minute guided tour, and no photography is allowed inside the castle. There are also special guided tours that focus on specific topics. In the peak season from June until August, Neuschwanstein has as many as 6000 visitors per day, and guests without advance reservation may have to wait several hours. Ticket sales are processed exclusively via the ticket centre in Hohenschwangau. As of 2008, the total number of visitors was more than 60 million In 2004, the revenues were booked as €6.5 million.

 

Neuschwanstein is a global symbol of the era of Romanticism. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies such as Helmut Käutner's Ludwig II (1955) and Luchino Visconti's Ludwig (1972), both biopics about the king; the musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and the war drama The Great Escape (1963). It served as the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle and later, similar structures. It is also visited by the character Grace Nakimura alongside Herrenchiemsee in the game The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (1996).

 

In 1977, Neuschwanstein Castle became the motif of a West German definitive stamp, and it appeared on a €2 commemorative coin for the German Bundesländer series in 2012. In 2007, it was a finalist in the widely publicised on-line selection of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

 

A meteorite that reached Earth spectacularly on 6 April 2002, at the Austrian border near Hohenschwangau was named Neuschwanstein after the palace. Three fragments were found: Neuschwanstein I (1.75 kg (3.9 lb), found July 2002) and Neuschwanstein II (1.63 kg (3.6 lb), found May 2003) on the German side, and Neuschwanstein III (2.84 kg (6.3 lb), found June 2003) on the Austrian side near Reutte. The meteorite is classified as an enstatite chondrite with unusually large proportions of pure iron (29%), enstatite and the extremely rare mineral sinoite (Si2N2O).

 

Since 2015, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig's Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee palaces are on the German tentative list for a future designation as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A joint candidature with other representative palaces of the romantic historicism is discussed (including Schwerin Palace, for example).

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Das Schloss Neuschwanstein steht oberhalb von Hohenschwangau bei Füssen im südöstlichen bayerischen Allgäu. Der Bau wurde ab 1869 für den bayerischen König Ludwig II. als idealisierte Vorstellung einer Ritterburg aus der Zeit des Mittelalters errichtet. Die Entwürfe stammen von Christian Jank, die Ausführung übernahmen Eduard Riedel und Georg von Dollmann. Der König lebte nur wenige Monate im Schloss, er starb noch vor der Fertigstellung der Anlage. Neuschwanstein wurde ursprünglich als Neue Burg Hohenschwangau bezeichnet, seinen heutigen Namen trägt es seit 1886. Eigentümer des Schlosses ist der Freistaat Bayern; es wird von der Bayerischen Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlösser, Gärten und Seen betreut und bewirtschaftet.

 

Neuschwanstein ist das berühmteste der Schlösser Ludwigs II. und eine der bekanntesten Sehenswürdigkeiten Deutschlands. Es wird jährlich von etwa 1,5 Millionen Touristen besucht. Das oftmals als „Märchenschloss“ bezeichnete Neuschwanstein ist nahezu ganzjährig für Besucher geöffnet. Die Architektur und Innenausstattung sind vom romantischen Eklektizismus des 19. Jahrhunderts geprägt; das Schloss gilt als ein Hauptwerk des Historismus. Eine Aufnahme der „Ludwig-Schlösser“ Neuschwanstein, Linderhof und Herrenchiemsee in die Liste des Weltkulturerbes der UNESCO wird angestrebt.

 

Erstmals urkundlich erwähnt wurde ein »Castrum Swangowe« im Jahre 1090. Damit gemeint waren die im Mittelalter an der Stelle des heutigen Schlosses Neuschwanstein stehenden zwei kleinen Burgen: Die aus einem Palas und einem Bergfried bestehende Burg Vorderhohenschwangau an der Stelle des heutigen Palas und, nur durch einen Halsgraben getrennt, ein befestigter Wohnturm namens Hinterhohenschwangau, der sich dort befand, wo zwischen heutigem Ritterhaus und Kemenate auch Ludwig II. einen hohen Bergfried geplant hatte, zu dessen Errichtung er jedoch nicht mehr kam. Beide Gebäude gingen auf die Herren von Schwangau zurück, die in der Region als Lehensnehmer der Welfen (bis 1191) und der Staufer (bis 1268), danach als reichsunmittelbare Ritter ansässig waren, bis zu ihrem Aussterben im Jahre 1536. Der Minnesänger Hiltbolt von Schwangau stammt aus diesem Geschlecht. Hinterhohenschwangau war wahrscheinlich der Geburtsort von Margareta von Schwangau, der Ehefrau des Minnesängers Oswald von Wolkenstein. Als 1363 Herzog Rudolf IV. von Österreich Tirol unter habsburgische Herrschaft brachte, verpflichteten sich Stephan von Schwangau und seine Brüder, ihre Festen Vorder- und Hinterschwangau, die Burg Frauenstein und den Sinwellenturm dem österreichischen Herzog offenzuhalten.

 

Eine Urkunde von 1397 nennt zum ersten Mal den Schwanstein, das heutige Schloss Hohenschwangau, das um diese Zeit unterhalb der älteren Doppelburg auf einer Anhöhe zwischen Alpsee und Schwansee errichtet worden war. Seit dem 16. Jahrhundert befand sich die reichsunmittelbare Herrschaft Schwangau unter Oberhoheit der Wittelsbacher, welche die Burg Schwanstein zur Bärenjagd sowie als Sitz für jüngere Söhne und später für ein Pfleggericht nutzten. Sie hatten den gesamten Besitz 1567 aus dem Nachlass der bankrotten Augsburger Patrizierfamilie Baumgartner erworben.

 

Im 19. Jahrhundert waren die beiden oberen Burgen zu Ruinen verfallen, die Überreste Hinterhohenschwangaus zu einem Sylphenturm genannten Aussichtsplatz umgestaltet. Ludwig II. verbrachte einen Teil seiner Kindheit in der Nähe der Burgruinen auf dem benachbarten Schloss Hohenschwangau, das sein Vater König Maximilian II. um 1837 von einer spätmittelalterlichen Burg zu einem wohnlichen Schloss im Sinne der Romantik hatte umgestalten lassen. Hohenschwangau war ursprünglich als Schloss Schwanstein bekannt, seine neue Bezeichnung erhielt es erst während des Wiederaufbaus. Damit wurden die Namen der Burg Schwanstein und der älteren Doppelburg Vorder- und Hinterhohenschwangau vertauscht. Max II. hatte 1855 Baurat Eduard Riedel beauftragt, für den Turm von Hinterhohenschwangau zunächst einen Aussichtspavillon in Glas-Eisen-Konstruktion zu entwerfen, im Jahr darauf dann einen Plan für die Reparatur des Turms und die Herstellung eines Zimmers mit einem Zeltdach darüber. Beides wurde jedoch zurückgestellt.

 

Die oberhalb des Wohnschlosses gelegenen Ruinen waren dem Kronprinzen – wie auch der Frauenstein und der Falkenstein – häufiges Wanderziel und deshalb gut bekannt. 1859 zeichnete er die Überreste der Vorderhohenschwangauer Burg erstmals in sein Tagebuch. 1837 pries ein Anonymus das wiederaufgebaute Schloss Hohenschwangau als „die Wiege einer neuen Romantik“ und schwärmte von dem Gedanken, dass „auch die Ruinen von dem vorderen Schlosse Schwangau (gemeint war die Doppelburg Vorder- und Hinterhohenschwangau), die mit Falkenstein und Hohen-Freyberg ein langgezogenes Dreieck bilden, zu einem großen einfachen Fest- und Sängersaal wiederaufgerichtet werden …“ Damit war die Idee eines Wiederaufbaus der Ruinen im Sinne einer Wiedergeburt des Austragungsortes des Sängerkriegs auf der Wartburg in der Welt; 20 Jahre bevor die thüringische Wartburg durch Hugo von Ritgen wiederaufgebaut wurde und 30 Jahre bevor Ludwig II. die Idee in die Tat umsetzte, indem er auf dem „Jugend“ genannten Burgfelsen von Vorder- und Hinterhohenschwangau ein neues „Sängerschloss“ nach dem Vorbild der Wartburg errichten ließ.

 

ach der Regierungsübernahme durch den jungen König 1864 war der Wiederaufbau der Vorderhohenschwangauer Burgruine – des späteren Neuschwansteins – das erste größere Schlossbauprojekt Ludwigs II. Er plante damit durchaus nichts Außergewöhnliches: In ganz Europa bauten sich zur gleichen Zeit gekrönte Häupter und Adelsfamilien Schlösser und Burgen in historischen Stilen oder ließen bedeutende mittelalterliche Monumente rekonstruieren. Kurz nach dem väterlichen Hohenschwangau hatte Ludwigs Onkel, König Friedrich Wilhelm IV. von Preußen, das Schloss Stolzenfels und von 1850 bis 1867 die Burg Hohenzollern wiedererrichten lassen. Der hannoversche König hatte von 1858 bis 1869 das Schloss Marienburg gebaut. Die britische Königin Victoria ließ ab 1845 Osborne House und kurz darauf Balmoral Castle umbauen, nachdem ihr Onkel Georg IV. schon zwischen 1820 und 1830 Windsor Castle bedeutend erweitert hatte. Ein weiteres Beispiel aus Europa war ab 1840 der Bau des Palácio Nacional da Pena durch den portugiesischen König Ferdinand II. Zur gleichen Zeit ließen die Fürsten zu Schwarzenberg das böhmische Schloss Frauenberg errichten und die Fürsten von Urach das Schloss Lichtenstein bauen. Auch die umfangreiche Restaurierung der Hohkönigsburg im Elsass durch den deutschen Kaiser, die allerdings erst im frühen 20. Jahrhundert stattfand, kann hier erwähnt werden.

 

Dem als Sinnbild einer Ritterburg gedachten Neuschwanstein folgten mit Linderhof noch ein Lustschloss aus der Epoche des Rokoko und mit Schloss Herrenchiemsee ein barocker Palast, der als Denkmal für die Zeit des Absolutismus stand. Angeregt zu dem Bau Neuschwansteins wurde Ludwig II. durch zwei Reisen: Im Mai 1867 besuchte er mit seinem Bruder Otto die wieder aufgebaute Wartburg bei Eisenach, im Juli desselben Jahres besichtigte er in Frankreich Schloss Pierrefonds, das damals von Eugène Viollet-le-Duc für Kaiser Napoleon III. von einer Burgruine zu einem historistischen Schloss umgestaltet wurde. Im Verständnis des Königs entsprachen beide Bauten einer romantischen Darstellung des Mittelalters, ebenso wie die musikalischen Sagenwelten Richard Wagners. Dessen Werke Tannhäuser und Lohengrin hatten den König nachhaltig beeindruckt. Am 15. Mai 1868 teilte er dem befreundeten Komponisten in einem Brief mit:

 

„Ich habe die Absicht, die alte Burgruine Hohenschwangau bei der Pöllatschlucht neu aufbauen zu lassen, im echten Styl der alten deutschen Ritterburgen“

 

Durch den Tod seines 1848 abgedankten Großvaters Ludwig I. konnte der junge König ab 1868 dessen Apanage einbehalten, wodurch ihm umfangreiche finanzielle Mittel zur Verfügung standen. Der König wollte mit dem nun entstehenden Bauprojekt in der ihm aus Kindertagen vertrauten Landschaft ein privates Refugium abseits der Hauptstadt München schaffen, in dem er seine Vorstellung des Mittelalters erleben konnte, zumal das von ihm gern genutzte Schloss Hohenschwangau jeweils während der Sommermonate von seiner ungeliebten Mutter, der Königin Marie, besetzt war. Die Entwürfe für das neue Schloss lieferte der Münchner Theatermaler Christian Jank, umgesetzt wurden sie durch den Architekten Eduard Riedel. Überlegungen, die Burgruinen in den Bau zu integrieren, wurden wegen der damit verbundenen technischen Schwierigkeiten nicht weiter verfolgt. Erste Pläne für das Schloss, die sich stilistisch an der Nürnberger Burg orientierten und einen schlichten Neubau anstelle der alten Burg Vorderhohenschwangau vorsahen, wurden wieder verworfen und gegen zunehmend umfangreichere Entwürfe ersetzt, die zu einem größeren Schloss nach dem Vorbild der Wartburg führten. Der König bestand auf einer detaillierten Planung und ließ sich jeden Entwurf zur Genehmigung vorlegen. Sein Einfluss auf die Entwürfe reichte so weit, dass das Schloss vor allem als seine eigene Schöpfung und weniger als die seiner beteiligten Architekten gelten kann.

 

Mit dem Bau des Schlosses wurde 1869 begonnen. Die Wünsche und Ansprüche Ludwigs II. wuchsen mit dem Bau ebenso wie die Ausgaben, und die Entwürfe und Kostenvoranschläge mussten mehrfach überarbeitet werden. So war anstelle des großen Thronsaales ursprünglich nur ein bescheidenes Arbeitszimmer geplant, und vorgesehene Gästezimmer wurden aus den Entwürfen wieder gestrichen, um Platz für einen Maurischen Saal zu schaffen, der aufgrund der ständigen Geldknappheit nicht realisiert werden konnte. Die ursprünglich schon für 1872 vorgesehene Fertigstellung des Schlosses verzögerte sich wiederholt. Als Dank für den Kaiserbrief erhielt der König ab 1871 zwar Zuwendungen aus dem Welfenfonds durch Bismarck, doch wurden seine finanziellen Mittel nun zunehmend auch durch seine weiteren Bauprojekte vereinnahmt. Der Palas und das Torhaus Neuschwansteins waren bis 1886 im Außenbau weitgehend fertiggestellt; ab 1884 konnte der König den Palas erstmals bewohnen. Ludwig II. lebte bis zu seinem Tod 1886 insgesamt nur 172 Tage im Schloss, das bis dahin noch einer Großbaustelle glich. 1885 empfing er hier anlässlich ihres 60. Geburtstags seine auf dem unteren Hohenschwangau residierende Mutter, die vormalige Königin Marie.

 

Neuschwanstein sollte Ludwig II. gewissermaßen als bewohnbare Theaterkulisse dienen. Es war als Freundschaftstempel dem Leben und Werk Richard Wagners gewidmet, der es jedoch nie betreten hat. Trotz seiner Größe war das Schloss nicht für die Aufnahme eines Hofstaats vorgesehen; es bot lediglich der Privatwohnung des Königs und Zimmern für die Dienerschaft Raum. Die Hofgebäude dienten weniger Wohn- als vielmehr dekorativen Zwecken. So war zum Beispiel der Bau der Kemenate – die erst nach Ludwigs Tod vollendet wurde – eine direkte Reminiszenz an den zweiten Akt von Lohengrin, wo ein solches Gebäude einen der Schauplätze darstellte.

 

Ludwig II. bezahlte seine Bauprojekte selbst aus seinem Privatvermögen und dem Einkommen seiner Zivilliste. Anders als oft kolportiert wird, wurde die Staatskasse für seine Bauten nicht belastet. Die Baukosten Neuschwansteins betrugen bis zum Tod des Königs 6.180.047 Mark, ursprünglich veranschlagt waren 3,2 Millionen Mark. Seine privaten Mittel reichten für die ausufernden Bauprojekte jedoch nicht mehr aus, und so musste der König laufend neue Kredite aufnehmen. 1883 war er bereits mit über 7 Millionen Mark verschuldet, 1885 drohte ihm erstmals eine Pfändung.

 

Die Streitigkeiten um die Verschuldung des Staatsoberhaupts veranlassten die bayerische Regierung 1886, den König zu entmündigen und für regierungsunfähig erklären zu lassen. Ludwig II. hielt sich zur Zeit seiner Entmündigung am 9. Juni 1886 in Neuschwanstein auf; es war das letzte seiner selbst in Auftrag gegebenen Schlösser, das er bewohnte. Die anlässlich seiner bevorstehenden Absetzung am 10. Juni 1886 nach Neuschwanstein gereiste Regierungskommission ließ der König im Torhaus festsetzen. Nach einigen Stunden wurden die Mitglieder der Kommission freigelassen. Am 11. Juni erschien eine zweite Kommission unter der Leitung Bernhard von Guddens. Der König musste Neuschwanstein daraufhin am 12. Juni 1886 verlassen und wurde nach Schloss Berg verbracht, wo er am 13. Juni 1886 im Starnberger See ertrank.

 

Ludwig II. errichtete Schloss Neuschwanstein nicht als Repräsentationsbau oder zur Machtdemonstration, sondern ausschließlich als seinen privaten Rückzugsort. Im Gegensatz dazu steht die heutige Bedeutung des Schlosses als eines der wichtigsten Touristenziele Deutschlands. Der Deutsche Tourismusverband macht auf internationaler Ebene mit Neuschwanstein Werbung für Bayern als ein Land der Märchenschlösser. So nimmt es nicht Wunder, dass bei einer Umfrage der Deutschen Zentrale für Tourismus (DZT) unter 15.000 ausländischen Gästen über deren liebstes Besucherziel das Schloss Neuschwanstein Platz 1 erreichte. Im nationalen Vergleich wählten 350.000 Teilnehmer die Schlossanlage in der ZDF-Show Unsere Besten – die Lieblingsorte der Deutschen indes nur auf Rang 19. Bei der Abstimmung über die neuen Weltwunder im Jahr 2007 war Schloss Neuschwanstein auf dem achten Platz zu finden.

 

Seit ihrer Öffnung für den Besucherverkehr im Todesjahr Ludwigs zählt die Anlage beständig steigende Gästezahlen. Allein in den ersten acht Wochen besuchten rund 18.000 Menschen das Schloss. 1913 zählte es über 28.000 Gäste, 1939 waren es bereits 290.000. Bis 2001 war die Zahl auf rund 1,3 Millionen Besucher angewachsen, darunter 560.000 Deutsche und 385.000 Amerikaner sowie Engländer. Drittstärkste Gruppe waren in jenem Jahr die 149.000 Japaner. Bis 2005 wurden insgesamt über 50 Millionen Besucher gezählt. 2013 wurde mit 1,52 Millionen Besuchern ein neuer Rekord aufgestellt, das waren 31 Prozent der gesamten Besucher in den staatlichen Schlössern, Burgen und Residenzen. Damit ist Schloss Neuschwanstein der unangefochtene Besuchermagnet der Bayerischen Schlösserverwaltung und deren einzige Anlage, die mehr Gewinn einbringt als Kosten verursacht. 2004 wurden über 6,5 Millionen Euro an Einnahmen verbucht. Die Anlage zählt in der Hochsaison von Juni bis August durchschnittlich mehr als 6000 Besucher am Tag, in Stoßzeiten bis zu 10.000. Aufgrund des hohen Andrangs müssen Gäste ohne Voranmeldung zum Teil mit mehreren Stunden Wartezeit rechnen. Der Ticketverkauf erfolgt – vor Ort und online – ausschließlich über das Ticketcenter in Hohenschwangau. Aus Gründen der Sicherheit ist es nur im Rahmen einer etwa 35-minütigen Führung möglich, das Schloss zu besichtigen. Daneben gibt es noch sogenannte Themenführungen, die sich beispielsweise mit den Sagenwelten der jeweiligen Bilder befassen.

 

Der mit Neuschwanstein verbundene Massentourismus ist für die Region jedoch nicht nur ein lukratives Geschäft, sondern bringt auch Probleme mit sich. Vor allem in den Sommermonaten ist die Verkehrssituation rund um die Königsschlösser Hohenschwangau und Neuschwanstein extrem angespannt. Der ausufernde Parksuchverkehr in Schwangau wirkt belastend auf die Bewohner, und der sich stauende Verkehr in der Augsburger Straße in Füssen ist zu einem Drittel auf den An- und Abreiseverkehr der Schlosstouristen zurückzuführen. Seit über 20 Jahren stehen die Stadt Füssen und die Gemeinde Schwangau in Verhandlung zur Beseitigung ihrer Verkehrsprobleme, doch die verschiedenen Interessenlagen und gegensätzliche Positionen der Beteiligten führten bislang zu keiner Lösung. Trotz langer Parkplatzsuche sowie Schlangestehen vor dem Ticketcenter und dem Schlossportal reißt der Besucherstrom nach Schloss Neuschwanstein nicht ab, denn

 

„Der Nimbus des „Märchenkönigs“ übt offensichtlich auf die Umwelt eine derartige Faszination aus, dass jeder Versuch, die Besucherströme auf andere, weniger besuchte Objekte abzulenken, bisher vergeblich war und wohl auch bleiben wird.“

 

Die bayerische Regierung investiert regelmäßig Summen in Millionenhöhe in die Erhaltung des Schlosses und in die touristische Erschließung der Anlage. 1977 musste der Felsberg unter der Kemenate für 500.000 DM saniert werden. Mit rund 640.000 DM schlug noch einmal die damalige Sanierung der Marienbrücke zu Buche, während für die Erneuerung der Schlossdächer 2,1 Millionen Mark aufgewendet werden mussten. In den 1980er Jahren war das Abtäufen eines Treppenhauses und die Anlage eines weiteren Besucheraufgangs nötig geworden. Sie kosteten insgesamt 4,2 Millionen Mark. In der Zeit von 1990 bis 2008 gab der Freistaat weitere 14,5 Millionen Euro für Instandhaltungsmaßnahmen – darunter die Instandsetzung der einzigen Zufahrtsstraße sowie eine jahrelange Fassadensanierung – und die Verbesserung der Besucherbetreuung aus. Auch die Innenräume müssen regelmäßig instandgesetzt und restauriert werden. So wurden 2009 und 2011 für über 425.000 Euro die original erhaltenen Textilien im Schlaf- sowie Wohnzimmer Ludwigs II. restauriert und durch Licht- sowie Tastschutz vor weiterem Verfall bewahrt.

 

Die Schlossverwaltung warnt davor, dass mit jährlich etwa 1,5 Millionen Besuchern das Schloss an die Grenzen seiner Kapazität gelangt sei. Die Besuchermassen würden – zusammen mit dem alpinen Klima und dem Licht – die wertvollen Möbel und Textilien stark belasten. Eine besondere Rolle scheint dabei die von den Besuchern ausgeatmete Feuchtigkeit zu spielen. Wissenschaftler sollen untersuchen, inwiefern die Schlossverwaltung diese Belastung verringern kann.

 

Neuschwanstein gilt als Sinnbild für die Zeit der Romantik und ist weltweit bekannt. In amerikanischer Werbung ist es das meistgenutzte Schlossmotiv. Schon im Mai 1954 zeigte die amerikanische Illustrierte Life in einer Sonderausgabe über das deutsche Wirtschaftswunder Schloss Neuschwanstein auf seiner Titelseite.

 

Das Schloss inspirierte Künstler wie Andy Warhol, der es zum Thema einer seiner Pop-Art-Sequenzen machte, nachdem er es 1971 besucht hatte. 2002 stürzten in der Nähe Neuschwansteins Trümmerstücke eines Meteoriten auf die Erde, die seitdem unter dem Namen des Schlosses katalogisiert sind.

 

Die Anlage war Vorbild für mehrere Bauten auf der ganzen Welt, allen voran für das Sleeping-Beauty-Schloss im Disneyland Resort im kalifornischen Anaheim. Auch das Dornröschen-Schloss im Disneyland Paris wurde dem bayerischen „Märchenschloss“ nachempfunden und folgt der internationalen Einordnung, die den Anblick von Neuschwanstein mit Disney's Cinderella bzw. mit Aschenputtel in Verbindung bringt. Ähnliches gilt für das Excalibur Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Der 1990 eröffnete, 290 Millionen Dollar teure Komplex zeigt starke Anlehnungen an Neuschwanstein. In Deutschland ließ der Kommerzienrat Friedrich Hoepfner in der Karlsruher Haid-und-Neu-Straße von 1896 bis 1898 seine „Hoepfner-Burg“ nach Plänen von Johann Hantschel errichten. Der als Betriebsgebäude für Hoepfners Brauerei errichtete Bau zeigt ebenfalls Reminiszenzen an Schloss Neuschwanstein.

 

Schloss Neuschwanstein diente unzählige Male als Kulisse für Verfilmungen über das Leben Ludwigs II. Es war zum Beispiel Drehort für Filme wie Helmut Käutners Ludwig II. von 1955 und Luchino Viscontis Ludwig II. von 1972. Auch die neueste Filmbiografie, Ludwig II. von Peter Sehr und Marie Noëlle aus dem Jahr 2012, wurde an Originalschauplätzen gedreht.

 

Die Anlage kam aber nicht nur bei Verfilmungen des Lebens Ludwigs II. zum Einsatz. Zum Beispiel fand auch ein Teil der Dreharbeiten zu Ken Hughes’ Fantasy-Komödie Tschitti Tschitti Bäng Bäng aus dem Jahr 1968 dort statt, und in Mel Brooks’ 1987 veröffentlichter Star-Wars-Parodie Spaceballs stellte Schloss Neuschwanstein das Zuhause von Prinzessin Vespa auf dem Planeten Druidia dar. Auch für Peter Zadeks Die wilden Fünfziger von 1983 und in dem 2008 erstmals ausgestrahlten TV-Spielfilm Die Jagd nach dem Schatz der Nibelungen diente Neuschwanstein als Kulisse.

 

In dem DEFA-Märchenfilm Die vertauschte Königin von Dieter Scharfenberg findet in der Anfangssequenz ein Schlossmodell Verwendung, das eine Adaption Neuschwansteins ist.

 

Die in dem Film Sherlock Holmes: Spiel im Schatten aus dem Jahr 2011 gezeigte Festung in den Schweizer Alpen wurde digital gestaltet, als Vorlage diente neben der Festung Hohenwerfen auch Schloss Neuschwanstein.

 

(Wikipedia)

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London, marking one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies will progressively fill the Tower's famous moat over the summer. Each poppy represents a British military fatality during the war.

 

The poppies will encircle the iconic landmark, creating not only a spectacular display visible from all around the Tower but also a location for personal reflection. The scale of the installation intends to reflect the magnitude of such an important centenary creating a powerful visual commemoration.

 

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red will see 888,246 ceramic poppies planted in the Tower's moat, each poppy representing a British military fatality during the war.

Galería Estatal Tretiakov - State Tretyakov Gallery - Государственная Третьяковская галерея

 

Borís Mijáilovich Kustódiev (ruso, Борис Михайлович Кустодиев; 7 de marzo de 1878–28 de mayo de 1927) fue un pintor y escenógrafo ruso.

Borís Kustódiev nació en Astrakán en la familia de un profesor de filosofía, historia de la literatura, y lógica en el seminario teológico local. Entre 1893 y 1896, Borís estudió en el seminario teológico y recibió clases privadas de arte en Astrakán de Pável Vlásov, un alumno de Vasili Perov.3 Posteriormente, desde 1896 hasta 1903, acudió al taller de Iliá Repin en la Academia Imperial de las Artes en San Petersburgo, colaborando posteriormente con él como ayudante. Expuso por vez primera en 1896.

Realizó visitas a Francia y España gracias a una beca de la Academia Imperial en 1904; luego, en 1907, estuvo en Italia, y en 1909 visitó Austria y Alemania, y de nuevo Francia e Italia. En esta época pintó sobre todo retratos y trabajos de género.

En 1905, Kustódiev se dedicó por vez primera a la ilustración de libros, un género que cultivaría el resto de su vida. Ilustró muchas obras de la literatura clásica rusa. Debido a una enfermedad, tuvo que marchar a Suiza, donde pasó un año en tratamiento en una clínica privada. Quedó parapléjico en 1916, estando a partir de entonces confinado en su habitación.

El artista también estuvo interesado en diseño de escenarios. Primero empezó a trabajar en el teatro en 1911, cuando diseñó decorados para la obra de Aleksandr Ostrovski Un corazón ardiente. Fue tal su éxito que le llegaron nuevos encargos. En 1913, diseñó escenario y vestuario para La muerte de Pázujin en el Teatro del Arte de Moscú. Demostró su talento en otras obras de Ostrovski.

En 1923, Kustódiev se unió a la Asociación de Artistas de la Rusia Revolucionaria. Siguió pintando, haciendo grabados, ilustrando libros y diseñando para el teatro hasta su muerte el 28 de mayo de 1927, en Leningrado.

 

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borís_Kustódiev

 

Boris Mikhaylovich Kustodiev (Russian: Бори́с Миха́йлович Кусто́диев; 7 March [O.S. 23 February] 1878 – 28 May 1927) was a Russian painter and stage designer.

Boris Kustodiev was born in Astrakhan into the family of a professor of philosophy, history of literature, and logic at the local theological seminary.[1] His father died young, and all financial and material burdens fell on his mother's shoulders. The Kustodiev family rented a small wing in a rich merchant's house. It was there that the boy's first impressions were formed of the way of life of the provincial merchant class. The artist later wrote, "The whole tenor of the rich and plentiful merchant way of life was there right under my nose... It was like something out of an Ostrovsky play." The artist retained these childhood observations for years, recreating them later in oils and water-colours.

Between 1893 and 1896, Kustodiev studied in theological seminary and took private art lessons in Astrakhan from Pavel Vlasov, a pupil of Vasily Perov. Subsequently, from 1896 to 1903, he attended Ilya Repin’s studio at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Concurrently, he took classes in sculpture under Dmitry Stelletsky and in etching under Vasiliy Mate. He first exhibited in 1896.

"I have great hopes for Kustodiev," wrote Repin. "He is a talented artist and a thoughtful and serious man with a deep love of art; he is making a careful study of nature..." When Repin was commissioned to paint a large-scale canvas to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the State Council, he invited Kustodiev to be his assistant. The painting was extremely complex and involved a great deal of hard work. Together with his teacher, the young artist made portrait studies for the painting, and then executed the right-hand side of the final work. Also at this time, Kustodiev made a series of portraits of contemporaries whom he felt to be his spiritual comrades. These included the artist Ivan Bilibin (1901, Russian Museum), Moldovtsev (1901, Krasnodar Regional Art Museum), and the engraver Mate (1902, Russian Museum). Working on these portraits considerably helped the artist, forcing him to make a close study of his model and to penetrate the complex world of the human soul.

In 1903, he married Julia Proshinskaya (1880–1942).

He visited France and Spain on a grant from the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1904. Also in 1904, he attended the private studio of René Ménard in Paris. After that he traveled to Spain, then, in 1907, to Italy, and in 1909 he visited Austria and Germany, and again France and Italy. During these years he painted many portraits and genre pieces. However, no matter where Kustodiev happened to be – in sunny Seville or in the park at Versailles – he felt the irresistible pull of his motherland. After five months in France he returned to Russia, writing with evident joy to his friend Mate that he was back once more "in our blessed Russian land".

The Russian Revolution of 1905, which shook the foundations of society, evoked a vivid response in the artist's soul. He contributed to the satirical journals Zhupel (Bugbear) and Adskaya Pochta (Hell’s Mail). At that time, he first met the artists of Mir Iskusstva (World of Art), the group of innovative Russian artists. He joined their association in 1910 and subsequently took part in all their exhibitions.

In 1905, Kustodiev first turned to book illustrating, a genre in which he worked throughout his entire life. He illustrated many works of classical Russian literature, including Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, The Carriage, and The Overcoat; Mikhail Lermontov's The Lay of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, His Young Oprichnik and the Stouthearted Merchant Kalashnikov; and Leo Tolstoy's How the Devil Stole the Peasants Hunk of Bread and The Candle.[2]

n 1909, he was elected into Imperial Academy of Arts. He continued to work intensively, but a grave illness—tuberculosis of the spine—required urgent attention. On the advice of his doctors he went to Switzerland, where he spent a year undergoing treatment in a private clinic. He pined for his distant homeland, and Russian themes continued to provide the basic material for the works he painted during that year. In 1918, he painted The Merchant's Wife, which became the most famous of his paintings.

In 1916, he became paraplegic. "Now my whole world is my room", he wrote. His ability to remain joyful and lively despite his paralysis amazed others. His colourful paintings and joyful genre pieces do not reveal his physical suffering, and on the contrary give the impression of a carefree and cheerful life.

His Pancake Tuesday/Maslenitsa (1916) and Fontanka (1916) are all painted from his memories. He meticulously restores his own childhood in the busy city on the Volga banks.

In the first years after the Russian Revolution of 1917 the artist worked with great inspiration in various fields. Contemporary themes became the basis for his work, being embodied in drawings for calendars and book covers, and in illustrations and sketches of street decorations, as well as some portraits (Portrait of Countess Grabowska)

His covers for the journals The Red Cornfield and Red Panorama attracted attention because of their vividness and the sharpness of their subject matter. Kustodiev also worked in lithography, illustrating works by Nekrasov. His illustrations for Leskov's stories The Darner and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District were landmarks in the history of Russian book designing, so well did they correspond to the literary images.

The artist was also interested in designing stage scenery. He first started work in the theatre in 1911, when he designed the sets for Alexander Ostrovsky's An Ardent Heart. Such was his success that further orders came pouring in. In 1913, he designed the sets and costumes for The Death of Pazukhin at the Moscow Art Theatre.

His talent in this sphere was especially apparent in his work for Ostrovsky's plays; It's a Family Affair, A Stroke of Luck, Wolves and Sheep, and The Storm. The milieu of Ostrovsky's plays—provincial life and the world of the merchant class—was close to Kustodiev's own genre paintings, and he worked easily and quickly on the stage sets.

In 1923, Kustodiev joined the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. He continued to paint, make engravings, illustrate books, and design for the theater up until his death of tuberculosis on 28 May 1927, in Leningrad.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Kustodiev

 

La Galería Estatal Tretiakov (en ruso: Государственная Третьяковская галерея [Gosudárstvennaya Tret'yakóvskaya galereya]) es una galería de arte ubicada en Moscú, Rusia, considerada el principal depositario de bellas artes rusas en el mundo.

Fue fundada en (1856) por el comerciante moscovita Pável Tretiakov (1832-1898), quien adquirió varias obras de artistas rusos contemporáneos, con el objetivo de crear una colección artística, que devino finalmente en este museo de arte nacional. En 1892, Tretiakov presentó su ya famoso repertorio a la nación rusa.

La fachada del edificio que alberga la galería, fue diseñada por el pintor Víktor Vasnetsov, al estilo típico de un cuento de hadas ruso. Fue construido entre 1902 y 1904 al sur del Kremlin de Moscú. Durante el siglo XX, la galería se extendió hacia varios inmuebles adyacentes, incluyendo la Iglesia de San Nicolás en Jamóvniki. Una edificación nueva, localizada en el Krymski Val, es usada para la promoción de arte ruso moderno.

La colección está conformada por más de 130 000 obras de arte, del rango de la Virgen de Vladímir y la Trinidad de Andréi Rubliov, hasta la monumental Composición VII de Vasili Kandinski y el Cuadrado Negro de Kazimir Malévich. En 1977, la galería contenía una significativa parte de la colección de George Costakis. Además, figuran otras obras igualmente importantes de los artistas Iván Aivazovski, Iván Argunov, Vasili Súrikov, Abram Arkhipov, Andréi Kolkutin, Orest Kiprenski, Valentín Serov, Vasili Polénov, Dmitri Levitski, Iliá Repin, Mijaíl Nésterov, Iván Shishkin y Marc Chagall.

 

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galería_Tretiakov

  

The State Tretyakov Gallery (Russian: Государственная Третьяковская Галерея, Gosudarstvennaya Tretyâkovskaya Galereya; abbreviated ГТГ, GTG) is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.

The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection, which might later grow into a museum of national art. In 1892, Tretyakov presented his already famous collection of approximately 2,000 works (1,362 paintings, 526 drawings, and 9 sculptures) to the Russian nation.

The façade of the gallery building was designed by the painter Viktor Vasnetsov in a peculiar Russian fairy-tale style. It was built in 1902–04 to the south from the Moscow Kremlin. During the 20th century, the gallery expanded to several neighboring buildings, including the 17th-century church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi.

The collection contains more than 130,000 exhibits, ranging from Theotokos of Vladimir and Andrei Rublev's Trinity to the monumental Composition VII by Wassily Kandinsky and the Black Square by Kazimir Malevich.

In 1977 the Gallery kept a significant part of the George Costakis collection.

In May 2012, the Tretyakov Art Gallery played host to the prestigious FIDE World Chess Championship between Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand as the organizers felt the event would promote both chess and art at the same time.

Pavel Tretyakov started collecting art in the middle of 1850. The founding year of the Tretyakov Gallery is considered to be 1856, when Tretyakov purchased two paintings of Russian artists: Temptation by N. G. Schilder and Skirmish with Finnish Smugglers by V. G. Kudyakov, although earlier, in 1854–1855, he had bought 11 drawings and nine pictures by Dutch Old Masters. In 1867 the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov was opened. The Gallery’s collection consisted of 1,276 paintings, 471 sculptures and 10 drawings by Russian artists, as well as 84 paintings by foreign masters.

In August 1892 Tretyakov presented his art gallery to the city of Moscow as a gift. In the collection at this time, there were 1,287 paintings and 518 graphic works of the Russian school, 75 paintings and eight drawings of European schools, 15 sculptures and a collection of icons. The official opening of the museum called the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov took place on August 15, 1893.

The gallery was located in a mansion that the Tretykov family had purchased in 1851. As the Tretyakov collection of art grew, the residential part of the mansion filled with art and it became necessary to make additions to the mansion in order to store and display the works of art. Additions were made in 1873, 1882, 1885, 1892 and 1902–1904, when there was the famous façade, designed in 1900–1903 by architect V. Bashkirov from the drawings of the artist Viktor Vasnetsov. Construction of the façade was managed by the architect A. M. Kalmykov.

In early 1913, the Moscow City Duma elected Igor Grabar as a trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery

On June 3, 1918, the Tretyakov Gallery was declared owned by Russian Federated Soviet Republic and was named the State Tretyakov Gallery. Igor Grabar was again appointed director of the museum. With Grabar’s active participation in the same year, the State Museum Fund was created, which up until 1927 remained one of the most important sources of replenishment of the gallery's collection.

In 1926 architect and academician A. V. Shchusev became the director of the gallery. In the following year the gallery acquired the neighboring house on Maly Tolmachevsky Lane (the house was the former home of the merchant Sokolikov). After restructuring in 1928, it housed the gallery's administration, academic departments, library, manuscripts department, and funds and graphics staffs. In 1985–1994, an administrative building was built from the design of architect A. L. Bernstein with two floors and height equal to that of the exposition halls.

In 1928 serious renovations were made to the gallery to provide heating and ventilation. In 1929 electricity was installed.

In 1929 the church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi was closed, and in 1932 the building was given to the gallery and became a storage facility for paintings and sculptures. Later, the church was connected to the exposition halls and a top floor was built which was specially designed for exhibiting a painting by A. A. Ivanov,The Appearance of Christ to the People (1837–1857). A transition space was built between rooms located on either side of the main staircase. This ensured the continuity of the view of exposure. The gallery began to develop a new concept of accommodating exhibits.

In 1936, a new two floor building was constructed which is located on the north side of the main building – it is known as the Schusevsky building. These halls were first used for exhibitions, and since 1940 have been included in the main route of exposure.

From the first days of the Great War, the gallery's personnel began dismantling the exhibition, as well as those of other museums in Moscow, in preparation for evacuating during wartime. Paintings were rolled on wooden shafts, covered with tissue paper, placed in boxes, and sheathed with waterproof material. In the middle of the summer of 1941 a train of 17 wagons traveled from Moscow and brought the collection to Novosibirsk. The gallery was not reopened in Moscow until May 17, 1945, upon the conclusion of the Great War.

In 1956, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Tretyakov Gallery, the Alexander Ivanov Hall was completed.

From 1980 to 1992, the director of the Tretyakov Gallery was Y. K. Korolev. Because of the increased number of visitors, Korolev was actively engaged in expanding the area of exposition. In 1983, construction work began to expand the gallery. In 1985 the Depository, a repository of works of art and restoration workshops, was commissioned. In 1986 renovations began on the main building of the Tretyakov Gallery. The architects I. M. Vinogradsky, G. V. Astafev, B. A. Klimov and others were retained to perform this project. In 1989, on the south side of the main building, a new building was designed and constructed to house a conference hall, a computer and information center, children's studio and exhibition halls. The building was named the "Corps of Engineers", because it housed engineering systems and services.

From 1986 to 1995, the Tretyakov Gallery in Lavrushinsky Lane was closed to visitors to accommodate a major renovation project to the building. At the time, the only museum in the exhibition area of this decade was the building on the Crimean Val, 10, which in 1985 was merged with the Tretyakov Gallery.

In 1985, the Tretyakov Gallery was administratively merged with a gallery of contemporary art, housed in a large modern building along the Garden Ring, immediately south of the Krymsky Bridge. The grounds of this branch of the museum contain a collection of Socialist Realism sculpture, including such highlights as Yevgeny Vuchetich's iconic statue Iron Felix (which was removed from Lubyanka Square in 1991), the Swords Into Plowshares sculpture representing a nude worker forging a plough out of a sword, and the Young Russia monument. Nearby is Zurab Tsereteli's 86-metre-tall statue of Peter the Great, one of the tallest outdoor statues in the world.

Near the gallery of modern art there is a sculpture garden called "the graveyard of fallen monuments" that displays statues of former Soviet Union that were relocated.

There are plans to demolish the gallery constructed in the late Soviet modernism style, though public opinion is strongly against this.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tretyakov_Gallery

 

www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/

 

Tower of London

 

Evolving installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies will progressively fill the Tower’s famous moat.

Oil on canvas; 91.7 x 72.7 cm.

 

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture,[2][3] the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

 

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.[4][5][6][7]

 

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortune, making him one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

 

Tower of London Poppies ~ Friday October 3rd 2014.

 

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ~ Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red is a 2014 work of installation art placed in the moat of the Tower of London, England, commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. The artist is Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper. The work's title is taken from the first line of a poem by an unknown World War I soldier, which begins: "The blood swept lands and seas of red, / Where angels dare to tread / ...

Form ~ The work consists of a sea of ceramic red poppies, being added progressively by volunteers. All the poppies have been individually hand-made in a ceramics factory in Derbyshire. It is intended that there will eventually be 888,246 of these, representing one estimate of the number of British and Colonial military fatalities in World War I. The sea of flowers is arranged to resemble a pool of blood which appears to be pouring out of a bastion window (the "Weeping Window"). The first poppy was planted on 17 July 2014, and the work was unveiled on 5 August (the centenary of Britain's entry into the war). It is planned to remain on display until 11 November 2014 (Armistice Day). Members of the public are invited to purchase the ceramic poppies, with a share of the proceeds going to service charities.

 

At around sunset each day between 1 September and 10 November, the names of one hundred World War I service personnel, nominated by members of the public to appear on a Roll of Honour, were read aloud by a Yeoman Warder, followed by the Last Post bugle call.

 

Official visits and public reactions ~ William and Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge on the day of its opening and by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh on 16 October.By 6 November four million people had seen the memorial, and the huge visitor demand saw Prime Minister David Cameron and other politicians join calls to try and extend the period which the installation remained at the Tower so that more visitors were able to pay their respects. Tower officials have resisted such calls, stating that the transience of the installation is a key part of the artistic concept,[11] and that the poppies would be removed as planned and distributed to their purchasers. On 8 November it was announced that the Wave segment – a steel construction with poppies around the Tower entrance – would remain in place until the end of the month, and that the Wave and the Weeping Window segments (both made by the Theatre Royal, Plymouth) would be taken on a tour of the UK lasting until 2018, and would then go on permanent display at the Imperial War Museums in London and Manchester.

 

Critical reaction ~ Although the installation has struck a chord with the public, it has received negative reactions from some press critics. A.A. Gill of The Sunday Times called it "impressive" but "curiously bland". The Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones described it as having a "false nobility" and being a "prettified and toothless" memorial. Tom Piper has responded that "... it is a remarkably good thing that it is so accessible. We should not be trying to create something that is difficult to understand.

Processed with CameraBag 2

 

An evolving installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies will progressively fill the Tower’s famous moat

 

Tower of London, UK

Marking the centenary of the start of WWI, the poppy art installation at The Tower of London.

 

Created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper using 888,246 ceramic poppies.

 

It's quite humbling to think that each one of these poppies represents a life lost in the first world war.

In fact such is the scale of this display, that I had to take this as a series of 6 shots to get it all in and do justice to it.

   

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Copyright: Alistair Beavis 2014

  

TowerPoppies1a-4

Siponto, Manfredonia ,Foggia, Puglia , italia © 2016 All rights reserved by Michele Masiero

 

FotoSketcher: lively

Nikon coolpix p 7100

  

Il Parco archeologico di Siponto, è situato a pochi chilometri dalla città di Manfredonia in Puglia.

Nell’area archeologica accanto alla chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore di origine medievale, sono presenti i resti di una basilica paleocristiana del IV sec. d.C. a tre navate con abside centrale e pavimento a mosaico. Al fine di valorizzare tutta l’area archeologica, che comprende anche il restauro del complesso della chiesa di San Leonardo posto nelle vicinanze, e preservare i resti archeologici della basilica paleocristiana, il ministero dei beni culturali e la sopraintendenza archeologica della Puglia utilizzando fondi europei , ha approvato e finanziato il progetto dello scultore lombardo Edoardo Tresoldi.

L’opera d’arte a carattere permanente di Edoardo Tresoldi, ricostruisce sui resti archeologici della basilica

paleocristiana , i volumi in scala reale della basilica stessa sino ad una altezza di 14 metri ,utilizzando reti in metallo galvanizzato trasparenti. L’Opera d’arte,unica al mondo, ha richiesto l’utilizzo di sette tonnellate di rete metallica leggera e trasparente , e un lavoro protrattosi per circa tre mesi di una equipe di una trentina di persone tra cui archeologi, ingegneri e architetti e il gruppo di giovani creativi che collaborano con Tresoldi da diversi anni.

Edoardo Tresoldi

Scultore, pittore e scenografo, Edoardo Tresoldi ha un approccio artistico e di ricerca creativa e libera. Studia design e arti visive all'istituto d'arte di Monza. Nel 2009 si trasferisce a Roma e inizia a lavorare come pittore di scena per vari progetti cinematografici. La scenografia diventa un laboratorio di sperimentazione. Dal 2013 realizza sculture ed installazioni in rete metallica. Edoardo ha 28 anni, è di Cambiago, in provincia di Milano ed è considerato uno dei talenti della street art italiana. Si fa aiutare da una squadra in cui l’età media è 25 anni e anche i responsabili di Sovrintendenze ed Ente Paesaggistici, hanno riconosciuto il valore delle sue opere. A lui sono state affidati luoghi importanti, come le installazioni alla Vigna di Leonardo a Milano e alla Basilica di Siponto a Manfredonia.

  

.The Archaeological Park of Siponto, is located a few kilometers from the town of Manfredonia in the Puglia region. In the archaeological site next to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore of medieval origin, there are the remains of a paleoChristian basilica of the fourth century. after Christ, with three naves and central apse and mosaic floor. In order to enhance the whole archaeological area, which also includes the restoration of the complex of the church of San Leonardo nearby, and preserve the archaeological remains of an early Christian basilica, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and the archaeological superintendence of Puglia using European funds, have approved and funded the project the Lombard sculptor Edoardo Tresoldi. The work of art, unique in the world, a permanent nature by Edoardo Tresoldi, reconstructs on the archaeological ruins of the paleoChristian basilica, the full-scale real volumes of the basilica itself up to a height of 14 meters, using wire mesh galvanized transparent.

The Art work required the use of seven tons of transparent metal mesh, and a job that lasted for about three months in a team of thirty people including archaeologists, engineers and architects and the group of young creatives that cooperate with Tresoldi from several years.

 

Edoardo Tresoldi

Sculptor, painter and stage designer, Edoardo Tresoldi has an artistic and creative research approach and free. He has studied design and visual arts at the Institute of Art of Monza. In 2009 he moved to Rome and began working as a scene painter for various film projects. The scenery becomes a testing laboratory. From 2013 makes sculptures and installations made of wire mesh. Edoardo is 28 years old, is born at Cambasio, in the province of Milan and is considered one of the talents of the Italian street art. It was helped by a team where the average age is 25 years. To him they were

  

From facebook and Dailybest

Czechoslovakian postcard by Tisk Severogravia Decin, no. 10-521-O-13. Photo: still from Dobry vojak Svejk/The Good Soldier Svejk (Jirî Trnka, 1955).

 

Because of his brilliant puppet animations, Czech puppeteer and stop-motion film-maker Jiří Trnka (1912-1969) was called ‘the Walt Disney of Eastern Europe’. For Dobry vojak Svejk/The Good Soldier Svejk (1955), he adapted the classic anti-war satire 'Švejk' by Jaroslav Hašek.

 

Jiří Trnka was born in the city of Pilsen, Austria-Hungary (now Plzeň, Czech Republic) in 1912. From the moment he could hold a pencil, Trnka drew pictures. At secondary school, his drawing teacher was the puppeteer and man of the theater Josef Skupa. Trnka studied at Prague's School of Arts and Crafts, and in 1936 he began a wooden puppet theatre on Prague’s Wenceslas Square, which was disbanded after the outbreak of WWII. During the war, he designed stage sets and illustrated Špalíček veršů a pohádek, a collection of Czech rhymes and fairy tales by František Hrubín. In the immediate wake of World War II, Trnka founded Bratři v triku (Brothers in Tricks) with fellow animators Eduard Hofman and Jiří Brdečka. This studio, dedicated to the production of traditional, hand-drawn animation, lives on today. Their first film was Zasadil dědek řepu (Grandpa Planted a Beet), followed by the puppet film Christmassy Betlém (Bethlehem), which captures the atmosphere of a Czech folk Christmas. In 1947, Trnka made the puppet film Špalíček (The Czech Year), which told six separate folk tales of Czech life. It was a defining moment for Trnka as he won several international awards three years running across Europe. Puppet animation is a traditional Czech art form, of which Trnka became the undisputed master. Most of his films were intended for adults and many were adaptations of literary works. These included feature-length covering working-class traditions and national heroes, such as Bajaja/Prince Bayaya (1950), and Staré povesti ceské/Old Czech Legends (1953). They made him an internationally recognized artist and the winner of film festival awards at Venice and elsewhere. He was a puppet-maker, a sculptor, and a set and stage designer. All of these talents were abundantly well utilised in his highly distinctive film work.

 

To explore the classics of Czech literature, Jiří Trnka decided in 1955 to adapt to the screen the immensely popular novel Osudy dobreho vojaka Svejka za svetove valky (The Good Soldier Švejk) written by Jaroslav Hašek. This anti-war satire is the most translated novel of Czech literature. At the time, there already existed film adaptations with real actors, such as Dobrý voják Švejk/The Last Bohemian (Martin Frič, 1931), starring Saša Rašilov as Švejk. Trnka however was the first to make an animated film about the bumbling soldier who earnestly attempts to follow orders. For the construction of the puppets, Trnka was inspired by the illustrations for the original book made by Josef Lada, which in the popular imagination were closely associated with the characters of Hašek. Dobry vojak Svejk/The Good Soldier Svejk (Jirî Trnka, 1955) is divided into three episodes, which tell the grotesque adventures of Švejk during World War I. The narrator was Jan Werich. The humorous film received several awards at international festivals. Trnka's masterpiece was Sen noci svatojánské/A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Jirî Trnka, 1959), which was presented in Cannes in 1959, which made him the icon of ‘Eastern country’ animators. Cerise Howard at Senses of Cinema: “a stunningly beautiful, highly faithful adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. Several years in the making, the puppet animation is more liquid, more balletic than ever.” Trnka's last film, Ruka/The Hand (Jirî Trnka, 1965), was an unexpected and surprising break in his work thus far. It was something completely new in content and form. The Hand is a merciless political allegory, which strictly follows the story outline without developing lyrical details as usual. In 1968, he received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for illustrators, recognizing his career contribution to children's literature. Jiri Trnka died in 1969 in Prague, only 57 years old. Four months later, The Hand was banned; all copies were confiscated by the secret police, put in a safe, and the film was forbidden for screening for the next twenty years.

 

Sources: Cerise Howard (Senses of Cinema), Edgar Datko (Animation World Magazine), Daniel Yates (IMDb), Europe of Cultures, Dangerous Minds, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

A painting of David Hockney’s quadriptych "Three trees near Thixendale, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter", exhibited in the museum Würth II, Gaisbach (Kuenzelsau), Franconia (Baden-Wuerttemberg)

 

Some background information:

 

If you drive through the countryside of the rural district of Hohenlohe with its pastures and little villages in the northeast of the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, you wouldn’t expect an art museum of international reputation being located in this area. However the museums Würth 1 and Würth 2 are and that has a particular reason: Both museums are attached to the headquarters of Würth Group, a multinational company and the biggest producer of screws in the world.

 

In 1954, the German billionaire Richard Würth took over a two-man business from his father at the age of 19 and made it a successful worldwide concern with almost 86,000 employees today. In the 70s, Würth began to collect art. Since then, he has collected roughly 18,500 works of art. His passion for collecting art even resulted in art becoming an important element of the Würth company culture. The most important works of art are made publicly available in altogether five museums of the Würth Group. All of them are freely accessible.

 

The newest of the five Würth museums is the museum Würth 2. It was attached to a forum, named after Reinhold Würth’s wife Carmen. The forum was opened in 2017, on occasion of the 80th birthday of Carmen Würth, while the extension building with the museum was opened in 2020. Both forum and museum were planned by the English architect David Chipperfield, who is based in Berlin. The extension building costed 39 million Euro, is dedicated to art from the late 19th to the 21st centuries and has a surface area of 5,500 square metres.

 

Beyond that, the Carmen Würth Forum is surrounded by an extensive sculpture garden. This sculpture garden features large sculptures of world-renowned sculptors, such as Georg Baselitz, Niki de Saint Phalle, Tony Cragg, Anish Kapoor, Anthony Caro, Alfred Hrdlicka, Eduardo Chillida and Jaume Plensa. However, the heart of the art collection is situated inside the museum.

 

On two floors, visitors can admire paintings and sculptures of modern painters and sculptors famous the world over. The collection comprises numerous artworks of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Legér, Rene Magritte, Giorgio de Chirico, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Edvard Munch, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, Eugene Boudin, Joan Miró, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Max Beckmann, Max Liebermann, Anselm Kiefer, David Hockney, Jörg Immendorff, Jean Arp, Fernando Botero, Serge Poliakoff and Gerhard Richter, to name only the best known artists.

 

If you want to visit the museum, just follow the A6 motorway between Nuremberg and Heilbronn. Take the exit to Kupferzell then and follow the road about 9 km (5.6 miles) towards Kuenzelsau. After having arrived in Gailsbach, the museum is well-signposted. And if you are interested in art, you definitely won’t regret your visit.

 

About David Hockney:

 

David Hockney, who was born in 1937, is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. Hockney grew up in Bradford, West Riding of Yorkshire. He studied at the Bradford College of Art and the Royal College of Art in London. In 1964 he moved to Los Angeles, but returned to Europe in the 1990s.

 

He has experimented with painting, drawing, printmaking, watercolours, photography, and many other media including a fax machine, paper pulp, computer applications and iPad drawing programs. The subject matter of interest ranges from still lifes to landscapes, portraits of friends, his dogs, and stage designs for the Royal Court Theatre, Glyndebourne, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

 

His works are housed in numerous public and private collections worldwide, including the 1853 Gallery at Salts Mill, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, to name just a few.

 

Hockney has always had a vivid interest in fashion too: In 1986, he was inducted into Vanity Fair's International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame. In 2005, Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey centred his entire spring/summer menswear collection around the artist. And in 2012, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, a close friend, named a checked jacket after Hockney. In 2011, British GQ named him one of the 50 Most Stylish Men in Britain and in March 2013, he was listed as one of the Fifty Best-dressed Over-50s by The Guardian.

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture,[2][3] the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

 

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.[4][5][6][7]

 

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortune, making him one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

Hollow significance

 

Lake Alpsee with a hotel lakeside and Neuschwanstein Castle in the distance, Hohenschwangau, Swabia, Bavaria, Germany

 

Some background information:

 

Neuschwanstein Castle and neighbouring Hohenschwangau Castle are definitely one of the highest attended visitor attractions throughout Germany. While Hohenschwangau Castle is visited by more than 300,000 visitors from all over the world each year, Neuschwanstein Castle is even visited by 1.3 million people annually. Hence, both Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castle have really become a big business. The tourist infrastructure around both castles leaves no touristic wishes to be desired and hence is well-prepared for the rush of visitors that arrives here every day. Well, compulsory visit made, but I for one definitely prefer the hidden gems.

 

Probably the most spectacular and also most famous view of Neuschwanstein Castle is the one from the so-called Marienbrücke (in English "Mary’s Bridge") overlooking both palace and the surrounding landscape. The Marienbrücke crosses Poellat Gorge right behind Neuschwanstein Castle in a distance of about 100 metres. Usually it’s crowded with tourists and visitors have to queue up to be able to cross the bridge and get a view of the building from there. However, at the time we were there, the Marienbrücke was closed due to problems with its statics. The necessary construction works won’t be completed before autumn 2022, just in case you plan a visit.

 

Neuschwanstein Castle is a 19th-century historicist palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near the town of Fuessen in southwest Bavaria. Like its neighbour Hohenschwangau Castle, it is situated in the Ostallgäu area in the Bavarian region of southern Swabia, directly bordering the Austrian state of Tyrol. The term Allgäu is applied to the northern part of the Alps and their foothills located in southwestern Bavaria. Both castles overlook the Alpsee (in English: "Alp Lake") and the Schwansee (in English: "Swan Lake") with a distant view into the Tyrolean Alps.

 

The Alpsee, which you can see on this picture, is a lake in the Ostallgäu, located about 4 kilometres southeast of the town of Füssen. It has a shoreline of about five kilometres (3.1 miles) and a depth of up to 62 metres. The German-Austrian border is situated just 450 metres south of the Alpsee. Also south of the Alpsee there’s a spring that feeds the lake. A little subsurface stream drains out of the Alpsee at the north shore, feeding the smaller Schwansee 400 metres north of the Alpsee as well.

 

The palace of Neuschwanstein was commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria (the so-called "Fairy Tale King") from the House of Wittelsbach as a retreat and in honour of Richard Wagner. While Hohenschwangau Castle was the childhood residence of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Neuschwanstein Castle was intended to be his private residence, until he died in 1886. It was opened to the public shortly after his death. Since then more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle.

 

Hence, the older one of both castles is Hohenschwangau Castle, which was designed by Ludwig’s father, King Maximilian II of Bavaria, in the first half of the 19th century. Neuschwanstein as well as Hohenschwangau Castle have predecessor buildings on the same spots, which had become ruins. The stronghold on the spot of Neuschwanstein Castle was first mentioned in a document in 1090 under the name of "Schwangau", while the stronghold on the spot of Hohenschwangau Castle was first mentioned in 1397 under the name of "Schwanstein". Only in the 19th century, the names of both castles switched.

 

Neuschwanstein Castle embodies both the contemporaneous architectural fashion known as castle romanticism, and King Ludwig II's enthusiasm for the operas of Richard Wagner. The King saw both buildings as representatives of a romantic interpretation of the Middle Ages, as well as the musical mythology of his friend Wagner, whose operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin had made a lasting impression on him.

 

The building design of Neuschwanstein was drafted by the stage designer Christian Jank and realised by the architect Eduard Riedel. For technical reasons, the ruined castle could not be integrated into the plan. Before and during the construction phase, the King insisted on a detailed plan and on personal approval of each and every draft. Ludwig's control even went so far that the palace has been regarded as his own creation, rather than that of the architects involved.

 

The construction of Neuschwanstein took a rather long time. It began in 1868, but King Ludwig II wasn’t able to move into the palace until 1880. The construction costs in the King's lifetime amounted to 6.2 million marks (an equivalent to 45 million € today), almost twice the initial cost estimate of 3.2 million marks. As his private means were insufficient for his increasingly escalating construction projects, the King continuously opened new lines of credit. Even after his debts had reached 14 million marks, King Ludwig II insisted on continuation of his different private architectural projects, to which also the palaces of Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee belonged.

 

To realise all his projects, Ludwig was also able to draw on an additional secret income, which he received in return for a political favour given to Otto von Bismarck. This favour was his approval of the imperial coronation of William I, King of Prussia, who was acclaimed German emperor at the Palace of Versailles in January 1871. By doing that, he had to divest himself of many of his royal prerogatives.

 

Despite its size, Neuschwanstein did not have space for the royal court, but contained only the King's private lodging and servants' rooms. The court buildings served decorative, rather than residential purposes. The palace was intended to serve King Ludwig II exclusively (who never had a wife or children) as a kind of inhabitable theatrical setting. However, it was also dedicated to the life and work of Richard Wagner, who died in 1883 before he had set foot in the building. In the end, Ludwig II lived in the palace for a total of only 172 days.

 

In 1886, while Ludwig II stayed in Neuschwanstein Palace, the Bavarian government decided to depose the King, who had become more and more divorced from reality. Shortly afterwards, he was also incapacitated and forced to leave his palace. Ludwig was then put under the supervision of Benhard von Gudden, a German neuroanatomist and psychiatrist. On 13th June 1886, both died under mysterious circumstances in the shallow shore water of Lake Starnberg near Berg Castle. Hence, his life ended tragically and the mystery of his death may also have contributed to the personality cult and the popularity, Ludwig has received after his demise.

 

Today, Neuschwanstein Castle has become a global symbol of the era of Romanticism. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies and has also served as the inspiration for Disneyland's "Sleeping Beauty Castle". In 1977, it became the motif of a West German definitive stamp. And in 2007, it was a finalist in the widely publicised on-line selection of the" New Seven Wonders of the World". Even a meteorite that reached Earth spectacularly in 2002 was named "Neuschwanstein". Since 2015, Neuschwanstein, Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee palaces are on the German tentative list for a future designation as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A joint candidature with other representative palaces of the romantic historicism is discussed.

Tower of London ceramic poppies.

 

"Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red", created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper.

888,246 ceramic poppies have progressively filled the Tower's famous moat over the summer. Each poppy represents a British military fatality during the war. The poppies have encircled the iconic landmark, creating not only a spectacular display visible from all around the Tower but also a location for personal reflection. The scale of the installation intends to reflect the magnitude of such an important centenary creating a powerful visual commemoration.

poppies.hrp.org.uk/

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. As one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture,[2][3] the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

 

Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.[4][5][6][7]

 

Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortune, making him one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

 

The 43 pillars sustaining the 3 buildings of Azkuna Zentroa symbolise the millions of columns, and infinity of cultures, architectures, wars and religions through which man has passed throughout history. Lorenzo Baraldi, the Italian stage designer, has materialised Philippe Starck’s cinematographic vision of this space in his own particular interpretation of the place.

 

Entering the Azkuna Zentroa Atrium of Cultures is to immerse oneself in the journey through the cultural and geographical diversity which has influenced the evolution of humanity. A journey for which there is no charted route since everyone may contribute with their own vision to create their own itinerary awakening their capacity to invent stories. The only priority in the arrangement of these sculptures was not to put columns of the same material or similar style together, so each one would have its fair importance and relevance. This journey is an opportunity to reflect on the importance of art in our lives even when we are not aware of it.

MATERIALS

 

The choice of materials to manufacture the 43 columns is also a journey through the history of the raw materials. First the oldest were chosen, such as marble, brick, wood and bronze. Then, by way of testimony to modern times, cement and steel. And finally, two elements used since ancient times were proposed, yet are virtually unknown, namely Lecce stone and glazed terracotta.

  

THE CRAFTS MEN

 

The hands of 120 people have made this staging a reality. Operatives, sculptors, painters and architects have devoted both body and soul to a commission which, in many cases, represented a professional challenge. Hence, the columns are also a tribute to craftsmanship, to attention to detail, the most tradition way of working, although modern techniques have been employed in their manufacture. (www.azkunazentroa.eus/az/ingl/home/visit-azkuna-zentroa/t...)

 

If you click around on that page you'll come across a flyer that's giving loads of details to every column.

Tower of London Poppies ~ Friday October 3rd 2014.

 

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ~ Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red is a 2014 work of installation art placed in the moat of the Tower of London, England, commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. The artist is Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper. The work's title is taken from the first line of a poem by an unknown World War I soldier, which begins: "The blood swept lands and seas of red, / Where angels dare to tread / ...

Form ~ The work consists of a sea of ceramic red poppies, being added progressively by volunteers. All the poppies have been individually hand-made in a ceramics factory in Derbyshire. It is intended that there will eventually be 888,246 of these, representing one estimate of the number of British and Colonial military fatalities in World War I. The sea of flowers is arranged to resemble a pool of blood which appears to be pouring out of a bastion window (the "Weeping Window"). The first poppy was planted on 17 July 2014, and the work was unveiled on 5 August (the centenary of Britain's entry into the war). It is planned to remain on display until 11 November 2014 (Armistice Day). Members of the public are invited to purchase the ceramic poppies, with a share of the proceeds going to service charities.

 

At around sunset each day between 1 September and 10 November, the names of one hundred World War I service personnel, nominated by members of the public to appear on a Roll of Honour, were read aloud by a Yeoman Warder, followed by the Last Post bugle call.

 

Official visits and public reactions ~ William and Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge on the day of its opening and by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh on 16 October.By 6 November four million people had seen the memorial, and the huge visitor demand saw Prime Minister David Cameron and other politicians join calls to try and extend the period which the installation remained at the Tower so that more visitors were able to pay their respects. Tower officials have resisted such calls, stating that the transience of the installation is a key part of the artistic concept,[11] and that the poppies would be removed as planned and distributed to their purchasers. On 8 November it was announced that the Wave segment – a steel construction with poppies around the Tower entrance – would remain in place until the end of the month, and that the Wave and the Weeping Window segments (both made by the Theatre Royal, Plymouth) would be taken on a tour of the UK lasting until 2018, and would then go on permanent display at the Imperial War Museums in London and Manchester.

 

Critical reaction ~ Although the installation has struck a chord with the public, it has received negative reactions from some press critics. A.A. Gill of The Sunday Times called it "impressive" but "curiously bland". The Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones described it as having a "false nobility" and being a "prettified and toothless" memorial. Tom Piper has responded that "... it is a remarkably good thing that it is so accessible. We should not be trying to create something that is difficult to understand.

Deutschland / Bayern - Schloss Neuschwanstein

 

Neuschwanstein Castle (German: Schloss Neuschwanstein, pronounced [nɔʏˈʃvaːnʃtaɪn], Southern Bavarian: Schloss Neischwanstoa) is a 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and in honour of Richard Wagner. Ludwig paid for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing, rather than Bavarian public funds.

 

The castle was intended as a home for the king, until he died in 1886. It was open to the public shortly after his death. Since then more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle. More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer.

 

The municipality of Schwangau lies at an elevation of 800 m (2,620 ft) at the southwest border of the German state of Bavaria. Its surroundings are characterised by the transition between the Alpine foothills in the south (toward the nearby Austrian border) and a hilly landscape in the north that appears flat by comparison.

 

In the Middle Ages, three castles overlooked the villages. One was called Schwanstein Castle. In 1832, Ludwig's father King Maximilian II of Bavaria bought its ruins to replace them with the comfortable neo-Gothic palace known as Hohenschwangau Castle. Finished in 1837, the palace became his family's summer residence, and his elder son Ludwig (born 1845) spent a large part of his childhood here.

 

Vorderhohenschwangau Castle and Hinterhohenschwangau Castle sat on a rugged hill overlooking Schwanstein Castle, two nearby lakes (Alpsee and Schwansee), and the village. Separated by only a moat, they jointly consisted of a hall, a keep, and a fortified tower house. In the nineteenth century only ruins remained of the twin medieval castles, but those of Hinterhohenschwangau served as a lookout place known as Sylphenturm.

 

The ruins above the family palace were known to the crown prince from his excursions. He first sketched one of them in his diary in 1859. When the young king came to power in 1864, the construction of a new palace in place of the two ruined castles became the first in his series of palace building projects. Ludwig called the new palace New Hohenschwangau Castle; only after his death was it renamed Neuschwanstein.[9] The confusing result is that Hohenschwangau and Schwanstein have effectively swapped names: Hohenschwangau Castle replaced the ruins of Schwanstein Castle, and Neuschwanstein Castle replaced the ruins of the two Hohenschwangau Castles.

 

Neuschwanstein embodies both the contemporaneous architectural fashion known as castle romanticism (German: Burgenromantik), and Ludwig II's immoderate enthusiasm for the operas of Richard Wagner.

 

In the 19th century, many castles were constructed or reconstructed, often with significant changes to make them more picturesque. Palace-building projects similar to Neuschwanstein had been undertaken earlier in several of the German states and included Hohenschwangau Castle, Lichtenstein Castle, Hohenzollern Castle, and numerous buildings on the River Rhine such as Stolzenfels Castle. The inspiration for the construction of Neuschwanstein came from two journeys in 1867 — one in May to the reconstructed Wartburg near Eisenach, another in July to the Château de Pierrefonds, which Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was transforming from a ruined castle into a historistic palace.

 

The king saw both buildings as representatives of a romantic interpretation of the Middle Ages, as well as the musical mythology of his friend Wagner, whose operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin had made a lasting impression on him.

 

In February 1868, Ludwig's grandfather Ludwig I died, freeing the considerable sums that were previously spent on the abdicated king's appanage. This allowed Ludwig II to start the architectural project of building a private refuge in the familiar landscape far from the capital Munich, so that he could live out his idea of the Middle Ages.

 

It is my intention to rebuild the old castle ruin of Hohenschwangau near the Pöllat Gorge in the authentic style of the old German knights' castles, and I must confess to you that I am looking forward very much to living there one day [...]; you know the revered guest I would like to accommodate there; the location is one of the most beautiful to be found, holy and unapproachable, a worthy temple for the divine friend who has brought salvation and true blessing to the world. It will also remind you of "Tannhäuser" (Singers' Hall with a view of the castle in the background), "Lohengrin'" (castle courtyard, open corridor, path to the chapel) ...

— Ludwig II, Letter to Richard Wagner, May 1868

 

The building design was drafted by the stage designer Christian Jank and realised by the architect Eduard Riedel. For technical reasons, the ruined castles could not be integrated into the plan. Initial ideas for the palace drew stylistically on Nuremberg Castle and envisaged a simple building in place of the old Vorderhohenschwangau Castle, but they were rejected and replaced by increasingly extensive drafts, culminating in a bigger palace modelled on the Wartburg. The king insisted on a detailed plan and on personal approval of each and every draft. Ludwig's control went so far that the palace has been regarded as his own creation, rather than that of the architects involved.

 

Whereas contemporary architecture critics derided Neuschwanstein, one of the last big palace building projects of the nineteenth century, as kitsch, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig II's other buildings are now counted among the major works of European historicism. For financial reasons, a project similar to Neuschwanstein – Falkenstein Castle – never left the planning stages.

 

The palace can be regarded as typical for nineteenth-century architecture. The shapes of Romanesque (simple geometric figures such as cuboids and semicircular arches), Gothic (upward-pointing lines, slim towers, delicate embellishments) and Byzantine architecture and art (the Throne Hall décor) were mingled in an eclectic fashion and supplemented with 19th-century technical achievements. The Patrona Bavariae and Saint George on the court face of the Palas (main building) are depicted in the local Lüftlmalerei style, a fresco technique typical for Allgäu farmers' houses, while the unimplemented drafts for the Knights' House gallery foreshadow elements of Art Nouveau. Characteristic of Neuschwanstein's design are theatre themes: Christian Jank drew on coulisse drafts from his time as a scenic painter.

 

The basic style was originally planned to be neo-Gothic but the palace was primarily built in Romanesque style in the end. The operatic themes moved gradually from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin to Parsifal.

 

In 1868, the ruins of the medieval twin castles were completely demolished; the remains of the old keep were blown up. The foundation stone for the palace was laid on 5 September 1869; in 1872 its cellar was completed and in 1876, everything up to the first floor, the gatehouse being finished first. At the end of 1882 it was completed and fully furnished, allowing Ludwig to take provisional lodgings there and observe the ongoing construction work. In 1874, management of the civil works passed from Eduard Riedel to Georg von Dollmann. The topping out ceremony for the Palas was in 1880, and in 1884, the king was able to move in to the new building. In the same year, the direction of the project passed to Julius Hofmann, after Dollmann had fallen from the King's favour.

 

The palace was erected as a conventional brick construction and later encased in various types of rock. The white limestone used for the fronts came from a nearby quarry. The sandstone bricks for the portals and bay windows came from Schlaitdorf in Württemberg. Marble from Untersberg near Salzburg was used for the windows, the arch ribs, the columns and the capitals. The Throne Hall was a later addition to the plans and required a steel framework.

 

The transport of building materials was facilitated by scaffolding and a steam crane that lifted the material to the construction site. Another crane was used at the construction site. The recently founded Dampfkessel-Revisionsverein (Steam Boiler Inspection Association) regularly inspected both boilers.

 

For about two decades the construction site was the principal employer in the region. In 1880, about 200 craftsmen were occupied at the site, not counting suppliers and other persons indirectly involved in the construction. At times when the king insisted on particularly close deadlines and urgent changes, reportedly up to 300 workers per day were active, sometimes working at night by the light of oil lamps. Statistics from the years 1879/1880 support an immense amount of building materials: 465 tonnes (513 short tons) of Salzburg marble, 1,550 t (1,710 short tons) of sandstone, 400,000 bricks and 2,050 cubic metres (2,680 cu yd) of wood for the scaffolding.

 

In 1870, a society was founded for insuring the workers, for a low monthly fee, augmented by the king. The heirs of construction casualties (30 cases are mentioned in the statistics) received a small pension.

 

In 1884, the king was able to move into the (still unfinished) Palas, and in 1885, he invited his mother Marie to Neuschwanstein on the occasion of her 60th birthday. By 1886, the external structure of the Palas (hall) was mostly finished. In the same year, Ludwig had the first, wooden Marienbrücke over the Pöllat Gorge replaced by a steel construction.

 

Despite its size, Neuschwanstein did not have space for the royal court, but contained only the king's private lodging and servants' rooms. The court buildings served decorative, rather than residential purposes: The palace was intended to serve Ludwig II as a kind of inhabitable theatrical setting. As a temple of friendship it was also dedicated to the life and work of Richard Wagner, who died in 1883 before he had set foot in the building. In the end, Ludwig II lived in the palace for a total of only 172 days.

 

Neuschwanstein welcomes almost 1.5 million visitors per year making it one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe. For security reasons the palace can only be visited during a 35-minute guided tour, and no photography is allowed inside the castle. There are also special guided tours that focus on specific topics. In the peak season from June until August, Neuschwanstein has as many as 6000 visitors per day, and guests without advance reservation may have to wait several hours. Ticket sales are processed exclusively via the ticket centre in Hohenschwangau. As of 2008, the total number of visitors was more than 60 million In 2004, the revenues were booked as €6.5 million.

 

Neuschwanstein is a global symbol of the era of Romanticism. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies such as Helmut Käutner's Ludwig II (1955) and Luchino Visconti's Ludwig (1972), both biopics about the king; the musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and the war drama The Great Escape (1963). It served as the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle and later, similar structures. It is also visited by the character Grace Nakimura alongside Herrenchiemsee in the game The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (1996).

 

In 1977, Neuschwanstein Castle became the motif of a West German definitive stamp, and it appeared on a €2 commemorative coin for the German Bundesländer series in 2012. In 2007, it was a finalist in the widely publicised on-line selection of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

 

A meteorite that reached Earth spectacularly on 6 April 2002, at the Austrian border near Hohenschwangau was named Neuschwanstein after the palace. Three fragments were found: Neuschwanstein I (1.75 kg (3.9 lb), found July 2002) and Neuschwanstein II (1.63 kg (3.6 lb), found May 2003) on the German side, and Neuschwanstein III (2.84 kg (6.3 lb), found June 2003) on the Austrian side near Reutte. The meteorite is classified as an enstatite chondrite with unusually large proportions of pure iron (29%), enstatite and the extremely rare mineral sinoite (Si2N2O).

 

Since 2015, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig's Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee palaces are on the German tentative list for a future designation as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A joint candidature with other representative palaces of the romantic historicism is discussed (including Schwerin Palace, for example).

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Das Schloss Neuschwanstein steht oberhalb von Hohenschwangau bei Füssen im südöstlichen bayerischen Allgäu. Der Bau wurde ab 1869 für den bayerischen König Ludwig II. als idealisierte Vorstellung einer Ritterburg aus der Zeit des Mittelalters errichtet. Die Entwürfe stammen von Christian Jank, die Ausführung übernahmen Eduard Riedel und Georg von Dollmann. Der König lebte nur wenige Monate im Schloss, er starb noch vor der Fertigstellung der Anlage. Neuschwanstein wurde ursprünglich als Neue Burg Hohenschwangau bezeichnet, seinen heutigen Namen trägt es seit 1886. Eigentümer des Schlosses ist der Freistaat Bayern; es wird von der Bayerischen Verwaltung der staatlichen Schlösser, Gärten und Seen betreut und bewirtschaftet.

 

Neuschwanstein ist das berühmteste der Schlösser Ludwigs II. und eine der bekanntesten Sehenswürdigkeiten Deutschlands. Es wird jährlich von etwa 1,5 Millionen Touristen besucht. Das oftmals als „Märchenschloss“ bezeichnete Neuschwanstein ist nahezu ganzjährig für Besucher geöffnet. Die Architektur und Innenausstattung sind vom romantischen Eklektizismus des 19. Jahrhunderts geprägt; das Schloss gilt als ein Hauptwerk des Historismus. Eine Aufnahme der „Ludwig-Schlösser“ Neuschwanstein, Linderhof und Herrenchiemsee in die Liste des Weltkulturerbes der UNESCO wird angestrebt.

 

Erstmals urkundlich erwähnt wurde ein »Castrum Swangowe« im Jahre 1090. Damit gemeint waren die im Mittelalter an der Stelle des heutigen Schlosses Neuschwanstein stehenden zwei kleinen Burgen: Die aus einem Palas und einem Bergfried bestehende Burg Vorderhohenschwangau an der Stelle des heutigen Palas und, nur durch einen Halsgraben getrennt, ein befestigter Wohnturm namens Hinterhohenschwangau, der sich dort befand, wo zwischen heutigem Ritterhaus und Kemenate auch Ludwig II. einen hohen Bergfried geplant hatte, zu dessen Errichtung er jedoch nicht mehr kam. Beide Gebäude gingen auf die Herren von Schwangau zurück, die in der Region als Lehensnehmer der Welfen (bis 1191) und der Staufer (bis 1268), danach als reichsunmittelbare Ritter ansässig waren, bis zu ihrem Aussterben im Jahre 1536. Der Minnesänger Hiltbolt von Schwangau stammt aus diesem Geschlecht. Hinterhohenschwangau war wahrscheinlich der Geburtsort von Margareta von Schwangau, der Ehefrau des Minnesängers Oswald von Wolkenstein. Als 1363 Herzog Rudolf IV. von Österreich Tirol unter habsburgische Herrschaft brachte, verpflichteten sich Stephan von Schwangau und seine Brüder, ihre Festen Vorder- und Hinterschwangau, die Burg Frauenstein und den Sinwellenturm dem österreichischen Herzog offenzuhalten.

 

Eine Urkunde von 1397 nennt zum ersten Mal den Schwanstein, das heutige Schloss Hohenschwangau, das um diese Zeit unterhalb der älteren Doppelburg auf einer Anhöhe zwischen Alpsee und Schwansee errichtet worden war. Seit dem 16. Jahrhundert befand sich die reichsunmittelbare Herrschaft Schwangau unter Oberhoheit der Wittelsbacher, welche die Burg Schwanstein zur Bärenjagd sowie als Sitz für jüngere Söhne und später für ein Pfleggericht nutzten. Sie hatten den gesamten Besitz 1567 aus dem Nachlass der bankrotten Augsburger Patrizierfamilie Baumgartner erworben.

 

Im 19. Jahrhundert waren die beiden oberen Burgen zu Ruinen verfallen, die Überreste Hinterhohenschwangaus zu einem Sylphenturm genannten Aussichtsplatz umgestaltet. Ludwig II. verbrachte einen Teil seiner Kindheit in der Nähe der Burgruinen auf dem benachbarten Schloss Hohenschwangau, das sein Vater König Maximilian II. um 1837 von einer spätmittelalterlichen Burg zu einem wohnlichen Schloss im Sinne der Romantik hatte umgestalten lassen. Hohenschwangau war ursprünglich als Schloss Schwanstein bekannt, seine neue Bezeichnung erhielt es erst während des Wiederaufbaus. Damit wurden die Namen der Burg Schwanstein und der älteren Doppelburg Vorder- und Hinterhohenschwangau vertauscht. Max II. hatte 1855 Baurat Eduard Riedel beauftragt, für den Turm von Hinterhohenschwangau zunächst einen Aussichtspavillon in Glas-Eisen-Konstruktion zu entwerfen, im Jahr darauf dann einen Plan für die Reparatur des Turms und die Herstellung eines Zimmers mit einem Zeltdach darüber. Beides wurde jedoch zurückgestellt.

 

Die oberhalb des Wohnschlosses gelegenen Ruinen waren dem Kronprinzen – wie auch der Frauenstein und der Falkenstein – häufiges Wanderziel und deshalb gut bekannt. 1859 zeichnete er die Überreste der Vorderhohenschwangauer Burg erstmals in sein Tagebuch. 1837 pries ein Anonymus das wiederaufgebaute Schloss Hohenschwangau als „die Wiege einer neuen Romantik“ und schwärmte von dem Gedanken, dass „auch die Ruinen von dem vorderen Schlosse Schwangau (gemeint war die Doppelburg Vorder- und Hinterhohenschwangau), die mit Falkenstein und Hohen-Freyberg ein langgezogenes Dreieck bilden, zu einem großen einfachen Fest- und Sängersaal wiederaufgerichtet werden …“ Damit war die Idee eines Wiederaufbaus der Ruinen im Sinne einer Wiedergeburt des Austragungsortes des Sängerkriegs auf der Wartburg in der Welt; 20 Jahre bevor die thüringische Wartburg durch Hugo von Ritgen wiederaufgebaut wurde und 30 Jahre bevor Ludwig II. die Idee in die Tat umsetzte, indem er auf dem „Jugend“ genannten Burgfelsen von Vorder- und Hinterhohenschwangau ein neues „Sängerschloss“ nach dem Vorbild der Wartburg errichten ließ.

 

ach der Regierungsübernahme durch den jungen König 1864 war der Wiederaufbau der Vorderhohenschwangauer Burgruine – des späteren Neuschwansteins – das erste größere Schlossbauprojekt Ludwigs II. Er plante damit durchaus nichts Außergewöhnliches: In ganz Europa bauten sich zur gleichen Zeit gekrönte Häupter und Adelsfamilien Schlösser und Burgen in historischen Stilen oder ließen bedeutende mittelalterliche Monumente rekonstruieren. Kurz nach dem väterlichen Hohenschwangau hatte Ludwigs Onkel, König Friedrich Wilhelm IV. von Preußen, das Schloss Stolzenfels und von 1850 bis 1867 die Burg Hohenzollern wiedererrichten lassen. Der hannoversche König hatte von 1858 bis 1869 das Schloss Marienburg gebaut. Die britische Königin Victoria ließ ab 1845 Osborne House und kurz darauf Balmoral Castle umbauen, nachdem ihr Onkel Georg IV. schon zwischen 1820 und 1830 Windsor Castle bedeutend erweitert hatte. Ein weiteres Beispiel aus Europa war ab 1840 der Bau des Palácio Nacional da Pena durch den portugiesischen König Ferdinand II. Zur gleichen Zeit ließen die Fürsten zu Schwarzenberg das böhmische Schloss Frauenberg errichten und die Fürsten von Urach das Schloss Lichtenstein bauen. Auch die umfangreiche Restaurierung der Hohkönigsburg im Elsass durch den deutschen Kaiser, die allerdings erst im frühen 20. Jahrhundert stattfand, kann hier erwähnt werden.

 

Dem als Sinnbild einer Ritterburg gedachten Neuschwanstein folgten mit Linderhof noch ein Lustschloss aus der Epoche des Rokoko und mit Schloss Herrenchiemsee ein barocker Palast, der als Denkmal für die Zeit des Absolutismus stand. Angeregt zu dem Bau Neuschwansteins wurde Ludwig II. durch zwei Reisen: Im Mai 1867 besuchte er mit seinem Bruder Otto die wieder aufgebaute Wartburg bei Eisenach, im Juli desselben Jahres besichtigte er in Frankreich Schloss Pierrefonds, das damals von Eugène Viollet-le-Duc für Kaiser Napoleon III. von einer Burgruine zu einem historistischen Schloss umgestaltet wurde. Im Verständnis des Königs entsprachen beide Bauten einer romantischen Darstellung des Mittelalters, ebenso wie die musikalischen Sagenwelten Richard Wagners. Dessen Werke Tannhäuser und Lohengrin hatten den König nachhaltig beeindruckt. Am 15. Mai 1868 teilte er dem befreundeten Komponisten in einem Brief mit:

 

„Ich habe die Absicht, die alte Burgruine Hohenschwangau bei der Pöllatschlucht neu aufbauen zu lassen, im echten Styl der alten deutschen Ritterburgen“

 

Durch den Tod seines 1848 abgedankten Großvaters Ludwig I. konnte der junge König ab 1868 dessen Apanage einbehalten, wodurch ihm umfangreiche finanzielle Mittel zur Verfügung standen. Der König wollte mit dem nun entstehenden Bauprojekt in der ihm aus Kindertagen vertrauten Landschaft ein privates Refugium abseits der Hauptstadt München schaffen, in dem er seine Vorstellung des Mittelalters erleben konnte, zumal das von ihm gern genutzte Schloss Hohenschwangau jeweils während der Sommermonate von seiner ungeliebten Mutter, der Königin Marie, besetzt war. Die Entwürfe für das neue Schloss lieferte der Münchner Theatermaler Christian Jank, umgesetzt wurden sie durch den Architekten Eduard Riedel. Überlegungen, die Burgruinen in den Bau zu integrieren, wurden wegen der damit verbundenen technischen Schwierigkeiten nicht weiter verfolgt. Erste Pläne für das Schloss, die sich stilistisch an der Nürnberger Burg orientierten und einen schlichten Neubau anstelle der alten Burg Vorderhohenschwangau vorsahen, wurden wieder verworfen und gegen zunehmend umfangreichere Entwürfe ersetzt, die zu einem größeren Schloss nach dem Vorbild der Wartburg führten. Der König bestand auf einer detaillierten Planung und ließ sich jeden Entwurf zur Genehmigung vorlegen. Sein Einfluss auf die Entwürfe reichte so weit, dass das Schloss vor allem als seine eigene Schöpfung und weniger als die seiner beteiligten Architekten gelten kann.

 

Mit dem Bau des Schlosses wurde 1869 begonnen. Die Wünsche und Ansprüche Ludwigs II. wuchsen mit dem Bau ebenso wie die Ausgaben, und die Entwürfe und Kostenvoranschläge mussten mehrfach überarbeitet werden. So war anstelle des großen Thronsaales ursprünglich nur ein bescheidenes Arbeitszimmer geplant, und vorgesehene Gästezimmer wurden aus den Entwürfen wieder gestrichen, um Platz für einen Maurischen Saal zu schaffen, der aufgrund der ständigen Geldknappheit nicht realisiert werden konnte. Die ursprünglich schon für 1872 vorgesehene Fertigstellung des Schlosses verzögerte sich wiederholt. Als Dank für den Kaiserbrief erhielt der König ab 1871 zwar Zuwendungen aus dem Welfenfonds durch Bismarck, doch wurden seine finanziellen Mittel nun zunehmend auch durch seine weiteren Bauprojekte vereinnahmt. Der Palas und das Torhaus Neuschwansteins waren bis 1886 im Außenbau weitgehend fertiggestellt; ab 1884 konnte der König den Palas erstmals bewohnen. Ludwig II. lebte bis zu seinem Tod 1886 insgesamt nur 172 Tage im Schloss, das bis dahin noch einer Großbaustelle glich. 1885 empfing er hier anlässlich ihres 60. Geburtstags seine auf dem unteren Hohenschwangau residierende Mutter, die vormalige Königin Marie.

 

Neuschwanstein sollte Ludwig II. gewissermaßen als bewohnbare Theaterkulisse dienen. Es war als Freundschaftstempel dem Leben und Werk Richard Wagners gewidmet, der es jedoch nie betreten hat. Trotz seiner Größe war das Schloss nicht für die Aufnahme eines Hofstaats vorgesehen; es bot lediglich der Privatwohnung des Königs und Zimmern für die Dienerschaft Raum. Die Hofgebäude dienten weniger Wohn- als vielmehr dekorativen Zwecken. So war zum Beispiel der Bau der Kemenate – die erst nach Ludwigs Tod vollendet wurde – eine direkte Reminiszenz an den zweiten Akt von Lohengrin, wo ein solches Gebäude einen der Schauplätze darstellte.

 

Ludwig II. bezahlte seine Bauprojekte selbst aus seinem Privatvermögen und dem Einkommen seiner Zivilliste. Anders als oft kolportiert wird, wurde die Staatskasse für seine Bauten nicht belastet. Die Baukosten Neuschwansteins betrugen bis zum Tod des Königs 6.180.047 Mark, ursprünglich veranschlagt waren 3,2 Millionen Mark. Seine privaten Mittel reichten für die ausufernden Bauprojekte jedoch nicht mehr aus, und so musste der König laufend neue Kredite aufnehmen. 1883 war er bereits mit über 7 Millionen Mark verschuldet, 1885 drohte ihm erstmals eine Pfändung.

 

Die Streitigkeiten um die Verschuldung des Staatsoberhaupts veranlassten die bayerische Regierung 1886, den König zu entmündigen und für regierungsunfähig erklären zu lassen. Ludwig II. hielt sich zur Zeit seiner Entmündigung am 9. Juni 1886 in Neuschwanstein auf; es war das letzte seiner selbst in Auftrag gegebenen Schlösser, das er bewohnte. Die anlässlich seiner bevorstehenden Absetzung am 10. Juni 1886 nach Neuschwanstein gereiste Regierungskommission ließ der König im Torhaus festsetzen. Nach einigen Stunden wurden die Mitglieder der Kommission freigelassen. Am 11. Juni erschien eine zweite Kommission unter der Leitung Bernhard von Guddens. Der König musste Neuschwanstein daraufhin am 12. Juni 1886 verlassen und wurde nach Schloss Berg verbracht, wo er am 13. Juni 1886 im Starnberger See ertrank.

 

Ludwig II. errichtete Schloss Neuschwanstein nicht als Repräsentationsbau oder zur Machtdemonstration, sondern ausschließlich als seinen privaten Rückzugsort. Im Gegensatz dazu steht die heutige Bedeutung des Schlosses als eines der wichtigsten Touristenziele Deutschlands. Der Deutsche Tourismusverband macht auf internationaler Ebene mit Neuschwanstein Werbung für Bayern als ein Land der Märchenschlösser. So nimmt es nicht Wunder, dass bei einer Umfrage der Deutschen Zentrale für Tourismus (DZT) unter 15.000 ausländischen Gästen über deren liebstes Besucherziel das Schloss Neuschwanstein Platz 1 erreichte. Im nationalen Vergleich wählten 350.000 Teilnehmer die Schlossanlage in der ZDF-Show Unsere Besten – die Lieblingsorte der Deutschen indes nur auf Rang 19. Bei der Abstimmung über die neuen Weltwunder im Jahr 2007 war Schloss Neuschwanstein auf dem achten Platz zu finden.

 

Seit ihrer Öffnung für den Besucherverkehr im Todesjahr Ludwigs zählt die Anlage beständig steigende Gästezahlen. Allein in den ersten acht Wochen besuchten rund 18.000 Menschen das Schloss. 1913 zählte es über 28.000 Gäste, 1939 waren es bereits 290.000. Bis 2001 war die Zahl auf rund 1,3 Millionen Besucher angewachsen, darunter 560.000 Deutsche und 385.000 Amerikaner sowie Engländer. Drittstärkste Gruppe waren in jenem Jahr die 149.000 Japaner. Bis 2005 wurden insgesamt über 50 Millionen Besucher gezählt. 2013 wurde mit 1,52 Millionen Besuchern ein neuer Rekord aufgestellt, das waren 31 Prozent der gesamten Besucher in den staatlichen Schlössern, Burgen und Residenzen. Damit ist Schloss Neuschwanstein der unangefochtene Besuchermagnet der Bayerischen Schlösserverwaltung und deren einzige Anlage, die mehr Gewinn einbringt als Kosten verursacht. 2004 wurden über 6,5 Millionen Euro an Einnahmen verbucht. Die Anlage zählt in der Hochsaison von Juni bis August durchschnittlich mehr als 6000 Besucher am Tag, in Stoßzeiten bis zu 10.000. Aufgrund des hohen Andrangs müssen Gäste ohne Voranmeldung zum Teil mit mehreren Stunden Wartezeit rechnen. Der Ticketverkauf erfolgt – vor Ort und online – ausschließlich über das Ticketcenter in Hohenschwangau. Aus Gründen der Sicherheit ist es nur im Rahmen einer etwa 35-minütigen Führung möglich, das Schloss zu besichtigen. Daneben gibt es noch sogenannte Themenführungen, die sich beispielsweise mit den Sagenwelten der jeweiligen Bilder befassen.

 

Der mit Neuschwanstein verbundene Massentourismus ist für die Region jedoch nicht nur ein lukratives Geschäft, sondern bringt auch Probleme mit sich. Vor allem in den Sommermonaten ist die Verkehrssituation rund um die Königsschlösser Hohenschwangau und Neuschwanstein extrem angespannt. Der ausufernde Parksuchverkehr in Schwangau wirkt belastend auf die Bewohner, und der sich stauende Verkehr in der Augsburger Straße in Füssen ist zu einem Drittel auf den An- und Abreiseverkehr der Schlosstouristen zurückzuführen. Seit über 20 Jahren stehen die Stadt Füssen und die Gemeinde Schwangau in Verhandlung zur Beseitigung ihrer Verkehrsprobleme, doch die verschiedenen Interessenlagen und gegensätzliche Positionen der Beteiligten führten bislang zu keiner Lösung. Trotz langer Parkplatzsuche sowie Schlangestehen vor dem Ticketcenter und dem Schlossportal reißt der Besucherstrom nach Schloss Neuschwanstein nicht ab, denn

 

„Der Nimbus des „Märchenkönigs“ übt offensichtlich auf die Umwelt eine derartige Faszination aus, dass jeder Versuch, die Besucherströme auf andere, weniger besuchte Objekte abzulenken, bisher vergeblich war und wohl auch bleiben wird.“

 

Die bayerische Regierung investiert regelmäßig Summen in Millionenhöhe in die Erhaltung des Schlosses und in die touristische Erschließung der Anlage. 1977 musste der Felsberg unter der Kemenate für 500.000 DM saniert werden. Mit rund 640.000 DM schlug noch einmal die damalige Sanierung der Marienbrücke zu Buche, während für die Erneuerung der Schlossdächer 2,1 Millionen Mark aufgewendet werden mussten. In den 1980er Jahren war das Abtäufen eines Treppenhauses und die Anlage eines weiteren Besucheraufgangs nötig geworden. Sie kosteten insgesamt 4,2 Millionen Mark. In der Zeit von 1990 bis 2008 gab der Freistaat weitere 14,5 Millionen Euro für Instandhaltungsmaßnahmen – darunter die Instandsetzung der einzigen Zufahrtsstraße sowie eine jahrelange Fassadensanierung – und die Verbesserung der Besucherbetreuung aus. Auch die Innenräume müssen regelmäßig instandgesetzt und restauriert werden. So wurden 2009 und 2011 für über 425.000 Euro die original erhaltenen Textilien im Schlaf- sowie Wohnzimmer Ludwigs II. restauriert und durch Licht- sowie Tastschutz vor weiterem Verfall bewahrt.

 

Die Schlossverwaltung warnt davor, dass mit jährlich etwa 1,5 Millionen Besuchern das Schloss an die Grenzen seiner Kapazität gelangt sei. Die Besuchermassen würden – zusammen mit dem alpinen Klima und dem Licht – die wertvollen Möbel und Textilien stark belasten. Eine besondere Rolle scheint dabei die von den Besuchern ausgeatmete Feuchtigkeit zu spielen. Wissenschaftler sollen untersuchen, inwiefern die Schlossverwaltung diese Belastung verringern kann.

 

Neuschwanstein gilt als Sinnbild für die Zeit der Romantik und ist weltweit bekannt. In amerikanischer Werbung ist es das meistgenutzte Schlossmotiv. Schon im Mai 1954 zeigte die amerikanische Illustrierte Life in einer Sonderausgabe über das deutsche Wirtschaftswunder Schloss Neuschwanstein auf seiner Titelseite.

 

Das Schloss inspirierte Künstler wie Andy Warhol, der es zum Thema einer seiner Pop-Art-Sequenzen machte, nachdem er es 1971 besucht hatte. 2002 stürzten in der Nähe Neuschwansteins Trümmerstücke eines Meteoriten auf die Erde, die seitdem unter dem Namen des Schlosses katalogisiert sind.

 

Die Anlage war Vorbild für mehrere Bauten auf der ganzen Welt, allen voran für das Sleeping-Beauty-Schloss im Disneyland Resort im kalifornischen Anaheim. Auch das Dornröschen-Schloss im Disneyland Paris wurde dem bayerischen „Märchenschloss“ nachempfunden und folgt der internationalen Einordnung, die den Anblick von Neuschwanstein mit Disney's Cinderella bzw. mit Aschenputtel in Verbindung bringt. Ähnliches gilt für das Excalibur Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Der 1990 eröffnete, 290 Millionen Dollar teure Komplex zeigt starke Anlehnungen an Neuschwanstein. In Deutschland ließ der Kommerzienrat Friedrich Hoepfner in der Karlsruher Haid-und-Neu-Straße von 1896 bis 1898 seine „Hoepfner-Burg“ nach Plänen von Johann Hantschel errichten. Der als Betriebsgebäude für Hoepfners Brauerei errichtete Bau zeigt ebenfalls Reminiszenzen an Schloss Neuschwanstein.

 

Schloss Neuschwanstein diente unzählige Male als Kulisse für Verfilmungen über das Leben Ludwigs II. Es war zum Beispiel Drehort für Filme wie Helmut Käutners Ludwig II. von 1955 und Luchino Viscontis Ludwig II. von 1972. Auch die neueste Filmbiografie, Ludwig II. von Peter Sehr und Marie Noëlle aus dem Jahr 2012, wurde an Originalschauplätzen gedreht.

 

Die Anlage kam aber nicht nur bei Verfilmungen des Lebens Ludwigs II. zum Einsatz. Zum Beispiel fand auch ein Teil der Dreharbeiten zu Ken Hughes’ Fantasy-Komödie Tschitti Tschitti Bäng Bäng aus dem Jahr 1968 dort statt, und in Mel Brooks’ 1987 veröffentlichter Star-Wars-Parodie Spaceballs stellte Schloss Neuschwanstein das Zuhause von Prinzessin Vespa auf dem Planeten Druidia dar. Auch für Peter Zadeks Die wilden Fünfziger von 1983 und in dem 2008 erstmals ausgestrahlten TV-Spielfilm Die Jagd nach dem Schatz der Nibelungen diente Neuschwanstein als Kulisse.

 

In dem DEFA-Märchenfilm Die vertauschte Königin von Dieter Scharfenberg findet in der Anfangssequenz ein Schlossmodell Verwendung, das eine Adaption Neuschwansteins ist.

 

Die in dem Film Sherlock Holmes: Spiel im Schatten aus dem Jahr 2011 gezeigte Festung in den Schweizer Alpen wurde digital gestaltet, als Vorlage diente neben der Festung Hohenwerfen auch Schloss Neuschwanstein.

 

(Wikipedia)

Oil on canvas; 80 x 97 cm.

 

. Italian painter, illustrator and stage designer. He began his training in Faenza in the workshop of the Italian painter and ceramicist Mario Ortolani (1901-55). After living briefly in Bologna (1927) and Paris (1928) he settled in Rome in 1929, first exhibiting his work at the Venice Biennale in the following year. His paintings at this time, such as Nude (Susanna after her Bath) (1929; Faenza, Pin. Com.), were characterized by an emphasis on tonal relationships and on the influence of the Scuola Romana. In 1934 he began to work with growing success as an illustrator for the journals Quadrivio and Italia letteraria. The contacts he established with Paris were intensified with his move there in 1947, resulting in three one-man shows at the Galerie Rive Gauche (in 1950, 1953 and 1957), and in his paintings he evolved a cautious balance between the representation and the disassembling of the image. Some of his best-known series of paintings date from this time, including his Cathedrals (e.g. Cathedral with Still-life and Dog, 1960; Rome, Vatican, Col. A. Relig. Mod.), pictures of town squares populated by acrobats and musicians, and later female nudes and a series entitled Mermaids.

  

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Contents

 

1 Early life and education

1.1 Early life

1.2 Art education

1.3 Artistic inspiration

2 Art career

2.1 Russia (1906–1910)

2.2 France (1910–1914)

2.3 Russia and Soviet Belarus (1914–1922)

2.4 France (1923–1941)

2.4.1 The Bible illustrations

2.4.2 Nazi campaigns against modern art

2.4.3 Escaping occupied France

2.5 United States (1941–1948)

2.5.1 Aleko ballet (1942)

2.5.2 Coming to grips with World War II

2.5.3 Post-war years

2.6 France (1948–1985)

2.6.1 Ceiling of the Paris Opera (1963)

3 Art styles and techniques

3.1 Color

3.2 Subject matter

3.2.1 From life memories to fantasy

3.2.2 Jewish themes

  

Early life and education

Chagall's Parents

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Art education

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Artistic inspiration

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Art career

Russia (1906–1910)

 

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

 

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

 

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

France (1910–1914)

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

Russia and Soviet Belarus (1914–1922)

 

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

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

 

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

Bella with White Collar, 1917

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

France (1923–1941)

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

The Bible illustrations

"The Prophet Jeremiah" (1968)

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Nazi campaigns against modern art

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Escaping occupied France

 

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

 

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

 

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

United States (1941–1948)

Photo portrait of Chagall in 1941 by Carl Van Vechten

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Coming to grips with World War II

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

With Virginia Haggard McNeil

 

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

 

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

 

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