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an Episode of David's Pointless Minute
Vysehrad Cemetery is the graveyard attached to the Basilica of Saint Peter & Saint Paul in Vysehrad (notes at the end about the Vysehrad complex).
The complex is over a thousand years old, but the cemetery was only established in 1869, which explains the newness of the headstones. It's an active cemetery, though it seems pretty packed walking around. As noted below, this could basically be seen as the Czech pantheon, given the number of notable Czechs interred here from the arts, letters, and medicine.
Among those you'll find here (that non-Czechs may recognize, by name or contribution) are: Jan Neruda (a poet, and the man from whom Pablo Neruda took his pen name), Antonin Dvorak (composer of the New World Symphony), Josef & Karel Capek (brothers, Josef created the word "robot" and Karel used it in his play R.U.R., which introduced the word to the world), Karel Ancerl (conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Toronto Symphony Orchestra), Hana Maskova (1968 bronze medalist in Olympic figure skating), and Jan Evangelista Purkyne (who, in 1839, coined the term "protoplasm"). There are many others of note, and very ornate headstones -- hence this large set. I don't intend to slight anyone, so feel free to do some research on your own if you wish.
Vysehrad is a pretty neat place to visit in Prague, in my opinion -- especially if you want to relax away from tourists.
It has a combination of things that make it wonderful for me. Its history, its current use, its location (and views it affords), and what's left on site -- taken individually, warrant a visit in my world. Collectively? Winner.
We'll start with what Vysehrad was, which involves local beliefs and legends. The (unproven) thought is that this is the original site of Prague, founded by Duke Krok in...who knows what year? Duke Krok is a myth, though may have been real. And since he's a myth, his daughters, too, are mythical. One of them is Libuse, who has a "bath" here, and she can be found in some architecture around town. I recall seeing her on a building on Karlova.
Duke Kroc was the first duke of the Czech people. Princess Libuse, the youngest (and wisest) of his three daughters later became queen and married a ploughman named Premysl, founding the Premyslid dynasty (interesting...she's royalty, he's a commoner, yet the dynasty is named for him because he's a man...yea for sexism?). The three sisters had special powers (one a healer, one a magician, and Libuse could predict the future). She prophesied the founding of Prague in the 8th century. So believe the Czechs.
What does history tell us? Well, this fortress-castle has been here for a thousand years give or take. Precise origin dates are unknown (or I can't seem to find them). One of the buildings here -- St. Martin's Chapel -- is known to have been built sometime between 1060-1090, so we can say it's conservatively a thousand years old.
Part of the fun of the legend that could support its continuing existence is its location high on a bluff directly overlooking the Vltava River. It was a perfect place to build a defensive fortress, that eventually became a royal castle. As the city grew, and Prague Castle was built, Vysehrad's importance waned.
The two castles competed (kind of) for two centuries to be the most important in Prague. The heyday for Vysehrad was in the late 11th century (when St. Martin's Chapel was built). Vratislaus II, the first king of Bohemia (until him, all were dukes or duchesses) moved his seat of power here from Prague Castle, at which point the original Vysehrad fortress received a major upgrade: a new palatial home, a church, a chapter house.
Growth continued, but only for a short time. Vratislaus's son, Duke Sobeslav (I'm not sure why he was duke, if his dad was king) moved the royal seat right on back to Prague Castle.
The death knell for Vysehrad (as a royal residence) came when Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (yeah, the same one for whom Charles Bridge is named) renovated Prague Castle to its current dimensions. Vysehrad was abandoned. However, Charles did renew the fortifications with new gates, a royal palace (though never official seat of government), and started repairing the basilica. This was early 14th century. About a hundred years later in 1420 at the start of the Hussite War, Vysehrad was rancasked. And again, a few decades later. Finally, Vysehrad was left to ruin...
...Until the Austrians came along. Austria-Hungary gained Czech lands as a prize of the Thirty Years' War, remodeling it as a baroque fortress, to use as a training center for their troops.
The main building that dominated Vysehrad (to this day) is the Basilica of St. Peter & St. Paul. It's pretty big. Hard to miss, for sure. Like St. Martin's Chapel, it was also (originally) built in the 11th century. Unlike little St. Martin's, though, the big fella was remodeled in the late 1300s and, again, by the Austrians in 1885 & 1887. It's now a neo-Gothic church. Also dating to this baroque renovation are the Tabor and Leopold gates.
So...what do you get when come to Vysehrad now? A city park, really. It's free to come and go (though I think going inside the church may cost a little money).
The bastion walls are fantastic to take a walk around and enjoy panoramic views of every part of the city, the river, the bridges, just to reflect on the here and now, and the past. The bastions are big enough, and long enough, that you can take some time to just do that alone. There are also benches if you want to relax and enjoy the view.
Inside the fortress walls, you'll find mostly wooded land (thanks to its having been abandoned) with the aforementioned church and chapel, plus some other historic recreations, a few trails, and...well, all around, pleasant places to be. There are a handful of statues around the grounds, including Good King Wenceslaus, and Princess Libuse.
Being as that it's a church -- and a large one -- there's also a church cemetery attached directly to the side and back of it. Creatively, it's called "Vysehrad Cemetery."
As far as cemeteries go, I've been to many, and this one has some of the most interesting headstones I've seen. Not only that, as far as Czechs go, this could almost be their Pantheon. While royalty are buried elsewhere (Prague Castle, for starters), the literati all seem to be buried here -- except Kafka. He's in the New Jewish Cemetery. And, not every famous Czech is buried here, of course, but quite a few prominent ones from arts and letters are taking their dirt naps here. At the end of the day, this is a big, beautiful public park, well worth a visit, and the locals love it. This seems to be one of the places they come to celebrate New Year's Eve. I love that it's not overrun by tourists, though hope that anyone who has read this can make it there and see for yourself.
Plaque explaining the heritage building, the main building of the former Marine Police headquarters. It reads The Main Building of the Former Marine Police Headquarters
"...Graceful... and even Palatial..." wrote the China Mail, 20th September 1884, of this building -- designed as the residence of the third-ranking government official as well as the base for the "Water" Police.
The Main Building, Victorian Colonial Neo-Classical in style, was built in the early 1880s. It was originally only two storeys with three-storeyed towers on the southeast and southwest corners. The existing top floor was added in the early 1920s.
The three-storeyed corner towers contained married living quarters. The southwest tower was the quarters for the Commander of the Marine Police and the southeast tower was designed to be the residence of the Captain Superintendent of Police, Walter Deane. It had an independent entrance on the eastern side of the building leading to the Superintendent's office and to his drawing room and dining room on the first floor. A tunnel passageway or service corridor led to a separate and self-contained kitchen and servants' quarters. For the building between these two towers, most of the rooms were barracks and duty rooms. The central portion of the ground level served as a control room. The one-storeyed outbuildings at the rear contained the bathhouses, stores and coolie quarters. Another storey was added on these outbuildings in the early 1920s.
No steel or steel reinforcing was used in the original main building. Loose granite blocks served as foundation for brick shear walls and timber joists floors and roofs. The entire ground floor (except for the cells) of the original main building of the Marine Police Headquarters was elevated approximately 3 to 4 feet above ground and airflow along these spaces was facilitated via small openings functioning as ventilation portals located on the exterior of all sides of the building. These ventilation portals kept the building suitably "aired" and prevented the decay of the timber floor joists. The airflow also cooled down the interior of the building in the hot and humid summers. High windows and ceilings designed in a time before modern power lighting and air conditioning also facilitated cool breezes in the summer months. Together, the raised floor, the tall windows and the high ceilings formed a precursor to a green design which is now emulated as supportive of a sustainable lifestyle.
The boy is explaining the message to his younger brother - and me!
Can you see the message in this artwork?
Clue:
The artist is the owner of the adjacent art gallery and also their relative. I would never have guessed, or noticed, what it says had he not shown us. Very clever!
simonstown, western cape-
kramats of tuan ismail and his son tuan jaliel
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The fact that there were of runaway slaves in the False Bay area early in the seventeenth century probably explains the presence of Kramats in Muizenberg and Simonstown.
For hundreds of years residents of Simonstown had known of the existence of two holy shrines situated just above Runciman’s Drive, there in a forest clearing above Goede gift. People from far and wide came to pay their respects. In the early years of Simonstown, the Muslim community was a small and concentrated one-all living within the immediate proximity of the two shrines. While the precise identity of these Auliyah could never be verified, regular visitors have been unanimous in their opinion that those buried in these graves are indeed the “friends of Allah”. Typical of all Kramats, the area has always been enveloped in an aura of calm and tranquility.
It was only earlier this century ( 21st) that a translation of a kitaab, a bound book passed from generation to generation, revealed with some certainty the identity of the Auliyah buried here. Written in ancient Sumbawanese, the kitaab identifies these Auliyah as Iman Abdul Karrien bin Imam Jalil bin Imam Islam of Sumbawa in Indonesia. (aka-Tuan Ismail Dea Malela and Tuan Dea Koasa).
In 1969,a second part of the “mystery” was put to rest by a UCT student, a certain Mr Muller who conducted his theisis on the Muslim community in Cape Town, and specifically Simontown. His research findings revealed what oral history had claimed for centuries – that Tuan Ismail Dea Malela and his son, Tuan Dea Koasa are of royal descent. His research cites the kitaab as the most valuable piece of evidence linking the families of the Dea royal family in Pemangong, Sumbawe, Indonesia and Sultan Kaharuddin to the Dea family in Simonstown.
excerpts above from the cape mazaar society's- kramats of the western cape'
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A Kramat is a shrine or mausoleum that has been built over the burial place of a Muslim who's particular piety and practice of the teachings of Islam is recognised by the community. I have been engaged in documenting these sites around Cape Town over several visits at different times over the last few years. They range widely from graves marked by an edge of stones to more elaborate tombs sheltered by buildings of various styles. They are cultural markers that speak of a culture was shaped by life at the Cape and that infuses Cape Town at large.
In my searches used the guide put out by the Cape Masaar Society as a basic guide to locate some recognised sites. Even so some were not that easy to find.
In the context of the Muslims at the Cape, historically the kramats represented places of focus for the faithful and were/are often places of local pilgrimage. When the Dutch and the VOC (United East India Company aka Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) set up a refuelling station and a settlement at the Cape, Muslims from their territories in the East Indies and Batavia were with them from the start as soldiers, slaves and 'Vryswarten'; (freemen). As the settlement established itself as a colony the Cape became a useful place to banish political opponents from the heart of their eastern empire. Some exiles were of royal lineage and there were also scholars amongst them. One of the most well known of these exiles was Sheik Yusuf who was cordially received by Govenor van der Stel as befitted his rank (he and his entourage where eventually housed on an estate away from the main settlement so that he was less likely to have an influence over the local population), others were imprisoned for a time both in Cape Town and on Robben island. It is said that the first Koran in the Cape was first written out from memory by Sheik Yusuf after his arrival. There were several Islamic scholars in his retinue and these men encouraged something of an Islamic revival amoung the isolated community. Their influence over the enslaved “Malay” population who were already nominally Muslim was considerable and through the ministrations of other teachers to the underclasses the influence of Islam became quite marked. As political opponents to the governing powers the teachers became focus points for escaped slaves in the outlying areas.
Under the VOC it was forbidden to practice any other faith other than Christianity in public which meant that there was no provision for mosques or madrasas. The faith was maintained informally until the end of the C18th when plans were made for the first mosque and promises of land to be granted for a specific burial ground in the Bo Kaap were given in negotiations for support against an imminent British invasion. These promises were honoured by the British after their victory.
There is talk of a prophecy of a protective circle of Islam that would surround Cape Town. I cannot find the specifics of this prophecy but the 27 kramats of the “Auliyah” or friends of Allah, as these honoured individuals are known, do form a loose circle of saints. Some of the Auliyah are credited with miraculous powers in legends that speak of their life and works. Within the folk tradition some are believed to be able to intercede on behalf of supplicants (even though this more part of a mystical philosophy (keramat) and is not strictly accepted in mainstream contemporary Islamic teaching) and even today some visitors may offer special prayers at their grave sites in much the same way as Christians might direct prayer at the shrine of a particular saint.
Meridith Wright explains that part of playing the bassoon means making her own reeds. Here she is using the profiler machine in the reed room at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music.
Photo: Annie Corrigan/WFIU
Learn more at Artist In The Making: Bassoonist Meridith Wright.
A woman tries to explain the passing of former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew to her son as they visit a tribute memorial outside the Istana palace in Singapore March 23, 2015. Lee passed away on early Monday morning aged 91. Photo by Tim Chong
Photo citation: Ted Auch, FracTracker Alliance, 2021.
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I don't usually take pictures of myself in random bathroom mirrors (unlike SOME people I know... and YOU know who you are!)... but I just HAD to photo-document the unusual things in THIS one. First of all, the carrot-looking thing coming out of the wall is a bar of soap. You just cup-and-slide your wet hand around it. Odd. Made me feel "naughty".
Odder still is the urinal mint hanging from the upper-left corner of the mirror!
NOT pictured is the cracked toilet seat that I just KNEW was going to bite my a$$ when I sat down -- and it DID -- but when you gotta go, you gotta GO! At LEAST they had toilet paper!
"ESP Explained" I started with a drawing I found in a 1930s "How to Draw" booklet. Using grids, I re-drew the figure to size onto illustration board. I framed it with ink inside a black ink frame, adding the inked ESP arrows and boxes representing sending & receiving. I used a goache to shade the cityscape gray. I used a "blower brush" with ink to create the coarse black texture inside the framed image. Yes, I used frisking paper to cover the figure. The two radiating boxes were hand drawn with ink. Digital colors and impossible shading were added last.
As I explained in the comments attached to the previous photo added to my ‘Messing about on boats’ album, thirty odd years ago I was finding my job and life in general somewhat stressful. Some friends invited me to join them on a canal cruise which slowed everything down and successfully de-stressed me. For a couple of weeks at any rate….
For well over a decade I spent every opportunity messing about on boats. Most of this was done before I had kids – I’ve only had a couple of trips on water with them along since my wife had a panic attack every time one got on the roof or walked along the ledge outside. In truth, she thinks boats are a bit, well, basic…..
I’m going to add some of my favourite photos to this album, most of which were taken before I’d ever heard of digital. This photo is of a trip taken in the autumn of 1982 involving the Shropshire Union and Llangollen Canals. It helps to have a few women on board in the hopes that one of them might cook. Also, they can be useful navigating through locks. Well, somebody has to take the photos….
Jason Gill (LMU Coach), Gary Powers (UNR Coach), Heath Jones (umpire), Joe Maiden (umpire), Rob Hansen (umpire).
Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature
February 24 – May 21, 2023
Italian-born American modernist Joseph Stella (1877–1946) is primarily recognized for his dynamic Futurist-inspired paintings of New York, especially the Brooklyn Bridge and Coney Island. Lesser known, but equally as ambitious, is his work dedicated to the natural world, a theme that served as a lifelong inspiration. Throughout his career, Stella produced an extraordinary number of works—in many formats and in diverse media—that take nature as their subject. These lush and colorful works are filled with flowers, trees, birds, and fish—some of which he encountered on his travels across continents or during his visits to botanical gardens, while others are abstracted and fantastical. Through these pictures, he created a rich and variegated portrait of nature, a sanctuary for a painter in a modern world.
Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature is co-organized by the High and the Brandywine River Museum of Art and is the first major museum exhibition to exclusively examine Stella’s nature-based works. The exhibition features more than one hundred paintings and works on paper that reveal the complexity and spirituality that drove Stella’s nature-based works and the breadth of his artistic vision. Through expanded in-gallery didactics, including a graphic timeline of Stella’s career and a short film, the exhibition digs deeply into the context of the works, exploring their inspirations, meanings, and stylistic influences.
Touring Dates:
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida (October 15, 2022–January 15, 2023)
Brandywine Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (June 17, 2023–September 24, 2023)
www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/arts/design/joseph-stella-flor...
www.forbes.com/sites/natashagural/2022/12/21/joseph-stell...
www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/joseph-stel...
If you know the painter Joseph Stella, it’s probably from his famous urban landscapes like Brooklyn Bridge (1921), a futurist interpretation of New York’s dramatic 20th-century industrialization. But Stella was just as captivated by the botanical world as he was by cityscapes, and today, Atlantans can see that side of the artist in vivid color. Joseph Stella: Visionary Nature, an explosive new exhibit at the High Museum of Art, features dozens of his flower and plant-filled paintings and drawings. In Atlanta through May 21, the exhibit travels chronologically through Stella’s lifelong love-affair with the natural world, from an early study of a piece of bark to the epic, intricate Tree of My Life.
Visionary Nature was a joint effort between the High; the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Florida; and the Brandywine Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where it heads next. “They were really focused on [Stella’s] nature works, and we have a great work by Stella here at the High,” said Stephanie Heydt, the museum’s Margaret and Terry Stent Curator of American Art. “It was a great collaboration.”
Stella was born in 1877 in Muro Lucano, a hilly city in southern Italy. He immigrated to New York originally intending to follow his brother into medicine, but after a uninspired stint in medical school, he pivoted to painting. Stella studied briefly under the impressionist painter William Merritt Chase at the New York School of Art and soon developed a reputation as a sensitive interpreter of the urban working class.
The High’s exhibit features of some of these early works, in which the natural world spills out amidst the smokestacks and steel mills of America’s industrial revolution. “This is the Progressive Era at the turn of the twentieth century,” Heydt explained. “And he’s looking at the people in his own community, specifically the Italian immigrants.”
Traveling back in Europe, Stella was inspired by the contemporary artists he saw there: the cubism of Pablo Picasso and early futurism of Umberto Boccioni. He drew on these sources back in the U.S, earning acclaim for his dynamic geometric paintings of the metropolis; several choice selections, including American Landscape (1929), and Smoke Stacks (1921), are on view in this exhibit.
But even as Stella built his career on the towering achievements of urban industry, he yearned for the sunny landscapes of his youth. He frequented havens like the Bronx Botanical Gardens, which opened in 1891 and offered escape from New York’s sooty streets. Walking through Brooklyn one day, he later wrote in an essay, he stumbled across a sapling.
“This little tree is coming up from a crack in the sidewalk, shadowed by a factory, and he sees himself in this tree,” Heydt said. “He says, This is me.”
That encounter inspired Tree of My Life (1919) a florid aria sung to the natural world. A sturdy olive tree—Stella himself—anchors the canvas, surrounded by a vortex of tropical plants, birds, and, in the background, Stella’s native Italian hills. Brandywine Museum Director Thomas Padon envisaged the exhibit after seeing Tree of My Life in a private collection. “I was transfixed,” Padon told the New York Times.
Stella painted Tree of My Life and Brooklyn Bridge within a year of each other, announcing a duality that would define the rest of this career. While he painted flowers throughout his life, it was his moody, futurist treatments of New York that made him an art-world celebrity. European artists fleeing World War I were landing in New York in droves, sparking a new creative fascination with the cutting-edge American city. “(Marcel) Duchamp says the art of Europe is dead, and this century is about America,” explained Heydt. “Stella’s understood to be one of the first American-based painters to figure out . . . how to paint the new modern city.”
But Stella’s love of the natural world—and of Europe—endured. He returned to botanical themes throughout his life, infused with the Old Master styles of the Italian Renaissance. Many works in this exhibit invoke the sun-drenched vistas and towering cathedrals of Italy, overrun by sumptuous flowers that are decidedly not native to the Iberian peninsula. Stella—a native turned immigrant—seems to delight in the contradiction: in Dance of Spring (1924), tropical orchids and calla lilies burst open in a beam of beatific light, like Jesus rising to the heavens in a Raphael. Purissima (1927), part of the High’s own collection, evokes the iconic Renaissance Madonna, here transformed by Stella’s whimsy: the stamens of a lily serve as her celestial crown, while snowy egrets (the Florida kind) grace her sides.
With saturations of color abounding in every room, Visionary Nature enjoys an added depth through words. Stella was a prolific writer, and the exhibit makes canny use of text to explore his passion for the living world. “My devout wish,” reads one such diary segment on view, “That my every working day might begin and end . . . with the light, gay painting of a flower.” In a unique addition to their exhibition, the High created a short video featuring more of Stella’s own thoughts. “We wanted to end with his voice telling us how he felt about various paintings in the show . . . or his ideas about art,” explained Heydt.
Stella, who died in 1946, spent the last years of his life in ill health, largely confined to his studio. He never stopped painting the natural world; a few of those last works, modest trees still full of flair, are on view here. A few years before his death, his friend and fellow artist Charmion von Wiegand paid a visit to his studio. She found Stella amidst a riot of color, studiously painting his favorite subject. “Flower studies of all kinds litter the floor,” wrote von Wiegand, “and turn it into a growing garden.”