Production: 2001 - 2004

Engine: 1,8 litre R4 (petrol)

Power: 132 - 182 PS

Gearbox: 6 speed manual

Layout: front engine, front drive

Location: Tokyo, Japan

 

Introduced at the 2001 Los Angeles Auto Show as a concept vehicle for Toyota's WiLL sub-brand (and foreshadowing the Scion brand), the WiLL VS was one of the few concept vehicles to go into production. Only about 4.000 units were ever made.

The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: Собор Василия Блаженного, romanized: Sobor Vasiliya Blazhennogo), known in English as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is an Orthodox church in Red Square of Moscow, and is one of the most popular cultural symbols of Russia. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, or Pokrovsky Cathedral.[3] It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. Its completion, with its colors, was made in 1683. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.

 

The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight chapels arranged around a ninth, central chapel dedicated to the Intercession; a tenth chapel was erected in 1588 over the grave of the venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City. Like all churches in Byzantine Christianity, the church was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Tsar.

 

The cathedral has nine domes (each one corresponding to a different church) and is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century ... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.

 

As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's antireligious campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928.[10] It was completely secularized in 1929, and remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, weekly Orthodox Christian services with prayer to St. Basil have been restored since 1997.

 

Because the church has no analog—in the preceding, contemporary, or later architecture of Muscovy and Byzantine cultural tradition, in general,—the sources that inspired Barma and Postnik are disputed. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc rejected European roots for the cathedral, opining that its corbel arches were Byzantine and ultimately Asian. A modern "Asian" hypothesis considers the cathedral a recreation of Qolşärif Mosque, which was destroyed by Russian troops after the Siege of Kazan.

 

Nineteenth-century Russian writers, starting with Ivan Zabelin,[5] emphasized the influence of the vernacular wooden churches of the Russian North; their motifs made their ways into masonry, particularly the votive churches that did not need to house substantial congregations. David Watkin also wrote of a blend of Russian and Byzantine roots, calling the cathedral "the climax" of Russian vernacular wooden architecture.

 

The church combines the staggered layered design of the earliest (1505–1508) part of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, the central tent of the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye (1530s), and the cylindric shape of the Church of Beheading of John the Baptist in Dyakovo (1547); but the origin of these unique buildings is equally debated. The Church in Kolomenskoye, according to Sergei Podyapolsky, was built by Italian Petrok Maly, although mainstream history has not yet accepted his opinion. Andrey Batalov revised the year of completion of Dyakovo church from 1547 to the 1560s–70s, and noted that Trinity Church could have had no tangible predecessors at all.

 

Dmitry Shvidkovsky suggested that the "improbable" shapes of the Intercession Church and the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye manifested an emerging national renaissance, blending earlier Muscovite elements with the influence of Italian Renaissance. A large group of Italian architects and craftsmen continuously worked in Moscow in 1474–1539, as well as Greek refugees who arrived in the city after the fall of Constantinople. These two groups, according to Shvidkovsky, helped Moscow rulers in forging the doctrine of Third Rome, which in turn promoted assimilation of contemporary Greek and Italian culture. Shvidkovsky noted the resemblance of the cathedral's floorplan to Italian concepts by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Donato Bramante, but most likely Filarete's Trattato di architettura. Other Russian researchers noted a resemblance to sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, although he could not have been known in Ivan's Moscow. Nikolay Brunov recognized the influence of these prototypes but not their significance; he suggested that mid-16th century Moscow already had local architects trained in Italian tradition, architectural drawing and perspective, and that this culture was lost during the Time of Troubles.

 

Andrey Batalov wrote that judging by the number of novel elements introduced with Trinity Church, it was most likely built by German craftsmen. Batalov and Shvidkovsky noted that during Ivan's reign, Germans and Englishmen replaced Italians, although German influence peaked later during the reign of Mikhail Romanov. German influence is indirectly supported by the rusticated pilasters of the central church, a feature more common in contemporary Northern Europe than in Italy.

Marble portrait of the emperor Antoninus Pius

Roman, Antonine period, A.D. 138-161

 

Antoninus Pius (r. 138–61 A.D.), originally from southern Gaul, was the first of the Antonines, an adoptive dynasty that reflected the connections between wealthy provincial and Italian families. He was adopted by Hadrian as his successor when he was already fifty-one years old. His portraits thus represent him as a mature man in a sober but refined style that consciously echoes the imperial imagery adopted by Hadrian. At the beginning of his reign, he had to impel a reluctant Senate to award Hadrian divine honors, and it is probably for this reason that he himself was given the title of Pius. Unlike his two immediate predecessors, Trajan and Hadrian, Antoninus did not embark on any major wars or travel widely through the Empire. Indeed, he was in effect the last emperor to spend most of his reign in the city of Rome itself. Regarded as a just and diligent administrator, Antoninus presided over the Empire at the height of its power--a time that the historian Edward Gibbon later famously referred to as the period when "the condition of the human race was most happy and most prosperous."

 

Many statues and portraits of Antoninus and his wife Faustina were produced in Rome and the provinces. In appearance, Antoninus followed the style made fashionable by Hadrian (r. 117–38 A.D.) (08.170.118; 08.170.120; 99.35.177)—a thick, curly beard and a frame of hair around the face—thus emphasizing a constructed familial connection to his predecessor and adoptive father.

 

In this marble portrait that was once part of a statue, the face of Antoninus assumes a meditative expression imparted mostly by upturned eyes and a prominent brow that overshadows the heavy lids. The contemplative pose is appropriate for Antoninus, a man who quietly furthered the centralization of government. Working with a coterie of legal experts, he made noteworthy revisions to Roman law, including the ruling that a man must be considered innocent until proven guilty.

 

The emotive quality of this portrait foreshadows a stylistic trend that reached its fullest development during the reign of Caracalla (r. 211–17 A.D.) (40.11.1a), whose portraits reflected a level of psychological expression previously unknown in Roman portraiture, and set a standard that greatly influenced the portrait styles of later emperors.

 

Fletcher Fund, 1933 (33.11.3)

 

**

The April 20, 2007 unveiling of the 30,000 square foot Greek and Roman Galleries concluded a 15-year project and returned thousands of works from the Museum’s permanent collection to public view. Over 5,300 objects, created between about 900 B.C. and the early fourth century A.D., are displayed, tracing the parallel stories of the evolution of Greek art in the Hellenistic period and the arts of southern Italy and Etruria and culminating in the rich and varied world of the Roman Empire from from the Late Republican period and the Golden Age of Augustus’s Principate to the conversion of Constantine the Great in A.D. 312. The centerpiece of the new installation is the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court, a monumental, peristyle cour court with a soaring two-story atrium that links the various galleries and themes.

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection contains more than two million works of art from around the world. It opened its doors on February 20, 1872, housed in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Under their guidance of John Taylor Johnston and George Palmer Putnam, the Met's holdings, initially consisting of a Roman stone sarcophagus and 174 mostly European paintings, quickly outgrew the available space. In 1873, occasioned by the Met's purchase of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot antiquities, the museum decamped from Fifth Avenue and took up residence at the Douglas Mansion on West 14th Street. However, these new accommodations were temporary; after negotiations with the city of New York, the Met acquired land on the east side of Central Park, where it built its permanent home, a red-brick Gothic Revival stone "mausoleum" designed by American architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mold. As of 2006, the Met measures almost a quarter mile long and occupies more than two million square feet, more than 20 times the size of the original 1880 building.

 

In 2007, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was ranked #17 on the AIA 150 America's Favorite Architecture list.

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1967. The interior was designated in 1977.

 

National Historic Register #86003556

  

The Foreshadowing - Departure

www.youtube.com/watch?v=97zt-Y1T9N8&feature=related

I found this leaf in the yard today and its guest - I believe we'll be having an early fall (my bare feet were freezing in the cool grass this evening).

July 19, 2018

1:35 pm - 2:35 pm

Doerr-Hosier Center

Andrea Mitchell, Daniel Coats

 

Property of the Aspen Institute / Photo Credit: Dan Bayer

In my mind I conjure up images from post holocaust documentary films of the death camps taken by the allied forces. Bodies piled up one on to of the other, as the bulldozers would shovel them into the massive graves. Trees symbolize life. Cut down gives me an ominous feeling that foreshadows an end of humanity.

 

These photographs were taken in Canada where the lumber industry is well regulated to maintain the forests. As the grown trees are cut down there are young ones planted to keep replenishing the tree population. Nevertheless the feeling of sadness and doom is ever present.

 

A man slowly approaches us with a cane and a slip of paper, his "Cat in the Hat" cap foreshadowing what's to come.

 

He begins to speak Mandarin to my Korean friends, asking where the hospital is, but is surprised to hear me respond in his mother tongue.

 

"Oh, you speak mandarin?! If you know Mandarin and English, you can speak anywhere in the world! But if you don't speak English here, you can't have friends. No friends."

 

I respond, "Wo shi nin-de pengyou." [I am your friend.]

 

Smiling, he invites us to, "Feel my arm, squeeze my arm. Now feel here [his pectoral muscle]. And here [his abdomen]. And here [his quads]. Guess how old I am."

 

We each take a stab, ranging from 65 to 80.

 

"I'm now going to teach you something" he says as he leans his cane and drops the shopping bags. "This is what my father taught me. If you do this, you will sleep like a dead man."

 

He demonstrates deliberate, slow breathing, both constraining the release of his breath and slowly allowing it to dissipate like a morning fog.

 

"Now feel here and here" he says to Sinji and me, putting our hands on his chest and abdomen simultaneously. As we do so, he fills his chest like a balloon, and slowly tucks in his belly. Again, he releases a minute gasp, then steams out the rest in a slow manner with a relaxed face.

 

"Xie-xie wo-men laoshi! [Thank you, our teacher!]. May I take your photo by the wall over here?"

 

As I take his photo, a security guard approaches and asks whom the packages belong to. We reassure him that their owner is standing before us, and that there are no nefarious designs going on behind the JPMorgan fortress.

 

"Friends, thank you. I am 70 years old. If you do what my father taught me, you'll live a healthy life."

An icon with an inimitable style, Louise Nevelson is now recognized as one of the major sculptors of the 20th century. Her art is generally discussed in relation to Cubism, Constructivism, Schwitters, the readymade, or the collage practices of the Dada and Surrealist movements. But her sources of inspiration are far broader, and her work invites us to explore an art history where dance and performance—around which the exhibition is structured—play a leading role. Thirty years after her death, her legacy continues to resonate with the young contemporary art scene, even in the world of fashion.

 

Nevelson's twenty-year study of eurythmy, a method of bodily expression aimed at discovering one's vital force and creative energy, revolutionized her life and work. In 1950, her discovery of Mexico and Guatemala gave a monumental dimension to her work, now imbued with a blend of geometry and magic. Under this dual influence, her environments gradually emerge, becoming monumental, enveloping, totemic, and sacred.

 

The works are composed of reclaimed wooden objects that she gathers in boxes, before stacking and painting them black, unifying the composition with a monochrome veil. Beyond the synthesis she achieves between pre-Columbian art, Cubism, and the Color Field painting movement, Nevelson envisions a space to be explored rather than a sculpture to be viewed head-on.

 

source: www.centrepompidou-metz.fr/en/programme/exposition/louise...

 

DAWN'S WEDDING FEAST

 

An architect of shadows, Nevelson also explores

the potential of light.

An architect of the shadows, Nevelson also explores

the potentialities of light.

The twilight sketched in 'Moongarden + One' gives way to dawn embodied in her first all-white environment, 'Dawn's Wedding Feast,' presented at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1959 exhibition 'Sixteen Americans.' In Nevelson's art, time—as conceived by the Mayans, who attributed regenerative virtues and a sacred power to it —seems to coil back upon itself in an infinite loop. The bride is nowhere to be found in this vast composition, for it is likely her own union with creation that Nevelson intended to represent. To the surprise of her critics, she began to envelop her sculptures in white, a more festive color that also lends greater sharpness to the forms. But while white has the virtue of rising in space, black provides an almost physical absorption, and this color would always remain her preference.

 

Information panel in the exhibition, at the entrance to this section.

 

Revisited after its presentation in Dawn’s Wedding Feast, this

sculpture is organized according to a symmetrical grid

that evokes the monumental towers of Notre-Dame

in Paris. The spirituality and contemplation that

emanate from it foreshadow the white, architecturally scaled environment of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd at

Saint Peter’s Church in New York, which Nevelson

created in 1977 – today the only one of his

installations to be permanently on display.

 

---------------------------

 

Icône au style inimitable, Louise Nevelson est aujourd’hui reconnue comme l’une des sculptrices majeures du XXème siècle. Son art est généralement évoqué à l’aune du cubisme, du constructivisme, de Schwitters, du ready-made ou des pratiques du collage des mouvements dada et surréalistes. Mais ses sources d’inspiration sont bien plus vastes et son œuvre invite à évoluer dans une histoire des arts où la danse et la performance – autour desquels l’exposition s’articule – jouent un rôle de premier plan. Trente ans après sa mort, son héritage continue de résonner auprès de la jeune scène contemporaine, jusque dans le monde de la mode.

 

L’étude pendant vingt ans de l’eurythmie qui enseigne une expression corporelle dont l’objectif était de découvrir sa force vitale et son énergie créatrice révolutionneront la vie et l’œuvre de Nevelson.

En 1950, sa découverte du Mexique et du Guatemala donnera une dimension monumentale à son œuvre, désormais porté par un mélange de géométrie et de magie. Sous cette double influence émergent ses environnements, progressivement monumentaux, enveloppants, totémiques et sacrés.

 

Les œuvres sont composées d’objets en bois récupérés qu’elle rassemble dans des boîtes, avant de les empiler et de les peindre en noir, unifiant la composition par un voile monochrome. Au-delà de la synthèse qu’elle opère entre l’art pré-colombien, le cubisme ou encore le mouvement de la color field painting, Nevelson imagine un lieu à explorer plutôt qu’une sculpture à regarder frontalement.

 

source: www.centrepompidou-metz.fr/fr/programmation/exposition/lo...

 

DAWN'S WEDDING FEAST

 

Architecte de l’ombre, Nevelson explore également

les potentialités de la lumière.

Au crépuscule esquissé dans 'Moongarden + One' succède l'aube incarnée dans son premier environnement blanc 'Dawn's wedding Feast' présenté au Museum of Modern Art dans l'exposition "Sixteen Americans" en 1959. Dans l'art de Nevelson, les temps - tel qu'il était envisagé par les Mayas qui lui conféraient des vertus régénératives, une force sacrée - semble s'enrouler sur lui-même en une boucle infinie. La mariée reste introuvable dans cette vaste composition car c'est probablement sa propre union avec la création que Nevelson a voulu représenter. Surpenant la critique, elle enveloppe alors ses sculptures de blanc, couleur plus festive qui donne aussi davantage de tranchant aux formes. Mais si le blanc a la vertu de s'élever dans l'espace, le noir procure une absorbtion presque physique et cette couleur aura toujours sa préférence.

 

Panneau d'information dans l'exposition, à l'entrée de cette section.

 

Revisitée après sa présentation dans Dawn’s Wedding Feast, cette sculpture s’organise selon une grille symétrique

qui évoque les tours monumentales de Notre-Dame

de Paris. La spiritualité et le recueillement qui s’en

dégagent annoncent l’environnement blanc à l’échelle

architecturale de la Chapel of the Good Shepherd à

la Saint Peter’s Church de New York, que Nevelson réalisera en 1977 – aujourd’hui la seule de ses installations à être visible de manière pérenne.

In this seconds-before-disaster photo, B786 is seen working the Diageo distillery in Valleyfield, with the skies foreshadowing the arrival of a torrential downpour that hit just moments after I took the photo. No Photoshop trickery here, it really was this eerie.

One day out the big window of the place we were staying we saw a hawk and a hummingbird. One would leave and then the other would show up … this went on for a couple of hours and we were fascinated. Ever try taking a photo of a hummingbird in flight? Might as well try and capture whales surfacing to breathe (foreshadowing)

d810, zeiss 135

Construction, Week 63 (Demolition, Week 3)

 

Here's a view closer to the store's former (or “former store's”...) left side, where you can see the Marketplace farther off to the left and the backhoes lined up in a nice little row off to the right. The landscaping island in the center foreground is one of only a few that lie on the closed-to-the-public side of the ever-growing fenceline and have yet to be disturbed – although perhaps the dead branch hanging from that leftmost tree is foreshadowing its fate... (cont.)

 

(c) 2016 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

This series will be the last of my uploads for the trip I took to southern Burgundy in September 2023.

 

Listed as a Historic landmark in 1900, the Romanesque church in the out-of-the-way village of Gourdon is one of the secret wonders of Burgundy. Not particularly outstanding from the outside, its large silhouette nevertheless foreshadows an impressive interior, and indeed it is, with its combination of a whooping three-level, Cluny-inspired elevation, its three naves and its generalized system of groin vaulting. Its collection of sculpted capitals is also famous, as are the alfresco paintings that were discovered in the 1940s as the plastering that was applied to hide them in the 19th century began to peel away. More such discoveries were made in the 1970s and restoration lasted until the early 1990s.

 

Located on a hilltop in the département of Saône-et-Loire, Gourdon has been inhabited since time immemorial. Valuable traces of Roman presence were found in 1845 and promptly shipped to a museum in Paris (the Cabinet des Médailles) where the are still being exhibited to this day. A monastery was founded here very early on, as there is a written trace of a dependency of the Le Puy cathedral chapter in 534, but claims that it was “a Benedictine priory” seem to me a bit overambitious, in spite of my sympathies for that order: let’s not forget that Saint Benedict died only in 547 in Monte Cassino, and I doubt that his Rule was so well-known in Gaul in his own lifetime that it could have been adopted by a small religious establishment in Burgundy... The monastery did certainly exist, though, as Saint Gregory of Tours visited it in 570 and there met with Didier (or Desideratus). About this last figure, History hesitates between the quality of abbot (that would indeed rather be prior if Gourdon were a priory back then) and that of hermit. In any case, by 1104, when the completed parish church is mentioned (there remains no trace of the in-between period), there is no further mention of that monastery, which must have disappeared in the meantime; it was probably little more than a hermitage, as by Year 1000 the rule had been largely propagated by Saint Benedict of Aniane († 821) and Benedictine houses were flourishing all over the Western world. An already existing priory would most likely never have been so abandoned and shut down. No physical traces of that establishment were ever found by archæologists.

 

Since around 1100, the church has been left almost intact, except for the bell tower which collapsed in 1881 and was rebuilt in 1889, exactly as it was before.

 

Affronted monsters on capital in the nave. This one was quite far away, I had to use my long lens to get it.

Frances Parkinson Keyes - Dinner at Antoine's

Dell Books 443, 1950

Cover Artist: Ric Grasso

 

"Spilled wine from a trembling hand foreshadows tangled love and tragedy..."

Foreshadowing of an era gone by.

Oil has been depleted and replaced by other forms of energy that are more environmentally sound.

Nature's reclaiming of the Earth is visible everywhere. Ancient structures and relics of abandoned gas stations and vehicles are still littering the soon to be pristine countryside. Humans hiding from view are awaiting clean-up operations, which have been too busy since the Great War.

 

Please view the entire set.

 

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

The Queen of Sheba is a figure first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The tale of her visit to King Solomon has undergone extensive Jewish, Islamic, and Ethiopian elaborations, and has become the subject of one of the most widespread and fertile cycles of legends in the Orient.

Bible[edit]

 

Queen of Sheba and Solomon, around 1280, window nowadays in Cologne Cathedral

 

The Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon, Tintoretto (around 1555)

The queen of Sheba "malkat-šəḇā" in the Hebrew Bible, βασίλισσα Σαβὰ in the Septuagint) came to Jerusalem "with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones" (I Kings 10:2). "Never again came such an abundance of spices" (10:10; II Chron. 9:1–9) as those she gave to Solomon. She came "to prove him with hard questions," which Solomon answered to her satisfaction. They exchanged gifts, after which she returned to her land.

 

The use of the term ḥiddot or "riddles" (I Kings 10:1), an Aramaic loanword whose shape points to a sound shift no earlier than the sixth century B.C., indicates a late origin for the text.[6] Since there is no mention of the fall of Babylon in 539 BC, Martin Noth has held that the Book of Kings received a definitive redaction around 550 BC.

 

Virtually all modern scholars agree that Sheba was the South Arabian kingdom of Saba, centered around the oasis of Marib, in present-day Yemen. Sheba was quite known in the classical world, and its country was called Arabia Felix. Around the middle of the first millennium B.C., there were Sabaeans also in the Horn of Africa, in the area that later became the realm of Aksum. There are five places in the Bible where the writer distinguishes Sheba (שׁבא), i. e. the Yemenite Sabaeans, from Seba (סבא), i. e. the African Sabaeans. In Ps. 72:10 they are mentioned together: "the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts". This spelling differentiation, however, may be purely factitious; the indigenous inscriptions make no such difference, and both Yemenite and African Sabaeans are there spelt in exactly the same way.

 

The alphabetic inscriptions from South Arabia furnish no evidence for women rulers, but Assyrian inscriptions repeatedly mention Arab queens in the north.Queens are well attested in Arabia, though according to Kitchen, not after 690 B.C.[6] Furthermore, Sabaean tribes knew the title of mqtwyt (high official). Makada or Makueda, the personal name of the queen in Ethiopian legend, might be interpreted as a popular rendering of the title of mqtwyt. This title may be derived from Ancient Egyptian m'kit ) "protectress, housewife".

 

The queen's visit could have been a trade mission. Early South Arabian trade with Mesopotamia involving wood and spices transported by camels is attested in the early ninth century B.C. and may have begun as early as the tenth.

 

The ancient Sabaic Awwām Temple, known in folklore as Maḥram (the Sanctuary of) Bilqīs, was recently excavated by archaeologists, but no trace of Queen of Sheba has been discovered so far in the many inscriptions found there.

 

Bible stories of the Queen of Sheba and the ships of Ophir served as a basis for legends about the Israelites traveling in the Queen of Sheba's entourage when she returned to her country to bring up her child by Solomon.

 

Christian

 

The Queen of Sheba, from a 15th-century manuscript now at Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen

Christian scriptures mention a "queen of the South" (Greek: βασίλισσα νότου, Latin: Regina austri), who "came from the uttermost parts of the earth", i.e. from the extremities of the then known (Christian) world, to hear the wisdom of Solomon (Mt. 12:42; Lk. 11:31).

 

The mystical interpretation of the Canticles, which was felt of supplying a literal basis for the speculations of the allegorists, makes its first appearance in Origen, who wrote a voluminous commentary on the Canticles.[16] In his commentary, Origen identified the bride of the Canticles with the "queen of the South" of the Gospels, i. e. the Queen of Sheba, who is assumed to have been Ethiopian.[17] Others have proposed either the marriage of Solomon with Pharaoh's daughter, or his marriage with an Israelitish woman, the Shulamite. The former was the favorite opinion of the mystical interpreters to the end of the 18th century; the latter has obtained since its introduction by Good (1803)

  

The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, Claude Lorrain (1600‒1682), oil on canvas

The bride of the Canticles is assumed to have been black due to a passage in Cant. 1:5, which the Revised Standard Version (1952) translates as "I am very dark, but comely", as does Jerome (Latin: Nigra sum, sed formosa), while the New Revised Standard Version (1989) has "I am black and beautiful", as the Septuagint (Greek: μέλαινα ἐιμί καί καλή).

  

Solomon and The Queen of Sheba Giovanni De Min 1789–1859

One legend has it that the Queen of Sheba brought Solomon the same gifts that the Magi later gave to Christ.

 

During the Middle Ages, Christians sometimes identified the queen of Sheba with the sibyl Sabba.

 

Jewish

According to Josephus (Ant. 8:165–73), the queen of Sheba was the queen of Egypt and Ethiopia, and brought to Israel the first specimens of the balsam, which grew in the Holy Land in the historian's time.Josephus (Antiquities 2.5-2.10) represents Cambyses as conquering the capital of Aethiopia, and changing its name from Seba to Meroe.Josephus affirms that the Queen of Sheba or Saba came from this region, and that it bore the name of Saba before it was known by that of Meroe. There seems also some affinity between the word Saba and the name or title of the kings of the Aethiopians, Sabaco.

 

The Talmud (Bava Batra 15b) insists that it was not a woman but a kingdom of Sheba (based on varying interpretations of Hebrew mlkt) that came to Jerusalem, obviously intended to discredit existing stories about the relations between Solomon and the Queen.Baba Bathra 15b: "Whoever says malkath Sheba (I Kings X, 1) means a woman is mistaken; ... it means the kingdom (מַלְכֻת) of Sheba".

 

The most elaborate account of the queen's visit to Solomon is given in the 8th century (?) Targum Sheni to Esther (see: Colloquy of the Queen of Sheba). A hoopoe informed Solomon that the kingdom of Sheba was the only kingdom on earth not subject to him and that its queen was a sun worshiper. He thereupon sent it to Kitor in the land of Sheba with a letter attached to its wing commanding its queen to come to him as a subject. She thereupon sent him all the ships of the sea loaded with precious gifts and 6,000 youths of equal size, all born at the same hour and clothed in purple garments. They carried a letter declaring that she could arrive in Jerusalem within three years although the journey normally took seven years. When the queen arrived and came to Solomon's palace, thinking that the glass floor was a pool of water, she lifted the hem of her dress, uncovering her legs. Solomon informed her of her mistake and reprimanded her for her hairy legs. She asked him three (Targ. Sheni to Esther 1:3) or, according to the Midrash (Prov. ii. 6; Yalḳ. ii., § 1085, Midrash ha-Hefez), more riddles to test his wisdom.

 

A Yemenite manuscript entitled "Midrash ha-Hefez" (published by S. Schechter in "Folk-Lore", 1890, pp. 353 et seq.) gives nineteen riddles, most of which are found scattered through the Talmud and the Midrash, which the author of the "Midrash ha-Hefez" attributes to the Queen of Sheba. Most of these riddles are simply Bible questions, some not of a very edifying character. The two that are genuine riddles are: "Without movement while living, it moves when its head is cut off," and "Produced from the ground, man produces it, while its food is the fruit of the ground." The answer to the former is, "a tree, which, when its top is removed, can be made into a moving ship"; the answer to the latter is, "a wick."

 

The rabbis who denounce Solomon interpret I Kings 10:13 as meaning that Solomon had criminal intercourse with the Queen of Sheba, the offspring of which was Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed the Temple (comp. Rashi ad loc.). According to others, the sin ascribed to Solomon in I Kings 11:7 et seq. is only figurative: it is not meant that Solomon fell into idolatry, but that he was guilty of failing to restrain his wives from idolatrous practises (Shab. 56b).

 

The Alphabet of Sirach avers that Nebuchadnezzar was the fruit of the union between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

 

In the Kabbalah, the Queen of Sheba was considered one of the queens of the demons and is sometimes identified with Lilith, first in the Targum of Job (1:15), and later in the Zohar and the subsequent literature. A Jewish and Arab myth maintains that the Queen was actually a jinn, half human and half demon.

 

In Ashkenazi folklore, the figure merged with the popular image of Helen of Troy or the Frau Venus of German mythology. Ashkenazi incantations commonly depict the Queen of Sheba as a seductive dancer. Until recent generations she was popularly pictured as a snatcher of children and a demonic witch.

 

Islam

 

Bilqis reclining in a garden, Persian miniature (ca. 1595), tinted drawing on paper

 

Illustration in a Hafez Frontispiece Depicting Queen Sheba, Walters manuscript W.631, around 1539

In the Quran, the story is essentially similar to the Bible and other Jewish sources.[7] Solomon commanded the Queen of Sheba to come to him as a subject, whereupon she appeared before him (XXVII, 30–31, 45). Before the queen had arrived, Solomon had moved her throne to his palace with the help of a wise man, who was able to move the throne faster than a Jinn. She recognized the throne, which had been disguised, and finally accepted the faith of Solomon.

 

Muslim commentators such as al-Tabari, al-Zamakhshari, al-Baydawi supplement the story at various points. The Queen's name is given as Bilqīs (Arabic: بلقيس‎), probably derived from Greek παλλακίς (pallakis) or the Hebraised pilegesh, "concubine". According to some he then married the Queen, while other traditions assert that he gave her in marriage to a tubba of Hamdan.[1] According to the Islamic tradition as represented by al-Hamdani, the queen of Sheba was the daughter of Ilsharah Yahdib, the Himyarite king of Najran.

 

The Quran and its commentators have preserved the earliest literary reflection of the complete Bilkis legend, which among scholars complements the narrative that is derived from a Jewish Midrash.

 

Coptic

The story of Solomon and the queen was popular among Copts, as shown by fragments of a Coptic legend preserved in a Berlin papyrus. The queen, having been subdued by deceit, gives Solomon a pillar on which all earthly science is inscribed. Solomon sends one of his demons to fetch the pillar from Ethiopia, whence it instantly arrives. In a Coptic poem, queen Yesaba of Cush asks riddles of Solomon.[30]

 

Ethiopian

 

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Konrad Witz

The fullest and most significant version of the legend appears in the Kebra Nagast (Glory of the Kings), the Ethiopian national saga, translated from Arabic in 1322. Here Menelik I is the child of Solomon and Makeda (the Ethiopic name of Bilkis) from whom the Ethiopian dynasty claims descent to the present day. While the Abyssinian story offers much greater detail, it omits any mention of the Queen's hairy legs or any other element that might reflect on her unfavourably.

 

Based on the Gospels of Matthew (12:42) and Luke (11:31), the "queen of the South" is claimed to be the queen of Ethiopia. In those times, King Solomon sought merchants from all over the world, in order to buy materials for the building of the Temple. Among them was Tamrin, great merchant of Queen Makeda of Ethiopia. Having returned to Ethiopia, Tamrin told the queen of the wonderful things he had seen in Jerusalem, and of Solomon's wisdom and generosity, whereupon she decided to visit Solomon. She was warmly welcomed, given a palace for dwelling, and received great gifts every day. Solomon and Makeda spoke with great wisdom, and instructed by him, she converted to Judaism. Before she left, there was a great feast in the king's palace. Makeda stayed in the palace overnight, after Solomon had sworn that he would not do her any harm, while she swore in return that she would not steal from him. As the meals had been spicy, Makeda awoke thirsty at night, and went to drink some water, when Solomon appeared, reminding her of her oath. She answered: "Ignore your oath, just let me drink water." That same night, Solomon had a dream about the sun rising over Israel, but being mistreated and despised by the Jews, the sun moved to shine over Ethiopia and Rome (i. e. the Byzantine empire). Solomon gave Makeda a ring as a token of faith, and then she left. On her way home, she gave birth to a son, whom she named Baina-leḥkem (i. e. bin al-ḥakīm, "Son of the Wise Man", later called Menilek). After the boy had grown up in Ethiopia, he went to Jerusalem carrying the ring, and was received with great honors. The king and the people tried in vain to persuade him to stay. Solomon gathered his nobles and announced that he would send his first-born son to Ethiopia together with their first-borns. He added that he was expecting a third son, who would marry the king of Rome's daughter and reign over Rome, so that the entire world would be ruled by David's descendants. Then Baina-leḥkem was anointed king by Zadok the high priest, and he took the name David. The first-born nobles who followed him are named, and even today some Ethiopian families claim their ancestry from them. Prior to leaving, the priests' sons had stolen the Ark of the Covenant, after their leader Azaryas had offered a sacrifice as commanded by one God's angel. With much wailing, the procession left Jerusalem on a wind cart lead and carried by the archangel Michael. Having arrived at the Red Sea, Azaryas revealed to the people that the Ark is with them. David prayed to the Ark and the people rejoiced, singing, dancing, blowing horns and flutes, and beating drums. The Ark showed its miraculous powers during the crossing of the stormy Sea, and all arrived unscathed. When Solomon learned that the Ark had been stolen, he sent a horseman after the thieves, and even gave chase himself, but neither could catch them. Solomon returned to Jerusalem, and gave orders to the priests to remain silent about the theft and to place a copy of the Ark in the Temple, so that the foreign nations could not say that Israel had lost its fame.

 

According to some sources, Queen Makeda was part of the dynasty founded by Za Besi Angabo in 1370 B.C., with her grandfather and father being the last male rulers of the royal line. The family's intended choice to rule Aksum was Makeda's brother, Prince Nourad, but his early death led to her succession to the throne. She apparently ruled the Ethiopian kingdom for more than 50 years.

 

In the Ethiopian Book of Aksum, Makeda is described as establishing a new capital city at Azeba.

 

Edward Ullendorff holds that Makeda is a corruption of Candace, the name or title of several Ethiopian queens from Meroe or Seba. Candace was the name of that queen of the Ethiopians whose chamberlain was converted to Christianity under the preaching of Philip the Evangelist (Acts 8:27) in 30 A.D. In the 14th century (?) Ethiopic version of the Alexander romance, Alexander the Great of Macedonia (Ethiopic Meqédon) is said to have met a queen Kandake of Nubia.

 

Historians believe that the Solomonic dynasty actually began in 1270 with the emperor Yekuno Amlak, who, with the support of the Ethiopian Church, overthrew the Zagwe Dynasty, which had ruled Ethiopia since sometime during the 10th century. The link to King Solomon provided a strong foundation for Ethiopian national unity. Despite the fact that the dynasty officially ended in 1769 with Emperor Iyaos, Ethiopian rulers continued to trace their connection to it, right up to the last 20th-century emperor, Haile Selassie.

 

According to one tradition, the Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel, "Falashas") also trace their ancestry to Menelik I, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.[39] An opinion that appears more historical is that the Falashas descend from those Jews who settled in Egypt after the first exile, and who, upon the fall of the Persian domination (539–333 B.C.) on the borders of the Nile, penetrated into the Sudan, whence they went into the western parts of Abyssinia.

 

Yoruba

The Yoruba Ijebu clan of Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria, claim that she was a noblewoman of theirs known as Oloye Bilikisu Sungbo, which is similar to the queen's name mentioned in the Quran. They also assert that a medieval system of walls and ditches, built sometime around the 10th century, was dedicated to her.

 

After excavations in 1999 the archaeologist Patrick Darling was quoted as saying, "I don't want to overplay the Sheba theory, but it cannot be discounted... The local people believe it and that's what is important... The most cogent argument against it at the moment is the dating."

 

In art Medieval

The treatment of Solomon in literature, art, and music also involves the sub-themes of the Queen of Sheba and the Shulammite of the Song of Songs. King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba was not a common subject until the 12th century. In Christian iconography Solomon represented Jesus, and Sheba represented the gentile Church; hence Sheba's meeting with Solomon bearing rich gifts foreshadowed the adoration of the Magi. On the other hand, Sheba enthroned represented the coronation of the virgin.

Renaissance

Piero della Francesca's frescoes in Arezzo (ca. 1466) on the Legend of the True Cross contain two panels on the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon. The legend links the beams of Solomon's palace (adored by Queen of Sheba) to the wood of the crucifixion. The Renaissance continuation of the analogy between the Queen's visit to Solomon and the adoration of the Magi is evident in the Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi (ca. 1510) by Hieronymus Bosch.

 

Literature

Boccaccio's On Famous Women (Latin: De Mulieribus Claris) follows Josephus in calling the Queen of Sheba Nicaula. Boccaccio goes on to explain that not only was she the Queen of Ethiopia and Egypt, but also the queen of Arabia. She also is related to have had a grand palace on "a very large island" called Meroe, located someplace near the Nile river, "practically on the other side of the world." From there Nicaula crossed the deserts of Arabia, through Ethiopia and Egypt and up the coast of the Red Sea, to come to Jerusalem to see "the great King Solomon."

 

Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies continues the convention of calling the Queen of Sheba "Nicaula". The author praises the Queen for secular and religious wisdom and lists her besides Christian and Hebrew prophetesses as first on a list of dignified female pagans.[citation needed]

 

Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus refers to the Queen of Sheba as Saba, when Mephistopheles is trying to persuade Faustus of the wisdom of the women with whom he supposedly shall be presented every morning.

 

Gérard de Nerval's autobiographical novel, Voyage to the Orient (1851), details his travels through the Middle East with much artistic license. He recapitulates at length a tale told in a Turkish cafe of King Soliman's love of Balkis, the Queen of Saba, but she, in turn, is destined to love Adoniram (Hiram Abif), Soliman's chief craftsman of the Temple, owing to both her and Adoniram's divine genealogy. Soliman grows jealous of Adoniram, and when he learns of three craftsmen who wish to sabotage his work and later kill him, Soliman willfully ignores warnings of these plots. Adoniram is murdered and Balkis flees Soliman's kingdom.

 

Léopold Sédar Senghor's "Elégie pour la Reine de Saba," published in his Elégies majeures in 1976, uses the Queen of Sheba in a love poem and for a political message. In the 1970s, he used the Queen of Sheba fable to widen his view of Negritude and Eurafrique by including 'Arab-Berber Africa.'

 

Neil Gaiman's 2001 novel American Gods features a version of Sheba called Bilquis. The character is played by Yetide Badaki in the identically named television adaptation on Starz.

 

Rudyard Kipling's book Just So Stories includes the tale of "The Butterfly That Stamped." Therein, Kipling identifies Balkis, "Queen that was of Sheba and Sable and the Rivers of the Gold of the South" as best, and perhaps only, beloved of the 1000 wives of Suleiman-bin-Daoud, King Solomon. Explicitly ascribed great wisdom, "Balkis, almost as wise as the Most Wise Suleiman-bin-Daoud", nevertheless Kipling perhaps implies in her a greater wisdom than her husband, in that she is able to gently manipulate her husband, the afrits and djinns he commands, the other quarrelsome 999 wives of Suleimin-bin-Daoud, the butterfly of the title and the butterfly's wife, thus bringing harmony and happiness for all.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Sheba

The near-solstice Sun hangs low in the hazy sky over the Santa Monica Pier on a slightly cool Saturday evening. The Ferris Wheel spins at Pacific Park as flags flap in the on-shore breeze that foreshadows the coming fog. A lee 10 stop ND filter allows for a 15 second exposure, even pointed directly at the the Sun.

This isn't posted late, just figured I'd beat the rush - this'll be back soon enough.

 

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 697. Photo: Warner. Publicity still for East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955).

 

American actor James Dean (1931-1955) was the quintessential 1950s teenager, brooding and romantic. An air of androgyny attributed to his iconic appeal to both men and women. The three roles that defined his stardom are as troubled teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955) and surly ranch hand Jett Rink in Giant (1956). After his death in a car crash, the only 24-yers-old Dean became the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

 

James Byron Dean was born in 1931, in Marion, Indiana, the only child of Winton Dean and Mildred Marie Wilson. Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, Dean and his family moved to Santa Monica, California. In 1938, his mother was suddenly struck with acute stomach pain and quickly began to lose weight. She died of uterine cancer when Dean was nine years old. Unable to care for his son, Dean's father sent him to live with his aunt and uncle, Ortense and Marcus Winslow, on their farm in Fairmount, Indiana, where he was raised in their Quaker household. Dean's overall performance in school was exceptional and he was a popular student. He played on the baseball and varsity basketball teams, studied drama, and competed in public speaking through the Indiana High School Forensic Association. After graduating from Fairmount High School in May 1949, he moved back to California with his dog, Max, to live with his father and stepmother. He enrolled in Santa Monica College (SMC) and majored in pre-law. He transferred to UCLA for one semester and changed his major to drama, which resulted in estrangement from his father. While at UCLA, Dean was picked from a group of 350 actors to portray Malcolm in Macbeth. At that time, he also began acting in James Whitmore's workshop. In January 1951, he dropped out of UCLA to pursue a full-time career as an actor. Dean's first television appearance was in a Pepsi Cola commercial His first speaking part was as John the Beloved Disciple, in Hill Number One (1951), an Easter television special dramatizing the Resurrection of Jesus. Dean subsequently obtained three walk-on roles in films: as a soldier in Samuel Fuller’s moody study of a platoon in the Korean War, Fixed Bayonets! (Samuel Fuller, 1951), a boxing cornerman in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy Sailor Beware (Hal Walker, 1952), and a youth in the comedy Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (Douglas Sirk, 1952) with Rock Hudson. While struggling to get jobs in Hollywood, Dean also worked as a parking lot attendant at CBS Studios, during which time he met Rogers Brackett, a radio director for an advertising agency, who offered him professional help and guidance in his chosen career, as well as a place to stay. In July 1951, Dean appeared on Alias Jane Doe, which was produced by Brackett. In October 1951, Dean moved to New York City. There, he worked as a stunt tester for the game show Beat the Clock, but was subsequently fired for allegedly performing the tasks too quickly. He also appeared in episodes of several CBS television series The Web, Studio One, and Lux Video Theatre, before gaining admission to the Actors Studio to study method acting under Lee Strasberg. There, he was classmates and close friends with Carroll Baker, alongside whom he would eventually star in Giant (George Stevens, 1956). Dean's career picked up and he performed in further episodes of several early 1950s television. One early role, for the CBS series Omnibus in the episode Glory in the Flower (1953), saw Dean portraying the type of disaffected youth he would later portray in Rebel Without a Cause. Positive reviews for Dean's 1954 theatrical role as Bachir, the blackmailing Arab house boy, in an adaptation of André Gide's book The Immoralist, led to calls from Hollywood.

  

In 1954, James Dean was cast in the emotionally complex role of 'Cal Trask' in East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955), an adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1952 novel East of Eden. The lengthy novel deals with the story of the Trask and Hamilton families over the course of three generations, focusing especially on the lives of the latter two generations in Salinas Valley, California, from the mid-19th century through the 1910s. In contrast to the book, the film script focused on the last portion of the story, predominantly with the character of Cal. Though he initially seems more aloof and emotionally troubled than his twin brother Aron (Richard Davalos), Cal is soon seen to be more worldly, business savvy, and even sagacious than their pious and constantly disapproving father (Raymond Massey) who seeks to invent a vegetable refrigeration process. Cal is bothered by the mystery of their supposedly dead mother, and discovers she is still alive and a brothel-keeping 'madam'; the part was played by actress Jo Van Fleet. Much of Dean's performance in the film was unscripted, including his dance in the bean field and his fetal-like posturing while riding on top of a train boxcar (after searching out his mother in nearby Monterey). The most famous improvisation of the film occurs when Cal's father rejects his gift of $5,000, money Cal earned by speculating in beans before the US became involved in World War I. Instead of running away from his father as the script called for, Dean instinctively turned to Massey and in a gesture of extreme emotion, lunged forward and grabbed him in a full embrace, crying. Kazan kept this and Massey's shocked reaction in the film. Wikipedia: “Dean's performance in the film foreshadowed his role as Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause. Both characters are angst-ridden protagonists and misunderstood outcasts, desperately craving approval from their fathers.” In recognition of his performance in East of Eden, Dean was nominated posthumously for the 1956 Academy Awards as Best Actor in a Leading Role of 1955, the first official posthumous acting nomination in Academy Awards history. East of Eden was the only film starring Dean that he would see released in his lifetime.

 

James Dean quickly followed up his role in Eden with a starring role as the brooding red-jacketed teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) with Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood. The film depicts the dilemma of a typical teenager of the time, who feels that no one, not even his peers, can understand him. The film scrupulously follows the classic theatrical disciplines, telling all within a 24-hour period. Jim Stark was Dean’s true starring role, and Rebel Without a Cause proved to be hugely popular among teenagers. The landmark juvenile-delinquent drama fixed James Dean’s image forever in American culture. In his next film, Giant (George Stevens, 1956), Dean played a supporting role to Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. This was due to his desire to avoid being typecast as a rebellious teenager like Cal Trask or Jim Stark. In the film, he plays Jett Rink, a Texan ranch hand who strikes oil and becomes wealthy. His role was notable in that, in order to portray an older version of his character in the film's later scenes, Dean dyed his hair gray and shaved some of it off to give himself a receding hairline. Giant would prove to be Dean's last film. At the end of the film, Dean was supposed to make a drunken speech at a banquet; this is nicknamed the 'Last Supper' because it was the last scene before his sudden death. Due to his desire to make the scene more realistic by actually being inebriated for the take, Dean mumbled so much that director George Stevens decided the scene had to be overdubbed by Nick Adams, who had a small role in the film, because Dean had died before the film was edited. Dean received his second posthumous Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his role in Giant at the 29th Academy Awards in 1957 for films released in 1956.

 

Today, James Dean is often considered an icon because of his perceived experimental take on life, which included his ambivalent sexuality. Most of his so-called affairs with various starlets were made up by the Warner Brothers public relations. Dean's best-remembered relationship was with young Italian actress Pier Angeli, whom he met while Angeli was shooting The Silver Chalice (1955) on an adjoining Warner lot, and with whom he exchanged items of jewelry as love tokens. Angeli's mother disapproved of Dean. After finishing his role for East of Eden, he took a brief trip to New York in October 1954. While he was away, Angeli unexpectedly announced her engagement to Italian-American singer Vic Damone. The press was shocked and Dean expressed his irritation. Angeli married Damone the following month. Dean also dated Swiss actress Ursula Andress. She was seen with Dean in his sports cars, and was with him on the day he bought the car that he died in. The Gay Times Readers' Awards cited him as the greatest male gay icon of all time. Dean’s ambiguous relationship with Sal Mineo in the angst-ridden Rebel Without A Cause has led many to speculate and view this golden age film as years ahead of its time. When questioned about his sexual orientation, Dean is reported to have said, "No, I am not a homosexual. But I'm also not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back." Dean, with time on his side during down times of filming, often frequented gay bars in mornings, afternoons and evenings in both Hollywood, Studio City and North Hollywood. He and screenwriter and theatre student from UCLA, William Bast lived together as roommates for a number of years. Bast later became Dean's first biographer and told he and Dean ‘experimented’ sexually. Journalist Joe Hyams suggests that any gay activity Dean might have been involved in appears to have been strictly "for trade", as a means of advancing his career. However, the ‘trade only’ notion is contradicted by Bast and other Dean biographers. Biographer Val Holley: “There's been quite an evolution in the thinking since Dean's death in 1955, moving from ‘James Dean was straight’ to ‘Dean had sex with men but only to advance his career’ to ‘Dean had sex with women but only to advance his career.’ In 2016, a new gossipy biography was published, James Dean: Tomorrow Never Comes, by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince. The authors claim Dean was in love with Marlon Brando and the two would had a long affair with S&M overtones. We may never know for certain if Dean identified as gay, straight, bisexual, but, regardless, what he’s come to represent still resonates with many LGBT audiences.

 

In 1954, James Dean had become interested in developing an auto racing career. He purchased various vehicles after filming for East of Eden had concluded, including a Triumph Tiger T110 and a Porsche 356. Just before filming began on Rebel Without a Cause, he competed in his first professional event at the Palm Springs Road Races, which was held in Palm Springs, California on March 26–27, 1955. Dean achieved first place in the novice class, and second place at the main event. His racing continued in Bakersfield a month later, where he finished first in his class and third overall. Dean hoped to compete in the Indianapolis 500, but his busy schedule made it impossible. Dean's final race occurred in Santa Barbara on Memorial Day, 30 May 1955. He was unable to finish the competition due to a blown piston. His brief career was put on hold when Warner Brothers barred him from all racing during the production of Giant. Dean had finished shooting his scenes and the movie was in post-production when he decided to race again. Dean was scheduled to compete at a racing event in Salinas, California on 30 September 1955. Accompanying the actor to the occasion was stunt coordinator Bill Hickman, Collier's photographer Sanford Roth, and Rolf Wütherich, the German mechanic from the Porsche factory who maintained Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder "Little Bastard" car. Wütherich, who had encouraged Dean to drive the car from Los Angeles to Salinas to break it in, accompanied Dean in the Porsche. At 3:30 p.m. Dean was ticketed for speeding, as was Hickman who was following behind in another car. As the group traveled to the event via U.S. Route 466, (currently SR 46) at approximately 5:15 p.m. a 1950 Ford Tudor was passing through an intersection while turning, ahead of the Porsche. Dean, unable to stop in time, slammed into the driver's side of the Ford resulting in Dean's car bouncing across the pavement onto the side of the highway. Dean's passenger, Wütherich, was thrown from the Porsche, while Dean was trapped in the car and sustained numerous fatal injuries, including a broken neck. The driver of the Ford, Donald Turnupseed, exited his damaged vehicle with minor injuries. Dean was pronounced dead on arrival shortly after he arrived by ambulance at the Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital at 6:20 p.m. The Failure Analysis Associates later reconstructed and recreated all details of the accident and have concluded that James Dean was travelling 55 to 56 mph when the fateful accident occurred, thereby proving he had not been speeding, as rumor had it. Ed Stephan at IMDb: “At age 24, James Dean was killed almost immediately from the impact from a broken neck. His very brief career, violent death and highly publicized funeral transformed him into a cult object of apparently timeless fascination.”

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Ed Stephan (IMDb), Daniel Bates (Daily Mail), Towleroad, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Today, both "The Land That Time Forgot" and "The People That Time Forgot" are fan favorites and hold a special 'cult' status among film buffs. I just goes to show that sometimes great films

don't need huge budgets to succeed, just dinosaurs and sexy cave women.

The Land That Time Forgot (1975)

Additional Photos in Set.

www.flickr.com/photos/morbius19/sets/72157639657354056/

 

youtu.be/d0K97czqecQ?t=1s Trailer

Amicus Pictures

Directed By: Kevin Connor

Written By: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jim Cawthorn, Michael Moorcock, Milton Subotsky

Cast:

Doug McClure as Bowen Tyler

John McEnery as Captain Von Schoenvorts

Susan Penhaligon as Lisa Clayton

Keith Barron as Bradley

Anthony Ainley as Dietz

Godfrey James as Borg

Bobby Parr as Ahm

Declan Mulholland as Olson

Colin Farrell as Whiteley

Ben Howard as Benson

Roy Holder as Plesser

Andrew McCulloch as Sinclair

Ron Pember as Jones

Grahame Mallard as Deusett

Andrew Lodge as Reuther

Runtime: 90 Minutes

Color: Color

 

Story

In the year 1916 during WW1, an Allied vessel carrying civilians, the SS Montrose, is torpedoed by a German submarine. The survivors manage to board the sub and successfully take control of it. After the two sides continuously plot to overthrow the other, the group become lost. With supplies and fuel dwindling, the two opposing factions decide to work together. They find a strange continent in the icy region of the Atlantic ocean, but strangely, the water surrounding it is warm. Christened Caprona by an early Italian navigator named Caproni, the ice encroached island has no place to land. Traversing a winding underwater cavern, the U-boat ascends into a river.

The group find themselves in a strange land filled with prehistoric creatures. With dangers lurking at every turn, the lost travelers haven't enough fuel for a return trip. The group journey North across the land of Caprona in search of fuel. The further north they go, the more highly advanced the creatures and inhabitants become. They later find crude oil deposits and build

machinery with which to refine the lubricant for use in the subs engines. Attempting to leave, the mysterious volcanic continent threatens to rip itself apart to keep the involuntarily exiled travelers from escaping The Land That Time Forgot.

The set design is amazing with the makers getting full use out of Shepperton Studios, the home of Amicus. Some years later, the famed Pinewood Studios would acquire Shepperton. The Director of Photography on LAND, Alan Hume, does an admirable job capturing the colorful landscapes and fauna of the lost world of Caprona. Hume also took the job of DP on the three other Connor directed monster movies. Hume would later perform photographic duties on several of the Bond pictures in addition to the comedic prehistoric opus, CAVEMAN (1981) starring Ringo Starr among a cast of other recognizable faces.

 

The first in a series of popular fantasy adventure movies from the team of producer John Dark and director Kevin Conner. A highly ambitious British film from Amicus Productions, the chief rival to Hammer Films. Hammer had done their own series of prehistoric epics beginning with ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (1966). That film featured stop motion animation by famed animator Ray Harryhausen. The film was so successful a follow-up was ordered albeit somewhat hesitantly considering the length of time it took for the stop motion effects to be created.

Doug McClure leads the cast to Caprona in a role that suits his former cowboy persona on THE VIRGINIAN television program. McClure replaced Stuart Whitman who was originally cast. Apparently, Whitman never received his full compensation to not participate in the picture and McClure was a likewise unwanted commodity as well. At the time, he was going through a divorce and a spate of drinking which kept him in a volatile mood from time to time. However, according to Susan Penhaligon, McClure was always a gentleman with her. McClure is very good and any hint of rambunctious behavior behind the scenes isn't evident in his pulpy performance.

  

McClure would take the lead role for AT THE EARTH'S CORE (1976), in which he would be paired with a rather spunky Peter Cushing. In 1977's THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT, McClure took a 'Guest Star' credit and only appears during the finale although he's the main focus of the story when Patrick Wayne journey's to Caprona to rescue him. It's the only film in the series that is a direct link with one of the other pictures. The fourth film, WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS (1978), isn't a Burroughs tale and also isn't an Amicus picture. Columbia handled distribution in the US.

In the early 1970s’ Amicus Pictures (Owned by Milton Subotsky and Max J Rosenberg) decided to pump some life into the declining British fantasy film industry by bringing the works of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs to the big screen. At about the same time the film company’s rival, Hammer, had abandoned its standard horror films for features starring half naked women in an attempt to put more bodies in the seats. Amicus felt that the time seemed right for a series of films based on Burroughs strait forward action tales to fill the cinematic void.

The first of the four Burrough’s stories to be produced by Amicus would be an adaptation of the short story “The Land That Time Forgot” which was first published in Blue Book Magazine in 1918. Milton Subotsky had first penned a screenplay for the film back in the early 1960s’ but his first draft was initially rejected by the late Burrough’s estate. It was under their prodding that the script was rewritten by Jim Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock. Their dialogue heavy, light on the action script however didn’t meet Subotsky’s approval, so it was reworked yet again.

"The Land that Time Forgot" began production at Pinewood Studios in April 1974 with a meager $750,000 budget that had been put up by American International Pictures in exchange for the American distribution rights. This extremely low budget forced the film-makers to settle for cost cutting measures in the effects department. Hand puppets were used for the films dinosaurs in many scenes where costly stop motion animation had intended to be used. The effect looks

primitive when compared to modern CGI effects, but for the time period in which it was created, these effects in "The Land That Time Forgot" fared well against most rival productions.

Script problems and hand held dino’s were not the only problems the production would face in its early stages. Originally Stuart Whitman was cast as the American engineer Bowen Tyler, but Samuel Arkoff of AIP protested. Their next choice, Doug McClure, finally agreed to take the role after initially passing on it. McClure was billed as the perfect leading man by director Kevin Connor. McClure had earned a reputation as a marketable lead on the TV Western “The Virginian.” On the set however, McClure earned another type of reputation after his tendency to hit the bottle caused him to miss a couple of days shooting and punch a hole in producer Johnny Dark’s office door. Despite this McClure was considered a nice guy by his costars. He even held the hand of a nervous Susan Penhaligon (cast as biologist Lisa Clayton) during the explosions of the films volcano erupting climax. John McEnry, who played the German U-boat Captain von Schoverts, was continually acting up on the set due to his belief that the production was beneath him as an actor. This lead to his voice being dubbed over by Anton Diffrin due to his demeanor and lackluster tone. Aside from this however none of the other off screen troubles manifested themselves in the finished product.

 

The films plot is a strait forward Burroughs adventure story.

John McEnery, who plays the somewhat honorable Captain Von Shoenvorts, the leader of the German forces, was dubbed by Anton Diffring. The first 15 or 20 minutes of the film are very well handled, having the American and British survivors take command of the Nazi sub only to have the Germans take the vessel back, only to lose it once more. During the final switch, the Allied survivors get some poetic justice on their German captors. When the sub is to rendezvous with a Nazi supply ship, Tyler quietly launches torpedoes destroying the enemy vessel in recompense for the prior destruction of the civilian ship.

Anthony Ainley as Dietz is the true antagonist of the picture. He appears to have much respect for his Captain, but at the beginning after the Germans have sunk the civilian vessel, Dietz asks if there is an order to surface to look for survivors. Capt. Von Shoenvorts declines, yet Dietz responds with, "Survivors may live to fight another day." The Captain then says, "They are in enough trouble already...besides, these were civilians." As the Captain walks away there is a look of unmitigated and deceitful envy on the face of Dietz.

He secretly harbors desires to command his own unit and this materializes during the finale when Dietz shoots his Captain and takes over the doomed submarine. Ainley played a much different character in THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW (1971) in which he played a priest who is seduced by a harbinger of the Devil.

Derek Meddings was in charge of special effects on the picture and his work here would foreshadow some great things to come. Meddings would tackle effects chores on a number of big movies including a slew of the James Bond movies and big budgeted fantasy pictures such as SUPERMAN 1 and 2, KRULL and the 1989 version of BATMAN.

  

Monster designer Roger Dicken was in charge of the ambitious dinosaur sequences seen in THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT. He also created special effects for several Hammer films including WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (1970) in which Dicken worked alongside fellow luminaries, Jim Danforth and Dave Allen. Dicken was Danforth's assistant here but on LAND, Dicken was on his own.

Douglas Gamley composed the score which has that Amicus sound to it, but given the nature of the film, Gamley peppers the score with at least one rousing composition which is saved for the finale. The scene in question has Tyler and Lisa racing back to the refinery as the land explodes around them. The group has left without them, though. As the U-boat makes its way back across the now burning river, Tyler and Lisa watch as the sub is destroyed from the boiling water and overwhelming heat.

During the finale, Caprona (described as a gigantic volcanic crater) begins to seemingly erupt destroying life on the island. In the third film, also during the finale, Tyler tells his friend, McBride that the land is alive and will stop their escape. Tyler states that the volcano controls everything. This adds a mystical element to the narrative making Caprona a living character. Taking what is said by Tyler in the third film, the erupting of the volcano in LAND seems to be in retaliation against the stranded travelers attempting to escape the island. By destroying the sub and its inhabitants, Caprona's secret remains hidden away from the eyes of modern man. The film ends as it began, with Tyler tossing a canister with notes detailing Caprona and the creatures residing therein.

The survivors of a torpedoed allied cargo ship turn the tables on their German attackers and seize control of their U-boat. The ever scheming German crew manage to damage the ships compass and instead of steaming to a neutral port, the group finds itself off the coast of the legendary island of Caprona, where time has stood still since prehistoric times. Forced to venture ashore in search of food, supplies and fuel, the crew encounters a bevy of dinosaurs that intend on making sure no one escapes alive. As in all good adventure stories of this type, just about everything and everyone the group encounters is set on doing them mortal harm and danger lies behind every turn. The groups focus is a simple a straight forward one, keep from being eaten and figure out a way to get off the island before it consumed in a river of molten rock. Seems all good dinosaur flicks have to end in some kind of volcanic catastrophe, and this film is no exception, even though Moorcock had originally written it with a different ending.

  

James Cawthorn (1929-2008) Artist

Jim Cawthorn is best known to Burroughs fans for his early work on the British fanzine Burroughsiana, edited by Michael Moorcock from 1956-1958, and for Erbania, edited by Pete Ogden during the same period. He also illustrated for Tarzan Adventures, a series of Tarzan comics interspersed with other stories and articles, also edited by Michael Moorcock. The series was reprinted by Savoy in 1977.

 

American Burroughs fans were generally unfamiliar with the British Tarzan publications before the Internet came onto the scene, but they are certainly familiar with the film production of The Land That Time Forgot, for which Jim Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock wrote the screenplay.

 

This Amicus film starred Doug McClure, making his first appearance in a British film under the auspices of American International Pictures, Inc. Cawthorn is reported to have been dissatisfied with the changes made to their screenplay which was written and signed on October, 1973, and which was filmed a year later. Besides changing names, characters and situations, they blew up Caprona which did not sit well with most American fans.

 

Cawthorn had produced many unpublished comic strips, including The Land That Time Forgot, and was working on A Princess of Mars when he died on December 2, 2008. He and Moorcock edited Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, published in London by Xanadu in 1988.

 

Cawthorn had many admirers, including Tarzan artist Burne Hogarth who wrote that the young artist’s work had a quality "most compelling and fascinating... He has an authentic talent." Of the many Cawthorn illustrations available for viewing, we found an early (1958) original in the Burroughs Memorial Collection which he drew for one of Maurice B. Gardner’s Bantan books.

 

While out shooting photos last weekend, I was driving down to the lake near my home and happened upon a tree where 10 vultures were perched. Never have I seen so many of them in or around one single tree. Across the road, in 2 other trees, there were at least 10 more. It's a bit eerie to see so many carrion-eaters at once, looking down as you walk beneath them, camera in hand.

  

Acrylic on Canvas (160 cm x 250 cm)

 

"We Saw the Future" is a conceptual series of acrylic paintings by , Brazilian artist Zéh Palito. The series portrays a world wherein man and animal merge as one. Defining Palito's archetypal foreshadowings of this obscure destiny, each painting illuminates a specific step of the journey. Using his signature color palette of bright reds, royal blues, lime greens, and electric yellows within the contrasting organic shapes against geometric, Zéh Palito takes his audience into this self-conceived dimension. He enhances the cardinal concept of nature’s connectivity by splashing evocative imagery about the canvas: grenades ejecting rainbows, hands possessing hearts, elephants and gorrilas exploring uncharted territory. “We Saw the Future” reinvents the inherent evolution, alludes to the riddance of all things bad, and leaps towards the equality of man and his fellow animal. Yet again, Zéh Palito gives his audience reason to take a second look at the world around them. For, it is man who determines what lay ahead. Perhaps the future is not such a mystery after all.

 

(Paley Martin- Art Nouveau MAG)

 

Daniel Buren - Les Deux Plateaux

 

The Palais-Royal (French: [pa.lɛ ʁwa.jal]) is a former French royal palace located on Rue Saint-Honoré in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. The screened entrance court faces the Place du Palais-Royal, opposite the Louvre. Originally called the Palais-Cardinal, it was built for Cardinal Richelieu from about 1633 to 1639 by architect Jacques Lemercier. Richelieu bequeathed it to Louis XIII, before Louis XIV gave it to his younger brother, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans. As the succeeding Dukes of Orléans made such extensive alterations over the years, almost nothing remains of Lemercier's original design.

 

The Palais-Royal is now the seat of the Ministry of Culture, the Conseil d'État and the Constitutional Council. The central Palais-Royal Garden (Jardin du Palais-Royal) serves as a public park; its arcade houses shops.

 

History

 

Palais-Cardinal

 

Originally called the Palais-Cardinal, the palace was the personal residence of Cardinal Richelieu. The architect Jacques Lemercier began his design in 1629; Construction commenced in 1633 and was completed in 1639. The gardens were begun in 1629 by Jean Le Nôtre (father of André Le Nôtre), Simon Bouchard, and Pierre I Desgots, to a design created by Jacques Boyceau. Upon Richelieu's death in 1642 the palace became the property of the King and acquired the new name Palais-Royal.

 

After Louis XIII died the following year, it became the home of the Queen Mother Anne of Austria and her young sons Louis XIV and Philippe, duke of Anjou, along with her advisor Cardinal Mazarin.

 

From 1649, the palace was the residence of the exiled Henrietta Maria and Henrietta Anne Stuart, wife and daughter of the deposed King Charles I of England. The two had escaped England in the midst of the English Civil War and were sheltered by Henrietta Maria's nephew, King Louis XIV.

 

The Palais Brion, a separate section near the rue de Richelieu to the west of the Palais-Royal, was purchased by Louis XIV from the heirs of Cardinal Richelieu. Louis had it connected to the Palais-Royal. It was at the Palais Brion that Louis had his mistress Louise de La Vallière stay while his affair with Madame de Montespan was still an official secret.

 

Philippe I, Duke of Orléans

 

Henrietta Anne was married to Louis' younger brother, Philippe I, Duke of Orléans in the palace chapel on 31 March 1661. After their marriage, Louis XIV allowed his brother and wife to use the Palais-Royal as their main Paris residence. The following year the new duchess gave birth to a daughter, Marie Louise d'Orléans, inside the palace. She created the ornamental gardens of the palace, which were said to be among the most beautiful in Paris. Under the new ducal couple, the Palais-Royal would become the social center of the capital.

 

The palace was redecorated and new apartments were created for the Duchess's maids and staff. Several of the women who later came to be favourites to King Louis XIV were from her household: Louise de La Vallière, who gave birth there to two sons of the King, in 1663 and 1665; Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan, who supplanted Louise; and Angélique de Fontanges, who was in service to the second Duchess of Orléans.

 

The court gatherings at the Palais-Royal were famed all around the capital as well as all of France. It was at these parties that the crème de la crème of French society came to see and be seen. Guests included the main members of the royal family like the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria; Anne, Duchess of Montpensier, the Princes of Condé and of Conti. Philippe's favourites were also frequent visitors.

 

After Henrietta Anne died in 1670 the Duke took a second wife, the Princess Palatine, who preferred to live in the Château de Saint-Cloud. Saint-Cloud thus became the main residence of her eldest son and the heir to the House of Orléans, Philippe Charles d'Orléans known as the Duke of Chartres.

 

he Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture occupied the Palais Brion from 1661 to 1691 and shared it with the Académie Royale d'Architecture from 1672. The royal collection of antiquities was installed there under the care of the art critic and official court historian André Félibien, who was appointed in 1673.

 

About 1674 the Duke of Orléans had André Le Nôtre redesign the gardens of the Palais-Royal.

 

After the dismissal of Madame de Montespan and the arrival of her successor, Madame de Maintenon, who forbade any lavish entertainment at Versailles, the Palais-Royal was again a social highlight.

 

In 1692, on the occasion of the marriage of the duke of Chartres to Françoise Marie de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Blois, a legitimised daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, the King deeded the Palais-Royal to his brother. The new couple did not occupy the northeast wing, where Anne of Austria had originally lived, but instead chose to reside in the Palais Brion. For the convenience of the bride, new apartments were built and furnished in the wing facing east on the rue de Richelieu.

 

It was at this time that Philippe commissioned a Grande Galerie along the rue de Richelieu for his famous Orleans Collection of paintings, which was easily accessible to the public. Designed by the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, it was constructed around 1698–1700 and painted with Virgilian subjects by Coypel. The cost of this reconstruction totaled about 400,000 livres. Hardouin-Mansart's assistant, François d'Orbay, prepared a general site plan, showing the Palais-Royal before these alterations were made.

 

Philippe II, Duke of Orléans

 

When the Duke of Orléans died in 1701, his son became the head of the House of Orléans. The new Duke and Duchess of Orléans took up residence at the Palais-Royal. Two of their daughters, Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans, later the Duchess of Modena, and Louise Diane d'Orléans, later the Princess of Conti, were born there.

 

At the death of Louis XIV in 1715, his five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him. The Duke of Orléans became Regent for the young Louis XV, setting up the country's government at the Palais-Royal, while the young king lived at the nearby Tuileries Palace. The Palais-Royal housed the magnificent Orleans Collection of some 500 paintings, which was arranged for public viewing until it was sold abroad in 1791.

 

He commissioned Gilles-Marie Oppenord to redesign the apartments of the Duchess on the ground floor in 1716 and to decorate the Grand Appartement of the Palais Brion in the light and lively style Régence that foreshadowed the Rococo, as well as the Regent's more intimate petits appartements. Oppenord also made changes to the Grande Galerie of the Palais Brion and created a distinctive Salon d'Angle, which connected the Grand Appartement to the Grande Galerie along the rue de Richelieu (1719–20; visible on the 1739 Turgot map of Paris). All of this work was lost, when the Palais Brion was demolished in 1784 for the construction of the Salle Richelieu, now hosting the Comédie-Française.

 

Louis d'Orléans

 

After the Regency, the social life of the palace became much more subdued. Louis XV moved the court back to Versailles and Paris was again ignored. The same happened with the Palais-Royal. Louis d'Orléans succeeded his father as the new duke of Orléans in 1723. He and his son Louis Philippe lived at the other family residence in Saint-Cloud, which had been empty since the death of the Princess Palatine in 1722.

 

Claude Desgots redesigned the gardens of the Palais-Royal in 1729.

 

Louis Philippe I

 

In 1752 Louis Philippe I succeeded his father as the duke of Orléans. The Palais-Royal was soon the scene of the notorious debaucheries of Louise Henriette de Bourbon who had married to Louis Philippe in 1743. New apartments (located in what is now the northern section of the Rue-de-Valois wing) were added for her in the early 1750s by the architect Pierre Contant d'Ivry.[15] She died at the age of thirty-two in 1759. She was the mother of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, later known as Philippe Égalité. A few years after the death of Louise Henriette, her husband secretly married his mistress, the witty marquise de Montesson, and the couple lived at the Château de Sainte-Assise where he died in 1785. Just before his death, he completed the sale of the Château de Saint-Cloud to Queen Marie Antoinette.

 

Louis Philippe II

 

Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans was born at Saint-Cloud and later moved to the Palais-Royal and lived there with his wife, the wealthy Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon whom he had married in 1769. The duke controlled the Palais-Royal from 1780 onward. The couple's eldest son, Louis-Philippe III d'Orléans, was born there in 1773. Louis Philippe II succeeded his father as the head of the House of Orléans in 1785.

 

Theatres of the Palais-Royal

 

The Palais-Royal had contained one of the most important public theatres in Paris, in the east wing on the rue Saint-Honoré (on a site just to the west of what is now the rue de Valois).[16] It was built from 1637 to 1641 to designs by Lemercier and was initially known as the Great Hall of the Palais-Cardinal. This theatre was later used by the troupe of Molière beginning in 1660, by which time it had become known as the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. After Molière's death in 1673 the theatre was taken over by Jean-Baptiste Lully, who used it for his Académie Royale de Musique (the official name of the Paris Opera at that time).

 

The Opera's theatre was destroyed by fire in 1763, but was rebuilt to the designs of architect Pierre-Louis Moreau Desproux on a site slightly further to the east (where the rue de Valois is located today) and reopened in 1770. This second theatre continued to be used by the Opera until 1781, when it was also destroyed by fire, but this time it was not rebuilt. Moreau Desproux also designed the adjacent surviving entrance façades of the Palais-Royal.

 

At the request of Louis Philippe II two new theatres were constructed in the Palais-Royal complex shortly after the fire. Both of these new theatres were designed by Victor Louis, the architect who also designed the shopping galleries facing the garden (see below). The first theatre, which opened on 23 October 1784, was a small puppet theatre in the northwest corner of the gardens at the intersection of the Galerie de Montpensier and the Galerie de Beaujolais. Initially it was known as the Théâtre des Beaujolais, then as the Théâtre Montansier, after which Victor Louis enlarged it for the performance of plays and operas. Later, beginning with the political turmoil of the Revolution, this theatre was known by a variety of other names. It was converted to a café with shows in 1812, but reopened as a theatre in 1831, when it acquired the name Théâtre du Palais-Royal, by which it is still known today.

 

Louis Philippe II's second theatre was larger and located near the southwest corner of the complex, on the rue de Richelieu. He originally intended it for the Opera, but that company refused to move into it. Instead he offered it to the Théâtre des Variétés-Amusantes, formerly on the boulevard du Temple but since 1 January 1785 playing in a temporary theatre in the gardens of the Palais-Royal. This company changed its name to Théâtre du Palais-Royal on 15 December 1789, and later moved into the new theatre upon its completion, where they opened on 15 May 1790. On 25 April 1791 the anti-royalist faction of the Comédie-Française, led by Talma, left that company's theatre on the left bank (at that time known as the Théâtre de la Nation, but today as the Odéon), and joined the company on the rue de Richelieu, which promptly changed its name to Théâtre Français de la rue de Richelieu. With the founding of the French Republic in September 1792 the theatre's name was changed again, to Théâtre de la République. In 1799 the players of the split company reunited at the Palais-Royal, and the theatre officially became the Comédie-Française, also commonly known as the Théâtre-Français, names which it retains to this day.

 

Shopping arcades

 

Louis Philippe II also had Victor Louis build six-story apartment buildings with ground-floor colonnades facing the three sides of the palace garden between 1781 and 1784. On the outside of these wings three new streets were constructed in front of the houses that had formerly overlooked the garden: the rue de Montpensier on the west, rue de Beaujolais to the north, and rue de Valois on the east. He commercialised the new complex by letting out the area under the colonnades to retailers and service-providers and in 1784 the shopping and entertainment complex opened to the public. Over a decade or so, sections of the Palais were transformed into shopping arcades that became the centre of 18th-century Parisian economic and social life.

 

Though the main part of the palace (corps de logis) remained the private Orléans seat, the arcades surrounding its public gardens had 145 boutiques, cafés, salons, hair salons, bookshops, museums, and countless refreshment kiosks. These retail outlets sold luxury goods such as fine jewelry, furs, paintings and furniture to the wealthy elite. Stores were fitted with long glass windows which allowed the emerging middle-classes to window shop and indulge in fantasies. Thus, the Palais-Royal became one of the first of the new style of shopping arcades and became a popular venue for the wealthy to congregate, socialise and enjoy their leisure time. The redesigned palace complex became one of the most important marketplaces in Paris. It was frequented by the aristocracy, the middle classes, and the lower orders. It had a reputation as being a site of sophisticated conversation (revolving around the salons, cafés, and bookshops), shameless debauchery (it was a favorite haunt of local prostitutes), as well as a hotbed of Freemasonic activity.

 

Designed to attract the genteel middle class, the Palais-Royal sold luxury goods at relatively high prices. However, prices were never a deterrent, as these new arcades came to be the place to shop and to be seen. Arcades offered shoppers the promise of an enclosed space away from the chaos that characterised the noisy, dirty streets; a warm, dry space away from the elements; and a safe-haven where people could socialise and spend their leisure time. Promenading in the arcades became a popular eighteenth century pastime for the emerging middle classes.

 

From the 1780s to 1837, the palace was once again the centre of Parisian political and social intrigue and the site of the most popular cafés. The historic restaurant "Le Grand Véfour", which opened in 1784, is still there. In 1786, a noon cannon was set up by a philosophical amateur, set on the Paris meridian, in which the sun's noon rays, passing through a lens, lit the cannon's fuse. The noon cannon is still fired at the Palais-Royal, though most of the ladies for sale have disappeared, those who inspired the Abbé Delille's lines:

 

Dans ce jardin on ne rencontre

Ni prés, ni bois, ni fruits, ni fleurs.

Et si l'on y dérègle ses mœurs,

Au moins on y règle sa montre.

 

("In this garden one encounters neither meadows, nor woods, nor fruits, nor flowers. And, if one upsets one's morality, at least one may reset one's watch.")

 

The Cirque du Palais-Royal, constructed in the center of the garden, has been described as "a huge half-subterranean spectacle space of food, entertainments, boutiques, and gaming that ran the length of the park and was the talk of the capital." It was destroyed by fire on 15 December 1798.

 

Inspired by the souks of Arabia, the Galerie de Bois, a series of wooden shops linking the ends of the Palais-Royal and enclosing the south end of the garden, was first opened in 1786. For Parisians, who lived in the virtual absence of pavements, the streets were dangerous and dirty; the arcade was a welcome addition to the streetscape as it afforded a safe place where Parisians could window shop and socialise. Thus, the Palais-Royal began what architectural historian Bertrand Lemoine [fr] describes as "l’Ère des passages couverts" (the Arcade Era), which transformed European shopping habits between 1786 and 1935.

 

Palais de l'Égalité and the Revolution

 

During the revolutionary period, Philippe d'Orléans became known as Philippe Égalité and ruled at the Palais de l'Égalité, as it was known during the more radical phase of the Revolution] He had made himself popular in Paris when he opened the gardens of the palace to all Parisians. In one of the shops around the garden Charlotte Corday bought the knife she used to stab Jean-Paul Marat. Along the galeries, ladies of the night lingered, and smart gambling casinos were lodged in second-floor quarters.

 

The Marquis de Sade referred to the grounds in front of the palace in his Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795) as a place where progressive pamphlets were sold.

 

Upon the execution of the Duke, the palace's ownership lapsed to the state, whence it was called Palais du Tribunat. The Comédie-Française, the state theatre company, was reorganised by Napoleon in the décret de Moscou on 15 October 1812, which contains 87 articles.

 

Bourbon restoration to Second Empire

 

fter the Restoration of the Bourbons, at the Palais-Royal the young Alexandre Dumas obtained employment in the office of the powerful Duke of Orléans, who regained control of the palace during the Restoration.

 

The Duke had Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine draw up plans to complete work left unfinished by the Duke's father. Fontaine's most significant work included the western wing of the Cour d'Honneur, the Aile Montpensier, and with Charles Percier, what was probably the most famous of Paris's covered arcades, the Galerie d'Orléans, enclosing the Cour d'Honneur on its north side. Both were completed in 1830. The Galerie d'Orléans was demolished in the 1930s, but its flanking rows of columns still stand between the Cour d'Honneur and the Palais-Royal Garden.

 

Following the July Revolution of 1830 when the Duke of Orléans ascended the throne as Louis-Phillipe I, the palace remained the principal residence of the new monarch.

 

In the Revolution of 1848, a Paris mob attacked and looted the royal residence Palais-Royal, particularly the art collection of King Louis-Philippe. During the Second French Republic, the palace was briefly renamed the "Palais-National".

 

During the Second French Empire of Napoleon III, the Palais-Royal became home to the cadet branch of the Bonaparte family, represented by Prince Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon III's cousin. A lavish dining room was constructed in the Second Empire style, and is now known as the Salle Napoleon of the Council of State.

 

During the final days of Paris Commune, on May 24, 1871, the palace, seen as a symbol of aristocracy, was set afire by the Communards, but suffered less damage than other government buildings. As a result, it became the temporary (and later permanent) home of several state institutions, including the Conseil d'Etat, or State Council.

 

The Palais-Royal today

 

Today, the Palais-Royal is the home of the Conseil d'État, the Constitutional Council, and the Ministry of Culture.

 

Gardens

 

The first garden of the Palais was planted by Cardinal Richelieu in 1629, where the Court of Honor is today. In 1633, Richelieu obtained authorisation to extend the garden northeast into the land occupied by the obsolete medieval city walls of Paris. He also received permission to sell forty-five building sites around the garden. The new garden site was 170 meters by 400 meters, making it the third largest garden in Paris, after the Tuileries Garden and Luxembourg Garden. The new garden featured long alleys shaded by trees, elaborate parterres and flower beds, a fountain in the centre, and a circular water basin at the north end. The master hydraulics engineer Jean-Baptiste Le Tellier designed the fountain, which, like the Louvre Palace, took its water from the La Samaritaine pump on the Seine.

 

The garden was redesigned several times, notably in 1674 by André Le Nôtre, and his nephew Claude Desgots in 1730. In 1817, under Charles X of France, the main water basin was enlarged to twenty-five meters in diameter, and the longitudinal parterres were remade in 1824. In 1992 the landscape gardener Mark Rudkin created new lawns and flower beds, termed "Salons of greenery", with seasonal flowers enclosed by grills covered with climbing plants. The garden was classified as a French historical monument in 1920, followed by the rest of the Palais-Royal in 1994.

 

A small cannon was installed in the middle of the bowling green at the north end of the garden in 1786. It fired a shot each day at noon, regulated by an ingenious mechanism that used a magnifying lens pointed at the sun's noontime position to light the match which fired the gunpowder. Between 1891 and 1911, the official noontime in France was defined by the cannon shot. It was stolen in 1998, but recovered and returned to its place in 2002.

 

The two major alleys of the gardens are named for two of the famous 20th-century residents of the neighbouring buildings, the writers Colette and Jean Cocteau.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Les Deux Plateaux, more commonly known as the Colonnes de Buren, is an art installation created by the French artist Daniel Buren in 1985–1986. It is located in the inner courtyard (Cour d'Honneur) of the Palais Royal in Paris, France.

 

As described by the architectural writer Andrew Ayers, "Buren's work takes the form of a conceptual grid imposed on the courtyard, whose intersections are marked by candy-striped black-and-white columns of different heights poking up from the courtyard's floor like sticks of seaside rock. ... In one sense the installation can be read as an exploration of the perception and intellectual projection of space."[1]

 

The work replaced the courtyard's former parking lot and was designed to conceal ventilation shafts for an underground extension of the culture ministry's premises.[1] Some of the columns extend below courtyard level and are surrounded by pools of water into which passersby toss coins.

 

The project was the brainchild of the culture minister Jack Lang and elicited considerable controversy at the time. It was attacked for its cost and unsuitability to a historic landmark. Lang paid no attention to the orders of the Commission des Monuments Historiques, which objected to the plan. In retrospect Ayers has remarked: "Given the harmlessness of the result (deliberate — Buren wanted a monument that would not dominate), the fuss seems excessive, although the columns have proved not only expensive to install, but also to maintain."

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Das Palais Royal, früher Palais Cardinal, ist ein Pariser Stadtpalast im 1. Arrondissement, etwa 150 Meter nördlich des Louvre. Das Palais beherbergt heute in seinem Haupttrakt den Staatsrat (frz. Conseil d’État), im Westflügel die Comédie-Française und den Verfassungsrat (frz. Conseil constitutionnel) und im Ostflügel das Kulturministerium.

 

Geschichte

 

Es wurde in den Jahren 1627 bis 1629 von dem Architekten Jacques Le Mercier für den ersten Minister Ludwigs XIII., Kardinal Richelieu, gebaut, nach dessen Tod 1642 ging es in den Besitz der Krone über und nahm seinen heutigen Namen an. Nach Richelieu bewohnte die Königinmutter und Regentin Anna von Österreich das Palais mit ihren beiden minderjährigen Söhnen, Ludwig XIV. und Philippe d’Orléans.

 

Zur Zeit der Fronde, die in den Jahren 1648 bis 1653 in Paris und ganz Frankreich wütete, erlebte Ludwig XIV. eine Nacht im Palais Royal, die seine lange absolutistische Regentschaft stark prägen sollte. Nachdem Angehörige der Pariser Parlamente, der französischen Gerichtshöfe, im Jahre 1648 gegen königliche Verordnungen Mazarins und Annas von Österreich revoltierten, war die Regentin gezwungen, mit ihren beiden Söhnen, dem minderjährigen König Ludwig XIV. und dessen jüngerem Bruder Philippe, Herzog von Anjou, Paris zu verlassen und in das königliche Schloss nach Saint-Germain-en-Laye zu fliehen, um einer Gefangennahme durch die Frondeure zu entgehen.

 

Jedoch verlangten die politischen Unruhen bald zunehmend die Präsenz der königlichen Familie in der Hauptstadt Paris und so kehrte Anna von Österreich mit ihren Söhnen im Jahre 1651 nach Paris in das Palais Royal zurück. In der Nacht vom 9. auf den 10. Februar gelang es aufständischen Pariser Bürgern, durch die Kooperation königlicher Angestellter bis in das Schlafgemach des jungen Königs vorzudringen, um dessen Anwesenheit zu überprüfen. Der sich schlafend stellende Ludwig lag schutzlos ausgeliefert in seinem Bett, während die aufständischen Bürger an diesem vorübergingen. Die Mitglieder der königlichen Familie waren faktisch zu Gefangenen in ihrem belagerten Palais geworden. Obwohl dem jungen König in jener Nacht kein körperlicher Schaden zugefügt wurde, grub sich dieses Erlebnis im Pariser Palais Royal dennoch tief in sein Gedächtnis ein. Niemals wieder wollte er seinen Untertanen so macht- und schutzlos ausgeliefert sein, was aus späteren Aussagen Ludwigs XIV. und einigen innenpolitischen Maßnahmen hervorgeht. Auch die Tatsache, dass er das von ihm beauftragte Schloss in Versailles in den 1680er Jahren zu seinem festen Wohn- und Regierungssitz machte, geht zum Teil auf die früheren Pariser Erfahrungen zurück. Aufgrund seiner Lage außerhalb von Paris galt Schloss Versailles als eine besser zu verteidigende Anlage als die königlichen Schlösser und Palais im Pariser Zentrum.

 

Im Jahr 1636 wurde in einem Anbau das Palasttheater geöffnet. In den Jahren 1660 bis 1673 spielte dort die Schauspieltruppe von Molière. Nach seinem Tod diente das Gebäude bis zum Jahr 1763 als Ort für diverse Opernaufführungen, dann brannte es – am 6. April 1763 – komplett aus. Am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts wurde die Anlage wiederaufgebaut. Seit dem Jahr 1786 dient sie der Comédie-Française als Sitz.

 

Seit der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts residierten im Palais Royal die Mitglieder des Hauses Orléans, beginnend mit Philippe I., dem Bruder Ludwigs XIV., und seiner (zweiten) Gemahlin Liselotte von der Pfalz. Es folgten ihr Sohn, der Regent Philippe II., Louis Philippe I. und Louis-Philippe II. („Philippe Égalité“).

 

Am 8. Juni 1781 kam es zu einem weiteren Brand des Palais Royal. Es geriet der Opernsaal in Brand, weshalb die Pariser Oper erneut umziehen musste. In den Jahren 1781 bis 1784 ließ Philippe Égalité die Galerie de Bois bauen, ein gigantisches Immobilienprojekt, wobei rund um den Palastgarten drei riesige Galerieflügel mit etwa 60 Häusern mit Arkadengängen, Wohnungen, Läden, Gastronomiebetrieben und Vergnügungseinrichtungen errichtet wurden, die bis heute stehen. Hier konzentrierte sich bald das Nachtleben der Hauptstadt. Die Promenade auf der „Allée des Soupirs“ (Seufzerallee) war in ganz Europa berühmt, weil sich dort die schönsten Mädchen und Frauen aus allen Ständen prostituierten, auch Personen aus dem Hochadel wurden dort angetroffen. Da die Anlage dem Herzog von Orléans, einem entfernten Vetter des Königs, gehörte, hatte die Polizei keinen Zutritt. Dies ermöglichte eine gewisse Versammlungsfreiheit und so wurde das Palais zu einer Zentrale der Patriotischen Bewegung, darunter auch der Klub der Zweiundzwanzig. Am 13. Juli 1789 (nach einigen Quellen am 11. Juli oder 12. Juli) rief dort Camille Desmoulins zum bewaffneten Aufstand auf. Der Herzog selbst schloss sich der Revolution an (und nannte sich „Philippe Égalité“), als Mitglied des Nationalkonvents stimmte er sogar für die Hinrichtung seines Cousins, des Königs. Das verhinderte aber nicht, dass er selbst unter der Terrorherrschaft 1793 festgenommen und guillotiniert wurde.

 

Die einst berüchtigten Spielhallen wurden im Jahre 1838 geschlossen.

 

Zu den Bewohnern der Häuser am Jardin du Palais Royal gehörten unter anderem Colette, Jean Cocteau und Jean Marais.

 

Von 1829 bis 1831 wurde, nachdem die Galerie de Bois geschlossen wurde, eine neue Galerie im Palais Royal errichtet, die Galerie d’Orléans.

 

Bei den zahlreichen Brandstiftungen im Zuge der Pariser Kommune wurde unter anderem auch das Palais Royal teilweise in Brand gesteckt.

 

Im Ehrenhof (Cour d’Honneur) des Palais Royal befindet sich seit 1986 das begehbare Kunstwerk Les Deux Plateaux des französischen Installationskünstlers Daniel Buren.

 

Das Palais Royal im Film

 

Das Palais Royal dient in diversen Spielfilmen als Kulisse. Zu ihnen gehören:

 

Charade (1963) von Stanley Donen

Interview mit einem Vampir (1994) von Neil Jordan

Männer und Frauen – Eine Gebrauchsanweisung (1996) von Claude Lelouch

The Da Vinci Code – Sakrileg (2006) von Ron Howard

So ist Paris (2007) von Cédric Klapisch

Ca$h (2008) von Éric Besnard

Vorsicht Sehnsucht (2009) von Alain Resnais

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) von Christopher McQuarrie

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Der Jardin du Palais Royal ist eine große Parkanlage im 1. Arrondissement von Paris. Sie wurde 1633 angelegt und ist als Jardin remarquable ausgezeichnet.

 

Lage und Namensursprung

 

Der Park ist von vier arkadenartigen Galerien umgeben: Galerie de Montpensier im Westen, Galerie de Beaujolais im Norden, Galerie de Valois im Osten und Galerie du Jardin im Süden.

 

Geschichte

 

Der Garten wurde vom Kardinal Richelieu gewollt, um den Palais Royal zu schmücken und vom königlichen Gärtner, Pierre Desgotz, gestaltet. Palast und Garten wurden nach dem Tod des Kardinals Ludwig XIII. vermacht und die königliche Familie ließ sich dort nieder. Das heutige Aussehen mit Galerien und Alleen erhielt er durch Charles X.

 

Besonderheiten

 

Statuen

 

Zwischen 1900 und 1945 standen in dem Garten eine Vielzahl von Statuen, von denen heute nur noch zwei erhalten sind:

 

Martial Adolphe Thabard,

Le Charmeur de serpent (1875) und

 

Paul Le Moyne,

Le Pâtre et la chêvre (1830)

 

Le Charmeur de serpent, errichtet um 1830

 

Le Pâtre et la Chèvre, errichtet um 1830

 

Monument à Victor Hugo, Marmor von Auguste Rodin, errichtet 1909; steht heute im Musée Rodin

 

Statue de Camille Desmoulins, Bronze von Eugène-Jean Boverie, errichtet 1905; 1942 abgebaut und eingeschmolzen im Zusammenhang mit Mobilisation des métaux non ferreux

 

Am Eingang zum Garten Les Deux Plateaux oder Colonnes de Buren

 

Le petit canon

 

1785 erfand Sieur Rousseau, ein Ingenieur für mathematische Instrumente und Uhrmacher, der ein Geschäft in der Beaujolais-Galerie hatte, eine Kanonenuhr. Sie wurde 1786 auf Anordnung des Duc d’Orléans gegenüber von Rousseau Laden aufgestellt und auf den Meridian von Paris ausgerichtet. Dank einer Lupe entzündeten die Sonnenstrahlen einen Docht, der das Pulver in der Kanone sonnigen Tagen von Mai bis Oktober entzündete und somit zur Mittagszeit einen Knall auslöste. Dies diente dazu, die Uhren in Paris auf die genaue Zeit einzustellen. Auf dem Sockel stand der Spruch: Horas non numero nisi serenas (Nur die glücklichen Stunden zählen.) 1799 wurde sie weiter südlich (in die Nähe der Colonnes de Buren) verlegt, wo sie noch heute steht.

 

Ab 1816 oder 1826 war die Zeit, die vom Mittagsweiser am Palais Royal angezeigt wurde, nicht mehr die offizielle Zeit in Paris. Zu jener Zeit galt in der Tat die durchschnittliche Sommerzeit von Paris (die Zeit der Uhren) und ersetzte damit die Zeit, die an der Sonnenuhr abgelesen wurde. 1891 wird die mittlere Zeit des Medianwerts von Paris auf ganz Frankreich ausgedehnt. 1911 wird es verboten, sich nach der petit canon zu richten, denn Frankreich hat die GMT angenommen.

 

1990 wird die Kanone restauriert und beginnt wieder, mittags zu donnern. Doch damit muss sie wieder aufhören, wegen des Plan Vigipirate. Als sie 1998 gestohlen wird, wird eine Nachbildung aufgestellt. 2011 entscheidet das französische Kulturministerium, die ursprüngliche Funktion wieder herzustellen aber ohne die Auslösung per Sonnenstrahl. Jedoch gibt es einen Beauftragten, der jeden Mittwoch um 12 Uhr einen Schuss abgeben muss.

 

Weitere Besonderheiten

 

In dem Garten steht ein Wallace-Brunnen.

 

Am 15. Dezember 1934 wurde von der tschechoslowakischen Gemeinde in Frankreich eine Gedenktafel in der Galerie von Valois zum Andenken an die tschechoslowakischen Freiwilligen angebracht, die am 22. August 1914 „(um) an der Seite Frankreichs die Freiheit der Nationen (zu) verteidigen und die nationale Unabhängigkeit wieder (zu) erlangen“. Die Tafel soll daran erinnern, dass sich zwei tschechische Vereine in Paris, der Sokol von Paris und der Sozialistische Verein Rovnost, vor einem tschechischen Restaurant im Garten, wo sie ihre Versammlungen abhalten, in der Absicht zusammenkamen, Frankreich im Krieg zu helfen. Dies führte zur Verpflichtung von mehreren hundert Freiwilligen in der Fremdenlegion für die Dauer des Krieges.

 

Filme, die hier gedreht wurden

 

1963: Charade von Stanley Donen

2015: Le Grand Jeu von Nicolas Pariser

2018: Baron noir, TV-Serie

2018: Dix pour cent, TV-Serie

2018: Mission: Impossible – Fallout von Christopher McQuarrie

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Les Deux Plateaux, im Französischen bekannt als « colonnes de Buren », ist ein Kunstwerk des französischen Künstlers Daniel Buren[1], das mit Hilfe von Patrick Bouchain geschaffen wurde. Das Werk befindet sich vor dem Palais Royal von Paris, zu dem auch der Jardin du Palais Royal gehört, der seit 1920 als eines der historischen Denkmäler von Paris eingestuft ist. Das Palais ist Sitz des Kulturministers; im ihm befinden sich auch das Theater der Comédie-Française und der Conseil constitutionnel, das französische Verfassungsgericht.

 

Die Skulptur

 

Les Deux Plateaux ist ein Projekt aus dem Jahr 1985. Die Skulptur erstreckt sich über eine Fläche von 3000 Quadratmetern auf dem Haupthof des Palais Royal de Paris im ersten Bezirk. Bevor dieser Hof durch das Werk von Daniel Buren überbaut wurde, diente er als Parkplatz. Er entwarf dann ein bewusst urbanes Werk als Gegensatz zur Feierlichkeit des Ortes (Kultusministerium und Verfassungsrat), damit sich das Publikum frei darin bewegen und auf den Säulen herumklettern konnte.

 

Das Projekt soll zwei unterschiedliche Plateaus darstellen, auf denen eine Anordnung von 13 × 20 = 260 Säulen aus Marmor zu sehen ist. Die Höhe der Säulen ist stets 2,40 m, obwohl sie unterschiedlich weit aus dem Boden ragen. Diese Form der dem Auge „verborgenen Kunst“ war ein Faible des damaligen Präsidenten Mitterrand (s. u.). Sie sind aus Carrara-Marmor und schwarzem und weißem Marmor aus den Pyrenäen gefertigt, die als die edelsten Materialien in der Bildhauerei gelten. Die Säulenreihen sind in Anlehnung an die klassische Architektur des Quadrats ausgerichtet, sie sind im Schachbrettmuster angeordnet. Zu dem Kunstwerk gehören auch ein unterirdischer Brunnen und ein Lichtspiel.

 

Geschichte

 

Hintergrund

 

Das Werk wurde ursprünglich vom ehemaligen französischen Kulturminister Jack Lang in Auftrag gegeben, der den Ehrenhof des Palais Royal vergrößern wollte. Für Lang war es ein Ärgernis, dass die Sehenswürdigkeit Palais Royal im südlichen Bereich durch einen Parkplatz herabgewürdigt wurde. So kam er auf die Idee, diesen Parkplatz in ein Kunstwerk zu verwandeln. Das Projekt Les Deux Plateaux wurde dann 1985 vom damaligen französischen Staatspräsidenten François Mitterrand aus mehreren Vorschlägen ausgewählt. Daniel Burens Ziel bei dieser Arbeit war es, das Untergeschoss freizulegen und einen Kontrast zwischen Klassik und Moderne zu schaffen.

 

Polemik und Renovierung

 

Als das Projekt 1986 fertiggestellt wurde, kam es zu zahlreichen Kontroversen, vor allem in den Medien, mit fast 225 Artikeln in 45 französischsprachigen Zeitungen, insbesondere des Le Figaro. Daniel Buren sah sich mit vielen Initiativen konfrontiert, die sich gegen die Skulptur wehrten. Ihm wurde vorgeworfen, einen mythischen Ort degradieren zu wollen. Trotz zahlreicher Versuche, die Arbeiten zu stoppen, wurde das Werk schließlich am 30. Juli 1986 der Öffentlichkeit vorgestellt, obwohl die juristischen Auseinandersetzungen erst Ende 1992 abgeschlossen waren. Er erhielt Petitionen von Anwohnern, Briefe, parlamentarische Anfragen, Graffiti und Beleidigungen an Bauzäunen.

 

Nachdem zahlreiche Schäden – unter anderem auch durch Budgetkürzungen und mangelhafte Bauausführung bedingt – aufgetreten waren, wurde das Werk 2008 renoviert. Die Kosten für die Restaurierung werden auf 3,2 Millionen Euro allein für die Säulen geschätzt.

 

Im Zuge der Renovierungsarbeiten wurde das Werk mit einer neuen farbigen Bauwand versehen um die Baustelle zu schützen und damit die Besucher das Geschehen im Inneren verfolgen können.

 

(Wikipedia)

Description: As she was growing up in Washington, D.C., Emma Reh (1896-1982) contributed many prize-winning essays and drawings to local newspapers, foreshadowing a lifelong interest in communication. She joined the staff of Science Service around 1924 and continued as a frequent contributor throughout the 1930s, reporting on archeological excavations in Mexico, as well as the social and political situation in that country. In 1935, she worked for the Soil Conservation Service and later for the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, writing about food consumption and distribution problems.

 

Creator/Photographer: Unidentified photographer

 

Medium: Black and white photographic print

 

Persistent URL: http://photography.si.edu/SearchImage.aspx?id=5784

 

Repository: Smithsonian Institution Archives

 

Collection: Accession 90-105: Science Service Records, 1920s – 1970s - Science Service, now the Society for Science & the Public, was a news organization founded in 1921 to promote the dissemination of scientific and technical information. Although initially intended as a news service, Science Service produced an extensive array of news features, radio programs, motion pictures, phonograph records, and demonstration kits and it also engaged in various educational, translation, and research activities.

 

Accession number: SIA2009-0884

This handsome timepiece is a classic example of the American shelf clock tradition, most likely dating from the late 1840s to mid-1850s, based on its form, materials, and painted lower glass.

 

Patina

One of the most evocative features of this clock is the thick patina that has developed on either side of the small brass door pull—a subtle but powerful indicator of its long history in domestic life.

 

This is not merely the result of age or environmental exposure, but a classic example of what decorative arts scholars call contact patina: the gradual burnishing and darkening of wood through repeated human touch. Each time the clock was opened to wind the movement or adjust the hands—typically once a week—fingers brushed the case beside the knob, leaving behind trace oils and wearing a soft polish into the surface. Over time, this built up into a tactile record of use, a kind of vernacular provenance that links the object to the rhythm of daily life.

 

Unlike a pristine museum piece, this clock bears visible witness to its role as a functional and familiar presence in the household, its case shaped not only by design but by the repetitive gestures of care and routine.

 

The Veneer

The close-up image reveals a richly figured, high-contrast wood veneer with ribbon-like banding and dark streaks set against a warm reddish-brown ground—characteristics strongly indicative of Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra), the most prized species used for decorative veneer work in mid-19th-century American furniture and clocks.

 

The dramatic, almost bookmatched grain patterns and oily depth of surface reflect a level of natural complexity that would be difficult to replicate with faux graining techniques, and the coloration and striping rule out domestic species like walnut, cherry, or mahogany, which tend to be more uniform and subdued.

 

This is clearly not painted or grain-simulated pine, but a true tropical hardwood veneer, likely imported and carefully applied to elevate the visual sophistication of an otherwise utilitarian clock case.

 

Based on visual analysis alone, it is almost certainly genuine rosewood veneer—probably Brazilian in origin—confirming the clock's alignment with the mid-19th-century trend toward richly veneered consumer goods that aspired to refinement through both material and form.

 

The Movement

Based on the form, proportions, and stylistic features of the clock—particularly the case shape, stenciled dial, and reverse-painted lower glass—it was almost certainly powered by a weight-driven brass movement, most likely an 8-day mechanism manufactured in Connecticut between the 1840s and 1850s.

 

Clocks of this type typically featured two descending cast iron weights, each suspended by a cord or chain wound around a drum: one driving the timekeeping mechanism (escapement and gear train), and the other powering an hourly striking mechanism, usually a simple bell or wire gong.

 

These weights would descend slowly over the course of a week, requiring the owner to rewind the clock once every seven to eight days using a key or crank. This system marked a pivotal development in American clockmaking, replacing earlier wooden movements of the 1820s and 1830s with more affordable, reliable, and standardized brass works.

 

The relatively tall yet shallow case is typical of shelf clocks designed to accommodate a full-size pendulum and descending weights while remaining compact enough for domestic mantels or wall brackets. The upper glass door allowed access to the dial and winding arbors, while the lower glass panel—though primarily decorative—sometimes opened as well for pendulum adjustment.

 

Far from being a spring-driven or battery-powered novelty, this clock embodies the mechanical ingenuity and democratizing spirit of mid-19th-century Connecticut clockmakers, whose innovations brought accurate, ornamental timekeeping within reach of the growing American middle class.

 

️Case Design: Empire Revival with a Touch of Restraint

 

The clock case displays veneered rosewood - a hallmark of American mass-market clocks from the mid-19th century. The thick, broad molding with deeply chamfered edges is characteristic of the Empire Revival style, popular in clock cases after about 1835.

 

This style was a simplified, Americanized echo of high-style Empire furniture.

 

The form is rectilinear and masculine, eschewing the curves of Federal or Rococo Revival trends.

 

It speaks to the democratization of style in American decorative arts: mass-produced clocks like this brought a sense of refinement into middle-class homes at a time when furniture was becoming increasingly standardized.

 

The construction, likely by a Connecticut firm such as Seth Thomas, Eli Terry, or Chauncey Jerome, reflects the “transitional” period between early wooden works and later spring-driven brass movements.

 

⌚ Dial: Stenciled Roman Numerals with Exposed Movement

 

The dial features Roman numerals in a clean stencil style, with an open center that allows a glimpse of the brass gearworks—a detail that became common in mid-century clocks as brass movement manufacturing matured.

 

The relatively small, round viewing aperture reveals enough to showcase the clock's mechanical heart but not enough to distract.

 

The starkness of the numerals and simplicity of the minute marks suggest an effort to blend utility with modest refinement.

 

️Lower Door Glass: The Compass Rose Motif

 

This is where things get especially interesting.

 

The painted lower tablet features a central compass rose or eight-pointed star, surrounded by scrolling foliate patterns in gold and white. Here's what stands out:

 

Why It's Hard to Date:

 

The compass rose is an ambiguous visual symbol in American folk and decorative art. It:

 

Echoes nautical and cartographic traditions, making it appealing in both coastal and inland decorative contexts.

 

Is also a quasi-Masonic symbol, often associated with moral direction or worldly orientation, which gave it broad symbolic appeal in the 19th century.

 

This compass/starburst design overlaps with:

 

Fraktur and Pennsylvania Dutch motifs

 

Folk-painted furniture

 

Nautical-themed stencils

 

Patent stenciling in parlor decoration

 

Its execution here suggests factory stencilwork, not freehand, so it was likely part of the mass production system but intended to offer a slightly exotic, learned, or "mariner's" flair to the domestic interior.

 

The round motifs with jagged or scalloped edges in the corners of the clock’s lower glass tablet strongly evoke the flower known as a "pink"—a member of the Dianthus family, including carnations—whose fringed petals were a familiar visual form in 19th-century decorative arts. Though abstracted and rendered in a limited palette, these forms likely reference the symbolic language of flowers popular at the time: carnations represented affection, remembrance, and good fortune, and their inclusion here subtly feminizes and sentimentalizes the clock’s otherwise geometric design.

 

The pairing of these stylized floral medallions with the bold compass rose at the center creates a deliberate interplay between domestic warmth and directional clarity, between the emotional and the mechanical.

 

It reflects a broader 19th-century decorative tendency to merge industrial regularity with romantic naturalism—a hybrid language seen in stenciled walls, toleware, and reverse-painted mirrors and clocks throughout the antebellum period. In this context, the “pinks” not only soften the visual field but also root the mass-produced object in the sentimental and symbolic culture of the Victorian home.

 

While one must be cautious when drawing connections across periods in the decorative arts, the curving lines that frame the compass rose and corner motifs on this clock glass do appear to foreshadow the sinuous outlines of jigsaw-cut fretwork that became a hallmark of the Queen Anne revival and Eastlake-influenced styles later in the 19th century.

 

Though modest and schematic—painted rather than carved, and purely ornamental rather than structural—these flourishes share the same impulse to soften rectilinear form with graceful, scrolling detail.

 

They occupy a transitional space in American design, marking the shift from the simplified classical motifs of the mid-century to the more expressive, machine-assisted intricacy that would soon define Victorian taste. In this sense, the clock quietly anticipates a return to decorative elaboration—not through hand carving, but via scroll saws and jig-cut embellishments, as seen in furniture, gable brackets, and parlor ornament of the 1870s and 1880s.

 

The effect here is subdued and economical, but the visual rhythm of the lines hints at the more assertive ornamentation to come.

 

Context in Decorative Arts:

 

This kind of glass painting fits into the tradition of "eglomisé" (reverse-painted) glass tablets, a defining feature of American clocks from ca. 1830–1860. The patterns:

 

Were usually done via stencils and pounce patterns, then filled in by hand.

 

Balanced bold geometric clarity (in the star) with fanciful, curvilinear border scrolls.

 

Provided a splash of color and interest in parlors that otherwise may have lacked artwork.

 

This particular motif, with its clean divisions and symmetrical arms, aligns with navigational, moral, and even religious overtones popular in antebellum Protestant America. It may have appealed equally to the Yankee merchant, Midwest farmer, or Methodist schoolteacher—it was culturally portable.

 

Broader Context: American Consumer Goods and Clock Democratization

 

The entire object is emblematic of mid-19th-century American mass production:

 

Wooden shelf clocks like this were among the first true mass consumer goods in the U.S.

 

Clockmakers in Connecticut led the charge, thanks to:

 

Standardized brass movements

 

Pine cases with veneered or faux-painted surfaces

 

Factory stenciling and lithographed dials

 

The affordability and availability of these clocks meant that even modest households could own a timepiece, a powerful symbol of middle-class aspirations and punctuality culture in a growing capitalist economy.

 

Verdict on Date and Typology

 

Probable date: ca. 1845–1855

 

Maker: Possibly Jerome, Birge, or another Connecticut manufacturer—though unmarked, the design falls squarely within their domain.

 

Type: 30-hour weight-driven shelf clock, sometimes called a "transition" or "column and cornice" derivative. The absence of side columns or ogee curves suggests a transitional Empire form.

 

This text is a collaboration with Chat GPT.

Today, both "The Land That Time Forgot" and "The People That Time Forgot" are fan favorites and hold a special 'cult' status among film buffs. I just goes to show that sometimes great films

don't need huge budgets to succeed, just dinosaurs and sexy cave women.

The Land That Time Forgot (1975)

Additional Photos in Set.

www.flickr.com/photos/morbius19/sets/72157639657354056/

 

youtu.be/d0K97czqecQ?t=1s Trailer

Amicus Pictures

Directed By: Kevin Connor

Written By: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jim Cawthorn, Michael Moorcock, Milton Subotsky

Cast:

Doug McClure as Bowen Tyler

John McEnery as Captain Von Schoenvorts

Susan Penhaligon as Lisa Clayton

Keith Barron as Bradley

Anthony Ainley as Dietz

Godfrey James as Borg

Bobby Parr as Ahm

Declan Mulholland as Olson

Colin Farrell as Whiteley

Ben Howard as Benson

Roy Holder as Plesser

Andrew McCulloch as Sinclair

Ron Pember as Jones

Grahame Mallard as Deusett

Andrew Lodge as Reuther

Runtime: 90 Minutes

Color: Color

 

Story

In the year 1916 during WW1, an Allied vessel carrying civilians, the SS Montrose, is torpedoed by a German submarine. The survivors manage to board the sub and successfully take control of it. After the two sides continuously plot to overthrow the other, the group become lost. With supplies and fuel dwindling, the two opposing factions decide to work together. They find a strange continent in the icy region of the Atlantic ocean, but strangely, the water surrounding it is warm. Christened Caprona by an early Italian navigator named Caproni, the ice encroached island has no place to land. Traversing a winding underwater cavern, the U-boat ascends into a river.

The group find themselves in a strange land filled with prehistoric creatures. With dangers lurking at every turn, the lost travelers haven't enough fuel for a return trip. The group journey North across the land of Caprona in search of fuel. The further north they go, the more highly advanced the creatures and inhabitants become. They later find crude oil deposits and build

machinery with which to refine the lubricant for use in the subs engines. Attempting to leave, the mysterious volcanic continent threatens to rip itself apart to keep the involuntarily exiled travelers from escaping The Land That Time Forgot.

The set design is amazing with the makers getting full use out of Shepperton Studios, the home of Amicus. Some years later, the famed Pinewood Studios would acquire Shepperton. The Director of Photography on LAND, Alan Hume, does an admirable job capturing the colorful landscapes and fauna of the lost world of Caprona. Hume also took the job of DP on the three other Connor directed monster movies. Hume would later perform photographic duties on several of the Bond pictures in addition to the comedic prehistoric opus, CAVEMAN (1981) starring Ringo Starr among a cast of other recognizable faces.

 

The first in a series of popular fantasy adventure movies from the team of producer John Dark and director Kevin Conner. A highly ambitious British film from Amicus Productions, the chief rival to Hammer Films. Hammer had done their own series of prehistoric epics beginning with ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (1966). That film featured stop motion animation by famed animator Ray Harryhausen. The film was so successful a follow-up was ordered albeit somewhat hesitantly considering the length of time it took for the stop motion effects to be created.

Doug McClure leads the cast to Caprona in a role that suits his former cowboy persona on THE VIRGINIAN television program. McClure replaced Stuart Whitman who was originally cast. Apparently, Whitman never received his full compensation to not participate in the picture and McClure was a likewise unwanted commodity as well. At the time, he was going through a divorce and a spate of drinking which kept him in a volatile mood from time to time. However, according to Susan Penhaligon, McClure was always a gentleman with her. McClure is very good and any hint of rambunctious behavior behind the scenes isn't evident in his pulpy performance.

  

McClure would take the lead role for AT THE EARTH'S CORE (1976), in which he would be paired with a rather spunky Peter Cushing. In 1977's THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT, McClure took a 'Guest Star' credit and only appears during the finale although he's the main focus of the story when Patrick Wayne journey's to Caprona to rescue him. It's the only film in the series that is a direct link with one of the other pictures. The fourth film, WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS (1978), isn't a Burroughs tale and also isn't an Amicus picture. Columbia handled distribution in the US.

In the early 1970s’ Amicus Pictures (Owned by Milton Subotsky and Max J Rosenberg) decided to pump some life into the declining British fantasy film industry by bringing the works of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs to the big screen. At about the same time the film company’s rival, Hammer, had abandoned its standard horror films for features starring half naked women in an attempt to put more bodies in the seats. Amicus felt that the time seemed right for a series of films based on Burroughs strait forward action tales to fill the cinematic void.

The first of the four Burrough’s stories to be produced by Amicus would be an adaptation of the short story “The Land That Time Forgot” which was first published in Blue Book Magazine in 1918. Milton Subotsky had first penned a screenplay for the film back in the early 1960s’ but his first draft was initially rejected by the late Burrough’s estate. It was under their prodding that the script was rewritten by Jim Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock. Their dialogue heavy, light on the action script however didn’t meet Subotsky’s approval, so it was reworked yet again.

"The Land that Time Forgot" began production at Pinewood Studios in April 1974 with a meager $750,000 budget that had been put up by American International Pictures in exchange for the American distribution rights. This extremely low budget forced the film-makers to settle for cost cutting measures in the effects department. Hand puppets were used for the films dinosaurs in many scenes where costly stop motion animation had intended to be used. The effect looks

primitive when compared to modern CGI effects, but for the time period in which it was created, these effects in "The Land That Time Forgot" fared well against most rival productions.

Script problems and hand held dino’s were not the only problems the production would face in its early stages. Originally Stuart Whitman was cast as the American engineer Bowen Tyler, but Samuel Arkoff of AIP protested. Their next choice, Doug McClure, finally agreed to take the role after initially passing on it. McClure was billed as the perfect leading man by director Kevin Connor. McClure had earned a reputation as a marketable lead on the TV Western “The Virginian.” On the set however, McClure earned another type of reputation after his tendency to hit the bottle caused him to miss a couple of days shooting and punch a hole in producer Johnny Dark’s office door. Despite this McClure was considered a nice guy by his costars. He even held the hand of a nervous Susan Penhaligon (cast as biologist Lisa Clayton) during the explosions of the films volcano erupting climax. John McEnry, who played the German U-boat Captain von Schoverts, was continually acting up on the set due to his belief that the production was beneath him as an actor. This lead to his voice being dubbed over by Anton Diffrin due to his demeanor and lackluster tone. Aside from this however none of the other off screen troubles manifested themselves in the finished product.

 

The films plot is a strait forward Burroughs adventure story.

John McEnery, who plays the somewhat honorable Captain Von Shoenvorts, the leader of the German forces, was dubbed by Anton Diffring. The first 15 or 20 minutes of the film are very well handled, having the American and British survivors take command of the Nazi sub only to have the Germans take the vessel back, only to lose it once more. During the final switch, the Allied survivors get some poetic justice on their German captors. When the sub is to rendezvous with a Nazi supply ship, Tyler quietly launches torpedoes destroying the enemy vessel in recompense for the prior destruction of the civilian ship.

Anthony Ainley as Dietz is the true antagonist of the picture. He appears to have much respect for his Captain, but at the beginning after the Germans have sunk the civilian vessel, Dietz asks if there is an order to surface to look for survivors. Capt. Von Shoenvorts declines, yet Dietz responds with, "Survivors may live to fight another day." The Captain then says, "They are in enough trouble already...besides, these were civilians." As the Captain walks away there is a look of unmitigated and deceitful envy on the face of Dietz.

He secretly harbors desires to command his own unit and this materializes during the finale when Dietz shoots his Captain and takes over the doomed submarine. Ainley played a much different character in THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW (1971) in which he played a priest who is seduced by a harbinger of the Devil.

Derek Meddings was in charge of special effects on the picture and his work here would foreshadow some great things to come. Meddings would tackle effects chores on a number of big movies including a slew of the James Bond movies and big budgeted fantasy pictures such as SUPERMAN 1 and 2, KRULL and the 1989 version of BATMAN.

  

Monster designer Roger Dicken was in charge of the ambitious dinosaur sequences seen in THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT. He also created special effects for several Hammer films including WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (1970) in which Dicken worked alongside fellow luminaries, Jim Danforth and Dave Allen. Dicken was Danforth's assistant here but on LAND, Dicken was on his own.

Douglas Gamley composed the score which has that Amicus sound to it, but given the nature of the film, Gamley peppers the score with at least one rousing composition which is saved for the finale. The scene in question has Tyler and Lisa racing back to the refinery as the land explodes around them. The group has left without them, though. As the U-boat makes its way back across the now burning river, Tyler and Lisa watch as the sub is destroyed from the boiling water and overwhelming heat.

During the finale, Caprona (described as a gigantic volcanic crater) begins to seemingly erupt destroying life on the island. In the third film, also during the finale, Tyler tells his friend, McBride that the land is alive and will stop their escape. Tyler states that the volcano controls everything. This adds a mystical element to the narrative making Caprona a living character. Taking what is said by Tyler in the third film, the erupting of the volcano in LAND seems to be in retaliation against the stranded travelers attempting to escape the island. By destroying the sub and its inhabitants, Caprona's secret remains hidden away from the eyes of modern man. The film ends as it began, with Tyler tossing a canister with notes detailing Caprona and the creatures residing therein.

The survivors of a torpedoed allied cargo ship turn the tables on their German attackers and seize control of their U-boat. The ever scheming German crew manage to damage the ships compass and instead of steaming to a neutral port, the group finds itself off the coast of the legendary island of Caprona, where time has stood still since prehistoric times. Forced to venture ashore in search of food, supplies and fuel, the crew encounters a bevy of dinosaurs that intend on making sure no one escapes alive. As in all good adventure stories of this type, just about everything and everyone the group encounters is set on doing them mortal harm and danger lies behind every turn. The groups focus is a simple a straight forward one, keep from being eaten and figure out a way to get off the island before it consumed in a river of molten rock. Seems all good dinosaur flicks have to end in some kind of volcanic catastrophe, and this film is no exception, even though Moorcock had originally written it with a different ending.

  

James Cawthorn (1929-2008) Artist

Jim Cawthorn is best known to Burroughs fans for his early work on the British fanzine Burroughsiana, edited by Michael Moorcock from 1956-1958, and for Erbania, edited by Pete Ogden during the same period. He also illustrated for Tarzan Adventures, a series of Tarzan comics interspersed with other stories and articles, also edited by Michael Moorcock. The series was reprinted by Savoy in 1977.

 

American Burroughs fans were generally unfamiliar with the British Tarzan publications before the Internet came onto the scene, but they are certainly familiar with the film production of The Land That Time Forgot, for which Jim Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock wrote the screenplay.

 

This Amicus film starred Doug McClure, making his first appearance in a British film under the auspices of American International Pictures, Inc. Cawthorn is reported to have been dissatisfied with the changes made to their screenplay which was written and signed on October, 1973, and which was filmed a year later. Besides changing names, characters and situations, they blew up Caprona which did not sit well with most American fans.

 

Cawthorn had produced many unpublished comic strips, including The Land That Time Forgot, and was working on A Princess of Mars when he died on December 2, 2008. He and Moorcock edited Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, published in London by Xanadu in 1988.

 

Cawthorn had many admirers, including Tarzan artist Burne Hogarth who wrote that the young artist’s work had a quality "most compelling and fascinating... He has an authentic talent." Of the many Cawthorn illustrations available for viewing, we found an early (1958) original in the Burroughs Memorial Collection which he drew for one of Maurice B. Gardner’s Bantan books.

 

Foreshadowing wave of FALLS arrival...

 

Presagio de la llegada del OTOÑO...

 

www.goear.com/listen/3bb1a89/la-estacion-del-otono-vivaldi

late summer shadows in the pool; neighbor's trees; fence. the diving board looks out over the deep and this scene, devoid of family swimmers foreshadows the dreaded closing

The Spasskaya Tower (Russian: Спасская башня, romanized: Spasskaya bashnya), also translated as the Saviour Tower, is the main tower on the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin which overlooks Red Square.

 

History

The Spasskaya Tower was built in 1491 by the Italian architect Pietro Antonio Solari. Initially, it was named the Frolovskaya Tower after the Church of Frol and Lavr in the Kremlin, which is no longer there. The tower's modern name comes from the icon of 'Spas Nerukotvorny' (Russian: Спас Нерукотворный) translated as 'The Saviour Not Made by Hands', which was placed above the gates on the inside wall in 1658 and removed in 1917. The tower is also named for the wall-painted icon of 'Spas Smolensky' (Russian: Спас Смоленский) translated as 'Smolensky Saviour', which was created in the 16th century on the outside wall of the tower, plastered over in 1937, but reopened and restored in 2010.

 

The Spasskaya Tower was the first tower of the many Moscow Kremlin Towers to be crowned with the hipped roof in 1624–1625 by architects Bazhen Ogurtsov and Christopher Galloway (a Scottish architect and clock maker). According to a number of historical accounts, the clock on the Spasskaya Tower appeared between 1491 and 1585. It is usually referred to as the Kremlin chimes (Кремлёвские куранты) and designates official Moscow Time. The clock face has a diameter of 6 metres (20 ft). The gate of Spasskaya Tower was used to greet foreign dignitaries, and was also used during formal ceremonies or processions held on Red Square.

 

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The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: Собор Василия Блаженного, romanized: Sobor Vasiliya Blazhennogo), known in English as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is an Orthodox church in Red Square of Moscow, and is one of the most popular cultural symbols of Russia. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, or Pokrovsky Cathedral. It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. Its completion, with its colors, was made in 1683. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.

 

The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight chapels arranged around a ninth, central chapel dedicated to the Intercession; a tenth chapel was erected in 1588 over the grave of the venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries, it was perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City. Like all churches in Byzantine Christianity, the church was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Tsar.

 

The cathedral has nine domes (each one corresponding to a different church) and is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century ... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century, and it is considered as a prime example of Russian Renaissance architecture.

 

As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's antireligious campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularized in 1929, and remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, weekly Orthodox Christian services with prayer to St. Basil have been restored since 1997.

Max Ernst, Brühl 1891 - Paris 1976

Stadt mit Tieren – City with Animals (ca. 1914 -16)

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

 

Max Ernst came to artistic maturity during one of the most fractious periods in European history. Both politically and culturally, the second decade of the 20th century was a tumultuous period which brought major change to Europe: World War I broke out, the Russian empire collapsed, and avant-garde organizations proliferated in the arts. In Germany, where Ernst was born to an amateur painter and his wife in 1891, the journal Der Sturm began publication in 1910 and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group was formed in Munich in 1911. These and many other manifestations of the avant-garde provided the impetus for Ernst’s rejection of the academic tradition represented by his father’s paintings.

 

Ernst was conscripted into the military as an artillery engineer during World War I and was twice wounded, yet managed to pursue his artistic interests throughout the course of the war, exhibiting in Berlin at the Der Sturm gallery in 1916. The following year, he published “Vom Werden der Farbe” (“On the Origins of Colour”), an article that paid tribute to Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, and Vasily Kandinsky, reflecting Ernst’s aesthetic interests at the time. Landscape (Stadt mit Tieren, ca. 1914–16) similarly represents a synthesis of artistic idioms gleaned from his peers: the pictorial logic invokes a Cubist idiom, while the palette and animal forms recall the paintings of Heinrich Campendonk and Franz Marc.

 

While Landscape predates Ernst’s involvement with Cologne Dada in the late 1910s and the Surrealist movement in the 1920s, the startling juxtapositions and fantastic imagery foreshadow this later work. Active among the Surrealists, who plumbed the recesses of the mind and the world of dreams for their imagery, Ernst would develop his own highly personal iconography, including the man with the bowler hat and the bird seen in this painting. The former has been interpreted as a reference to his father, while the latter evolved into the artist’s alter ego “Loplop” and appeared frequently throughout Ernst’s oeuvre. The prominent eyes—presaging the Surrealist fascination with vision—compound the ambiguity of the canvas: they appear frontally in the profiles of the animals in the foreground and are partially obscured in the landscape below the figure with the bowler hat. Resistant to ready interpretation, this painting is perhaps best understood in terms of Louis Aragon’s comment that “Max Ernst’s thought must be grasped at that point where, with a bit of color, some sketching, he tries to acclimate the specter he has just hurled into an alien landscape, or at that point where he places in the new arrival’s hand an object the other cannot touch.”

 

Source: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

 

" THE LAST SUPPER " by Leonardo da Vinci - painted in the years 1495 to 1498 .

In more modern times , due to the painting's deterioration it was reproduced with substantial re-touching . The original had itself required partial repaintings in previous centuries. The above picture is from an old bible .

 

Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper upon the end wall of the Refectory of the Dominion Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan .

 

Misadventures . Unfortunately for posterity , Leonardo painted upon such a badly prepared stucco ground (base) that his completed work began an obvious and rapid deterioration very soon after its completion . By the year 1556 half of its surface was considered ruined . Further insult to the paintings initial injuries were contrived almost a century later when the monks themselves , to create a doorway , cut out an area of the Leonardos' fresco - an area that included the Christ's feet .

DESECRATION . In 1796 when troops of Napoleon's invading cavalry used the

convent's refectory as a stable the painting was desecrated by

deliberately contemptuous soiling . Afterwards the refectory was used as a barn .

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During the decades when British people were very much more consciously aware and celebrative of christianity than they are today , many would prominently display a print of Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting in their homes. For example,my late grandmother had such a print above her bed . Please note that much of the following textual information is from Wilkipedia - the free website encyclopedia .

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The Last Supper Leonardo da Vinci, 1495–1498 tempera on gesso, pitch and mastic

460 × 880 cm, 181 × 346 in Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan .

 

" The Last Supper (Italian: Il Cenacolo or L'Ultima Cena) is a 15th century mural painting in Milan created by Leonardo da Vinci for his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza and his duchess Beatrice d'Este. It represents the scene of The Last Supper from the final days of Jesus as narrated in the Gospel of John 13:21, when Jesus announces that one of his twelve disciples would betray him. "

 

" The actual painting which measures 460 × 880 centimeters (15 feet × 29 ft) decorates the back halls of the dining hall at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. " Though its theme was then traditionally favoured for such refectories, Leonardo produced an exceptional work of fine natural realism conveying a masterful understanding of human frailty .

 

"The lunettes above the main painting, formed by the triple arched ceiling of the refectory, are painted with Sforza coats-of-arms. The opposite wall of the refectory is covered by the Crucifixion fresco by Donato Montorfano, to which Leonardo added figures of the Sforza family in tempera. (These figures have deteriorated in much the same way as has The Last Supper.) Leonardo began work on The Last Supper in 1495 and completed it in 1498—however, he did not work on the piece continuously throughout this period. According to 'Leonardo Da Vinci' [Kenneth Clark, p.144, Penguin Books 1939,1993], this beginning date is not certain, as "the archives of the convent have been destroyed and our meagre documents date from 1497 when the painting was nearly finished."

 

" The Last Supper specifically portrays the reaction given by each apostle when Jesus said one of them would betray him. All twelve apostles have different reactions to the news, with various degrees of anger and shock .

 

From left to right the apostles are :-

(i) Bartholomew, James, son of Alphaeus and Andrew form a group of three, all are surprised .

 

(2) Judas Iscariot, Peter and John form another group of three. Judas is wearing green and blue and is in shadow, looking rather withdrawn and taken aback by the sudden revelation of his plan. He is clutching a small bag, perhaps signifying the silver given to him as payment to betray Jesus, or perhaps a reference to his role within the twelve disciples as treasurer. He is the only person to have his elbow on the table which is traditionally a sign of bad manners . Peter looks angry and is holding a knife pointed away from Christ, perhaps foreshadowing his violent reaction in Gethsemane during Jesus' arrest. The youngest apostle, John, appears to swoon.

 

(3) Thomas, James the Greater and Philip are the next group of three. Thomas is clearly upset; James the Greater looks stunned, with his arms in the air. Meanwhile, Philip appears to be requesting some explanation.

 

(4) Matthew, Jude Thaddeus and Simon the Zealot are the final group of three. Both Jude Thaddeus and Matthew are turned toward Simon, perhaps to find out if he has any answer to their initial questions.

  

These names are all agreed upon by art historians. In the 19th century a manuscript -" by Leonardo Da Vinci was found confirming their names , previously only Judas, Peter, John and Jesus were positively identified.

 

In common with other depictions of The Last Supper from this period, Leonardo adopts the convention of seating the diners on one side of the table, so that none of them have their backs to the viewers of the work . However, most previous depictions had typically excluded Judas by placing him alone on the opposite side of the table from the other eleven disciples and Jesus. Another technique commonly used was placing halos around all the disciples except Judas. Leonardo creates a more dramatic and realistic effect by having Judas lean back into shadow. He also creates a realistic and psychologically engaging means to explain why Judas takes the bread at the same time as Jesus, just after Jesus has predicted that this is what his betrayer will do. Jesus is shown saying this to Saints Thomas and James to his left, who react in horror as Jesus points with his left hand to a piece of bread before them. Distracted by the conversation between John and Peter, Judas reaches for a different piece of bread, as, unseen by him, Jesus too stretches out with his right hand towards it. All of the angles and lighting draw attention to Christ.

 

The painting contains several references to the number 3, which may be an allusion to the Holy Trinity. The Apostles are seated in groupings of three; there are three windows behind Jesus; and the shape of Jesus' figure resembles a triangle. There may have been many other references that have since been lost due to the painting's deterioration. "

 

Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., Firenze (Florence), no. 3435. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for Giant (George Stevens, 1956).

 

American actor James Dean (1931-1955) was the quintessential 1950s teenager, brooding and romantic. An air of androgyny attributed to his iconic appeal to both men and women. The three roles that defined his stardom are as troubled teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955) and surly ranch hand Jett Rink in Giant (1956). After his death in a car crash, the only 24-yers-old Dean became the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

 

James Byron Dean was born in 1931, in Marion, Indiana, the only child of Winton Dean and Mildred Marie Wilson. Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, Dean and his family moved to Santa Monica, California. In 1938, his mother was suddenly struck with acute stomach pain and quickly began to lose weight. She died of uterine cancer when Dean was nine years old. Unable to care for his son, Dean's father sent him to live with his aunt and uncle, Ortense and Marcus Winslow, on their farm in Fairmount, Indiana, where he was raised in their Quaker household. Dean's overall performance in school was exceptional and he was a popular student. He played on the baseball and varsity basketball teams, studied drama, and competed in public speaking through the Indiana High School Forensic Association. After graduating from Fairmount High School in May 1949, he moved back to California with his dog, Max, to live with his father and stepmother. He enrolled in Santa Monica College (SMC) and majored in pre-law. He transferred to UCLA for one semester and changed his major to drama, which resulted in estrangement from his father. While at UCLA, Dean was picked from a group of 350 actors to portray Malcolm in Macbeth. At that time, he also began acting in James Whitmore's workshop. In January 1951, he dropped out of UCLA to pursue a full-time career as an actor. Dean's first television appearance was in a Pepsi Cola commercial His first speaking part was as John the Beloved Disciple, in Hill Number One (1951), an Easter television special dramatizing the Resurrection of Jesus. Dean subsequently obtained three walk-on roles in films: as a soldier in Samuel Fuller’s moody study of a platoon in the Korean War, Fixed Bayonets! (Samuel Fuller, 1951), a boxing cornerman in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy Sailor Beware (Hal Walker, 1952), and a youth in the comedy Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (Douglas Sirk, 1952) with Rock Hudson. While struggling to get jobs in Hollywood, Dean also worked as a parking lot attendant at CBS Studios, during which time he met Rogers Brackett, a radio director for an advertising agency, who offered him professional help and guidance in his chosen career, as well as a place to stay. In July 1951, Dean appeared on Alias Jane Doe, which was produced by Brackett. In October 1951, Dean moved to New York City. There, he worked as a stunt tester for the game show Beat the Clock, but was subsequently fired for allegedly performing the tasks too quickly. He also appeared in episodes of several CBS television series The Web, Studio One, and Lux Video Theatre, before gaining admission to the Actors Studio to study method acting under Lee Strasberg. There, he was classmates and close friends with Carroll Baker, alongside whom he would eventually star in Giant (George Stevens, 1956). Dean's career picked up and he performed in further episodes of several early 1950s television. One early role, for the CBS series Omnibus in the episode Glory in the Flower (1953), saw Dean portraying the type of disaffected youth he would later portray in Rebel Without a Cause. Positive reviews for Dean's 1954 theatrical role as Bachir, the blackmailing Arab house boy, in an adaptation of André Gide's book The Immoralist, led to calls from Hollywood.

  

In 1954, James Dean was cast in the emotionally complex role of 'Cal Trask' in East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955), an adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1952 novel East of Eden. The lengthy novel deals with the story of the Trask and Hamilton families over the course of three generations, focusing especially on the lives of the latter two generations in Salinas Valley, California, from the mid-19th century through the 1910s. In contrast to the book, the film script focused on the last portion of the story, predominantly with the character of Cal. Though he initially seems more aloof and emotionally troubled than his twin brother Aron (Richard Davalos), Cal is soon seen to be more worldly, business savvy, and even sagacious than their pious and constantly disapproving father (Raymond Massey) who seeks to invent a vegetable refrigeration process. Cal is bothered by the mystery of their supposedly dead mother, and discovers she is still alive and a brothel-keeping 'madam'; the part was played by actress Jo Van Fleet. Much of Dean's performance in the film was unscripted, including his dance in the bean field and his fetal-like posturing while riding on top of a train boxcar (after searching out his mother in nearby Monterey). The most famous improvisation of the film occurs when Cal's father rejects his gift of $5,000, money Cal earned by speculating in beans before the US became involved in World War I. Instead of running away from his father as the script called for, Dean instinctively turned to Massey and in a gesture of extreme emotion, lunged forward and grabbed him in a full embrace, crying. Kazan kept this and Massey's shocked reaction in the film. Wikipedia: “Dean's performance in the film foreshadowed his role as Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause. Both characters are angst-ridden protagonists and misunderstood outcasts, desperately craving approval from their fathers.” In recognition of his performance in East of Eden, Dean was nominated posthumously for the 1956 Academy Awards as Best Actor in a Leading Role of 1955, the first official posthumous acting nomination in Academy Awards history. East of Eden was the only film starring Dean that he would see released in his lifetime.

 

James Dean quickly followed up his role in Eden with a starring role as the brooding red-jacketed teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) with Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood. The film depicts the dilemma of a typical teenager of the time, who feels that no one, not even his peers, can understand him. The film scrupulously follows the classic theatrical disciplines, telling all within a 24-hour period. Jim Stark was Dean’s true starring role, and Rebel Without a Cause proved to be hugely popular among teenagers. The landmark juvenile-delinquent drama fixed James Dean’s image forever in American culture. In his next film, Giant (George Stevens, 1956), Dean played a supporting role to Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. This was due to his desire to avoid being typecast as a rebellious teenager like Cal Trask or Jim Stark. In the film, he plays Jett Rink, a Texan ranch hand who strikes oil and becomes wealthy. His role was notable in that, in order to portray an older version of his character in the film's later scenes, Dean dyed his hair gray and shaved some of it off to give himself a receding hairline. Giant would prove to be Dean's last film. At the end of the film, Dean was supposed to make a drunken speech at a banquet; this is nicknamed the 'Last Supper' because it was the last scene before his sudden death. Due to his desire to make the scene more realistic by actually being inebriated for the take, Dean mumbled so much that director George Stevens decided the scene had to be overdubbed by Nick Adams, who had a small role in the film, because Dean had died before the film was edited. Dean received his second posthumous Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his role in Giant at the 29th Academy Awards in 1957 for films released in 1956.

 

Today, James Dean is often considered an icon because of his perceived experimental take on life, which included his ambivalent sexuality. Most of his so-called affairs with various starlets were made up by the Warner Brothers public relations. Dean's best-remembered relationship was with young Italian actress Pier Angeli, whom he met while Angeli was shooting The Silver Chalice (1955) on an adjoining Warner lot, and with whom he exchanged items of jewelry as love tokens. Angeli's mother disapproved of Dean. After finishing his role for East of Eden, he took a brief trip to New York in October 1954. While he was away, Angeli unexpectedly announced her engagement to Italian-American singer Vic Damone. The press was shocked and Dean expressed his irritation. Angeli married Damone the following month. Dean also dated Swiss actress Ursula Andress. She was seen with Dean in his sports cars, and was with him on the day he bought the car that he died in. The Gay Times Readers' Awards cited him as the greatest male gay icon of all time. Dean’s ambiguous relationship with Sal Mineo in the angst-ridden Rebel Without A Cause has led many to speculate and view this golden age film as years ahead of its time. When questioned about his sexual orientation, Dean is reported to have said, "No, I am not a homosexual. But I'm also not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back." Dean, with time on his side during down times of filming, often frequented gay bars in mornings, afternoons and evenings in both Hollywood, Studio City and North Hollywood. He and screenwriter and theatre student from UCLA, William Bast lived together as roommates for a number of years. Bast later became Dean's first biographer and told he and Dean ‘experimented’ sexually. Journalist Joe Hyams suggests that any gay activity Dean might have been involved in appears to have been strictly "for trade", as a means of advancing his career. However, the ‘trade only’ notion is contradicted by Bast and other Dean biographers. Biographer Val Holley: “There's been quite an evolution in the thinking since Dean's death in 1955, moving from ‘James Dean was straight’ to ‘Dean had sex with men but only to advance his career’ to ‘Dean had sex with women but only to advance his career.’ In 2016, a new gossipy biography was published, James Dean: Tomorrow Never Comes, by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince. The authors claim Dean was in love with Marlon Brando and the two would had a long affair with S&M overtones. We may never know for certain if Dean identified as gay, straight, bisexual, but, regardless, what he’s come to represent still resonates with many LGBT audiences.

 

In 1954, James Dean had become interested in developing an auto racing career. He purchased various vehicles after filming for East of Eden had concluded, including a Triumph Tiger T110 and a Porsche 356. Just before filming began on Rebel Without a Cause, he competed in his first professional event at the Palm Springs Road Races, which was held in Palm Springs, California on March 26–27, 1955. Dean achieved first place in the novice class, and second place at the main event. His racing continued in Bakersfield a month later, where he finished first in his class and third overall. Dean hoped to compete in the Indianapolis 500, but his busy schedule made it impossible. Dean's final race occurred in Santa Barbara on Memorial Day, 30 May 1955. He was unable to finish the competition due to a blown piston. His brief career was put on hold when Warner Brothers barred him from all racing during the production of Giant. Dean had finished shooting his scenes and the movie was in post-production when he decided to race again. Dean was scheduled to compete at a racing event in Salinas, California on 30 September 1955. Accompanying the actor to the occasion was stunt coordinator Bill Hickman, Collier's photographer Sanford Roth, and Rolf Wütherich, the German mechanic from the Porsche factory who maintained Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder "Little Bastard" car. Wütherich, who had encouraged Dean to drive the car from Los Angeles to Salinas to break it in, accompanied Dean in the Porsche. At 3:30 p.m. Dean was ticketed for speeding, as was Hickman who was following behind in another car. As the group traveled to the event via U.S. Route 466, (currently SR 46) at approximately 5:15 p.m. a 1950 Ford Tudor was passing through an intersection while turning, ahead of the Porsche. Dean, unable to stop in time, slammed into the driver's side of the Ford resulting in Dean's car bouncing across the pavement onto the side of the highway. Dean's passenger, Wütherich, was thrown from the Porsche, while Dean was trapped in the car and sustained numerous fatal injuries, including a broken neck. The driver of the Ford, Donald Turnupseed, exited his damaged vehicle with minor injuries. Dean was pronounced dead on arrival shortly after he arrived by ambulance at the Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital at 6:20 p.m. The Failure Analysis Associates later reconstructed and recreated all details of the accident and have concluded that James Dean was travelling 55 to 56 mph when the fateful accident occurred, thereby proving he had not been speeding, as rumor had it. Ed Stephan at IMDb: “At age 24, James Dean was killed almost immediately from the impact from a broken neck. His very brief career, violent death and highly publicized funeral transformed him into a cult object of apparently timeless fascination.”

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Ed Stephan (IMDb), Daniel Bates (Daily Mail), Towleroad, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

thegoldensieve.com

 

A trip through the trippiest place I know

When I was a kid, my parents had a friend, Bob, who was one of those characters that seems straight out of a Jean Shepard story. In the golden hindsight of memory's sieve, it's hard to to draw the line between reality, the rosy blur of childhood memory and dream. One thing I clearly remember, however, was that Bob had a deep interest in the strange, especially in the space where oddball, creepy and craft intersect. Therefore, once-upon-a-time, we drove with Bob and the whole family out to south-western Wisconsin to visit a place called The House on the Rock. As an craftsman, Bob knew something of the sculptures and the lore surrounding this road-side oddity. We didn't know what to expect.

What I can remember was a long hallway suspended above the pines, swaying gently in the breeze, a series of gaudy rooms with outlandish decorations and automated music machines that played out-of-tune music when plied with a token. I also remember the tour of The House was extremely trying as the tour went on forever. By the time we reached the end of a long hallway and an enormous indoor carousel, walking to the steady pounding of a timpani drum, we had had enough and looked for a way out. All we could find was a fire exit and decided, rather than seeing just how deep the rabbit hole goes, we should crash out. Since then, the House on the Rock became a fixture of the familial lore. It became a symbol for the creepy, the strange and the never-ending. If memory serves, it was most aptly compared with a flu-dream - that is, one of those fitful, aberrantly creepy and thoroughly surreal nightmares one has when running a high fever. When we woke left, it was hard to be sure what fitful visions were real and what were twisted by our imaginations into something more sinister. The mere mention of The House on the Rock became something of an inside joke and reference point. When we found ourselves in a strange place or lost in some over-long detour, a House on the Rock comparison wasn't long in coming.

So, when after a wedding some months past, my wife and I found ourselves with some good friends and without a plan for the day - we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and visit the House on the Rock. One of our companions had been just a few years back and we were prepared for the full three tours. The folks at the front didn't mind my bringing a tripod through (although one bored manager near the end seemed to have a problem - luckily this place is such a dark labyrinth that those problems were quickly left behind) and I will not bring to you over the course of three posts about thirty-odd photographs from within the musky corners of this oddity.

The "house," comprises the first tour. A tour of the entire museum is split into three parts and it takes over three hours to complete. I will share the photographs I took in three parts as well, roughly split along the same lines as the tour. As you walk through the place, you find yourself making a slow decent from the gaudy, semi-organized spaces of the house into progressive disorganization, disorientation and creepshow. For me, the experience reaches its apogee at the end of the second tour - in a room billed as having the world's largest carousel. At this point, however, only the second tour is ending; after all, it wouldn't be the House on the Rock if it didn't go on too long. Should you need any further testimony to the other-worldly quality of this museum, in doing a little background checking and research for this post, I discovered that the House on the Rock serves as the portal into the minds of the gods in a novel called American Gods.

The house, (which the long exposures of these images gives the appearance of being well-lit, don't be fooled) initially gives the impression of careful design and imagination but eventually yields to the chaos that awaits. "The Infinity Room" (above) is one of the very first rooms in the house and presents the last true glimpse of daylight the visitor gets for the next several hours. The small little spaces one might expect to find in Jackie Treehorn's Malibu penthouse from the Coen brothers' Big Lebowski end about the time the strange collections of artifacts begin. A few suits of armor facing the stadium seating of a claustrophobic amphitheater mirror the contents of a room near the end of tour three where a vast collection of armors from numerous time periods wage war near a fiberglass elephant. Just out of the house and into the second tour and a "Streets of Yesterday" exhibit begins. Miniaturized versions of small town Americana and non-functional, creepy fortuneteller booths foreshadow the bulk the second tour, or what I would call "The Dark Carnival," after Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

self-portrait

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Carthoris is madly in love with Thuvia. This love was foreshadowed at the end of the previous novel. Unfortunately Thuvia is promised to Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol. On Barsoom nothing can break an engagement between a man and woman...

 

vintagefilmandsound.xyz/thuvia-maid-of-mars-by-edgar-rice...

by yvzchiu ift.tt/1oe7lww

Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 519. Photo: Richard Miller / Warner Bros. James Dean at the set of Giant (George Stevens, 1956).

 

American actor James Dean (1931-1955) was the quintessential 1950s teenager, brooding and romantic. An air of androgyny attributed to his iconic appeal to both men and women. The three roles that defined his stardom are as troubled teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955) and surly ranch hand Jett Rink in Giant (1956). After his death in a car crash, the only 24-yers-old Dean became the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

 

James Byron Dean was born in 1931, in Marion, Indiana, the only child of Winton Dean and Mildred Marie Wilson. Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, Dean and his family moved to Santa Monica, California. In 1938, his mother was suddenly struck with acute stomach pain and quickly began to lose weight. She died of uterine cancer when Dean was nine years old. Unable to care for his son, Dean's father sent him to live with his aunt and uncle, Ortense and Marcus Winslow, on their farm in Fairmount, Indiana, where he was raised in their Quaker household. Dean's overall performance in school was exceptional and he was a popular student. He played on the baseball and varsity basketball teams, studied drama, and competed in public speaking through the Indiana High School Forensic Association. After graduating from Fairmount High School in May 1949, he moved back to California with his dog, Max, to live with his father and stepmother. He enrolled in Santa Monica College (SMC) and majored in pre-law. He transferred to UCLA for one semester and changed his major to drama, which resulted in estrangement from his father. While at UCLA, Dean was picked from a group of 350 actors to portray Malcolm in Macbeth. At that time, he also began acting in James Whitmore's workshop. In January 1951, he dropped out of UCLA to pursue a full-time career as an actor. Dean's first television appearance was in a Pepsi Cola commercial His first speaking part was as John the Beloved Disciple, in Hill Number One (1951), an Easter television special dramatizing the Resurrection of Jesus. Dean subsequently obtained three walk-on roles in films: as a soldier in Samuel Fuller’s moody study of a platoon in the Korean War, Fixed Bayonets! (Samuel Fuller, 1951), a boxing cornerman in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy Sailor Beware (Hal Walker, 1952), and a youth in the comedy Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (Douglas Sirk, 1952) with Rock Hudson. While struggling to get jobs in Hollywood, Dean also worked as a parking lot attendant at CBS Studios, during which time he met Rogers Brackett, a radio director for an advertising agency, who offered him professional help and guidance in his chosen career, as well as a place to stay. In July 1951, Dean appeared on Alias Jane Doe, which was produced by Brackett. In October 1951, Dean moved to New York City. There, he worked as a stunt tester for the game show Beat the Clock, but was subsequently fired for allegedly performing the tasks too quickly. He also appeared in episodes of several CBS television series The Web, Studio One, and Lux Video Theatre, before gaining admission to the Actors Studio to study method acting under Lee Strasberg. There, he was classmates and close friends with Carroll Baker, alongside whom he would eventually star in Giant (George Stevens, 1956). Dean's career picked up and he performed in further episodes of several early 1950s television. One early role, for the CBS series Omnibus in the episode Glory in the Flower (1953), saw Dean portraying the type of disaffected youth he would later portray in Rebel Without a Cause. Positive reviews for Dean's 1954 theatrical role as Bachir, the blackmailing Arab house boy, in an adaptation of André Gide's book The Immoralist, led to calls from Hollywood.

  

In 1954, James Dean was cast in the emotionally complex role of 'Cal Trask' in East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955), an adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1952 novel East of Eden. The lengthy novel deals with the story of the Trask and Hamilton families over the course of three generations, focusing especially on the lives of the latter two generations in Salinas Valley, California, from the mid-19th century through the 1910s. In contrast to the book, the film script focused on the last portion of the story, predominantly with the character of Cal. Though he initially seems more aloof and emotionally troubled than his twin brother Aron (Richard Davalos), Cal is soon seen to be more worldly, business savvy, and even sagacious than their pious and constantly disapproving father (Raymond Massey) who seeks to invent a vegetable refrigeration process. Cal is bothered by the mystery of their supposedly dead mother, and discovers she is still alive and a brothel-keeping 'madam'; the part was played by actress Jo Van Fleet. Much of Dean's performance in the film was unscripted, including his dance in the bean field and his fetal-like posturing while riding on top of a train boxcar (after searching out his mother in nearby Monterey). The most famous improvisation of the film occurs when Cal's father rejects his gift of $5,000, money Cal earned by speculating in beans before the US became involved in World War I. Instead of running away from his father as the script called for, Dean instinctively turned to Massey and in a gesture of extreme emotion, lunged forward and grabbed him in a full embrace, crying. Kazan kept this and Massey's shocked reaction in the film. Wikipedia: “Dean's performance in the film foreshadowed his role as Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause. Both characters are angst-ridden protagonists and misunderstood outcasts, desperately craving approval from their fathers.” In recognition of his performance in East of Eden, Dean was nominated posthumously for the 1956 Academy Awards as Best Actor in a Leading Role of 1955, the first official posthumous acting nomination in Academy Awards history. East of Eden was the only film starring Dean that he would see released in his lifetime.

 

James Dean quickly followed up his role in Eden with a starring role as the brooding red-jacketed teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) with Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood. The film depicts the dilemma of a typical teenager of the time, who feels that no one, not even his peers, can understand him. The film scrupulously follows the classic theatrical disciplines, telling all within a 24-hour period. Jim Stark was Dean’s true starring role, and Rebel Without a Cause proved to be hugely popular among teenagers. The landmark juvenile-delinquent drama fixed James Dean’s image forever in American culture. In his next film, Giant (George Stevens, 1956), Dean played a supporting role to Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. This was due to his desire to avoid being typecast as a rebellious teenager like Cal Trask or Jim Stark. In the film, he plays Jett Rink, a Texan ranch hand who strikes oil and becomes wealthy. His role was notable in that, in order to portray an older version of his character in the film's later scenes, Dean dyed his hair gray and shaved some of it off to give himself a receding hairline. Giant would prove to be Dean's last film. At the end of the film, Dean was supposed to make a drunken speech at a banquet; this is nicknamed the 'Last Supper' because it was the last scene before his sudden death. Due to his desire to make the scene more realistic by actually being inebriated for the take, Dean mumbled so much that director George Stevens decided the scene had to be overdubbed by Nick Adams, who had a small role in the film, because Dean had died before the film was edited. Dean received his second posthumous Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his role in Giant at the 29th Academy Awards in 1957 for films released in 1956.

 

Today, James Dean is often considered an icon because of his perceived experimental take on life, which included his ambivalent sexuality. Most of his so-called affairs with various starlets were made up by the Warner Brothers public relations. Dean's best-remembered relationship was with young Italian actress Pier Angeli, whom he met while Angeli was shooting The Silver Chalice (1955) on an adjoining Warner lot, and with whom he exchanged items of jewelry as love tokens. Angeli's mother disapproved of Dean. After finishing his role for East of Eden, he took a brief trip to New York in October 1954. While he was away, Angeli unexpectedly announced her engagement to Italian-American singer Vic Damone. The press was shocked and Dean expressed his irritation. Angeli married Damone the following month. Dean also dated Swiss actress Ursula Andress. She was seen with Dean in his sports cars, and was with him on the day he bought the car that he died in. The Gay Times Readers' Awards cited him as the greatest male gay icon of all time. Dean’s ambiguous relationship with Sal Mineo in the angst-ridden Rebel Without A Cause has led many to speculate and view this golden age film as years ahead of its time. When questioned about his sexual orientation, Dean is reported to have said, "No, I am not a homosexual. But I'm also not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back." Dean, with time on his side during down times of filming, often frequented gay bars in mornings, afternoons and evenings in both Hollywood, Studio City and North Hollywood. He and screenwriter and theatre student from UCLA, William Bast lived together as roommates for a number of years. Bast later became Dean's first biographer and told he and Dean ‘experimented’ sexually. Journalist Joe Hyams suggests that any gay activity Dean might have been involved in appears to have been strictly "for trade", as a means of advancing his career. However, the ‘trade only’ notion is contradicted by Bast and other Dean biographers. Biographer Val Holley: “There's been quite an evolution in the thinking since Dean's death in 1955, moving from ‘James Dean was straight’ to ‘Dean had sex with men but only to advance his career’ to ‘Dean had sex with women but only to advance his career.’ In 2016, a new gossipy biography was published, James Dean: Tomorrow Never Comes, by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince. The authors claim Dean was in love with Marlon Brando and the two would had a long affair with S&M overtones. We may never know for certain if Dean identified as gay, straight, bisexual, but, regardless, what he’s come to represent still resonates with many LGBT audiences.

 

In 1954, James Dean had become interested in developing an auto racing career. He purchased various vehicles after filming for East of Eden had concluded, including a Triumph Tiger T110 and a Porsche 356. Just before filming began on Rebel Without a Cause, he competed in his first professional event at the Palm Springs Road Races, which was held in Palm Springs, California on March 26–27, 1955. Dean achieved first place in the novice class, and second place at the main event. His racing continued in Bakersfield a month later, where he finished first in his class and third overall. Dean hoped to compete in the Indianapolis 500, but his busy schedule made it impossible. Dean's final race occurred in Santa Barbara on Memorial Day, 30 May 1955. He was unable to finish the competition due to a blown piston. His brief career was put on hold when Warner Brothers barred him from all racing during the production of Giant. Dean had finished shooting his scenes and the movie was in post-production when he decided to race again. Dean was scheduled to compete at a racing event in Salinas, California on 30 September 1955. Accompanying the actor to the occasion was stunt coordinator Bill Hickman, Collier's photographer Sanford Roth, and Rolf Wütherich, the German mechanic from the Porsche factory who maintained Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder "Little Bastard" car. Wütherich, who had encouraged Dean to drive the car from Los Angeles to Salinas to break it in, accompanied Dean in the Porsche. At 3:30 p.m. Dean was ticketed for speeding, as was Hickman who was following behind in another car. As the group traveled to the event via U.S. Route 466, (currently SR 46) at approximately 5:15 p.m. a 1950 Ford Tudor was passing through an intersection while turning, ahead of the Porsche. Dean, unable to stop in time, slammed into the driver's side of the Ford resulting in Dean's car bouncing across the pavement onto the side of the highway. Dean's passenger, Wütherich, was thrown from the Porsche, while Dean was trapped in the car and sustained numerous fatal injuries, including a broken neck. The driver of the Ford, Donald Turnupseed, exited his damaged vehicle with minor injuries. Dean was pronounced dead on arrival shortly after he arrived by ambulance at the Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital at 6:20 p.m. The Failure Analysis Associates later reconstructed and recreated all details of the accident and have concluded that James Dean was travelling 55 to 56 mph when the fateful accident occurred, thereby proving he had not been speeding, as rumor had it. Ed Stephan at IMDb: “At age 24, James Dean was killed almost immediately from the impact from a broken neck. His very brief career, violent death and highly publicized funeral transformed him into a cult object of apparently timeless fascination.”

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Ed Stephan (IMDb), Daniel Bates (Daily Mail), Towleroad, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Subject: Reh, Emma

       Science Service

 

Type: Black-and-white photographs

 

Topic: Journalism, Scientific

 

Local number: SIA Acc. 90-105 [SIA2009-2150]

 

Summary: As she was growing up in Washington, D.C., Emma Reh (1896-1982) contributed many prize-winning essays and drawings to local newspapers, foreshadowing a lifelong interest in communication. She joined the staff of Science Service around 1924 and continued as a frequent contributor throughout the 1930s, reporting on archeological excavations in Mexico (this image shows her in Oaxaca), as well as the social and political situation in that country. In 1935, she worked for the Soil Conservation Service and later for the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, writing about food consumption and distribution problems

 

Cite as: Acc. 90-105 - Science Service, Records, 1920s-1970s, Smithsonian Institution Archives

 

Persistent URL:http://siris-archives.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=all&source=~!siarchives&uri=full=3100001~!289408~!0#focus

 

Repository:Smithsonian Institution Archives

 

View more collections from the Smithsonian Institution.

The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: Собо́р Васи́лия Блаже́нного, tr. Sobór Vasíliya Blazhénnogo), commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is an Orthodox church in Red Square of Moscow, and is one of the most popular cultural symbols of Russia. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, or Pokrovsky Cathedral. It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. Its completion, with its colors, was made in 1683. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.

 

The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight chapels arranged around a ninth, central chapel dedicated to the Intercession; a tenth chapel was erected in 1588 over the grave of the venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries, because it was perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, like all churches in Byzantine Christianity, the church was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Tsar.

 

The cathedral has nine domes (each one corresponding to a different church) and is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century ... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.

 

As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's antireligious campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularized in 1929, and remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, weekly Orthodox Christian services with prayer to St. Basil have been restored since 1997.

 

Construction under Ivan IV

The site of the church had been, historically, a busy marketplace between the St. Frol's (later Saviour's) Gate of the Moscow Kremlin and the outlying posad. The centre of the marketplace was marked by the Trinity Church, built of the same white stone as the Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy (1366–68) and its cathedrals. Tsar Ivan IV marked every victory of the Russo-Kazan War by erecting a wooden memorial church next to the walls of Trinity Church; by the end of his Astrakhan campaign, it was shrouded within a cluster of seven wooden churches. According to the report in Nikon's Chronicle, in the autumn of 1554 Ivan ordered the construction of the wooden Church of Intercession on the same site, "on the moat". One year later, Ivan ordered the construction of a new stone cathedral on the site of Trinity Church to commemorate his campaigns. Dedication of a church to a military victory was "a major innovation" for Muscovy. The placement of the church outside the Kremlin walls was a political statement in favour of posad commoners and against hereditary boyars.

 

Contemporary commentators clearly identified the new building as Trinity Church, after its easternmost sanctuary; the status of "katholikon" (собор, sobor, large assembly church) had not been bestowed on it yet:

 

On the Trinity on the Moat in Moscow.

In the same year, through the will of czar and lord and grand prince Ivan began making the pledged church, as he promised for the capture of Kazan: Trinity and Intercession and seven sanctuaries, also called "on the moat". And the builder was Barma with company.

 

— Piskaryov Chronicle, 1560 (7068 per Byzantine calendar)

The identity of the architect is unknown. Tradition held that the church was built by two architects, Barma and Postnik, the official Russian cultural heritage register lists "Barma and Postnik Yakovlev". Researchers proposed that both names refer to the same person, Postnik Yakovlev or, alternatively, Ivan Yakovlevich Barma (Varfolomey). Legend held that Ivan blinded the architect so that he could not re-create the masterpiece elsewhere. Many historians are convinced that it is a myth, as the architect later participated in the construction of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow as well as in building the walls and towers of the Kazan Kremlin. Postnik Yakovlev remained active at least throughout the 1560s. This myth likely originated with Jerome Horsey's account of Ivan III of Moscow having blinded the architect of the fortress of Ivangorod.

 

There is evidence that construction involved stonemasons from Pskov and German lands.

 

Architectural style

Because the church has no analog—in the preceding, contemporary, or later architecture of Muscovy and Byzantine cultural tradition, in general,—the sources that inspired Barma and Postnik are disputed. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc rejected European roots for the cathedral, opining that its corbel arches were Byzantine and ultimately Asian. A modern "Asian" hypothesis considers the cathedral a recreation of Qolşärif Mosque, which was destroyed by Russian troops after the Siege of Kazan.

 

Nineteenth-century Russian writers, starting with Ivan Zabelin,[5] emphasized the influence of the vernacular wooden churches of the Russian North; their motifs made their ways into masonry, particularly the votive churches that did not need to house substantial congregations. David Watkin also wrote of a blend of Russian and Byzantine roots, calling the cathedral "the climax" of Russian vernacular wooden architecture.

 

The church combines the staggered layered design of the earliest (1505–1508) part of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, the central tent of the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye (1530s), and the cylindric shape of the Church of Beheading of John the Baptist in Dyakovo (1547); but the origin of these unique buildings is equally debated. The Church in Kolomenskoye, according to Sergei Podyapolsky, was built by Italian Petrok Maly, although mainstream history has not yet accepted his opinion. Andrey Batalov revised the year of completion of Dyakovo church from 1547 to the 1560s–70s, and noted that Trinity Church could have had no tangible predecessors at all.

 

Dmitry Shvidkovsky suggested that the "improbable" shapes of the Intercession Church and the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye manifested an emerging national renaissance, blending earlier Muscovite elements with the influence of Italian Renaissance. A large group of Italian architects and craftsmen continuously worked in Moscow in 1474–1539, as well as Greek refugees who arrived in the city after the fall of Constantinople. These two groups, according to Shvidkovsky, helped Moscow rulers in forging the doctrine of Third Rome, which in turn promoted assimilation of contemporary Greek and Italian culture. Shvidkovsky noted the resemblance of the cathedral's floorplan to Italian concepts by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Donato Bramante, but most likely Filarete's Trattato di architettura. Other Russian researchers noted a resemblance to sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, although he could not have been known in Ivan's Moscow. Nikolay Brunov recognized the influence of these prototypes but not their significance; he suggested that mid-16th century Moscow already had local architects trained in Italian tradition, architectural drawing and perspective, and that this culture was lost during the Time of Troubles.

 

Andrey Batalov wrote that judging by the number of novel elements introduced with Trinity Church, it was most likely built by German craftsmen. Batalov and Shvidkovsky noted that during Ivan's reign, Germans and Englishmen replaced Italians, although German influence peaked later during the reign of Mikhail Romanov. German influence is indirectly supported by the rusticated pilasters of the central church, a feature more common in contemporary Northern Europe than in Italy.

 

The 1983 academic edition of Monuments of Architecture in Moscow takes the middle ground: the church is, most likely, a product of the complex interaction of distinct Russian traditions of wooden and stone architecture, with some elements borrowed from the works of Italians in Moscow. Specifically, the style of brickwork in the vaults is Italian.

 

Layout

Instead of following the original ad hoc layout (seven churches around the central core), Ivan's architects opted for a more symmetrical floor plan with eight side churches around the core, producing "a thoroughly coherent, logical plan" despite the erroneous latter "notion of a structure devoid of restraint or reason" influenced by the memory of Ivan's irrational atrocities. The central core and the four larger churches placed on the four major compass points are octagonal; the four diagonally placed smaller churches are cuboid, although their shape is hardly visible through later additions. The larger churches stand on massive foundations, while the smaller ones were each placed on a raised platform as if hovering above ground.

 

Although the side churches are arranged in perfect symmetry, the cathedral as a whole is not. The larger central church was deliberately offset to the west from the geometric centre of the side churches, to accommodate its larger apse on the eastern side. As a result of this subtle calculated asymmetry, viewing from the north and the south presents a complex multi-axial shape, while the western façade, facing the Kremlin, appears properly symmetrical and monolithic. The latter perception is reinforced by the fortress-style machicolation and corbeled cornice of the western Church of Entry into Jerusalem, mirroring the real fortifications of the Kremlin.

 

Inside the composite church is a labyrinth of narrow vaulted corridors and vertical cylinders of the churches. Today the cathedral consists of nine individual chapels. The largest, central one, the Church of the Intercession, is 46 metres (151 ft) tall internally but has a floor area of only 64 square metres (690 sq ft). Nevertheless, it is wider and airier than the church in Kolomenskoye with its exceptionally thick walls. The corridors functioned as internal parvises; the western corridor, adorned with a unique flat caissoned ceiling, doubled as the narthex.

 

The detached belfry of the original Trinity Church stood southwest or south of the main structure. Late 16th- and early 17th-century plans depict a simple structure with three roof tents, most likely covered with sheet metal. No buildings of this type survive to date, although it was then common and used in all of the pass-through towers of Skorodom. August von Meyenberg's panorama (1661) presents a different building, with a cluster of small onion domes.

 

Structure

The foundations, as was traditional in medieval Moscow, were built of white stone, while the churches themselves were built of red brick (28 by 14 by 8 cm (11.0 by 5.5 by 3.1 in)), then a relatively new material (the first attested brick building in Moscow, the new Kremlin Wall, was started in 1485). Surveys of the structure show that the basement level is perfectly aligned, indicating use of professional drawing and measurement, but each subsequent level becomes less and less regular. Restorers who replaced parts of the brickwork in 1954–1955 discovered that the massive brick walls conceal an internal wooden frame running the entire height of the church. This frame, made of elaborately tied thin studs, was erected as a life-size spatial model of the future cathedral and was then gradually enclosed in solid masonry.

 

The builders, fascinated by the flexibility of the new technology, used red bricks as a decorative medium both inside and out, leaving as much brickwork open as possible; when location required the use of stone walls, it was decorated with a brickwork pattern painted over stucco. A major novelty introduced by the church was the use of strictly "architectural" means of exterior decoration. Sculpture and sacred symbols employed by earlier Russian architecture are completely missing; floral ornaments are a later addition. Instead, the church boasts a diversity of three-dimensional architectural elements executed in brick.

 

Colour

The church acquired its present-day vivid colours in several stages from the 1680s to 1848. Russian attitude towards colour in the 17th century changed in favour of bright colours; iconographic and mural art experienced an explosive growth in the number of available paints, dyes and their combinations. The original colour scheme, missing these innovations, was far less challenging. It followed the depiction of the Heavenly City in the Book of Revelation:

 

And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.

And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats, I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.

 

— Revelation, 4:3–4 (KJV)

The 25 seats from the biblical reference are alluded to in the building's structure, with the addition of eight small onion domes around the central tent, four around the western side church and four elsewhere. This arrangement survived through most of the 17th century. The walls of the church mixed bare red brickwork or painted imitation of bricks with white ornaments, in roughly equal proportion. The domes, covered with tin, were uniformly gilded, creating an overall bright but fairly traditional combination of white, red and golden colours. Moderate use of green and blue ceramic inserts provided a touch of rainbow as prescribed by the Bible.

 

While historians agree on the colour of the 16th-century domes, their shape is disputed. Boris Eding wrote that they most likely were of the same onion shape as the present-day domes. However, both Kolomenskoye and Dyakovo churches have flattened hemispherical domes, and the same type could have been used by Barma and Postnik.

 

Development

1583–1596

The original Trinity Church burnt down in 1583 and was refitted by 1593. The ninth sanctuary, dedicated to Basil Fool for Christ (the 1460s–1552), was added in 1588 next to the north-eastern sanctuary of the Three Patriarchs. Another local fool, Ivan the Blessed, was buried on the church grounds in 1589; a sanctuary in his memory was established in 1672 inside the south-eastern arcade.

 

The vault of the Saint Basil Sanctuary serves as a reference point in evaluating the quality of Muscovite stonemasonry and engineering. As one of the first vaults of its type, it represents the average of engineering craft that peaked a decade later in the church of the Trinity in Khoroshovo (completed 1596). The craft was lost in the Time of Troubles; buildings from the first half of the 17th century lack the refinement of the late 16th century, compensating for poor construction skill with thicker walls and heavier vaults.

 

1680–1683

The second, and most significant, round of refitting and expansion took place in 1680–1683. The nine churches themselves retained their appearance, but additions to the ground-floor arcade and the first-floor platform were so profound that Nikolay Brunov rebuilt a composite church from an "old" building and an independent work that incorporated the "new" Trinity Church. What once was a group of nine independent churches on a common platform became a monolithic temple.

 

The formerly open ground-floor arcades were filled with brick walls; the new space housed altars from thirteen former wooden churches erected on the site of Ivan's executions in Red Square. Wooden shelters above the first-floor platform and stairs (the cause of frequent fires) were rebuilt in brick, creating the present-day wrap-around galleries with tented roofs above the porches and vestibules.

 

The old detached belfry was demolished; its square basement was reused for a new belltower. The tall single tented roof of this belltower, built in the vernacular style of the reign of Alexis I, significantly changed the appearance of the cathedral, adding a strong asymmetrical counterweight to the church itself. The effect is most pronounced on the southern and eastern facades (as viewed from Zaryadye), although the belltower is large enough to be seen from the west.

 

The first ornamental murals in the cathedral appeared in the same period, starting with floral ornaments inside the new galleries; the towers retained their original brickwork pattern. Finally, in 1683, the church was adorned with a tiled cornice in yellow and blue, featuring a written history of the church in Old Slavic typeface.

 

1737–1784

In 1737 the church was damaged by a massive fire and later restored by Ivan Michurin. The inscriptions made in 1683 were removed during the repairs of 1761–1784. The church received its first figurative murals inside the churches; all exterior and interior walls of the first two floors were covered with floral ornamentation. The belltower was connected with the church through a ground-floor annex; the last remaining open arches of the former ground-floor arcade were filled during the same period, erasing the last hint of what was once an open platform carrying the nine churches of Ivan's Jerusalem.

 

1800–1848

Paintings of Red Square by Fyodor Alekseyev, made in 1800–1802, show that by this time the church was enclosed in an apparently chaotic cluster of commercial buildings; rows of shops "transformed Red Square into an oblong and closed yard." In 1800 the space between the Kremlin wall and the church was still occupied by a moat that predated the church itself. The moat was filled in preparation for the coronation of Alexander I in 1801. The French troops who occupied Moscow in 1812 used the church for stables and looted anything worth taking. The church was spared by the Fire of Moscow (1812) that razed Kitai-gorod, and by the troops' failure to blow it up according to Napoleon's order. The interiors were repaired in 1813 and the exterior in 1816. Instead of replacing missing ceramic tiles of the main tent, the Church preferred to simply cover it with a tin roof.

 

The fate of the immediate environment of the church has been a subject of dispute between city planners since 1813. Scotsman William Hastie proposed clearing the space around all sides of the church and all the way down to the Moskva River; the official commission led by Fyodor Rostopchin and Mikhail Tsitsianov agreed to clear only the space between the church and Lobnoye Mesto. Hastie's plan could have radically transformed the city, but he lost to the opposition, whose plans were finally endorsed by Alexander I in December 1817 (the specific decision on clearing the rubble around the church was issued in 1816).

 

Nevertheless, actual redevelopment by Joseph Bove resulted in clearing the rubble and creating Vasilyevskaya (St. Basil's) Square between the church and Kremlin wall by shaving off the crest of the Kremlin Hill between the church and the Moskva River. Red Square was opened to the river, and "St. Basil thus crowned the decapitated hillock." Bove built the stone terrace wall separating the church from the pavement of Moskvoretskaya Street; the southern side of the terrace was completed in 1834. Minor repairs continued until 1848, when the domes acquired their present-day colours.

 

1890–1914

Preservationist societies monitored the state of the church and called for a proper restoration throughout the 1880s and 1890s, but it was regularly delayed for lack of funds. The church did not have a congregation of its own and could only rely on donations raised through public campaigning; national authorities in Saint Petersburg and local in Moscow prevented financing from state and municipal budgets. In 1899 Nicholas II reluctantly admitted that this expense was necessary, but again all the involved state and municipal offices, including the Holy Synod, denied financing. Restoration, headed by Andrey Pavlinov (died 1898) and Sergey Solovyov, dragged on from 1896 to 1909; in total, preservationists managed to raise around 100,000 roubles.

 

Restoration began with replacing the roofing of the domes. Solovyov removed the tin roofing of the main tent installed in the 1810s and found many original tiles missing and others discoloured; after a protracted debate the whole set of tiles on the tented roof was replaced with new ones. Another dubious decision allowed the use of standard bricks that were smaller than the original 16th-century ones. Restorers agreed that the paintwork of the 19th century must be replaced with a "truthful recreation" of historic patterns, but these had to be reconstructed and deduced based on medieval miniatures. In the end, Solovyov and his advisers chose a combination of deep red with deep green that is retained to the present.

 

In 1908 the church received its first warm air heating system, which did not work well because of heat losses in long air ducts, heating only the eastern and northern sanctuaries. In 1913 it was complemented with a pumped water heating system serving the rest of the church.

 

1918–1941

During World War I, the church was headed by protoiereus Ioann Vostorgov, a nationalist preacher and a leader of the Black-Hundredist Union of the Russian People. Vostorgov was arrested by Bolsheviks in 1918 on a pretext of embezzling nationalized church properties and was executed in 1919.[citation needed] The church briefly enjoyed Vladimir Lenin's "personal interest"; in 1923 it became a public museum, though religious services continued until 1929.

 

Bolshevik planners entertained ideas of demolishing the church after Lenin's funeral (January 1924). In the first half of the 1930s, the church became an obstacle for Joseph Stalin's urbanist plans, carried out by Moscow party boss Lazar Kaganovich, "the moving spirit behind the reconstruction of the capital". The conflict between preservationists, notably Pyotr Baranovsky, and the administration continued at least until 1936 and spawned urban legends. In particular, a frequently-told story is that Kaganovich picked up a model of the church in the process of envisioning Red Square without it, and Stalin sharply responded "Lazar, put it back!" Similarly, Stalin's master planner, architect Vladimir Semyonov, reputedly dared to "grab Stalin's elbow when the leader picked up a model of the church to see how Red Square would look without it" and was replaced by pure functionary Sergey Chernyshov.

 

In the autumn of 1933, the church was struck from the heritage register. Baranovsky was summoned to perform a last-minute survey of the church slated for demolition, and was then arrested for his objections. While he served his term in the Gulag, attitudes changed and by 1937 even hard-line Bolshevik planners admitted that the church should be spared. In the spring of 1939, the church was locked, probably because demolition was again on the agenda; however, the 1941 publication of Dmitry Sukhov's detailed book on the survey of the church in 1939–1940 speaks against this assumption.

 

1947 to present

In the first years after World War II renovators restored the historical ground-floor arcades and pillars that supported the first-floor platform, cleared up vaulted and caissoned ceilings in the galleries, and removed "unhistoric" 19th-century oil paint murals inside the churches. Another round of repairs, led by Nikolay Sobolev in 1954–1955, restored original paint imitating brickwork, and allowed restorers to dig inside old masonry, revealing the wooden frame inside it. In the 1960s, the tin roofing of the domes was replaced with copper.

 

The last round of renovation was completed in September 2008 with the opening of the restored sanctuary of St. Alexander Svirsky. The building is still partly in use today as a museum and, since 1991, is occasionally used for services by the Russian Orthodox Church. Since 1997 Orthodox Christian services have been held regularly. Nowadays every Sunday at Saint Basil's church there is a divine liturgy at 10 a.m. with an Akathist to Saint Basil.

 

Naming

The building, originally known as "Trinity Church",[8] was consecrated on 12 July 1561, and was subsequently elevated to the status of a sobor (similar to an ecclesiastical basilica in the Catholic Church, but usually and incorrectly translated as "cathedral"). "Trinity", according to tradition, refers to the easternmost sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, while the central sanctuary of the church is dedicated to the Intercession of Mary. Together with the westernmost sanctuary of the Entry into Jerusalem, these sanctuaries form the main east–west axis (Christ, Mary, Holy Trinity), while other sanctuaries are dedicated to individual saints.

 

Sanctuaries of the cathedral

Compass point Type Dedicated to Commemorates

Central coreTented churchIntercession of Most Holy TheotokosBeginning of the final assault of Kazan, 1 October 1552

WestColumnEntry of Christ into JerusalemTriumph of the Muscovite troops

North-westGroin vaultSaint Gregory the Illuminator of ArmeniaCapture of Ars Tower of Kazan Kremlin, 30 September 1552

NorthColumnSaint Martyrs Cyprian and Justinia (since 1786 Saint Adrian and Natalia of Nicomedia)Complete capture of Kazan Kremlin, 2 October 1552

North-eastGroin vaultThree Patriarchs of Alexandria (since 1680 Saint John the Merciful)Defeat of Yepancha's cavalry on 30 August 1552

EastColumnLife-giving Holy TrinityHistorical Trinity Church on the same site

South-eastGroin vaultSaint Alexander SvirskyDefeat of Yepancha's cavalry on 30 August 1552

SouthColumnThe icon of Saint Nicholas from the Velikaya River (Nikola Velikoretsky)The icon was brought to Moscow in 1555.

South-westGroin vaultSaint Barlaam of KhutynMay have been built to commemorate Vasili III of Russia

North-eastern annex (1588)Groin vaultBasil the BlessedGrave of venerated local saint

South-eastern annex (1672)Groin vaultLaying the Veil (since 1680: Nativity of Theotokos, since 1916: Saint John the Blessed of Moscow)Grave of venerated local saint

The name "Intercession Church" came into use later, coexisting with Trinity Church. From the end of the 16th century[66] to the end of the 17th century the cathedral was also popularly called Jerusalem, with reference to its church of Entry into Jerusalem as well as to its sacral role in religious rituals. Finally, the name of Vasily (Basil) the Blessed, who died during construction and was buried on-site, was attached to the church at the beginning of the 17th century.

 

Current Russian tradition accepts two coexisting names of the church: the official "Church of Intercession on the Moat" (in full, the "Church of Intercession of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat"), and the "Temple of Basil the Blessed". When these names are listed together the latter name, being informal, is always mentioned second.

 

The common Western translations "Cathedral of Basil the Blessed" and "Saint Basil's Cathedral" incorrectly bestow the status of cathedral on the church of Basil, but are nevertheless widely used even in academic literature. Especially during the 19. century, in English and other languages the Saint Basil's Cathedral was also called (Cathedral or Church of) Vassili Blagennoi.

 

Sacral and social role

On the day of its consecration the church itself became part of Orthodox thaumaturgy. According to the legend, its "missing" ninth church (more precisely a sanctuary) was "miraculously found" during a ceremony attended by Tsar Ivan IV, Metropolitan Makarius with the divine intervention of Saint Tikhon. Piskaryov's Chronist wrote in the second quarter of the 17th century:

 

And the Tsar came to the dedication of the said church with Tsaritsa Nastasia and with Metropolitan Makarius and brought the icon of St Nicholas the Wonderworker that came from Vyatka. And they began to offer a prayer service with sanctified water. And the Tsar touched the base with his own hands. And the builders saw that another sanctuary appeared, and told the Tsar. And the Tsar, and Metropolitan, and all the clergy were surprised by the finding of another sanctuary. And the Tsar ordered it to be dedicated to Nicholas ...

 

— Piskaryov Chronicle, 1560 (7068 per Byzantine calendar)

 

Allegory of Jerusalem

Construction of wrap-around ground-floor arcades in the 1680s visually united the nine churches of the original cathedral into a single building. Earlier, the clergy and the public perceived it as nine distinct churches on a common base, a generalized allegory of the Orthodox Heavenly City similar to fantastic cities of medieval miniatures. At a distance, separate churches towering over their base resembled the towers and churches of a distant citadel rising above the defensive wall. The abstract allegory was reinforced by real-life religious rituals where the church played the role of the biblical Temple in Jerusalem:

 

The capital city, Moscow, is split into three parts; the first of them, called Kitai-gorod, is encircled with a solid thick wall. It contains an extraordinary beautiful church, all clad in shiny bright gems, called Jerusalem. It is the destination of an annual Palm Sunday walk, when the Grand Prince must lead a donkey carrying the Patriarch, from the Church of Virgin Mary to the church of Jerusalem which stands next to the citadel walls. Here is where the most illustrious princely, noble and merchant families live. Here is, also, the main muscovite marketplace: the trading square is built as a brick rectangle, with twenty lanes on each side where the merchants have their shops and cellars ...

 

— Peter Petreius, History of the Great Duchy of Moscow, 1620

Templum S. Trinitatis, etiam Hierusalem dicitur; ad quo Palmarum fest Patriarcha asino insidens a Caesare introducitur.

Temple of Holy Trinity, also called Jerusalem, to where the tsar leads the Patriarch, sitting on a donkey, on the Palm Holiday.

 

— Legend of Peter's map of Moscow, 1597, as reproduced in the Bleau Atlas

The last donkey walk (хождение на осляти) took place in 1693. Mikhail Petrovich Kudryavtsev noted that all cross processions of the period began, as described by Petreius, from the Dormition Church, passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and ended at Trinity Cathedral. For these processions the Kremlin itself became an open-air temple, properly oriented from its "narthex" (Cathedral Square) in the west, through the "royal doors" (Saviour's Gate), to the "sanctuary" (Trinity Cathedral) in the east.

 

Urban hub

Tradition calls the Kremlin the centre of Moscow, but the geometric centre of the Garden Ring, first established as the Skorodom defensive wall in the 1590s, lies outside the Kremlin wall, coincident with the cathedral. Pyotr Goldenberg (1902–71), who popularized this notion in 1947, still regarded the Kremlin as the starting seed of Moscow's radial-concentric system, despite Alexander Chayanov's earlier suggestion that the system was not strictly concentric at all.

 

In the 1960s Gennady Mokeev (born 1932) formulated a different concept of the historical growth of Moscow. According to Mokeev, medieval Moscow, constrained by the natural boundaries of the Moskva and Neglinnaya Rivers, grew primarily in a north-easterly direction into the posad of Kitai-gorod and beyond. The main road connecting the Kremlin to Kitai-gorod passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and immediately afterwards fanned out into at least two radial streets (present-day Ilyinka and Varvarka), forming the central market square. In the 14th century the city was largely contained within two balancing halves, Kremlin and Kitai-gorod, separated by a marketplace, but by the end of the century it extended further along the north-eastern axis. Two secondary hubs in the west and south spawned their own street networks, but their development lagged behind until the Time of Troubles.

 

Tsar Ivan's decision to build the church next to St. Frol's Gate established the dominance of the eastern hub with a major vertical accent, and inserted a pivot point between the nearly equal Kremlin and Kitai-gorod into the once amorphous marketplace. The cathedral was the main church of the posad, and at the same time it was perceived as a part of the Kremlin thrust into the posad, a personal messenger of the Tsar reaching the masses without the mediation of the boyars and clergy. It was complemented by the nearby Lobnoye mesto, a rostrum for the Tsar's public announcements first mentioned in chronicles in 1547 and rebuilt in stone in 1597–1598. Conrad Bussow, describing the triumph of False Dmitriy I, wrote that on 3 June 1606 "a few thousand men hastily assembled and followed the boyarin with [the impostor's] letter through the whole Moscow to the main church they call Jerusalem that stands right next to the Kremlin gates, raised him on Lobnoye Mesto, called out for the Muscovites, read the letter and listened to the boyarin's oral explanation."

 

Replicas

A scale model of Saint Basil's Cathedral has been built in Jalainur in Inner Mongolia, near China's border with Russia. The building houses a science museum.

Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 5.

 

American actor James Dean (1931-1955) was the quintessential 1950s teenager, brooding and romantic. An air of androgyny attributed to his iconic appeal to both men and women. The three roles that defined his stardom are as troubled teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), loner Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955) and surly ranch hand Jett Rink in Giant (1956). After his death in a car crash, the only 24-yers-old Dean became the first actor to receive a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

 

James Byron Dean was born in 1931, in Marion, Indiana, the only child of Winton Dean and Mildred Marie Wilson. Six years after his father had left farming to become a dental technician, Dean and his family moved to Santa Monica, California. In 1938, his mother was suddenly struck with acute stomach pain and quickly began to lose weight. She died of uterine cancer when Dean was nine years old. Unable to care for his son, Dean's father sent him to live with his aunt and uncle, Ortense and Marcus Winslow, on their farm in Fairmount, Indiana, where he was raised in their Quaker household. Dean's overall performance in school was exceptional and he was a popular student. He played on the baseball and varsity basketball teams, studied drama, and competed in public speaking through the Indiana High School Forensic Association. After graduating from Fairmount High School in May 1949, he moved back to California with his dog, Max, to live with his father and stepmother. He enrolled in Santa Monica College (SMC) and majored in pre-law. He transferred to UCLA for one semester and changed his major to drama, which resulted in estrangement from his father. While at UCLA, Dean was picked from a group of 350 actors to portray Malcolm in Macbeth. At that time, he also began acting in James Whitmore's workshop. In January 1951, he dropped out of UCLA to pursue a full-time career as an actor. Dean's first television appearance was in a Pepsi Cola commercial His first speaking part was as John the Beloved Disciple, in Hill Number One (1951), an Easter television special dramatizing the Resurrection of Jesus. Dean subsequently obtained three walk-on roles in films: as a soldier in Samuel Fuller’s moody study of a platoon in the Korean War, Fixed Bayonets! (Samuel Fuller, 1951), a boxing cornerman in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comedy Sailor Beware (Hal Walker, 1952), and a youth in the comedy Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (Douglas Sirk, 1952) with Rock Hudson. While struggling to get jobs in Hollywood, Dean also worked as a parking lot attendant at CBS Studios, during which time he met Rogers Brackett, a radio director for an advertising agency, who offered him professional help and guidance in his chosen career, as well as a place to stay. In July 1951, Dean appeared on Alias Jane Doe, which was produced by Brackett. In October 1951, Dean moved to New York City. There, he worked as a stunt tester for the game show Beat the Clock, but was subsequently fired for allegedly performing the tasks too quickly. He also appeared in episodes of several CBS television series The Web, Studio One, and Lux Video Theatre, before gaining admission to the Actors Studio to study method acting under Lee Strasberg. There, he was classmates and close friends with Carroll Baker, alongside whom he would eventually star in Giant (George Stevens, 1956). Dean's career picked up and he performed in further episodes of several early 1950s television. One early role, for the CBS series Omnibus in the episode Glory in the Flower (1953), saw Dean portraying the type of disaffected youth he would later portray in Rebel Without a Cause. Positive reviews for Dean's 1954 theatrical role as Bachir, the blackmailing Arab house boy, in an adaptation of André Gide's book The Immoralist, led to calls from Hollywood.

  

In 1954, James Dean was cast in the emotionally complex role of 'Cal Trask' in East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955), an adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1952 novel East of Eden. The lengthy novel deals with the story of the Trask and Hamilton families over the course of three generations, focusing especially on the lives of the latter two generations in Salinas Valley, California, from the mid-19th century through the 1910s. In contrast to the book, the film script focused on the last portion of the story, predominantly with the character of Cal. Though he initially seems more aloof and emotionally troubled than his twin brother Aron (Richard Davalos), Cal is soon seen to be more worldly, business savvy, and even sagacious than their pious and constantly disapproving father (Raymond Massey) who seeks to invent a vegetable refrigeration process. Cal is bothered by the mystery of their supposedly dead mother, and discovers she is still alive and a brothel-keeping 'madam'; the part was played by actress Jo Van Fleet. Much of Dean's performance in the film was unscripted, including his dance in the bean field and his fetal-like posturing while riding on top of a train boxcar (after searching out his mother in nearby Monterey). The most famous improvisation of the film occurs when Cal's father rejects his gift of $5,000, money Cal earned by speculating in beans before the US became involved in World War I. Instead of running away from his father as the script called for, Dean instinctively turned to Massey and in a gesture of extreme emotion, lunged forward and grabbed him in a full embrace, crying. Kazan kept this and Massey's shocked reaction in the film. Wikipedia: “Dean's performance in the film foreshadowed his role as Jim Stark in Rebel Without A Cause. Both characters are angst-ridden protagonists and misunderstood outcasts, desperately craving approval from their fathers.” In recognition of his performance in East of Eden, Dean was nominated posthumously for the 1956 Academy Awards as Best Actor in a Leading Role of 1955, the first official posthumous acting nomination in Academy Awards history. East of Eden was the only film starring Dean that he would see released in his lifetime.

 

James Dean quickly followed up his role in Eden with a starring role as the brooding red-jacketed teenager Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) with Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood. The film depicts the dilemma of a typical teenager of the time, who feels that no one, not even his peers, can understand him. The film scrupulously follows the classic theatrical disciplines, telling all within a 24-hour period. Jim Stark was Dean’s true starring role, and Rebel Without a Cause proved to be hugely popular among teenagers. The landmark juvenile-delinquent drama fixed James Dean’s image forever in American culture. In his next film, Giant (George Stevens, 1956), Dean played a supporting role to Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. This was due to his desire to avoid being typecast as a rebellious teenager like Cal Trask or Jim Stark. In the film, he plays Jett Rink, a Texan ranch hand who strikes oil and becomes wealthy. His role was notable in that, in order to portray an older version of his character in the film's later scenes, Dean dyed his hair gray and shaved some of it off to give himself a receding hairline. Giant would prove to be Dean's last film. At the end of the film, Dean was supposed to make a drunken speech at a banquet; this is nicknamed the 'Last Supper' because it was the last scene before his sudden death. Due to his desire to make the scene more realistic by actually being inebriated for the take, Dean mumbled so much that director George Stevens decided the scene had to be overdubbed by Nick Adams, who had a small role in the film, because Dean had died before the film was edited. Dean received his second posthumous Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his role in Giant at the 29th Academy Awards in 1957 for films released in 1956.

 

Today, James Dean is often considered an icon because of his perceived experimental take on life, which included his ambivalent sexuality. Most of his so-called affairs with various starlets were made up by the Warner Brothers public relations. Dean's best-remembered relationship was with young Italian actress Pier Angeli, whom he met while Angeli was shooting The Silver Chalice (1955) on an adjoining Warner lot, and with whom he exchanged items of jewelry as love tokens. Angeli's mother disapproved of Dean. After finishing his role for East of Eden, he took a brief trip to New York in October 1954. While he was away, Angeli unexpectedly announced her engagement to Italian-American singer Vic Damone. The press was shocked and Dean expressed his irritation. Angeli married Damone the following month. Dean also dated Swiss actress Ursula Andress. She was seen with Dean in his sports cars, and was with him on the day he bought the car that he died in. The Gay Times Readers' Awards cited him as the greatest male gay icon of all time. Dean’s ambiguous relationship with Sal Mineo in the angst-ridden Rebel Without A Cause has led many to speculate and view this golden age film as years ahead of its time. When questioned about his sexual orientation, Dean is reported to have said, "No, I am not a homosexual. But I'm also not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back." Dean, with time on his side during down times of filming, often frequented gay bars in mornings, afternoons and evenings in both Hollywood, Studio City and North Hollywood. He and screenwriter and theatre student from UCLA, William Bast lived together as roommates for a number of years. Bast later became Dean's first biographer and told he and Dean ‘experimented’ sexually. Journalist Joe Hyams suggests that any gay activity Dean might have been involved in appears to have been strictly "for trade", as a means of advancing his career. However, the ‘trade only’ notion is contradicted by Bast and other Dean biographers. Biographer Val Holley: “There's been quite an evolution in the thinking since Dean's death in 1955, moving from ‘James Dean was straight’ to ‘Dean had sex with men but only to advance his career’ to ‘Dean had sex with women but only to advance his career.’ In 2016, a new gossipy biography was published, James Dean: Tomorrow Never Comes, by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince. The authors claim Dean was in love with Marlon Brando and the two would had a long affair with S&M overtones. We may never know for certain if Dean identified as gay, straight, bisexual, but, regardless, what he’s come to represent still resonates with many LGBT audiences.

 

In 1954, James Dean had become interested in developing an auto racing career. He purchased various vehicles after filming for East of Eden had concluded, including a Triumph Tiger T110 and a Porsche 356. Just before filming began on Rebel Without a Cause, he competed in his first professional event at the Palm Springs Road Races, which was held in Palm Springs, California on March 26–27, 1955. Dean achieved first place in the novice class, and second place at the main event. His racing continued in Bakersfield a month later, where he finished first in his class and third overall. Dean hoped to compete in the Indianapolis 500, but his busy schedule made it impossible. Dean's final race occurred in Santa Barbara on Memorial Day, 30 May 1955. He was unable to finish the competition due to a blown piston. His brief career was put on hold when Warner Brothers barred him from all racing during the production of Giant. Dean had finished shooting his scenes and the movie was in post-production when he decided to race again. Dean was scheduled to compete at a racing event in Salinas, California on 30 September 1955. Accompanying the actor to the occasion was stunt coordinator Bill Hickman, Collier's photographer Sanford Roth, and Rolf Wütherich, the German mechanic from the Porsche factory who maintained Dean's Porsche 550 Spyder "Little Bastard" car. Wütherich, who had encouraged Dean to drive the car from Los Angeles to Salinas to break it in, accompanied Dean in the Porsche. At 3:30 p.m. Dean was ticketed for speeding, as was Hickman who was following behind in another car. As the group traveled to the event via U.S. Route 466, (currently SR 46) at approximately 5:15 p.m. a 1950 Ford Tudor was passing through an intersection while turning, ahead of the Porsche. Dean, unable to stop in time, slammed into the driver's side of the Ford resulting in Dean's car bouncing across the pavement onto the side of the highway. Dean's passenger, Wütherich, was thrown from the Porsche, while Dean was trapped in the car and sustained numerous fatal injuries, including a broken neck. The driver of the Ford, Donald Turnupseed, exited his damaged vehicle with minor injuries. Dean was pronounced dead on arrival shortly after he arrived by ambulance at the Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital at 6:20 p.m. The Failure Analysis Associates later reconstructed and recreated all details of the accident and have concluded that James Dean was travelling 55 to 56 mph when the fateful accident occurred, thereby proving he had not been speeding, as rumor had it. Ed Stephan at IMDb: “At age 24, James Dean was killed almost immediately from the impact from a broken neck. His very brief career, violent death and highly publicized funeral transformed him into a cult object of apparently timeless fascination.”

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Ed Stephan (IMDb), Daniel Bates (Daily Mail), Towleroad, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Collection (formerly Untitled)

1954-1955

oil, paper, fabric, wood, and metal on canvas, 80 in. x 96 in. x 3 1/2 in.

Robert Rauschenberg, American (Port Arthur, Texas, 1925 - 2008, Captiva, Florida)

 

Acquired 1972, Collection SFMOMA, Gift of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson, © Estate of Robert Rauschenberg / Licensed by VAGA, New York, 72.26

 

Aptly titled, Collection presents an array of photographs, fabric scraps, newspapers clippings, wood blocks, paint drips, shapes, colors, and textures jostling with one another and jockeying for position on one vibrant canvas. Scribbled paint strokes blur the punchlines of comics, drips of white paint collide with a thick red line squeezed right from the paint tube, and bits of headlines such as "Dandruff may be the beginning of baldness" jump out amid abstract patches of pink, red, and yellow.

 

Collection is one of the first of a group of works made in the 1950s that Rauschenberg termed "combines," addressing the quandary of placing such work within more clearly defined media categories such as painting, sculpture, collage, or assemblage. Incorporating elements of each, Rauschenberg's Collection resonates with the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practice of gentlemen collectors accumulating objects into a wunderkammer, or room of marvels.

 

Coexisting with the random, improvisatory nature of Collection is an equally strong logical presence. The picture is divided into nine sections, three distinct vertical panels marked by three horizontal bands of pictorial activity, and the image is almost quartered by the intersection of the red and white lines of paint mentioned above. The middle horizontal band holds the crux of accumulated objects, and thus the most activity. The lower horizontal band retains an emphasis on bands of color similar to abstract works by painters such as Morris Louis and a repetitive logic that foreshadows minimalists such as Donald Judd. The upper band of geometric collages of fabric and paint maintains a cool neutrality.

 

Rauschenberg's use of found objects and everyday materials in the Combines to invade and subvert the pristine nature of the picture plane has both elicited critical attention and influenced a variety of artists, from Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol to Bruce Nauman and Sigmar Polke. Equally important, however, is his respect for the integrity of the picture plane in these works, a respect that stems from his admiration for and emulation of the generation of Abstract Expressionist painters that came before him, including Willem de Kooning and Clyfford Still. Although the use of banal objects draws inspiration from the readymades of Marcel Duchamp at the turn of the century, the improvisatory gestures employed in applying both paint and object to Collection owe much to the generation of "action" painters to which Still and de Kooning belonged.

 

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) was opened in 1935 under director Grace L. McCann Morley as the San Francisco Museum of Art, the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art. For its first sixty years, the museum occupied upper floors of the War Memorial Veterans Building in the Civic Center. Under director Henry T. Hopkins, the museum added "Modern" to its title in 1975, and established an international reputation. In 1995 the museum moved to its current location, a large cubistic building designed by Mario Botta Architetto of Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum at 151 Third Street.

This fictional 9F first appeared with the Railfreight ‘flying crate’ logo that was applied to road vehicles in the mid-1960s, foreshadowing the dedicated freight sector livery that would follow two decades later. It has now been backdated to represent the premier example of the class in the photographic grey paint scheme, in which selected examples of new locomotives were painted for official photographs - a practice that had been superseded by better photographic emulsions by the time that the British Railways standard steam locomotives appeared (updated 17-May-23).

 

All rights reserved. Not to be posted on Facebook or anywhere else without my prior written permission. Please follow the link below for additional information about my Flickr images:

www.flickr.com/photos/northernblue109/6046035749/in/set-7...

 

The Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed (Russian: Собо́р Васи́лия Блаже́нного, tr. Sobór Vasíliya Blazhénnogo), commonly known as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is an Orthodox church in Red Square of Moscow, and is one of the most popular cultural symbols of Russia. The building, now a museum, is officially known as the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, or Pokrovsky Cathedral. It was built from 1555 to 1561 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan. Its completion, with its colors, was made in 1683. It was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.

 

The original building, known as Trinity Church and later Trinity Cathedral, contained eight chapels arranged around a ninth, central chapel dedicated to the Intercession; a tenth chapel was erected in 1588 over the grave of the venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries, because it was perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, like all churches in Byzantine Christianity, the church was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Tsar.

 

The cathedral has nine domes (each one corresponding to a different church) and is shaped like the flame of a bonfire rising into the sky. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to the fifteenth century ... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.

 

As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's antireligious campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely secularized in 1929, and remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, weekly Orthodox Christian services with prayer to St. Basil have been restored since 1997.

 

Construction under Ivan IV

The site of the church had been, historically, a busy marketplace between the St. Frol's (later Saviour's) Gate of the Moscow Kremlin and the outlying posad. The centre of the marketplace was marked by the Trinity Church, built of the same white stone as the Kremlin of Dmitry Donskoy (1366–68) and its cathedrals. Tsar Ivan IV marked every victory of the Russo-Kazan War by erecting a wooden memorial church next to the walls of Trinity Church; by the end of his Astrakhan campaign, it was shrouded within a cluster of seven wooden churches. According to the report in Nikon's Chronicle, in the autumn of 1554 Ivan ordered the construction of the wooden Church of Intercession on the same site, "on the moat". One year later, Ivan ordered the construction of a new stone cathedral on the site of Trinity Church to commemorate his campaigns. Dedication of a church to a military victory was "a major innovation" for Muscovy. The placement of the church outside the Kremlin walls was a political statement in favour of posad commoners and against hereditary boyars.

 

Contemporary commentators clearly identified the new building as Trinity Church, after its easternmost sanctuary; the status of "katholikon" (собор, sobor, large assembly church) had not been bestowed on it yet:

 

On the Trinity on the Moat in Moscow.

In the same year, through the will of czar and lord and grand prince Ivan began making the pledged church, as he promised for the capture of Kazan: Trinity and Intercession and seven sanctuaries, also called "on the moat". And the builder was Barma with company.

 

— Piskaryov Chronicle, 1560 (7068 per Byzantine calendar)

The identity of the architect is unknown. Tradition held that the church was built by two architects, Barma and Postnik, the official Russian cultural heritage register lists "Barma and Postnik Yakovlev". Researchers proposed that both names refer to the same person, Postnik Yakovlev or, alternatively, Ivan Yakovlevich Barma (Varfolomey). Legend held that Ivan blinded the architect so that he could not re-create the masterpiece elsewhere. Many historians are convinced that it is a myth, as the architect later participated in the construction of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in Moscow as well as in building the walls and towers of the Kazan Kremlin. Postnik Yakovlev remained active at least throughout the 1560s. This myth likely originated with Jerome Horsey's account of Ivan III of Moscow having blinded the architect of the fortress of Ivangorod.

 

There is evidence that construction involved stonemasons from Pskov and German lands.

 

Architectural style

Because the church has no analog—in the preceding, contemporary, or later architecture of Muscovy and Byzantine cultural tradition, in general,—the sources that inspired Barma and Postnik are disputed. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc rejected European roots for the cathedral, opining that its corbel arches were Byzantine and ultimately Asian. A modern "Asian" hypothesis considers the cathedral a recreation of Qolşärif Mosque, which was destroyed by Russian troops after the Siege of Kazan.

 

Nineteenth-century Russian writers, starting with Ivan Zabelin,[5] emphasized the influence of the vernacular wooden churches of the Russian North; their motifs made their ways into masonry, particularly the votive churches that did not need to house substantial congregations. David Watkin also wrote of a blend of Russian and Byzantine roots, calling the cathedral "the climax" of Russian vernacular wooden architecture.

 

The church combines the staggered layered design of the earliest (1505–1508) part of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, the central tent of the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye (1530s), and the cylindric shape of the Church of Beheading of John the Baptist in Dyakovo (1547); but the origin of these unique buildings is equally debated. The Church in Kolomenskoye, according to Sergei Podyapolsky, was built by Italian Petrok Maly, although mainstream history has not yet accepted his opinion. Andrey Batalov revised the year of completion of Dyakovo church from 1547 to the 1560s–70s, and noted that Trinity Church could have had no tangible predecessors at all.

 

Dmitry Shvidkovsky suggested that the "improbable" shapes of the Intercession Church and the Church of Ascension in Kolomenskoye manifested an emerging national renaissance, blending earlier Muscovite elements with the influence of Italian Renaissance. A large group of Italian architects and craftsmen continuously worked in Moscow in 1474–1539, as well as Greek refugees who arrived in the city after the fall of Constantinople. These two groups, according to Shvidkovsky, helped Moscow rulers in forging the doctrine of Third Rome, which in turn promoted assimilation of contemporary Greek and Italian culture. Shvidkovsky noted the resemblance of the cathedral's floorplan to Italian concepts by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Donato Bramante, but most likely Filarete's Trattato di architettura. Other Russian researchers noted a resemblance to sketches by Leonardo da Vinci, although he could not have been known in Ivan's Moscow. Nikolay Brunov recognized the influence of these prototypes but not their significance; he suggested that mid-16th century Moscow already had local architects trained in Italian tradition, architectural drawing and perspective, and that this culture was lost during the Time of Troubles.

 

Andrey Batalov wrote that judging by the number of novel elements introduced with Trinity Church, it was most likely built by German craftsmen. Batalov and Shvidkovsky noted that during Ivan's reign, Germans and Englishmen replaced Italians, although German influence peaked later during the reign of Mikhail Romanov. German influence is indirectly supported by the rusticated pilasters of the central church, a feature more common in contemporary Northern Europe than in Italy.

 

The 1983 academic edition of Monuments of Architecture in Moscow takes the middle ground: the church is, most likely, a product of the complex interaction of distinct Russian traditions of wooden and stone architecture, with some elements borrowed from the works of Italians in Moscow. Specifically, the style of brickwork in the vaults is Italian.

 

Layout

Instead of following the original ad hoc layout (seven churches around the central core), Ivan's architects opted for a more symmetrical floor plan with eight side churches around the core, producing "a thoroughly coherent, logical plan" despite the erroneous latter "notion of a structure devoid of restraint or reason" influenced by the memory of Ivan's irrational atrocities. The central core and the four larger churches placed on the four major compass points are octagonal; the four diagonally placed smaller churches are cuboid, although their shape is hardly visible through later additions. The larger churches stand on massive foundations, while the smaller ones were each placed on a raised platform as if hovering above ground.

 

Although the side churches are arranged in perfect symmetry, the cathedral as a whole is not. The larger central church was deliberately offset to the west from the geometric centre of the side churches, to accommodate its larger apse on the eastern side. As a result of this subtle calculated asymmetry, viewing from the north and the south presents a complex multi-axial shape, while the western façade, facing the Kremlin, appears properly symmetrical and monolithic. The latter perception is reinforced by the fortress-style machicolation and corbeled cornice of the western Church of Entry into Jerusalem, mirroring the real fortifications of the Kremlin.

 

Inside the composite church is a labyrinth of narrow vaulted corridors and vertical cylinders of the churches. Today the cathedral consists of nine individual chapels. The largest, central one, the Church of the Intercession, is 46 metres (151 ft) tall internally but has a floor area of only 64 square metres (690 sq ft). Nevertheless, it is wider and airier than the church in Kolomenskoye with its exceptionally thick walls. The corridors functioned as internal parvises; the western corridor, adorned with a unique flat caissoned ceiling, doubled as the narthex.

 

The detached belfry of the original Trinity Church stood southwest or south of the main structure. Late 16th- and early 17th-century plans depict a simple structure with three roof tents, most likely covered with sheet metal. No buildings of this type survive to date, although it was then common and used in all of the pass-through towers of Skorodom. August von Meyenberg's panorama (1661) presents a different building, with a cluster of small onion domes.

 

Structure

The foundations, as was traditional in medieval Moscow, were built of white stone, while the churches themselves were built of red brick (28 by 14 by 8 cm (11.0 by 5.5 by 3.1 in)), then a relatively new material (the first attested brick building in Moscow, the new Kremlin Wall, was started in 1485). Surveys of the structure show that the basement level is perfectly aligned, indicating use of professional drawing and measurement, but each subsequent level becomes less and less regular. Restorers who replaced parts of the brickwork in 1954–1955 discovered that the massive brick walls conceal an internal wooden frame running the entire height of the church. This frame, made of elaborately tied thin studs, was erected as a life-size spatial model of the future cathedral and was then gradually enclosed in solid masonry.

 

The builders, fascinated by the flexibility of the new technology, used red bricks as a decorative medium both inside and out, leaving as much brickwork open as possible; when location required the use of stone walls, it was decorated with a brickwork pattern painted over stucco. A major novelty introduced by the church was the use of strictly "architectural" means of exterior decoration. Sculpture and sacred symbols employed by earlier Russian architecture are completely missing; floral ornaments are a later addition. Instead, the church boasts a diversity of three-dimensional architectural elements executed in brick.

 

Colour

The church acquired its present-day vivid colours in several stages from the 1680s to 1848. Russian attitude towards colour in the 17th century changed in favour of bright colours; iconographic and mural art experienced an explosive growth in the number of available paints, dyes and their combinations. The original colour scheme, missing these innovations, was far less challenging. It followed the depiction of the Heavenly City in the Book of Revelation:

 

And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.

And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats, I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.

 

— Revelation, 4:3–4 (KJV)

The 25 seats from the biblical reference are alluded to in the building's structure, with the addition of eight small onion domes around the central tent, four around the western side church and four elsewhere. This arrangement survived through most of the 17th century. The walls of the church mixed bare red brickwork or painted imitation of bricks with white ornaments, in roughly equal proportion. The domes, covered with tin, were uniformly gilded, creating an overall bright but fairly traditional combination of white, red and golden colours. Moderate use of green and blue ceramic inserts provided a touch of rainbow as prescribed by the Bible.

 

While historians agree on the colour of the 16th-century domes, their shape is disputed. Boris Eding wrote that they most likely were of the same onion shape as the present-day domes. However, both Kolomenskoye and Dyakovo churches have flattened hemispherical domes, and the same type could have been used by Barma and Postnik.

 

Development

1583–1596

The original Trinity Church burnt down in 1583 and was refitted by 1593. The ninth sanctuary, dedicated to Basil Fool for Christ (the 1460s–1552), was added in 1588 next to the north-eastern sanctuary of the Three Patriarchs. Another local fool, Ivan the Blessed, was buried on the church grounds in 1589; a sanctuary in his memory was established in 1672 inside the south-eastern arcade.

 

The vault of the Saint Basil Sanctuary serves as a reference point in evaluating the quality of Muscovite stonemasonry and engineering. As one of the first vaults of its type, it represents the average of engineering craft that peaked a decade later in the church of the Trinity in Khoroshovo (completed 1596). The craft was lost in the Time of Troubles; buildings from the first half of the 17th century lack the refinement of the late 16th century, compensating for poor construction skill with thicker walls and heavier vaults.

 

1680–1683

The second, and most significant, round of refitting and expansion took place in 1680–1683. The nine churches themselves retained their appearance, but additions to the ground-floor arcade and the first-floor platform were so profound that Nikolay Brunov rebuilt a composite church from an "old" building and an independent work that incorporated the "new" Trinity Church. What once was a group of nine independent churches on a common platform became a monolithic temple.

 

The formerly open ground-floor arcades were filled with brick walls; the new space housed altars from thirteen former wooden churches erected on the site of Ivan's executions in Red Square. Wooden shelters above the first-floor platform and stairs (the cause of frequent fires) were rebuilt in brick, creating the present-day wrap-around galleries with tented roofs above the porches and vestibules.

 

The old detached belfry was demolished; its square basement was reused for a new belltower. The tall single tented roof of this belltower, built in the vernacular style of the reign of Alexis I, significantly changed the appearance of the cathedral, adding a strong asymmetrical counterweight to the church itself. The effect is most pronounced on the southern and eastern facades (as viewed from Zaryadye), although the belltower is large enough to be seen from the west.

 

The first ornamental murals in the cathedral appeared in the same period, starting with floral ornaments inside the new galleries; the towers retained their original brickwork pattern. Finally, in 1683, the church was adorned with a tiled cornice in yellow and blue, featuring a written history of the church in Old Slavic typeface.

 

1737–1784

In 1737 the church was damaged by a massive fire and later restored by Ivan Michurin. The inscriptions made in 1683 were removed during the repairs of 1761–1784. The church received its first figurative murals inside the churches; all exterior and interior walls of the first two floors were covered with floral ornamentation. The belltower was connected with the church through a ground-floor annex; the last remaining open arches of the former ground-floor arcade were filled during the same period, erasing the last hint of what was once an open platform carrying the nine churches of Ivan's Jerusalem.

 

1800–1848

Paintings of Red Square by Fyodor Alekseyev, made in 1800–1802, show that by this time the church was enclosed in an apparently chaotic cluster of commercial buildings; rows of shops "transformed Red Square into an oblong and closed yard." In 1800 the space between the Kremlin wall and the church was still occupied by a moat that predated the church itself. The moat was filled in preparation for the coronation of Alexander I in 1801. The French troops who occupied Moscow in 1812 used the church for stables and looted anything worth taking. The church was spared by the Fire of Moscow (1812) that razed Kitai-gorod, and by the troops' failure to blow it up according to Napoleon's order. The interiors were repaired in 1813 and the exterior in 1816. Instead of replacing missing ceramic tiles of the main tent, the Church preferred to simply cover it with a tin roof.

 

The fate of the immediate environment of the church has been a subject of dispute between city planners since 1813. Scotsman William Hastie proposed clearing the space around all sides of the church and all the way down to the Moskva River; the official commission led by Fyodor Rostopchin and Mikhail Tsitsianov agreed to clear only the space between the church and Lobnoye Mesto. Hastie's plan could have radically transformed the city, but he lost to the opposition, whose plans were finally endorsed by Alexander I in December 1817 (the specific decision on clearing the rubble around the church was issued in 1816).

 

Nevertheless, actual redevelopment by Joseph Bove resulted in clearing the rubble and creating Vasilyevskaya (St. Basil's) Square between the church and Kremlin wall by shaving off the crest of the Kremlin Hill between the church and the Moskva River. Red Square was opened to the river, and "St. Basil thus crowned the decapitated hillock." Bove built the stone terrace wall separating the church from the pavement of Moskvoretskaya Street; the southern side of the terrace was completed in 1834. Minor repairs continued until 1848, when the domes acquired their present-day colours.

 

1890–1914

Preservationist societies monitored the state of the church and called for a proper restoration throughout the 1880s and 1890s, but it was regularly delayed for lack of funds. The church did not have a congregation of its own and could only rely on donations raised through public campaigning; national authorities in Saint Petersburg and local in Moscow prevented financing from state and municipal budgets. In 1899 Nicholas II reluctantly admitted that this expense was necessary, but again all the involved state and municipal offices, including the Holy Synod, denied financing. Restoration, headed by Andrey Pavlinov (died 1898) and Sergey Solovyov, dragged on from 1896 to 1909; in total, preservationists managed to raise around 100,000 roubles.

 

Restoration began with replacing the roofing of the domes. Solovyov removed the tin roofing of the main tent installed in the 1810s and found many original tiles missing and others discoloured; after a protracted debate the whole set of tiles on the tented roof was replaced with new ones. Another dubious decision allowed the use of standard bricks that were smaller than the original 16th-century ones. Restorers agreed that the paintwork of the 19th century must be replaced with a "truthful recreation" of historic patterns, but these had to be reconstructed and deduced based on medieval miniatures. In the end, Solovyov and his advisers chose a combination of deep red with deep green that is retained to the present.

 

In 1908 the church received its first warm air heating system, which did not work well because of heat losses in long air ducts, heating only the eastern and northern sanctuaries. In 1913 it was complemented with a pumped water heating system serving the rest of the church.

 

1918–1941

During World War I, the church was headed by protoiereus Ioann Vostorgov, a nationalist preacher and a leader of the Black-Hundredist Union of the Russian People. Vostorgov was arrested by Bolsheviks in 1918 on a pretext of embezzling nationalized church properties and was executed in 1919.[citation needed] The church briefly enjoyed Vladimir Lenin's "personal interest"; in 1923 it became a public museum, though religious services continued until 1929.

 

Bolshevik planners entertained ideas of demolishing the church after Lenin's funeral (January 1924). In the first half of the 1930s, the church became an obstacle for Joseph Stalin's urbanist plans, carried out by Moscow party boss Lazar Kaganovich, "the moving spirit behind the reconstruction of the capital". The conflict between preservationists, notably Pyotr Baranovsky, and the administration continued at least until 1936 and spawned urban legends. In particular, a frequently-told story is that Kaganovich picked up a model of the church in the process of envisioning Red Square without it, and Stalin sharply responded "Lazar, put it back!" Similarly, Stalin's master planner, architect Vladimir Semyonov, reputedly dared to "grab Stalin's elbow when the leader picked up a model of the church to see how Red Square would look without it" and was replaced by pure functionary Sergey Chernyshov.

 

In the autumn of 1933, the church was struck from the heritage register. Baranovsky was summoned to perform a last-minute survey of the church slated for demolition, and was then arrested for his objections. While he served his term in the Gulag, attitudes changed and by 1937 even hard-line Bolshevik planners admitted that the church should be spared. In the spring of 1939, the church was locked, probably because demolition was again on the agenda; however, the 1941 publication of Dmitry Sukhov's detailed book on the survey of the church in 1939–1940 speaks against this assumption.

 

1947 to present

In the first years after World War II renovators restored the historical ground-floor arcades and pillars that supported the first-floor platform, cleared up vaulted and caissoned ceilings in the galleries, and removed "unhistoric" 19th-century oil paint murals inside the churches. Another round of repairs, led by Nikolay Sobolev in 1954–1955, restored original paint imitating brickwork, and allowed restorers to dig inside old masonry, revealing the wooden frame inside it. In the 1960s, the tin roofing of the domes was replaced with copper.

 

The last round of renovation was completed in September 2008 with the opening of the restored sanctuary of St. Alexander Svirsky. The building is still partly in use today as a museum and, since 1991, is occasionally used for services by the Russian Orthodox Church. Since 1997 Orthodox Christian services have been held regularly. Nowadays every Sunday at Saint Basil's church there is a divine liturgy at 10 a.m. with an Akathist to Saint Basil.

 

Naming

The building, originally known as "Trinity Church",[8] was consecrated on 12 July 1561, and was subsequently elevated to the status of a sobor (similar to an ecclesiastical basilica in the Catholic Church, but usually and incorrectly translated as "cathedral"). "Trinity", according to tradition, refers to the easternmost sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, while the central sanctuary of the church is dedicated to the Intercession of Mary. Together with the westernmost sanctuary of the Entry into Jerusalem, these sanctuaries form the main east–west axis (Christ, Mary, Holy Trinity), while other sanctuaries are dedicated to individual saints.

 

Sanctuaries of the cathedral

Compass point Type Dedicated to Commemorates

Central coreTented churchIntercession of Most Holy TheotokosBeginning of the final assault of Kazan, 1 October 1552

WestColumnEntry of Christ into JerusalemTriumph of the Muscovite troops

North-westGroin vaultSaint Gregory the Illuminator of ArmeniaCapture of Ars Tower of Kazan Kremlin, 30 September 1552

NorthColumnSaint Martyrs Cyprian and Justinia (since 1786 Saint Adrian and Natalia of Nicomedia)Complete capture of Kazan Kremlin, 2 October 1552

North-eastGroin vaultThree Patriarchs of Alexandria (since 1680 Saint John the Merciful)Defeat of Yepancha's cavalry on 30 August 1552

EastColumnLife-giving Holy TrinityHistorical Trinity Church on the same site

South-eastGroin vaultSaint Alexander SvirskyDefeat of Yepancha's cavalry on 30 August 1552

SouthColumnThe icon of Saint Nicholas from the Velikaya River (Nikola Velikoretsky)The icon was brought to Moscow in 1555.

South-westGroin vaultSaint Barlaam of KhutynMay have been built to commemorate Vasili III of Russia

North-eastern annex (1588)Groin vaultBasil the BlessedGrave of venerated local saint

South-eastern annex (1672)Groin vaultLaying the Veil (since 1680: Nativity of Theotokos, since 1916: Saint John the Blessed of Moscow)Grave of venerated local saint

The name "Intercession Church" came into use later, coexisting with Trinity Church. From the end of the 16th century[66] to the end of the 17th century the cathedral was also popularly called Jerusalem, with reference to its church of Entry into Jerusalem as well as to its sacral role in religious rituals. Finally, the name of Vasily (Basil) the Blessed, who died during construction and was buried on-site, was attached to the church at the beginning of the 17th century.

 

Current Russian tradition accepts two coexisting names of the church: the official "Church of Intercession on the Moat" (in full, the "Church of Intercession of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat"), and the "Temple of Basil the Blessed". When these names are listed together the latter name, being informal, is always mentioned second.

 

The common Western translations "Cathedral of Basil the Blessed" and "Saint Basil's Cathedral" incorrectly bestow the status of cathedral on the church of Basil, but are nevertheless widely used even in academic literature. Especially during the 19. century, in English and other languages the Saint Basil's Cathedral was also called (Cathedral or Church of) Vassili Blagennoi.

 

Sacral and social role

On the day of its consecration the church itself became part of Orthodox thaumaturgy. According to the legend, its "missing" ninth church (more precisely a sanctuary) was "miraculously found" during a ceremony attended by Tsar Ivan IV, Metropolitan Makarius with the divine intervention of Saint Tikhon. Piskaryov's Chronist wrote in the second quarter of the 17th century:

 

And the Tsar came to the dedication of the said church with Tsaritsa Nastasia and with Metropolitan Makarius and brought the icon of St Nicholas the Wonderworker that came from Vyatka. And they began to offer a prayer service with sanctified water. And the Tsar touched the base with his own hands. And the builders saw that another sanctuary appeared, and told the Tsar. And the Tsar, and Metropolitan, and all the clergy were surprised by the finding of another sanctuary. And the Tsar ordered it to be dedicated to Nicholas ...

 

— Piskaryov Chronicle, 1560 (7068 per Byzantine calendar)

 

Allegory of Jerusalem

Construction of wrap-around ground-floor arcades in the 1680s visually united the nine churches of the original cathedral into a single building. Earlier, the clergy and the public perceived it as nine distinct churches on a common base, a generalized allegory of the Orthodox Heavenly City similar to fantastic cities of medieval miniatures. At a distance, separate churches towering over their base resembled the towers and churches of a distant citadel rising above the defensive wall. The abstract allegory was reinforced by real-life religious rituals where the church played the role of the biblical Temple in Jerusalem:

 

The capital city, Moscow, is split into three parts; the first of them, called Kitai-gorod, is encircled with a solid thick wall. It contains an extraordinary beautiful church, all clad in shiny bright gems, called Jerusalem. It is the destination of an annual Palm Sunday walk, when the Grand Prince must lead a donkey carrying the Patriarch, from the Church of Virgin Mary to the church of Jerusalem which stands next to the citadel walls. Here is where the most illustrious princely, noble and merchant families live. Here is, also, the main muscovite marketplace: the trading square is built as a brick rectangle, with twenty lanes on each side where the merchants have their shops and cellars ...

 

— Peter Petreius, History of the Great Duchy of Moscow, 1620

Templum S. Trinitatis, etiam Hierusalem dicitur; ad quo Palmarum fest Patriarcha asino insidens a Caesare introducitur.

Temple of Holy Trinity, also called Jerusalem, to where the tsar leads the Patriarch, sitting on a donkey, on the Palm Holiday.

 

— Legend of Peter's map of Moscow, 1597, as reproduced in the Bleau Atlas

The last donkey walk (хождение на осляти) took place in 1693. Mikhail Petrovich Kudryavtsev noted that all cross processions of the period began, as described by Petreius, from the Dormition Church, passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and ended at Trinity Cathedral. For these processions the Kremlin itself became an open-air temple, properly oriented from its "narthex" (Cathedral Square) in the west, through the "royal doors" (Saviour's Gate), to the "sanctuary" (Trinity Cathedral) in the east.

 

Urban hub

Tradition calls the Kremlin the centre of Moscow, but the geometric centre of the Garden Ring, first established as the Skorodom defensive wall in the 1590s, lies outside the Kremlin wall, coincident with the cathedral. Pyotr Goldenberg (1902–71), who popularized this notion in 1947, still regarded the Kremlin as the starting seed of Moscow's radial-concentric system, despite Alexander Chayanov's earlier suggestion that the system was not strictly concentric at all.

 

In the 1960s Gennady Mokeev (born 1932) formulated a different concept of the historical growth of Moscow. According to Mokeev, medieval Moscow, constrained by the natural boundaries of the Moskva and Neglinnaya Rivers, grew primarily in a north-easterly direction into the posad of Kitai-gorod and beyond. The main road connecting the Kremlin to Kitai-gorod passed through St. Frol's (Saviour's) Gate and immediately afterwards fanned out into at least two radial streets (present-day Ilyinka and Varvarka), forming the central market square. In the 14th century the city was largely contained within two balancing halves, Kremlin and Kitai-gorod, separated by a marketplace, but by the end of the century it extended further along the north-eastern axis. Two secondary hubs in the west and south spawned their own street networks, but their development lagged behind until the Time of Troubles.

 

Tsar Ivan's decision to build the church next to St. Frol's Gate established the dominance of the eastern hub with a major vertical accent, and inserted a pivot point between the nearly equal Kremlin and Kitai-gorod into the once amorphous marketplace. The cathedral was the main church of the posad, and at the same time it was perceived as a part of the Kremlin thrust into the posad, a personal messenger of the Tsar reaching the masses without the mediation of the boyars and clergy. It was complemented by the nearby Lobnoye mesto, a rostrum for the Tsar's public announcements first mentioned in chronicles in 1547 and rebuilt in stone in 1597–1598. Conrad Bussow, describing the triumph of False Dmitriy I, wrote that on 3 June 1606 "a few thousand men hastily assembled and followed the boyarin with [the impostor's] letter through the whole Moscow to the main church they call Jerusalem that stands right next to the Kremlin gates, raised him on Lobnoye Mesto, called out for the Muscovites, read the letter and listened to the boyarin's oral explanation."

 

Replicas

A scale model of Saint Basil's Cathedral has been built in Jalainur in Inner Mongolia, near China's border with Russia. The building houses a science museum.