View allAll Photos Tagged omnipresence
Pindus mountains, Thessaly, Central Greece.
The Pindus Mountains form the principal range and backbone of mainland Greece, trending north-northwest–south-southeast from Albania to central Greece north of the Peloponnese. The highest point of the range is 8,651 feet (2,637 metres) in the Smólikas massif, near the Albanian border. Forested with oak, fir, beech, and pine, the Pindus creates a barrier for the westerly weather fronts, which puts the Thessalian plain to the east in a rain shadow. The mountains, snowcapped in winter, receive heavy rainfall that feeds such rivers as the Achelous and Mégdhova on the western slopes and the Pineiós and Aliákmon on the eastern.
This photograph was taken during a short visit to the region, with my English wife Theresa Jane Brown, on 17th & 18th, April, 2012.
Thanassis Fournarakos - Θανασης Φουρναρακος
Professional Photographer, retired.
Athens, Greece
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
None of my images may be downloaded, copied, reproduced, manipulated or used on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit written permission. THANK YOU!
This photograph has achieved the following highest awards:
* THE GOLDEN ALBUM
* OMNIPRESENCE CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE
* RED CARPET HALL OF FAME
Originally built as the Palace of Fine Arts for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, this structure later became the first home of the Field Museum of Natural History. After the museum moved out, the plaster-clad building was reconstructed (1929-33) in stone for the Museum of Science and Industry. Although its exterior is an exact copy of the original Beaux-Arts style Classical Revival design, its interior was remodeled in the Art Moderne style, under the direction of architect Alfred Shaw.
World's Columbian Exposition's Palace of Fine Arts was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.
Chorro de agua expulsado de una cueva marina violentamente
Casa Rural muy interesante: www.elpatioagaete.es/
Its indeed hard to find a spot on this earth where you cannot spot a McDonalds!
Photo taken from atop the Space Needle in Seattle. Sorry about the railings, couldn't avoid it, but it actually somewhat frames the photo.
Jan Altink 1885-1971 Groningen
Quatre chevaux Four horses 1925
Groningen. Groninger museum
(Museum Belvedere Heerenveen-Orangewoud )
***** L'ESQUISSE ou L'ART DU FLOU
L'Art Moderne, annoncé bien avant le début du 20è siècle par les pré-impressionnistes, les impressionnistes et les post-impressionnistes, a été un facteur tout à fait remarquable de renouvellement des formes, dans la peinture européenne.
L'Art a toujours été, une manière de rêver le monde réel. Mais les nouvelles techniques de l'Art Moderne, s'éloignent toutes, de manière très intentionnelle, volontariste, de la représentation exacte du réel.
Les peintres tendent à créer un art dans lequel l'interprétation du réel l'emporte sur sa reproduction.
L'artiste moderne ne reproduit plus guère le réel, il le rêve, ou l'invente. Ces tendances ont abouti à l'art non figuratif, autrement appelé l'art abstrait.
Ce renouvellement des formes en peinture a apporté de nouvelles possibilités, très intéressantes, et très belles, d'expression artistique.
Parmi les techniques développées au cours du 19è siècle l'Esquisse a été une des meilleures expressions de l'Art du Flou.
L'Art du Flou a été pratiqué de manière géniale par Léonard de Vinci. Le "Sfumato" est, dans le cadre d'une peinture très figurative et parfaitement finie, comme la Joconde, les Vierges au rocher, ou Saint Jean Baptiste, une ébauche d'art du flou.
L'Esquisse a été dans l'histoire de la peinture un projet, une étude préparatoire, qui permettait à l'artiste de s'assurer de la cohérence et de l'équilibre de son tableau fini. Dans ce cas, le plus souvent, le flou n'est qu'une approximation, un brouillon, le témoin d'un art incomplet qui demande à être achevé.
Mais de nombreux artistes, au cours des siècles passés, ont parfaitement compris que l'esquisse pouvait, parfois, exceptionnellement, être une oeuvre achevée.
C'est à dire une oeuvre dont une grande majorité de spectateurs, experts ou non, ressentaient impérieusement que RIEN ne devait lui être ajoutée. Ce n'est pas une définition mathématique, mais c'est la meilleure.
L'esquisse n'est une oeuvre achevée que lorsqu'elle est créatrice d'une atmosphère singulière, particulièrement suggestive, porteuse d'une poésie qui lui est propre, unique. Quand il apparaît de manière évidente que plus de précision dans le dessin fermerait les portes à l'imaginaire, au mystère, et détruirait un équilibre subtile entre le rêve et la réalité.
Le dessin trop précis peut en effet fermer les portes à l'imaginaire, alors que le flou qui caractérise l'esquisse peut les ouvrir. Les photographes le savent bien aussi : Le flou peut être simplement flou, mais il peut aussi être une invitation à ressentir un mystère et à participer à une énigme. Le spectateur est invité à meubler par son imagination le flou qui lui est proposé.
Mais c'est une alchimie dont seuls les grands artistes, peuvent, exceptionnellement, pénétrer le secret.
Le grand maître de cette technique, et celui qui, le plus précocement, l'a poussé le plus loin, a été sans doute William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix a été aussi, un peu après Turner, un des grands précurseurs de l'art de l'esquisse. Par exemple dans la "mort de Sadarnapale" mais aussi dans bien d'autres tableaux. Mais Delacroix est aussi un exemple des limites de cette technique. Toutes les techniques rencontrent, à un moment ou à un autre, leurs limites.
L'Art de l'esquisse est redoutablement difficile, car il ne suffit pas de dessiner schématiquement un sujet pour faire une belle oeuvre. De même qu'en photographie de nos jours, il ne suffit pas de dessiner et de peindre flou pour créer une oeuvre d'art.
L'Europe a découvert avec les romantiques (Delacroix, Turner Constable) et les impressionnistes l'art de l'esquisse et ses charmes particuliers, mais nous voyons de nos jours de l'esquisse à profusion, au point que l'on peut poser la question : Et si on revenait, aussi, à de la peinture finie, comme celle des artistes du MEAM de Barcelone ? Combien d'artistes depuis les impressionnistes on fait de l'esquisse par facilité ?! En fait pour être capable de peindre une esquisse vraiment artistique, il faut être capable de peindre un tableau bien dessiné, totalement achevé et peint, et d'y ajouter une beauté indéfinissable, en ne le finissant pas ! Ce n'est pas donné à tout le monde.
Le flou peut n'être qu'une esquisse ou une approximation, dont finalement la valeur marchande ne tient qu'à la signature d'un grand nom.
Il est vrai que l'esquisse peut dégager une certaine puissance expressive, avoir une puissance évocatrice, une poésie de l'inachevé. Une force expressive que le tableau, bien fini, bien dessiné et bien peint, achevé, peut effectivement perdre. Mais la magie poétique de l'art du flou ne peut pas être systématique.
Le flou, c'est aussi beaucoup une question de mode. Une habitude du regard. Une culture.
L'esthétique de notre époque est un peu trop focalisée sur l'esquisse.
On finit par ne plus voir que des esquisses dans les galeries de peintures modernes ou contemporaines.
En réalité les artistes ne sont pas les seuls responsables de cette situation. Au 19è siècle la société occidentale est entrée dans une culture qui fait de la réussite, matérielle, économique, et de l'Argent ses valeurs principales. Dès lors des esquisses, qui ne seraient pas sorties des brouillons personnels de l'artiste, pendant les siècles précédents, sont devenues de marchandises sources de profits. Ces marchandises, se trouvent même dans les musées. Picasso avait très bien compris ce mécanisme économique.
Bien sûr cette évolution est habillée de Grands Principes : Il n'est pas question d'Argent, mais de l'Artiste, de la Liberté de Création, du Progrès des Arts, d'une "sensibilité nouvelle", de "vivre avec son temps" etc...
Cette omniprésence de l'esquisse reflète non seulement des habitudes du regard mais des valeurs éthiques. L'Art du Flou est devenu aussi l'Art de faire, vite, de l'Argent.
Valeurs morales positives ou négatives. Nous vivons dans un monde un peu trop pressé !! Pour aller où ?
THE SKETCH OR THE ART OF BLUR
Modern Art, announced well before the beginning of the 20th century by the pré-impressionnists, impressionists and post-impressionists, was a factor quite remarkable renewal forms in European painting.
Art has always been a way to dream the real world. But the new techniques of modern art, are moving away all so very intentional, deliberate, of the exact representation of reality.
The painters tend to create an art in which the interpretation of reality trumps its reproduction.
The modern artist is hardly reproduces reality, it's dream or invent. These trends have resulted in non-figurative art, also called abstract art.
This renewal forms in painting is total. He brought new possibilities of artistic expression.
Among the techniques developed during the 19th century, the sketch was one of the best expressions of the Art of Blur.
The Art of Blur has been practiced ingeniously by Leonardo da Vinci. The "Sfumato" is in the context of a very figurative and perfectly finished painting, like the Mona Lisa, the Virgin on the rock, or John the Baptist, a draft of art of blur..
The sketch was in the history of painting, a project, a preparatory study, which allowed the artist to ensure the coherence and balance of the finished table. In this case, usually, the blur is only an approximation, a preform, a draft, witnessed an incomplete art which needs to be completed.
But many artists, over the centuries, have understood perfectly that the sketch was sometimes, exceptionally, be a finished work.
That is to say a work, of which a large majority of spectators, experts or not, imperiously felt that NOTHING was to be added to it. This is not a mathematical definition, but this is the best.
The sketch is a finished work, only when it is creative, from a singular atmosphere, particularly suggestive, carrying a single poetry. When he appears, with evidence, that more precision in drawing, closes the doors to the imagination, of the mystery, and destroy a subtle balance between dream and reality.
The tto precise drawing can, in fact, close the doors to the imagination. While the blur, characteristic of the sketch, can open these doors. The photographers also know well: The blur can be simply fuzzy, but it can also be an invitation to feel a mystery and to participate in an enigma. The viewer is invited to furnish the blur proposed to him, through his imagination.
But it is an alchemy that only great artists have exceptionally found the secret.
The great master of this technique that the earliest, pushed him, foremost, was William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix was also a little after Turner, one of the major precursors of the art of the sketch. For example in the "death of Sadarnapale" but also in many other paintings. But Delacroix is also an example of the limitations of this technique. All techniques meet, at one time or another, their limits.
The Art of the sketch is terribly difficult, because it is not enough to draw schematically a subject to make a beautiful work. It is not enough to draw and paint blur, or photographing blur, to create a work of art.
Europe has discovered with the Romantics (Delacroix, Turner Constable) and the Impressionists the art of sketching and its particular charms, but today we see the sketch in profusion, to the point that we can ask the question: What if we came back to finished the painting, like the artists of the MEAM from Barcelona? How many artists since the Impressionists have sketched for ease ?! In fact, to be able to paint a really artistic sketch, one must be able to paint a well-designed, completely finished and painted picture, and add an indefinable beauty to it, by not finishing it! It's not given for everyone.
The blur can be only a sketch or an approximation, which ultimately market value is up to the signing of a big name.
It is true that the sketch can release a certain expressive power, have an evocative power, a poetry of unfinished. An expressive force that the painting, well finished, well designed and well painted, completed, can actually lose. But the poetic magic of Blur Art cannot be systematic.
It is also very much a question of fashion. A habit of look. A culture.
The aesthetics of our time is a little too focused on the sketch.
We finally see only sketches in the galleries of modern and contemporary paintings.
In fact the artists are not the solely responsibles, for this situation. In the 19th century Western society has entered a culture that makes of the success, physical, material, economic, and of money, its main values. Therefore the sketches, which would not come out of personal drafts of the artist, in previous centuries, have become merchandises, and sources of profits. These goods are found even in museums. Picasso understood very well, what economic mechanism.
Of course this evolution is dressed in Great Principles: There is no question of Money, but of the Artist, of the Freedom of Creation,of the Progress of the Arts, of a "new sensibility", "to live with her time "etc ...
This omnipresence of the sketch reflects not only the look but the habits of ethical values.
positive or negative moral values. The Art of the blur has also become the Art to do, quickly, of the money.
We live in a world too pressed !! To go where ?
Salted sheep meadow / Mont Saint-Michel
Mont-Saint-Michel has been listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 1979.
Scenery captured on March 28, 2012 @ 16:37:34 hrs.
www.eurorivercruises.com/index.php
199[070610] In a external wall of my new compound, seems that nothing scapes to the omnipresence of sand tones in Doha´s buildings. The desert color city.
Pierre Bonnard 1867-1947 Paris
La grange (Vache dans l'écurie)
The barn (Cow in the stable) 1912
Madrid Musée Thyssen Bornemisza
L'ESQUISSE ou L'ART DU FLOU
L'Art Moderne, annoncé bien avant le début du 20è siècle par les pré-impressionnistes, les impressionnistes et les post-impressionnistes, a été un facteur tout à fait remarquable de renouvellement des formes, dans la peinture européenne.
L'Art a toujours été, une manière de rêver le monde réel. Mais les nouvelles techniques de l'Art Moderne, s'éloignent toutes, de manière très intentionnelle, volontariste, de la représentation exacte du réel.
Les peintres tendent à créer un art dans lequel l'interprétation du réel l'emporte sur sa reproduction.
L'artiste moderne ne reproduit plus guère le réel, il le rêve, ou l'invente. Ces tendances ont abouti à l'art non figuratif, autrement appelé l'art abstrait.
Ce renouvellement des formes en peinture a apporté de nouvelles possibilités, très intéressantes, et très belles, d'expression artistique.
Parmi les techniques développées au cours du 19è siècle l'Esquisse a été une des meilleures expressions de l'Art du Flou.
L'Art du Flou a été pratiqué de manière géniale par Léonard de Vinci. Le "Sfumato" est, dans le cadre d'une peinture très figurative et parfaitement finie, comme la Joconde, les Vierges au rocher, ou Saint Jean Baptiste, une ébauche d'art du flou.
L'Esquisse a été dans l'histoire de la peinture un projet, une étude préparatoire, qui permettait à l'artiste de s'assurer de la cohérence et de l'équilibre de son tableau fini. Dans ce cas, le plus souvent, le flou n'est qu'une approximation, un brouillon, le témoin d'un art incomplet qui demande à être achevé.
Mais de nombreux artistes, au cours des siècles passés, ont parfaitement compris que l'esquisse pouvait, parfois, exceptionnellement, être une oeuvre achevée.
C'est à dire une oeuvre dont une grande majorité de spectateurs, experts ou non, ressentaient impérieusement que RIEN ne devait lui être ajoutée. Ce n'est pas une définition mathématique, mais c'est la meilleure.
L'esquisse n'est une oeuvre achevée que lorsqu'elle est créatrice d'une atmosphère singulière, particulièrement suggestive, porteuse d'une poésie qui lui est propre, unique. Quand il apparaît de manière évidente que plus de précision dans le dessin fermerait les portes à l'imaginaire, au mystère, et détruirait un équilibre subtile entre le rêve et la réalité.
Le dessin trop précis peut en effet fermer les portes à l'imaginaire, alors que le flou qui caractérise l'esquisse peut les ouvrir. Les photographes le savent bien aussi : Le flou peut être simplement flou, mais il peut aussi être une invitation à ressentir un mystère et à participer à une énigme. Le spectateur est invité à meubler par son imagination le flou qui lui est proposé.
Mais c'est une alchimie dont seuls les grands artistes, peuvent, exceptionnellement, pénétrer le secret.
Le grand maître de cette technique, et celui qui, le plus précocement, l'a poussé le plus loin, a été sans doute William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix a été aussi, un peu après Turner, un des grands précurseurs de l'art de l'esquisse. Par exemple dans la "mort de Sadarnapale" mais aussi dans bien d'autres tableaux. Mais Delacroix est aussi un exemple des limites de cette technique. Toutes les techniques rencontrent, à un moment ou à un autre, leurs limites.
L'Art de l'esquisse est redoutablement difficile, car il ne suffit pas de dessiner schématiquement un sujet pour faire une belle oeuvre. De même qu'en photographie de nos jours, il ne suffit pas de dessiner et de peindre flou pour créer une oeuvre d'art.
L'Europe a découvert avec les romantiques (Delacroix, Turner Constable) et les impressionnistes l'art de l'esquisse et ses charmes particuliers, mais nous voyons de nos jours de l'esquisse à profusion, au point que l'on peut poser la question : Et si on revenait, aussi, à de la peinture finie, comme celle des artistes du MEAM de Barcelone ? Combien d'artistes depuis les impressionnistes on fait de l'esquisse par facilité ?! En fait pour être capable de peindre une esquisse vraiment artistique, il faut être capable de peindre un tableau bien dessiné, totalement achevé et peint, et d'y ajouter une beauté indéfinissable, en ne le finissant pas ! Ce n'est pas donné à tout le monde.
Le flou peut n'être qu'une esquisse ou une approximation, dont finalement la valeur marchande ne tient qu'à la signature d'un grand nom.
Il est vrai que l'esquisse peut dégager une certaine puissance expressive, avoir une puissance évocatrice, une poésie de l'inachevé. Une force expressive que le tableau, bien fini, bien dessiné et bien peint, achevé, peut effectivement perdre. Mais la magie poétique de l'art du flou ne peut pas être systématique.
Le flou, c'est aussi beaucoup une question de mode. Une habitude du regard. Une culture.
L'esthétique de notre époque est un peu trop focalisée sur l'esquisse.
On finit par ne plus voir que des esquisses dans les galeries de peintures modernes ou contemporaines.
En réalité les artistes ne sont pas les seuls responsables de cette situation. Au 19è siècle la société occidentale est entrée dans une culture qui fait de la réussite, matérielle, économique, et de l'Argent ses valeurs principales. Dès lors des esquisses, qui ne seraient pas sorties des brouillons personnels de l'artiste, pendant les siècles précédents, sont devenues de marchandises sources de profits. Ces marchandises, se trouvent même dans les musées. Picasso avait très bien compris ce mécanisme économique.
Bien sûr cette évolution est habillée de Grands Principes : Il n'est pas question d'Argent, mais de l'Artiste, de la Liberté de Création, du Progrès des Arts, d'une "sensibilité nouvelle", de "vivre avec son temps" etc...
Cette omniprésence de l'esquisse reflète non seulement des habitudes du regard mais des valeurs éthiques. L'Art du Flou est devenu aussi l'Art de faire, vite, de l'Argent.
Valeurs morales positives ou négatives. Nous vivons dans un monde un peu trop pressé !! Pour aller où ?
THE SKETCH OR THE ART OF BLUR
Modern Art, announced well before the beginning of the 20th century by the pré-impressionnists, impressionists and post-impressionists, was a factor quite remarkable renewal forms in European painting.
Art has always been a way to dream the real world. But the new techniques of modern art, are moving away all so very intentional, deliberate, of the exact representation of reality.
The painters tend to create an art in which the interpretation of reality trumps its reproduction.
The modern artist is hardly reproduces reality, it's dream or invent. These trends have resulted in non-figurative art, also called abstract art.
This renewal forms in painting is total. He brought new possibilities of artistic expression.
Among the techniques developed during the 19th century, the sketch was one of the best expressions of the Art of Blur.
The Art of Blur has been practiced ingeniously by Leonardo da Vinci. The "Sfumato" is in the context of a very figurative and perfectly finished painting, like the Mona Lisa, the Virgin on the rock, or John the Baptist, a draft of art of blur..
The sketch was in the history of painting, a project, a preparatory study, which allowed the artist to ensure the coherence and balance of the finished table. In this case, usually, the blur is only an approximation, a preform, a draft, witnessed an incomplete art which needs to be completed.
But many artists, over the centuries, have understood perfectly that the sketch was sometimes, exceptionally, be a finished work.
That is to say a work, of which a large majority of spectators, experts or not, imperiously felt that NOTHING was to be added to it. This is not a mathematical definition, but this is the best.
The sketch is a finished work, only when it is creative, from a singular atmosphere, particularly suggestive, carrying a single poetry. When he appears, with evidence, that more precision in drawing, closes the doors to the imagination, of the mystery, and destroy a subtle balance between dream and reality.
The tto precise drawing can, in fact, close the doors to the imagination. While the blur, characteristic of the sketch, can open these doors. The photographers also know well: The blur can be simply fuzzy, but it can also be an invitation to feel a mystery and to participate in an enigma. The viewer is invited to furnish the blur proposed to him, through his imagination.
But it is an alchemy that only great artists have exceptionally found the secret.
The great master of this technique that the earliest, pushed him, foremost, was William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix was also a little after Turner, one of the major precursors of the art of the sketch. For example in the "death of Sadarnapale" but also in many other paintings. But Delacroix is also an example of the limitations of this technique. All techniques meet, at one time or another, their limits.
The Art of the sketch is terribly difficult, because it is not enough to draw schematically a subject to make a beautiful work. It is not enough to draw and paint blur, or photographing blur, to create a work of art.
Europe has discovered with the Romantics (Delacroix, Turner Constable) and the Impressionists the art of sketching and its particular charms, but today we see the sketch in profusion, to the point that we can ask the question: What if we came back to finished the painting, like the artists of the MEAM from Barcelona? How many artists since the Impressionists have sketched for ease ?! In fact, to be able to paint a really artistic sketch, one must be able to paint a well-designed, completely finished and painted picture, and add an indefinable beauty to it, by not finishing it! It's not given for everyone.
The blur can be only a sketch or an approximation, which ultimately market value is up to the signing of a big name.
It is true that the sketch can release a certain expressive power, have an evocative power, a poetry of unfinished. An expressive force that the painting, well finished, well designed and well painted, completed, can actually lose. But the poetic magic of Blur Art cannot be systematic.
It is also very much a question of fashion. A habit of look. A culture.
The aesthetics of our time is a little too focused on the sketch.
We finally see only sketches in the galleries of modern and contemporary paintings.
In fact the artists are not the solely responsibles, for this situation. In the 19th century Western society has entered a culture that makes of the success, physical, material, economic, and of money, its main values. Therefore the sketches, which would not come out of personal drafts of the artist, in previous centuries, have become merchandises, and sources of profits. These goods are found even in museums. Picasso understood very well, what economic mechanism.
Of course this evolution is dressed in Great Principles: There is no question of Money, but of the Artist, of the Freedom of Creation,of the Progress of the Arts, of a "new sensibility", "to live with her time "etc ...
This omnipresence of the sketch reflects not only the look but the habits of ethical values.
positive or negative moral values. The Art of the blur has also become the Art to do, quickly, of the money.
We live in a world too pressed !! To go where ?
Built in 1932, this neoclassical Revival building houses city and county offices an courtrooms.. In Short
It's best known for its Christmas lights, which decorate the building every winter. The tradition began in 1935 and has continued annually. The holiday lighting ceremony has become a large annual gathering. Keep an eye out for the tower chimes, which ring every 15 minutes, and the interior finish, which includes many lavish features. Colorado marble was used for counters in many of the public offices and restrooms.
NRHP District Civic Center
"Ce que je ne savais pas, c’est qu’une fois que la pluie commence à tomber ici, on ne sait pas quand elle s’arrêter ! Et c’est bien ce qui me désole : l’absence de trêve ! ‘’Oh, Le chant de la pluie..’’ après des semaines, voire des mois d’omniprésence, on est saturé de son chant… Lady Chatterley prenait beaucoup de plaisir à prendre ses douches sous la pluie : moi j’aime autant un bon bain chaud dans ma baignoire…" (Seize ans sous la pluie par moi-même)
What I didn’t realise was that once it starts raining here it rains, and rains and …! And that’s what got me down: continuous, unrelenting rain. “Oh the song of the rain…” after weeks, months of persistent rain this particular song starts to grate a little… Maybe Lady Chatterley did enjoy taking showers in the rain: give me a good warm bath in my bathroom any day… (Sixteen years in the rain by me)
Shopping Stadsfeestzaal
The "Stadsfeestzaal" from Antwerp was in earlier years an event hall for different occasions. A bookfair or a Christmasfair, exhibitions, studentparties,... A big fire in 2000 destroyed the whole "Stadsfeestzaal".
It took 7 years to rebuild this spectacular location. It was reopened as a shopping mall in October 2007.
Thillai Natarajah Temple, Chidambaram or Chidambaram temple is a Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Shiva located in the town of Chidambaram, East-Central Tamil Nadu, South India. The temple is known as the foremost of all temples (Kovil) to Saivites and has influenced worship, architecture, sculpture and performance art for over two millennium. The Sangam classics list chief architect Viduvelvidugu Perumthachchan as directing an early renovation of the shrine.
A major shrine of Lord Shiva worship since the classical period, there have been several renovations and offerings to Chidambaram by the Pallava, Chola, Pandya, Vijayanagara and Chera royals in the ancient and pre-medieval periods. The temple as it stands now is mainly of the 12th and 13th centuries, with later additions in similar style. Its bronze statues and stone sculptures depicting various deities and the famous Thillai trees (Excoecaria agallocha) of the surrounding forest reflect the highpoints of early Chola and Pallava art while its famed gold plated gopuram towers are medieval structural additions by the royals Aditya I, Parantaka Chola I, Kopperunchinga I, Krishnadevaraya and Jatavarman Sundara Pandyan. King Kocengannan Chola was born following prayers his parents offered at the temple and later in his life he refined its structure. The shrine gave the town its name.
The deity that presides here is கூத்தன் - Thillai Koothan (Thillai Nataraja - Shiva, The Lord of Dance). Chidambaram is the birthplace of the sculpture and bronze image representation of Lord Shiva as the cosmic dancer, a Tamilian concept and motif in Chola art that has since become notable as a symbol of Hinduism. The shrine is the only Shiva temple to have its main deity represented in this anthropomorphic form, as the supreme being who performs all cosmic activities. The consort deity here is Sivakami Amman (form of Amman - mother goddess and female energy). Two other forms of Lord Shiva are represented close to this in the vimana (inner sanctum) of the temple - as a crystallised lingam - the most common representation of Lord Shiva in temples, and as the aether space classical element, represented with empty space and a garland of fifty one hanging golden bilvam leaves (Aegle marmelos). Lord Shiva is captured in pose as Nataraja performing the Ananda Tandava ("Dance of Delight") in the golden hall of the shrine Pon Ambalam (பொன் அம்பலம்). The sculptures of Chidambaram inspired the postures of Bharatha Natyam. The Chidambaram complex is admired for its five famous halls (ambalam or sabhai), several grand smaller shrines to the Hindu deities Ganesh, Murugan, Vishnu and Sivakami Amman which contain Pandyan and Nayak architectural styles, and for its endowment from many water tanks, one of which links it to the Thillai Kali temple.
Chidambaram is one of the five Pancha Bootha Sthalams, the holiest Shiva temples each representing one of the five classical elements; Chidambaram represents akasha (aether). Chidambaram is glorified in Tirumular's Tirumandhiram and was visited by Patañjali and VyagjrapadharPulikaal Munivar. It is the primary shrine of the 275 Paadal Petra Sthalams - Shiva Sthalams glorified in the early medieval Tevaram poems by Tamil Saivite Nayanar saints Tirunavukkarasar, Thirugnana Sambandar and Sundarar. Hailed in the Tiruvacakam series by Manikkavacakar, these very volumes of the Tirumurai literature canon were themselves found in secret chambers of the temple. The Periya Puranam, a biography of these Nayanar saints by Sekkizhar commissioned by emperor Kulothunga Chola II, was written in the shrine's Thousand Pillared Hall. In Kanda Puranam, the epic authored by Kachiyappa Sivachariar of Kanchipuram, the Chidambaram shrine is venerated as one of the three foremost Shiva abodes in the world, alongside Koneswaram temple of Trincomalee and Mount Kailash.
ETYMOLOGY
The traditional name of the temple complex, Chidambaram Tillai Nataraja-koothan Kovil, alludes to the environment of its location and its origins and significance in Saivite worship. The mangrove of ancient Tillai (தில்லை) trees (Exocoeria agallocha) of the forest surrounding the shrine when it was first built inspired the shrine's name and early artistic inspiration; the Tillai trees of the nearby Pichavaram wetlands, the second largest mangrove in the world, extends to the temple area. The shrine is venerated as Tillai ambalam (தில்லை அம்பலம் ), literally meaning Tillai Open Stage, the open space surrounded by Tillai Vanam (தில்லை வனம்) (the Tillai forest) - the original name of this area.[9] The name of the town of this shrine, Chidambaram comes from the Tamil word Chitrambalam (சிற்றம்பலம்) - "small hall/stage"; also spelled Chithambalam (சிட்டம்பலம்), from citt/chitthu and ambalam - meaning "wisdom of this open stage/atmosphere". The shrine is where some devotees believe they will attain liberation, or chitaakasam - "wisdom/consciousness of the sky". "Nataraja" or "Koothan" mean "Lord of Dance".
LEGEND
The story of Chidambaram begins with Lord Shiva strolling into the Thillai Vanam (vanam meaning forest and thillai trees - botanical name Exocoeria agallocha, a species of mangrove trees - which currently grows in the Pichavaram wetlands near Chidambaram). In the Thillai forests resided a group of sages or 'rishis' who believed in the supremacy of magic and that God can be controlled by rituals and mantras or magical words. Lord Shiva strolled in the forest with resplendent beauty and brilliance, assuming the form of Bhikshatana, a simple mendicant seeking alms. He was followed by His consort, Vishnu as Mohini. The sages and their wives were enchanted by the brilliance and the beauty of The handsome mendicant and His consort. On seeing their womenfolk enchanted, the rishis got enraged and invoked scores of serpents (nāgas) by performing magical rituals. Lord Shiva lifted the serpents and donned them as ornaments on His matted locks, neck and waist. Further enraged, the sages invoked a fierce tiger, whose skins and dons were used by Lord Shiva as a shawl around His waist and then followed by a fierce elephant, which was devoured and ripped to death by Lord Shiva (Gajasamharamurthy).
The rishis gathered all their spiritual strength and invoked a powerful demon Muyalakan - a symbol of complete arrogance and ignorance. Lord Shiva wore a gentle smile, stepped on the demon's back, immobilized him and performed the Ánanda Tandava (the dance of eternal bliss) and disclosed his true form. The sages surrender, realizing that Lord Shiva is the truth and He is beyond magic and rituals.
PATRONAGE
To Saivites, primarily in Tamil Nadu, the very word koil refers primarily to Chidambaram Tillai Natarajar.
Chidambaram is a temple complex spread over 160,000 m2 in the heart of the city. The main complex to Lord Shiva Nataraja also contains shrines to deities such as Shivakami Amman, Ganesh, Murugan and Vishnu in the form Govindaraja Perumal. Chidambaram's earliest structures were designed and erected by ancient craftsmen called Perumtaccan. The golden tiled roof for the Chit Ambalam (the vimanam) was laid by the Chola King Parantaka I (907-950 CE) following which he was given the title - Thillaiyambalathhukku pon koorai veiyntha thevan (Tamil:தில்லையாம்பலதுக்கு பொன் கூரை வேய்ந்த தேவன், meaning the one who constructed the golden roof). In its floruit, kings Rajaraja Chola I (reign 985-1014 AD) and Kulothunga Chola I (1070-1120 AD) made significant donations to the temple. Gold and riches to the temple were donated by Rajaraja Chola's daughter Kundavai II while Chola king Vikrama Chola (1118-1135 AD) made donations for the conduct of the daily rituals.
Donations of gold and jewels have been made by various kings, rulers and patrons to the temple from 9th to 16th century - including the Maharaja of Pudukottai, Sethupathy (the emerald jewel still adorns the deity) and the British.
Naralokaviran, the general of king Kulothunga Chola I was responsible for building a shrine for child saint Thirugnana Sambanthar and installed a metal image inside it. He constructed a hall for recitation of Tevaram hymns and engraved the hymns in copper plates.
TEMPLE STRUCTURE
The temple is the only great temple complex to date mainly from the later Chola period, and contains the earliest examples of a number of features that are found in many later temples, including "the earliest known Devī or Amman shrine, nritta (dance) maṇḍapa, Sūrya shrine with chariot wheels, hundred-and-thousand pillared maṇḍapas, even the first giant Śiva Gangā tank".A classical Shiva temple as per Agama rules will have five prakarams (closed precincts of a temple) or circuits each separated by walls one within the other. The outer prakaram will be open to the sky except the innermost one. The innermost one will house the main deity as well as other deities. There will be a massive wooden or stone flag post exactly in line with the main deity. The innermost prakaram houses the sanctum sanctorum (தமிழ் = கருவரை).
Chidambaram is also referred to in various works such as Thillai (after the Thillai forest of yore in which the temple is now located), Perumpatrapuliyur or Vyagrapuram (in honour of Saint Vyagrapathar, Sanskrit: Vyaghrapada - "Tiger-Footed").
The temple is supposed to be located at the lotus heart of the Universe: Virat hridaya padma sthalam.
This gold-roofed stage is the sanctum sanctorum of the Chidambaram temple and houses the Lord in three forms:
- the "form" - the anthropomorphic form as an appearance of Nataraja, called the Sakala-thirumeni.
- the "semi-form" – the semi-anthropomorphic form as the Crystal linga of Chandramaulishvara, the Sakala-nishkala-thirumeni.
- the "formless" – as the space in Chidambara-rahasyam, an empty space within the sanctum sanctorum, the Nishkala-thirumeni.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TEMPLE DESIGN
The layout and architecture of the temple is replete with philosophical meanings.
Three of the five Panchaboothasthala temples, those at Kalahasti, Kanchipuram and Chidambaram all stand on a straight line exactly at 79 degree 41 minutes East longitude - truly an engineering, astrological and geographical wonder. Of the other two temples, Tiruvanaikkaval is located at around 3 degrees to the south and exactly 1 degree to the west of the northern tip of this divine axis, while Tiruvannamalai is around midway (1.5 degree to the south and 0.5 degree to the west).
The 9 gateways signify the 9 orifices in the human body.
The Chitsabai or Ponnambalam, the sanctum sanctorum represents the heart which is reached by a flight of 5 stairs called the Panchaatchara padi - pancha meaning 5, achhara – indestructible syllables – "SI VA YA NA MA", from a raised anterior dias - the Kanakasabai. The access to the Sabhai is through the sides of the stage (and not from the front as in most temples). The Chit sabha roof is supported by four pillars symbolic of the four Vedas.
The Ponnambalam or the Sanctum sanctorum is held by 28 pillars – representing the 28 agamas or set methodologies for the worship of Lord Shiva. The roof is held by a set of 64 beams representing the 64 forms of art and is held by several cross-beams representing the innumerable blood vessels. The roof has been laid by 21,600 golden tiles with the word SIVAYANAMA inscribed on them representing 21600 breaths. The golden tiles are fixed using 72,000 golden nails which represents the no. of nadis exists in human body. The roof is topped by a set of 9 sacred pots or kalasas, representing the 9 forms of energy. The artha mandapa(sanctum) has six pillars denoting the six shastras (holy texts).
The hall next to the artha mantapa has eighteen pillars symbolizing the eighteen Puranas.
TOWERS
The temple has nine gateways, and four of these have gateway towers or gopurams each with 7 storeys facing the East, South, West and North. The South gopuram called the Sokkaseeyan Thirunilai Ezhugopuram was constructed by a Pandya king identified from the presence of the dynasty's fish emblem sculpted on the ceiling. The Pandyas sculpted two fishes facing each other when they completed gopurams (and left it with one fish, in case it was incomplete). The earliest and smallest of the four is West gopuram constructed around 1150 and there are no reliable evidence on the construction. The sculptures shows goddess fighting the buffalo-demon and warlike Skanda astride his peacock. The North Gopuram was initiated around 1300 AD with the brick portion constructed by the Vijayanagara king Krishnadevaraya (1509-1530 AD) in the 16th century. The East Gopuram, was claimed to have been constructed by the Pallava King Koperunsingan II (1243-1279 AD) as per epigrahical records and was repaired by Subbammal, the mother-in-law of the famous philanthropist Pachaiyappa Mudaliar (1754-1794 AD). The idols of Pachaiappa Mudaliar and his wife Iyalammal have been sculpted on the eastern gopuram. The Pachaiappa Trust to date has been responsible for various functions in the temple and also maintain the temple car. The eastern gopuram is renowned for its complete enumeration of 108 poses of Indian classical dance – Bharathanatyam, detailed in small rectangular panels along the passage that leads to the gateway. Each gopuram has around fifty stone sculptures, with each repeating some portions from the other.
HALLS
There are 5 ambalams or sabhas (halls) inside the temple.
- Chit Ambalam or Chit Sabhai, which is the sanctum sanctorum housing Lord Nataraja and his consort Sivakami Sundari, and gave the temple town its name.
- Pon Ambalam or Kanaka Sabhai – the golden hall in front of the Chit Ambalam, from where the daily rituals are conducted.
- Nrithya sabhai or Natya sabhai, a 56-pillared hall lies to the south of the temple's flag mast (kodi maram or dwaja sthambam) where Nataraja outdanced Kali and established his supremacy
- Raja sabhai or the 1000-pillared hall which symbolizes the yogic chakra of thousand pillared lotus or Sahasraram (which in yoga is a chakra) at the crown of the head and is a seat where the soul unites with God. This chakra is represented as a 1000-petalled lotus. Meditating by concentrating at the Sahasrara Chakra is said to lead to a state of union with The Divine Force and is the pinnacle of yogic practice. The hall is open only on festive days.
- Deva Sabhai, which houses the Pancha moorthis (pancha - five, moorthis - deities, namely the deities of Ganesh, Somaskanda (seated posture of Lord Shiva with Pavarthi and Skanda), Sivananda Nayaki, Muruga and the image of Chandikeswarar.
SHRINES
- The shrines for the original Shivalingam worshipped by the saints Patanjali and Vyagrapathar – called the Thiru Aadhimoolanathar and his consort Umaiyammai
- The shrine of the 63 nayanars of Lord Shiva – called the Arubaththu moovar.
- Shrine of Sivagami.
- Ganesha shrine
- Shrine of Muruga or Pandiya nayakan
There are also several smaller shrines in the temple complex.
GOVINDARAJA SWAMY SHRINE
The Govindaraja shrine is dedicated to Vishnu and is one of the 108 holy temples of Lord Vishnu called divyadesam, revered by the 7th-9th-century saint poets of vaishnava (those worshipping Lord Vishnu) tradition, alwars. Kulashekara alwar mentions this temple as Tillai Chitrakutam and equates Chitrakuta of Ramayana fame with this shrine. King Kulothunga Chola II is believed to have uprooted the presiding Govindraja image from the shrine. The shrine has close connections with the Govindaraja temple in Tirupati dating back to saint Ramanuja of the 11-12th century. Ramanujar fled to Tirupati with the utsava (festival image) of the temple to escape punishment. Down the centuries, king Krishnappa Nayak (1564-1572 AD) was instrumental in installing the image of Govindaraja back in the temple. There was lot of resistance from the shaivites (those worshipping Shiva) against placing the Vishnu image in a revered Shiva temple, but the king was unmoved and the image was installed in the present form. There is no satisfactory evidence of co-existence of the Shiva and Vishnu shrines within the same temple built during the same time - there was a dispute even in last century during 1849 AD regarding the rights on the Govindaraja idol and Alwar Sannidhi(sanctum of azhwars) between Vaishnavas and Dikshitars and the position of Vaishnavas was upheld by the district court.
TEMPLE TANKS
The Chidambaram temple is well endowed with several water bodies within and around the temple complex.
- Sivaganga (சிவகங்கை) tank is in the third corridor of the temple opposite to the shrine of Shivagami. It is accessed by flights of stone steps leading from the shrine.
- Paramanandha koobham is the well on the eastern side of the Chitsabhai hall from which water is drawn for sacred purposes.
- Kuyya theertham is situated to the north-east of Chidambaram in Killai near the Bay of Bengal and has the shore called Pasamaruthanthurai.
- Pulimadu is situated around a kilometer and a half to the south of Chidambaram.
- Vyagrapatha Theertham is situated on to the west of the temple opposite to the temple of Ilamai Akkinaar.
- Anantha Theertham is situated to the west of the temple in front of the Anantheswarar temple.
- Nagaseri tank is situated to the west of the Anantha thirtham.
- Brahma Theertham is situated to the north-west of the temple at Thirukalaanjeri.
- Underground channels at the shrine drain excess water in a northeasterly direction to the Shivapiyai temple tank (சிவப்பியை குளம்) of the Thillai Kali Temple, Chidambaram. Due to poor maintenance, it has not been in use.
- Thiruparkadal is the tank to the south-east of the Shivapiyai tank.
TEMPLE CAR
The Chidambaram temple car is, perhaps, the most beautiful example of a temple car in all of Tamil Nadu. This car, on which Lord Nataraja descends twice a year, is drawn by several thousand devotees during the festivals.
ANANDA TANDAVA
The legend of the temple is same as the legend of Ānanda-tāṇḍava. Adhisesha, the serpent who serves as a bed of Lord Vishnu, hears about the Änanda thaandava and yearns to see and enjoy it. Lord Shiva beckons him to assume the saintly form of sage Patanjali and sends him to the Thillai forest, informing him that he will display the dance in due course. Patanjali who meditated in the Himalayas during krita age joins another saint, Vyaghrapada or Pulikaalmuni (Vyagra / Puli meaning "Tiger" and patha / kaal meaning "feet" – referring to the story of how he sought and got the feet and eyesight of a tiger to help climb trees well before dawn to pick flowers for The Lord before the bees visit them). The story of sage Patanjali as well as his great student sage Upamanyu is narrated in both Vishnu Purana as well as Shiva Purana. They move into the Thillai forest and worship Lord Shiva in the form of lingam, a deity worshipped today as Thirumoolataneswarar (Thiru - sri, Moolatanam - primordial or in the nature of a foundation, Eswarar- the Lord). Legends say that Lord Shiva displayed his dance of bliss (the Aananda Thaandavam) - as Nataraja to these two saints on the day of the poosam star in the Tamil month of Thai (January-February).
THE ANANDA TANDAVA POSTURE
The Ānanda-tāṇḍava posture of Nataraja represents pancikritya functions of the godhead believed to have created the dynamic force to create the world.
- The demon under Lord Nataraja's feet signifies that ignorance is under His feet.
- The fire in His hand (power of destruction) means He is the destroyer of evil.
- The raised hand (Abhaya or Pataka mudra) signifies that He is the savior of all life forms.
- The arc of fire called Thiruvashi or Prabhavati signifies the cosmos and the perpetual motion of the earth.
- The drum in His hand signifies the origin of life forms.
- The lotus pedestal signifies Om, the sound of the universe.
- His right eye, left eye and third eye signify the sun, moon and fire/knowledge, respectively.
- His right earring (makara kundalam) and left earring (sthri kundalam) signify the union of man and woman (right is man, left is woman).
- The crescent moon in His hair signifies benevolence and beauty.
- The flowing of river Ganges through His matted hair signifies eternity of life.
- The dreading of His hair and drape signify the force of His dance.
Another notable point of this posture is that it is based on the six point star. Nataraja's head forms the topmost point of the star, while His spreading hair and right hand form the upper side points. His drape and raised left leg form the lower points, and His right leg that rests on the demon Myalagga forms the lowest point. Surrounding this is the arc of fire.
RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TEMPLE
Pancha Bhoota Stalam (Sanskrit: पन्च भूत स्थल) refers to the five Shiva temples, each representing the manifestation of the five prime elements of nature - land, water, air, sky, fire. Pancha indicates five, Bhoota means elements and Stala means place. All these temples are located in South India with four of these temples at Tamil Nadu and one at Andhra Pradesh. The five elements are believed to be enshrined in the five lingams and each of the lingams representing Lord Shiva in the temple have five different names based on the elements they represent. In the temple, Shiva is said to have manifested himself in the form of sky. The other four manifestations are Prithivi Lingam (representing land) at Ekambareswarar Temple, Appu Lingam (representing Water) at Thiruvanaikaval, Agni Lingam (representing fire) at Annamalaiyar Temple and Vayu Lingam (representing air) at Srikalahasti Temple.
Aathara Stala indicates the Shiva temples which are considered to be divine impersonification of Tantric chakras associated with human anatomy. Nataraja temple is called the Anthaga stalam associated with Anthagam - the third eye.
Pancha Sabhai refers to the five places where Lord Shiva is said to have displayed His cosmic dance and all these places have stages or ambalams, also known as Sabhai. Apart from Chidambaram which has the Ponna Ambalam - the Golden Hall, the others are the I-Ratthina Ambalam - the Jeweled Hall at Thiruvaalangadu (rathinam – ruby / red jewelled), the Chitra Ambalam - the Painted Hall at Thirukutralam (chitra – painting), the Velli Ambalam - the Silver Hall at Madurai Meenakshi Amman Temple (velli – silver) and the Thaamira Ambalam - the Copper Hall at Nellaiappar Temple, Tirunelveli (Thaamiram – copper).
RELIGIOUS WORK AND SAINTS
There is no reference to the temple in Sangam literature of the 1st to 5th centuries and the earliest mention is found in 6th century Tamil literature. The temple and the deity were immortalized in Tamil poetry in the works of Thevaram by three poet saints belonging to the 7th century - Thirugnana Sambanthar, Thirunavukkarasar and Sundaramoorthy Nayanar. Thirugnana Sambanthar has composed 2 songs in praise of the temple, Thirunavukkarasar aka Appar 8 Tevarams in praise of Nataraja and Sundarar 1 song in praise of Nataraja. Sundarar commences his Thiruthondar thogai (the sacred list of Lord Shiva's 63 devotees) paying his respects to the priests of the Thillai temple - "To the devotees of the priests at Thillai, I am a devotee". The works of the first three saints, Thirumurai were stored in palm leaf manuscripts in the temple and were recovered by the Chola King Rajaraja Chola under the guidance of Nambiandarnambi. Manikkavasagar, the 10th century saivite poet has written two works, the first called Tiruvasakam (The sacred utterances) which largely has been sung in Chidambaram and the Thiruchitrambalakkovaiyar (aka Thirukovaiyar), which has been sung entirely in the temple. Manikkavasagar is said to have attained spiritual bliss at Chidambaram. The Chidambaram Mahatmiyam composed during the 12th century explain the subsequent evolution and de-sanskritization.
THE CHIDAMBARA RAHASIYAM
During the daily rituals, the Chief priest, of the day, himself in a state of Godliness - Shivohambhava (Shiva - the Lord, in His Sandhi form - Shivo-, aham – me / us, bhava - state of mind), parts the curtain, indicating the withdrawal of ignorance and reveals the space, and The Lord’s presence.
The Chidambara Rahasya, is hence representative of that time when one, in total surrender, allows God to intervene and remove our ignorance, even as we get to 'see and experience' His presence and hence - bliss.
Temple administration and daily rituals
WORSHIP FORMS
A unique feature of this temple is the bejeweled image of Lord Nataraja as the main deity. It depicts Lord Shiva as the master of Koothu-Bharata Natyam and is one of the few temples where Lord Shiva is represented by an anthropomorphic murthi rather than the classic, anionic Lingam.
At Chidambaram, the dancer dominates, not the linga as in other Shiva shrines. The Chitsabha houses a small sphatika(crystal) linga (Chandramoulisvara), believed to be a piece that fell from the crescent adorning Lord Shiva's head and installed by Adi Shankara. The linga is associated with the intangible fifth element, akasha (ether or space), the eternal infinite expanse where the dance of Lord Shiva takes place daily puja is offered to the linga and also to a small gem-carved figure of Ratnasabhapati.
Chidambaram offers a combination of the three apects of Shaiva worship - of the form Lord(Nataraja), of the form and the formlessness (linga) and of the formless omnipresence. The last is suggested by a "Chidambara rahasya", a chakra inscribed on a wall and blackened by applying "punugu" (civet) and over which hangs a string of golden bilva (bael) leaves. This can be viewed through the square chinks when the priest draws aside the dark "curtain of ignorance".
WORSHIP
The temple is managed and administered hereditarily by the Chidambaram Dikshitar – a class of Vaidika Brahmins whom, legends say, were brought here from Mt. Kailas, by Patanjali, specifically for the performance of the daily rituals and maintenance of the Chidambaram temple.
DIKSHITARS
The Dikshithars were supposed to be 3000 were called Tillai Muvayiram. Today they number around 360. These Dikshithars follow the Vedic rituals, unlike the Sivachariyars or Adhisaivars who follow the agamic rituals for the worship of Shiva and they sport a specific lopsided-to-the-left half shaved head. The rituals for the temple were collated from the Vedas and set by Patanjali, who is said to have inducted the Dikshithars into the worship of Lord Shiva as Nataraja. Every married male member of the Dikshithar family gets a turn to perform the rituals at the temple and can serve as the chief priest for the day. Married Dikshithars are also entitled a share of the temple's revenue. Though the temple is said to have been given endowments of almost 20 km2 of fertile land – having been patronized by various rulers for several centuries, it is managed almost entirely by privately run endowments.
DAILY RITUALS
The day begins with the chief priest of the day, performing required rituals to purify himself and assume the Shivoham bhava (Shiva-hood), after which he enters the temple to do the daily rituals. The day begins with Lord Shiva's footwear (padukas) brought at 7:00 am from the palliyarai (bedroom) to the sanctum sanctorum in a palanquin accompanied by devotees with cymbals, chimes and drums. The priest then performs the daily rituals with a yajna and a 'Gopujai' (worship of a cow and her calf). Worship (Puja) is done 6 times in a day. Before each puja, the spadika linga (crystal linga) or the semi form state of Lord Shiva is anointed with ghee, milk, curds, rice, sandal paste and holy ash. This is followed by presenting the naivedhyam or offering of freshly prepared food and sweets to the deity and the diparaadhana, a ritual of showing varied and decoratively set lamps, the reciting of Vedas in Sanskrit and the Panchapuranam (a set of 5 poems from a set of 12 works in Tamil – called the panniru thirumurai). The puja ends with the priest parting the curtains of the sanctum sanctorum to reveal the Chidambara Rahasyam (sanctum).
Before the 2nd puja, apart from the regular anointing of the crystal linga, a ruby Nataraja deity (the Rathinasabhapathy) is also anointed. The 3rd puja is at around 12.00 noon, after which the temple closes until around 4:30 pm. The 4th puja is performed at 6.00 pm, the 5th at 8:00 pm and the last puja of the day is performed at 10:00 pm, after which Lord Shiva’s footwear is taken in a procession for Him to ‘retire’ for the night. Before the 5th puja at night, the priest performs special rituals at the Chidambara Rahasya, where he anointed the yantra with aromatic substances and offers naivedyam. The last puja, called the arthajaama puja is performed with special fervor. It is believed that the entire divine force of the universe retires into the deity, when he retires for the night.
TEMPLE ADMINISTRATION
The Diskshithars one and fully responsible for the administration and pooja. Simply they mentioned their surname as the Sri Natarajar Temple Trustee and Pooja forever. Dikshithars life and temple tied as the nail and flesh relationship.
FESTIVALS
A whole year for men is said to be a single day for the gods. Just as six poojas are performed in a day at the sanctum sanctorum, six anointing ceremonies are performed for the principal deity - Nataraja in a year. They are the Marghazhi Thiruvaadhirai (in December-January) indicating the first puja, the fourteenth day after the new moon (chaturdasi) of the month of Masi (February-March) indicating the second pooja, the Chittirai Thiruvonam (in April-May), indicating the third pooja or uchikalam, the Uthiram of Aani (June-July) also called the Aani Thirumanjanam indicating the evening or the fourth puja, the chaturdasi of Aavani (August-September) indicating the fifth puja and the chaturdasi of the month of Puratasi (October-November) indicating the sixth pooja or Arthajama. Of these the Marghazhi Thiruvaadhirai (in December-January) and the Aani Thirumanjanam (in June-July ) are the most important. These are conducted as the key festivals with the main deity being brought outside the sanctum sanctorum in a procession that included a temple car procession followed by a long anointing ceremony. Several hundreds of thousands of people flock the temple to see the anointing ceremony and the ritualistic dance of Shiva when he is taken back to the sanctum sanctorum. Lord Shiva, in his incarnation of Nataraja, is believed to have born on full moon day in the constellation of Ardra, the sixth lunar mansion. Lord Shiva is bathed only 6 times a year, and on the previous night of Ardra, the bath rituals are performed on a grand scale. Pots full of milk, pomegranate juices, coconut water, ghee, oil, sandal paste, curds, holy ashes, and other liquids and solids, considered as sacred offering to the deity are used for the sacred ablution.
There are references in Umapathy Sivam's
Kunchithaangristhavam that the Maasi festival also had the Lord being carried out in procession, however this is not in vogue these days.
Natyanjali is a prominent festival celebrated during February every year when Bharatnatyam dancers from all over the country converge to present dance offering to Nataraja.
HISTORY
Constructed to signify where Tamil Shaivites identify the centre loci of the universe to be, the shrine, dedicated to Lord Shiva, has witnessed several significant events in the history of Tamil Nadu. A powerful legacy of Dravidian art, its structures and sculptures have attracted pilgrims to Chidambaram for over two millennium. The birthplace of Nataraja when Shaivite worship was highly popular during the Sangam period, Chidambaram had gained a reputation for holiness across the continent by the third century CE and the admiration of the Tamilakkam royals of the early Cholas, Chera dynasty and the early Pandyan Kingdom. Built by the early Cholas to one of their family deities - Nataraja-Koothan - it served as the king and queen's state temple and seat of their monarchs' coronations. The Chola royals underlined their non-partisan approach to religious iconography and faith by also patronizing the Srirangam Ranganathaswamy temple dedicated to Vishnu - their other Kuladheivam or "abode of family deity". Chola King Kocengannan who reigned in the first half of the 2nd century CE was born after his parents King Subhadevan and Kamaladevi worshipped in the Thillai Golden Hall (Pon Ambalam). He expanded the shrine in his later life and added to unfinished decorations. Saints Patañjali Tirumular and Vyaghrapada famously worshipped Nataraja at the shrine. The travelling Pallava-Chola king Simhavarman (II or III) who reigned in the 5th-6th century CE was cured of leprosy by bathing in the Shivagangai tank and in gratitude made extensive repairs and additions to the temple. He changed his name to Hiranyavarman or "golden bodied."
The Puranas, Sangam literature and the Tirumurai canon join several epigraphs and murals in highlighting the brilliance of the temple site and the devotion of Patañjali, Vyaghrapada-Pulikaalmunivar and patanjali to Nataraja at Thillai. The sthala puranam as well as umapathi sivacharya's koyil puranam give an account of how an ancient chola prince of kritayugam or first of epochal ages. Worshipped The Lord's feet at Chidambaram and being blessed with a vision of His was further helped by saint Vyaghrapada to consecrate a place of worship therewith. The temple murals and some cholan and pandyan literature refer to this sthala puranam. The chidambaram mahatyam as well as koyil puranam by the same author discuss as to how this prince who was presented with dhataki or atti garland and tiger flag in which Lord Indra would take abode to make him ever victorious was blessed with vision of lord and further attained mukti at this spot. This is very credible because all ancient literature and documents report that tiger flag and atti or dhataki (grislea tomentosa) garland as being emblematic with cholas. Some sangam period works also passingly refer to the krita age king's war with demons and his victory against them. The king also went by name Vyaghraketu after being gifted with the tiger flag.
Later during the 4th or 5th century CE, a pallava king called Simha Varman who was also a nayanmar saint by name Aiyatikal Kaadavarkon made some compositions and bathed in the tank and attained mukthi at tiru-perum-ppatra-puliyur or chidambaram. Aragalur Udaya Iraratevan Ponparappinan had refurbished most of the parts and rebuilt some parts of the temple around 1213 AD.
At periodical intervals (12 years in general), major repairs and renovation works are carried out, new facilities added and consecrated. Most old temples have also 'grown' over periods of time with additional facilities, more outer corridors and new gopurams (pagodas) were added by the rulers who patronized the temple. While this process has helped to keep the temples 'alive' as places of worship, from a purely archeological or historical perspective these renovations have unintentionally lead to destruction of the original works - which were not in sync with the latter and usually grander temple plans.
To this general trend, Chidambaram temple is no exception. The origins and developments of the temple are hence largely deduced from allied references in works of literature and poetry, the verbal information passed over generations by the Dikshithar community and from what little, of inscriptions and manuscripts that are available today.
The temple site is very ancient one is known to have been crafted time and again by the ancient craftsmen guild known as Perumthachchans. The reference to the same is available in sangam literature as well as other documents. The tevaram trio in particular have held this site to be of great sanctity with some like Tirugnanasambandar and Sundarar out of devotion being reluctant to set their foot in the place "because it would be an insult to the lord to put one's foot on his abode". The sangam works refer to the temple being favoured by all the three ancient crowns of south, the Neriyan (cholas), chezhiyan (pandyas) and uthiyan (cheras), even if the temple was in what was traditionally chola country.
INSCRIPTIONS
There are several inscriptions available in the temple and referring to the Chidambaram temple in neighbouring areas. Most inscriptions available pertain to the periods of Cholas - Rajaraja Chola I (985-1014 CE), Rajendra Chola I (1012-1044 CE), Kulothunga Chola I (1070-1120 CE), Vikrama Chola (1118-1135 CE), Rajadhiraja Chola II (1163 -1178 CE), Kulothunga Chola III (1178-1218 CE) and Rajaraja Chola III (1216-1256 CE). Pandya inscriptions date from Thribhuvana Chakravarthi Veerapandiyan, Jataavarman Thribhuvana Chakravarthi Sundarapaandiyan (1251-1268 CE) and Maaravarman Thribhuvana Chakravarthi Veerakeralanaagiya Kulashekara Pandiyan (1268-1308 CE). Pallava inscriptions are available for king Avani Aala Pirandhaan Ko-pperum-Singha (1216-1242 CE). Vijayanagara Kings mentioned in inscriptions are Veeraprathaapa Kiruttina Theva Mahaaraayar (1509-1529 CE), Veeraprathaapa Venkata Deva Mahaaraayar, Sri Ranga Theva Mahaaraayar, Atchyutha Deva Mahaaraayar (1529-1542 CE) and Veera Bhooopathiraayar. One of the inscriptions from the descendant of Cheramaan Perumal nayanar, Ramavarma Maharaja has been found.
KUMBHABISHEKAM 2015
The sacred Chidambaram Sri Sabanayagar Temple, which is also described as Boologa Kailaasam and Chithakasam
Sri Sivagamasundari Samaedha Sriman Anandha Nataraja Moorthy's Chitsabha Samprokshana Chithvilasa Maha Kumbhabishekam is about to happen in a great way On the auspicious day of Manmadha (Tamil) year Chithirai month 18th day (01-May-2015) Friday morning between 7:00 am and 8:30 am Hastha Nakshthra, Thrayodhasi Thithi, Amirtha yoga, Rishabha Lagna.
INVASIONS
The temple was severely vandalised during Malik Kafur's invasions of South India between 1311 and 1325. A garrison was set up within the temple precincts and the walls were fortified during the Carnatic Wars between the East India Company and the French and the Anglo-Mysore Wars that the British fought with Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan.
WIKIPEDIA
Joaquim Vayreda. 1843-1894. Girone. La terrasse. La terraza. Terrace. 1891.
Barcelone Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC)
L'ESQUISSE ou L'ART DU FLOU
L'Art Moderne, annoncé bien avant le début du 20è siècle par les pré-impressionnistes, les impressionnistes et les post-impressionnistes, a été un facteur tout à fait remarquable de renouvellement des formes, dans la peinture européenne.
L'Art a toujours été, une manière de rêver le monde réel. Mais les nouvelles techniques de l'Art Moderne, s'éloignent toutes, de manière très intentionnelle, volontariste, de la représentation exacte du réel.
Les peintres tendent à créer un art dans lequel l'interprétation du réel l'emporte sur sa reproduction.
L'artiste moderne ne reproduit plus guère le réel, il le rêve, ou l'invente. Ces tendances ont abouti à l'art non figuratif, autrement appelé l'art abstrait.
Ce renouvellement des formes en peinture a apporté de nouvelles possibilités, très intéressantes, et très belles, d'expression artistique.
Parmi les techniques développées au cours du 19è siècle l'Esquisse a été une des meilleures expressions de l'Art du Flou.
L'Art du Flou a été pratiqué de manière géniale par Léonard de Vinci. Le "Sfumato" est, dans le cadre d'une peinture très figurative et parfaitement finie, comme la Joconde, les Vierges au rocher, ou Saint Jean Baptiste, une ébauche d'art du flou.
L'Esquisse a été dans l'histoire de la peinture un projet, une étude préparatoire, qui permettait à l'artiste de s'assurer de la cohérence et de l'équilibre de son tableau fini. Dans ce cas, le plus souvent, le flou n'est qu'une approximation, un brouillon, le témoin d'un art incomplet qui demande à être achevé.
Mais de nombreux artistes, au cours des siècles passés, ont parfaitement compris que l'esquisse pouvait, parfois, exceptionnellement, être une oeuvre achevée.
C'est à dire une oeuvre dont une grande majorité de spectateurs, experts ou non, ressentaient impérieusement que RIEN ne devait lui être ajoutée. Ce n'est pas une définition mathématique, mais c'est la meilleure.
L'esquisse n'est une oeuvre achevée que lorsqu'elle est créatrice d'une atmosphère singulière, particulièrement suggestive, porteuse d'une poésie qui lui est propre, unique. Quand il apparaît de manière évidente que plus de précision dans le dessin fermerait les portes à l'imaginaire, au mystère, et détruirait un équilibre subtile entre le rêve et la réalité.
Le dessin trop précis peut en effet fermer les portes à l'imaginaire, alors que le flou qui caractérise l'esquisse peut les ouvrir. Les photographes le savent bien aussi : Le flou peut être simplement flou, mais il peut aussi être une invitation à ressentir un mystère et à participer à une énigme. Le spectateur est invité à meubler par son imagination le flou qui lui est proposé.
Mais c'est une alchimie dont seuls les grands artistes, peuvent, exceptionnellement, pénétrer le secret.
Le grand maître de cette technique, et celui qui, le plus précocement, l'a poussé le plus loin, a été sans doute William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix a été aussi, un peu après Turner, un des grands précurseurs de l'art de l'esquisse. Par exemple dans la "mort de Sadarnapale" mais aussi dans bien d'autres tableaux. Mais Delacroix est aussi un exemple des limites de cette technique. Toutes les techniques rencontrent, à un moment ou à un autre, leurs limites.
L'Art de l'esquisse est redoutablement difficile, car il ne suffit pas de dessiner schématiquement un sujet pour faire une belle oeuvre. De même qu'en photographie de nos jours, il ne suffit pas de dessiner et de peindre flou pour créer une oeuvre d'art.
Le flou peut n'être qu'une esquisse ou une approximation, dont finalement la valeur marchande ne tient qu'à la signature d'un grand nom.
Il est vrai que l'esquisse peut dégager une certaine puissance expressive, avoir une puissance évocatrice, une poésie de l'inachevé. Une force expressive que le tableau, bien fini, bien dessiné et bien peint, achevé, peut effectivement perdre. Mais la magie poétique de l'art du flou ne peut pas être systématique.
Le flou, c'est aussi beaucoup une question de mode. Une habitude du regard. Une culture.
L'esthétique de notre époque est un peu trop focalisée sur l'esquisse.
On finit par ne plus voir que des esquisses dans les galeries de peintures modernes ou contemporaines.
En réalité les artistes ne sont pas les seuls responsables de cette situation. Au 19è siècle la société occidentale est entrée dans une culture qui fait de la réussite, matérielle, économique, et de l'Argent ses valeurs principales. Dès lors des esquisses, qui ne seraient pas sorties des brouillons personnels de l'artiste, pendant les siècles précédents, sont devenues de marchandises sources de profits. Ces marchandises, se trouvent même dans les musées. Picasso avait très bien compris ce mécanisme économique.
Bien sûr cette évolution est habillée de Grands Principes : Il n'est pas question d'Argent, mais de l'Artiste, de la Liberté de Création, du Progrès des Arts, d'une "sensibilité nouvelle", de "vivre avec son temps" etc...
Cette omniprésence de l'esquisse reflète non seulement des habitudes du regard mais des valeurs éthiques. L'Art du Flou est devenu aussi l'Art de faire, vite, de l'Argent.
Valeurs morales positives ou négatives. Nous vivons dans un monde un peu trop pressé !! Pour aller où ?
THE SKETCH OR THE ART OF BLUR
Modern Art, announced well before the beginning of the 20th century by the pré-impressionnists, impressionists and post-impressionists, was a factor quite remarkable renewal forms in European painting.
Art has always been a way to dream the real world. But the new techniques of modern art, are moving away all so very intentional, deliberate, of the exact representation of reality.
The painters tend to create an art in which the interpretation of reality trumps its reproduction.
The modern artist is hardly reproduces reality, it's dream or invent. These trends have resulted in non-figurative art, also called abstract art.
This renewal forms in painting is total. He brought new possibilities of artistic expression.
Among the techniques developed during the 19th century, the sketch was one of the best expressions of the Art of Blur.
The Art of Blur has been practiced ingeniously by Leonardo da Vinci. The "Sfumato" is in the context of a very figurative and perfectly finished painting, like the Mona Lisa, the Virgin on the rock, or John the Baptist, a draft of art of blur..
The sketch was in the history of painting, a project, a preparatory study, which allowed the artist to ensure the coherence and balance of the finished table. In this case, usually, the blur is only an approximation, a preform, a draft, witnessed an incomplete art which needs to be completed.
But many artists, over the centuries, have understood perfectly that the sketch was sometimes, exceptionally, be a finished work.
That is to say a work, of which a large majority of spectators, experts or not, imperiously felt that NOTHING was to be added to it. This is not a mathematical definition, but this is the best.
The sketch is a finished work, only when it is creative, from a singular atmosphere, particularly suggestive, carrying a single poetry. When he appears, with evidence, that more precision in drawing, closes the doors to the imagination, of the mystery, and destroy a subtle balance between dream and reality.
The tto precise drawing can, in fact, close the doors to the imagination. While the blur, characteristic of the sketch, can open these doors. The photographers also know well: The blur can be simply fuzzy, but it can also be an invitation to feel a mystery and to participate in an enigma. The viewer is invited to furnish the blur proposed to him, through his imagination.
But it is an alchemy that only great artists have exceptionally found the secret.
The great master of this technique that the earliest, pushed him, foremost, was William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix was also a little after Turner, one of the major precursors of the art of the sketch. For example in the "death of Sadarnapale" but also in many other paintings. But Delacroix is also an example of the limitations of this technique. All techniques meet, at one time or another, their limits.
The Art of the sketch is terribly difficult, because it is not enough to draw schematically a subject to make a beautiful work. It is not enough to draw and paint blur, or photographing blur, to create a work of art.
The blur can be only a sketch or an approximation, which ultimately market value is up to the signing of a big name.
It is true that the sketch can release a certain expressive power, have an evocative power, a poetry of unfinished. An expressive force that the painting, well finished, well designed and well painted, completed, can actually lose. But the poetic magic of Blur Art cannot be systematic.
It is also very much a question of fashion. A habit of look. A culture.
The aesthetics of our time is a little too focused on the sketch.
We finally see only sketches in the galleries of modern and contemporary paintings.
In fact the artists are not the solely responsibles, for this situation. In the 19th century Western society has entered a culture that makes of the success, physical, material, economic, and of money, its main values. Therefore the sketches, which would not come out of personal drafts of the artist, in previous centuries, have become merchandises, and sources of profits. These goods are found even in museums. Picasso understood very well, what economic mechanism.
Of course this evolution is dressed in Great Principles: There is no question of Money, but of the Artist, of the Freedom of Creation,of the Progress of the Arts, of a "new sensibility", "to live with her time "etc ...
This omnipresence of the sketch reflects not only the look but the habits of ethical values.
positive or negative moral values. The Art of the blur has also become the Art to do, quickly, of the money.
We live in a world too pressed !! To go where ?
De toutes les églises de Rome, une seule est considérée comme étant la « mère et tête de toutes les églises » : la basilique Saint-Jean de Latran, cathédrale de Rome, siège du diocèse de la Ville.
Cette église fondamentale du Catholicisme est propriété du Saint-Siège et fait donc partie du Vatican (même si elle ne se trouve pas sur le territoire du Vatican). C’est une des quatre basiliques majeures de Rome, et ne l’est pas que par la taille : 12 conciles y eurent lieu, dont 5 œcuméniques tout au long du Moyen-âge et de la Renaissance (1123, 1139, 1179, 1215 et de 1512 à 1516). C’est aussi au Latran que Charlemagne se fit baptiser, à Pâques en 774, ou que les fameux accords entre l’Eglise et l’Etat furent signés en 1929, les accords du Latran.
L’Archibasilique du Très Saint-Sauveur, plus connue sous le nom de Basilique de Saint-Jean de Latran, est l’église la plus ancienne de la ville, construite avant même Saint Pierre de Rome. L’empereur Constantin Ier (306-337) l’a fit construire, selon la légende, après avoir guéri d’une maladie en 313, et sera consacrée en 324 par le pape Sylvestre Ier. C’est l’église utilisée par le pape, lorsqu’il assume le rôle d’évêque de la Ville Éternelle. Elle est bâtie sur les anciens terrains d’une ancienne famille patricienne, les Laterani, qui donnèrent ainsi leur nom à l’église, Latran. Sainte Hélène, la mère de Constantin, chrétienne très fervente, avait fait cadeau des terrains au pape de l’époque, Melchiade.
Avant le renouveau de Saint-Pierre de Rome, à la Renaissance, le siège de la Chrétienté était au Latran. Pendant 1000 ans, du IVe au XIVe siècle, le pape y avait sa résidence, son siège, jusqu’à l’« exil » de Clément V à Avignon, en 1309. L’ancienne résidence papale est encore visible, le Palais de Latran, que l’on peut voir collé à la basilique, reconverti en musée par le pape Grégoire XVI. L’église avec tant de reconstructions, eu forcément des besoins financiers importants. Les rois de France contribuèrent au financement, depuis Louis XI au XVe siècle, de façon plus ou moins régulière suivant les aléas de l’Histoire, jusqu’en 1871. Henri IV, en échange de l’assurance des revenus provenant de l’Abbaye de Clairac pour le Latran, fut remercié avec une statue que l’on peut encore voir de nos jours, et le dirigeant français fut fait chanoine d’honneur. Aujourd’hui, le Président de la République, quel qu’il soit est ainsi systématiquement fait chanoine d’honneur de la basilique Saint-Jean de Latran.
L’église que nous pouvons admirer aujourd’hui date du XVIIe siècle, sous le pontificat d’Urbain V, et est la deuxième plus grande église de Rome, avec ses 130m de long. La façade blanche réalisée entre 1732 et 1735, toute en travertin, fut conçue par le Florentin Alessandro Galilei, avec les statues monumentales en son sommet. Ces statues de 7m de haut représentent Jésus, Saint Jean et Saint Jean-Baptiste, ainsi que les docteurs de l’église. La gigantesque porte de bronze est une porte antique, qui n’est autre que celle de l’ancienne Curie romaine ! Sur le fronton, nous pouvons y lire « omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput », mère et tête de toutes les églises de la ville et du monde.
La structure intérieure de la basilique est l’œuvre de Francesco Borromini, exécutée en style baroque. Les travaux débutèrent lors de l’année sainte, le Jubilé de 1650, commandés par le pape Innocent X. Des 14 arcades originelles, il passa à 5, retravaillant ainsi totalement l’espace intérieur de la basilique, qui retrouva l’esprit de l’édifice antique, avec ses 5 nefs. Dans chaque niche de la nef, longue de 130m, nous pouvons voir les statues des apôtres qui regardent les fidèles venus à l’église. Ces statues furent sculptées entre 1703 et 1719. Les chapelles latérales sont également issues du génie de Borromini. Le jeu de lumières que Borromini a su créer est bluffant, avec la lumière qui rentre par les fenêtres, tels des puits de lumière. Cette lumière si spéciale renforce le coté sacré de cet endroit. Borromini conservera le sol, venu du Moyen-âge, et le plafond, en caissons peints et moulures dorées, du bois sculpté du XVIe siècle.
Le sol de la basilique mérite toute l’attention du monde. C’est un sol que l’on nomme de « cosmatesque ». Ce type de sol, fait d’innombrables morceaux de marbre, était typique de l’Italie du Moyen-âge, friande de ce type de mosaïque. Le nom vient de Laurent Cosma et de sa famille, les Cosmati, des artisans qui créèrent bon nombre de ces œuvres, en prélevant le marbre des ruines romaines antiques. Ces sols sont absolument splendides, m’impressionnant beaucoup plus que toutes les statues de l’église : on n’a pas l’habitude de marcher sur quelque chose de si beau, et son omniprésence donne cet aspect chaleureux à Saint Jean de Latran, bien différent des sols en pierre des cathédrales gothiques.
Of all the churches in Rome, only one is considered the "mother and head of all churches": the Basilica of St. John Lateran, cathedral of Rome, seat of the diocese of the City.
This fundamental church of Catholicism is property of the Holy See and therefore part of the Vatican (even if it is not located on Vatican territory). It is one of the four major basilicas of Rome, and it is not only because of the size: 12 councils took place, including 5 ecumenical throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1123, 1139, 1179, 1215 and from 1512 to 1516). It is also in the Lateran that Charlemagne was baptized, at Easter in 774, or that the famous agreements between the Church and the State were signed in 1929, the Lateran agreements.
The Archibasilica of the Most Holy Savior, better known as the Basilica of St. John Lateran, is the oldest church in the city, built even before St. Peter of Rome. Emperor Constantine I (306-337) had it built, according to legend, after curing a disease in 313, and will be consecrated in 324 by Pope Sylvester I. This is the church used by the pope when he assumes the role of bishop of the Eternal City. It is built on the old grounds of an old patrician family, the Laterani, which gave their name to the church, Lateran. St. Helena, the mother of Constantine, a very fervent Christian, had given the land to the pope of the time, Melchiade.
Before the revival of St. Peter's in Rome, during the Renaissance, the siege of Christendom was at the Lateran. For 1000 years, from the fourth to the fourteenth century, the pope had his residence, his seat, until the "exile" of Clement V in Avignon, in 1309. The former papal residence is still visible, the Lateran Palace , which can be seen stuck to the basilica, converted into a museum by Pope Gregory XVI. The church with so many reconstructions, had necessarily important financial needs. The kings of France contributed to the financing, since Louis XI in the 15th century, in a more or less regular way according to the vagaries of the History, until 1871. Henry IV, in exchange for the insurance of the revenues coming from the Abbey from Clairac to the Lateran, was thanked with a statue that can still be seen today, and the French leader was made canon of honor. Today, the President of the Republic, whoever he is is thus systematically made canon of honor of the basilica Saint-Jean of Lateran.
The church that we can admire today dates from the seventeenth century, under the pontificate of Urban V, and is the second largest church in Rome, with its 130m long. The white facade built between 1732 and 1735, all travertine, was designed by the Florentine Alessandro Galilei, with the monumental statues at the top. These statues 7m high represent Jesus, Saint John and Saint John the Baptist, as well as the doctors of the church. The gigantic bronze door is an ancient door, which is none other than that of the ancient Roman Curia! On the pediment, we can read "omnium urbis and orbis ecclesiarum mater and caput", mother and head of all the churches of the city and the world.
The inner structure of the basilica is the work of Francesco Borromini, executed in Baroque style. Work began during the holy year, the Jubilee of 1650, commissioned by Pope Innocent X. Of the 14 original arcades, he went to 5, thus completely reworking the interior space of the basilica, which found the spirit of the ancient building, with its 5 naves. In each niche of the nave, 130m long, we can see the statues of the apostles who watch the faithful coming to the church. These statues were carved between 1703 and 1719. The side chapels are also from the genius of Borromini. The play of lights that Borromini has created is stunning, with the light coming in through the windows, like skylights. This special light reinforces the sacred side of this place. Borromini will preserve the soil, from the Middle Ages, and the ceiling, in painted boxes and gilded moldings, carved wood of the sixteenth century.
The basilica floor deserves all the attention of the world. It is a soil that we call "cosmatesque". This type of floor, made of innumerable pieces of marble, was typical of medieval Italy, fond of this type of mosaic. The name comes from Laurent Cosma and his family, the Cosmati, craftsmen who created many of these works, taking marble from the ancient Roman ruins. These soils are absolutely splendid, impressing me much more than all the statues of the church: we are not used to walking on something so beautiful, and its omnipresence gives this warm aspect to Saint Jean de Latran, very different from the stone floors of Gothic cathedrals.
Musée Ulm (Kunsthalle Weisshaupt)
"We can make people swallow anything." Yes, to the elites, but not to the peoples.
When museums are a desert
UNDERSTAND CONTEMPORARY ART (3) THE ART OF THE BABEL TOWER
Today we conceive of no other art than of contestation, it is one of the signs of our decomposition. After all there was great art on command, there was even only art on command : Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Byzantium, Maya, Chinese Art, India, our Christian West, Renaissance, Baroque and even classic. It was beautiful, it was ordered, but the artists believed in him.
Jean DUCHE. The Shield of Athena.
"You can make to people swallow anything," says one expert: MARCEL DUCHAMP (interview on the express 23 July 1964) Under the name of art, for more than a hundred years now, people have been made to swallow anything. We are in the midst of unreality, what is officially considered to be the art of the 20th century and the beginning of the current century has no connection with art, it is anti-art, non-art, hoax.
JEAN LOUIS HARROUEL Contemporary Art, Great Falsification Jean Cyrille Godefroy 2009
"Why do we see little more in modern art museums than insignificance, formalism, empty intellectualism or derision and above all, above all, this overwhelming mass of abstract works, emptied of all substance, desolate, emaciated that we are obstinately, however, to buy, to exalt, to comment, to expose under the indifferent eye of visitors that this does not concern? "
Jean CLAIR (Considerations on the State of Fine Arts. Critique of Modernity. GALLIMAR NRF 1983)
We must understand here "modern art" by "contemporary art".
Art is what you believe in. And art makes you believe in what you believe. Art also makes you believe in what you wouldn't believe if you were free to believe. What if you don't believe in anything anymore? Not even in man? Only in yourself, in defiance of all others? That's official contemporary art.
The ugliness and absurdity of Official Contemporary Art are deadly viruses, destroying collective cultures and persons. It'is Covid-Art. It is self-confined in magnificent buildings where no public goes, except for a few vaccinated, constrained, adventurous or naive people.
Official contemporary art is an anti-art, commissioned, globalist, state and supra-state, public and private, which combines seven constants found in almost all European museums:
He is ugly, absurd, provocative, botched, sad, uprooted, obsessional, and as a result of all this, totally artificial.
1° The Ugly Art
This is what art historian Ernst Gombrich notes: "Western art has become an adventure on the edge of the impossible, and the art of the ugly".
The ugly Art is a major invention of the West in the second half of the 20th century. Ancient Fine Arts (Belle Arti, Schönen Künste, Fine Arts) and Modern Art, which goes from 1830 to 1950, have occasionally paint the ugliness of life and death. The ugliness of the Passion of Christ, the Devil, the Underworld, War, disease and epidemics, madness, death etc..... But the ugly was never a goal in itself, it was only a way to express the ugliness of certain realities.
In official contemporary art, this imperative of the ugly concerns both abstract and figurative art.
When the Ugly becomes a criterion of official art, a goal of the painter, and a necessary condition for entering a museum of painting, or sculpture, then the era of Contemporary Art undoubtedly begins.
The ideological, doctrinal, systematic adherence of Contemporary Art to ugliness is a very banal observation, which has been made many times, and which has been fully claimed by its theorists and practitioners.
The art critic Michel Tapié (1909-1987) noted in the 1950s and 1960s that "Modern Art - understand Contemporary Art - was born the day the idea of Art and Beauty were separated". Michel Tapié does not criticize this disjunction, on the contrary he notes it and justifies it. "we have changed our values". Indeed, ugliness has become a positive value in aesthetics!
It is very significant that Europe and the West of Museums distinguish, the Museums of "Fine Arts" (Belle Arti, Schönen Künste, Fine Art), from the "Museums of Contemporary Art". It is the officialization of the divorce of Art and Beauty. This institutionalization, this systematization of the anti-esthetic is a first in the history of civilizations.
It is imperative not to confuse Modern Art (1830--1950) with the Contemporary Art, that prevails in the West in official circles from the 1950s onwards. The essential difference, but very simple to understand, is this: Modern Art is an aesthetic, Contemporary Art is, and proclaims to be, an anti-aesthetic.
A few questions are in order:
Should man be proud of having renounced beauty in his official art?
Is it mandatory to consider that this is a necessary and inevitable evolution? A Progress even?
What if ugly art was, on the contrary, a degrading art, a regression? An Involution?
2° The Absurd Art.
During the whole period of the Ancient Fine Arts (Belle Arti, Schönen Künste, Fine Arts) art was never absurd. He always had a meaning, he was the bearer of a teaching very clearly perceptible by the greatest number, even by the illiterate, especially in religious art. From the Renaissance onwards, an art inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity appeared, the meaning of which was only accessible to a cultivated elite of European society. But art continues until the contemporary era to be meaningful, to hold a clear discourse designed to convince and bring peoples together.
In modern times, around 1900, with non-figurative, abstract art, a novelty appeared: the art of non-sense. The non-sense, understood as the lack of meaning, the absence of an intelligible discourse, carrying a precise message, easily identifiable by the populations or by the elites. This is when works "without title" or with meaningless titles appear: "Composition N°..."
But it is only with official contemporary art, after the Second World War, that nonsense, the absence of significant discourse, evolves, is exacerbated, and becomes synonymous with absurdity.
Abstract modern art is a blue triangle and a red dot on a white background.
Official contemporary art is a pair of shoes wearing glasses, a pile of stones, a bed suspended from the museum ceiling, or a mop...
This characteristic of absurdity, unlike that of ugliness, is not explicitly claimed by the dogmatics of the Anti-Art. On the contrary, the theorists of Official Contemporary Art absolutely want to make believe that Anti-Aesthetics is superiorly intelligent, carrying a highly subtle counter-discourse, superlatively "conceptual", that only a visitor initiated to the mysteries of contemporary thought could understand. Hence the importance in contemporary art museums of the Discourse on Art, which is sometimes displayed in a larger format than "works of art". In reality, the truly informed public, not the falsely enlightened public, must understand that there is nothing to understand about each of these "works of art". The discourse on art is there to deceive the public, to amaze them, to intimidate them, to prohibit them from contesting. On the other hand, it is necessary to understand the why this "art", which one, at the same time, displays its absurdity and hides it behind a whole justification discourse. It is also necessary to understand the global, political, ideological and social significance of this totally sophistic aesthetic and ethical deconstruction. We are in the presence of a Sophist art, to which we must firmly oppose the wisdom of Socrates. At the risk of having to drink hemlock, after condemnation by a misguided "Republic".
3° The Provocative Art.
Throughout the period of the Ancient Fine Arts (Belle Arti, Schönen Künste, Fine Arts) art was never provocative. Art's function and aim was to transmit a clear educational message, understandable by the majority, and its means were to seduce populations as a whole, or more specific clienteles, by carrying a consensual discourse, which brings the recipients together around a collective culture, and a common ideal. Art was a sharing between the members of the whole society conceived as a centripetal community. Art was inter-social, that is, it had to be suitable for all classes of society, to be accepted by them as a common good and to foster communication within the community.
With the official Contemporary Non-Art appears a systematic reverse doctrine, of a total intolerance: the dogma of art that must disturb the peoples. Art is no longer made to induce the adherence of the populations, but to disturb them, to provoke negative reactions of opposition, of rejection. The official discourse on art constantly proclaims the alleged need to "question" all traditions. Thus the "initiate" will distinguish himself by spreading praise on this so-called catharsis, and the uninformed, the zombie, will be stigmatized when he dares to criticize the absurdity of dogmatic violence made to beauty and meaning.
This dogma of "the art that must disturb" has all the characteristics of the intolerant language of certain religious doctrines of which fanatics are unable to admit and understand that a faith in a true God can pass through paths other than their own, and expose truths other than those in which they believe.
There is no longer any question of faith in a revealed God for the supporters of the "Enlightenment", but this doctrine of art, which has the duty to disturb peoples, is in reality the expression of a faith in a higher and revealed Human Reason, requiring a secret initiation. This doctrine is the translation in the field of aesthetics of an elitist, sectarian and dogmatic ideology. Fanaticism has desacralized itself in the West, but it remains identical to itself, and it is still as dangerous to freedom
Provocation is one of the founding principles characteristic of official contemporary art. If we want to understand official contemporary art and even a certain street art (that of vandal tags) we must think on the same ground as him. Oppose provocation and explicit contempt to the provocation and implicit contempt for peoples that is characteristic of official contemporary art. This is why official contemporary art, state art and even supra-state art, globalist, an art characteristic of our current Western civilization, reveals a worrying state of mind of the elites, an obvious overestimation of themselves, and poses a very real social and politic problem.
4° The Botched Art.
The botched Art starts from the sketch, it is born from its abusive systematization.
The Sketch was essentially a preparatory study in the history of painting, which allowed the artist to ensure the coherence and balance of his finished painting. In this case, most often, the approximation of the drawing, the blur of the representation is only a draft, a project, an incomplete art that needs to be completed.
Many artists, over the past centuries, have fully understood that the sketch could, sometimes, exceptionally, be a finished work. In other words, a work about which a large majority of spectators, experts or not, felt compellingly that NOTHING should be added to it. It is not a mathematical definition, not even philosophical, but it is the best, as in the case of beauty: the common feeling, the majority, enlightened by the opinion of the elites, but widely shared within a society.
The sketch is a finished work only when it creates a singular atmosphere, particularly suggestive, carrying a poetry of its own, unique. When it becomes clear that more precision in drawing would close the doors to the imagination, to mystery, and would destroy a subtle balance between dream and reality.
But it is an alchemy whose secret can only be penetrated by great artists.
It is true that the sketch can release a certain expressive power, have an evocative power, a poetry of the unfinished. An expressive force that the painting, well finished, well drawn and well painted, well finished, can indeed lose. But the poetic magic of the art of the blur cannot be systematic and loses all its seduction when it becomes a habit of doing and a conformity of the gaze.
Since the Impressionists, how many artists have blurred sketchs and paint stains, without art and for ease?
The aesthetics of our time has focused far too much on the sketch. The blur, the sketch, the stain have become a fashion, an obligatory culture. Always the same observation: good ideas, innovative and creative practices, become bad and sterile when they become systematized
In reality, artists are not the only ones responsible for this situation. In the 19th century Western society entered a culture that made of the material and economic success , and of the money, its main values. Since then, sketches, which would not have come out of the artist's personal files in previous centuries, have become commodities for profit. These goods are even found in museums.
Picasso, a painter in transition between modern and contemporary art, had a very good understanding of this economic mechanism.
Of course this evolution is dressed in Great Principles: It is not about Money, but about the Artist, the Freedom of Creation, the Progress of the Arts, a "new sensitivity", "living with the times" etc....
This omnipresence of the sketch, the blur and the tachism reflects not only habits of the gaze but also ethical and cultural values. The Art of sketching, blurring and symbolic and poetic suggestion has become, by spirit of both system and provocation, and also much by convenience and conformity to fashion, the easy Art, and the botched Art. The art of making a reputation and money as quickly as possible. We are at the opposite of the painting of previous centuries, at a time when art was a profession. A profession that could be learned at length, with difficulty, and that required infinite meticulousness.
5° The Sad Art
For centuries, European painting, European art in general, was designed to make peoples dream, or of an important part of a population: aristocracy, bourgeoisie or popular classes. When European painting painted monsters, diseases or war, it was only what was necessary to formulate a reminder to the realities of the world.
Apollo skinned Marsyas alive, Prometheus had his liver eaten on Zeus' orders, Adonis died, Orpheus failed to bring Eurydice back from the underworld. But Europe was not unhappy to be kidnapped, Aphrodite (Venus) was born and have loved, and spring regularly came back, like Persephone from the Underworld.
The Crucifixions, Burials, and Pietas were always accompanied by an Annunciation, a Nativity and a Resurrection. And after the Death of the Virgin come her Assumption and Coronation.
17th century Dutch art, secular and secular, untiringly proclaims the simple joys of family life, the seascape, the changing skies, village festivals, wedding dances and material abundances: meat, vegetables, cheese and flowers in abundance. A profusion that the skulls could not hide. Even without their teeth, farmers sang, certainly by drinking a little too much.
All the neoclassical, romantic and impressionist art of the 19th century has made you dream with landscapes from Italy or Europe: meadows dotted with poppies, fresh and friendly rivers, forests full of favourable shadows, mysterious castles, herds of sheep and cattle, shepherds musicians...... And apart from a few shipwrecks in a rough sea, on the whole, European painting was joyful and inspiring the peoples.
Dream of God, dream of spiritual or sensual Love, dream of eternal life, dream of goodness, purity and beauty, dream of motherhood, dream of paradise, on earth or in the air, dream of idyllic landscape, dream of successful hunting, dream of abundance. The Dream is not lacking in European painting during centuries, which are much more than a thousand years old. And this dream is still perceived today, even when it no longer corresponds to beliefs that are currently alive and shared. It is when ideologues and politicians, who impose on artists what art must be, have decided to paint a world that does not make peoples dream, that contemporary art has started: The Urinal of Marcel Duchamp is one of the archetypes of this "revolution".
The "Enlightened" have indeed invented the sad art. They are entirely wrong, once again despite their conviction that they are the Eye that illuminates the entire social pyramid from above: Art is what makes peoples dream. Not what gives them nightmares.
There is no doubt that during the 20th century in Europe, then in the West, a pessimistic, tragic and absurd view of life became widespread in the field of painting and sculpture
Are contemporary artists happy to have to produce this New Mandatory Art?
We do not see in the Contemporary Art rooms an art that breathes the Joy of Living and the Blossoming of Self.
Fra Angélico's works testify that this painter was happy to paint as he did. All in all, he was free! The same goes for the works of Pierre Paul Rubens or the Impressionists.
Looking at Van Gogh's works, one thing is certain: this tormented painter had the joy of freeing himself through his art from his difficulties in living.
What is the purpose of Art, if not to make people happy, or at least help them to live?
What is an Art that is not an enchantment?
Why a disenchanted Art? Systematically and ostensibly disenchanted?
The Hell of Enguerrand Quarton or Hieronymus Bosch was full of flames and horrible demons.
The Hell of our contemporary world has rationally evacuated all the obscurantist horrors of religion: it is as smooth, sad and absurd as white, yellow or black squares, plywood boxes, coal piles, cement beams, papier-mâché, piled up or suspended clothes and dirty cardboard.
It is the art of a globalist elite who refuse to communicate with their fellow human beings, and who are also unable to feel and make positive emotions feel. No beauty, no joy, no good. The art of making people dream has become the art of making them nightmares. It's more than sad, it's alarming. Would Democritus himself still be able to laugh about it?
6° The Rootless Art: The Art of the Tower of Babel
The attendance at the Museums of Contemporary Art reveals a phenomenon that quickly becomes obvious and haunting, from the moment the visitor becomes aware of it: the past of mankind and the history of civilizations are totally absent. It is once again the same observation: it is the opposite of Fine Arts (Belle Arti, Schönen Künste, Fine Arts). An atemporal Anti-Art, where all memory of the past is absent, is displayed in the Museums of Contemporary Art.
Official Contemporary Art is a cluster of diverse "things" that constitute a display case of present, an omnipresent present, totally cut off from any spatial or temporal environment:
Plain canvases, coloured or not, lines, dots, strokes and circles, squares or rectangles of various colours, and of course stains, especially stains. Rubble, pipes, broomsticks, mops, ladders, beds, chairs and wobbly tables, piles of various things: coal, stone, cardboard, paper, plastics. Rusty, twisted, broken, bent, broken beams, assembled cardboard boxes, stacked clothes and rags, open or closed boxes, broken or crushed machinery, pipes, cement beams, rubble, cinder blocks, tiles, whole or pulverized bricks, neon tubes, empty bags or full bags (it seems that conceptually it is very different), all kinds of pipes (iron, cement, plastic), rubber, buckets, jugs, pots; fences, telephones, typewriters, packaged or not, sinks, urinals, bicycles, fruit and vegetables, a whole variety of flea markets, but absurd where they are exposed: in the art museums.
A multitude of art schools claim to be inspired by contemporary society, especially its sciences and techniques: Conceptual art, video art, computer art, digital art, bio art, there is no shortage of names, but the resulting installations, apart from their systematic ugliness, far removed from the reality of today's laboratories or factories, are totally devoid of any meaning actually related to the human sciences and techniques as they are practiced. In the same way that these installations are in no way related to the actual urban life of a large part of the Western population. Fortunately, our cities do not resemble our museums of contemporary art.
Objects without a real identity, without "personality", without empathetic capacity, because they do not fit into any credible context.
Contemporary art museums are a accumulation of objects without a real identity, without "personality", without empathetic capacity, because they do not fit into any credible context.
nor the context of utility, because the objects presented are totally out of their real use.
nor the geographical context, as they are not representative of any culture characteristic of a region of the planet.
nor the historical approach, because these objects have no connection with the history and past of human societies.
There is nothing in these museums that can root the visitor in the history of his or her community or a particular community.
By observing Institutional Contemporary Art, by studying its discourse, it is clear that Western man is not either on the path of rapprochement with Nature. Nature, animals, and humanity - except when it is ugly and absurd - have almost totally disappeared from Western institutional art. The rapprochement with Nature is however a theme that all Western media aimed at the general public regularly develop. The theme of the animal has not disappeared from street art or from local, regional or national private commercial art either. It is omnipresent in photography.
Why this divorce between the Official Globalist Art, art reserved for the enlightened elite, totally artificial and counter nature, and the arts or media aimed at the general public?
Why is this Institutional Art uprooted not only from the different human cultures, but also from Nature?
The spectator is locked in a constant, haunting, terrifying present by his anonymity and his absence of any identity reference point. Contemporary art is Alzheimer's disease on the scale of the whole society: each moment follows one another without being connected to the moment before, and even less to a distant past. An anthill art in which generations succeed one another without any memorable link, only the chain of instinct remains active.
The official contemporary art is obviously designed to erase the memory of men and be better able to guide the remains of intelligence that will survive this treatment. It is easy to understand why the main audience of these contemporary art museums are students from schools, colleges and high schools.
This situation is indeed not the result of chance but of a political will based on a perfectly identifiable ideology: The "Enlightenment" ideology contained some important, timely, creative and living truths. But these truths have been interpreted in paroxysm of their extremism, and settled in absolute, systematic, unique and universal Truth, denying all the values and experiences of past civilizations. This new totalitarianism carries, like all totalitarianisms, tragic Shadows, and finally Death. When man claims himself to be the "Lights"", the lights of his only reason, it is quite consistent that he ends up in the deep shadow of error, of ignorance, ugly and absurd. What official contemporary art demonstrate.
Official contemporary art, that of the museums that bear this name, puts into practice, in the field of aesthetics, a fundamental principle of the Enlightenment ideology: "La Table Rase" (the clean slate). The European past and that of all civilizations is retrograde and obscurantist, it is the time of the Shadows. He must disappear completely so that the new Humanity can flourish in the Modernity, that the "Lights" alone represent. In the USSR, in Maoist China, this ideology of the "Table Rase" was imposed by an explicitly violent democratic totalitarianism, a single party claimant as legitimate "the dictatorship of the proletariat". In the capitalist countries the methods are different: totalitarianism is hidden behind the appearances of the supposedly plural liberal democracy. His methods are those of a disguised violence, underlying, inspired and organized by organizations hidden from the eyes of the general public: those of the manipulation of the opinions and the spirits.
The roots of peoples, the links of nations with their past must be totally severed in order to allow only the true and only doctrine to remain, that to the glory of universality. According to the High Priests of Globalism, this would be the price to pay to guarantee, through the disappearance of nations, ethnic and cultural groups and the creation of a single government on a global scale, a bright future, peace and paradise on earth. The disappearance of human roots is indeed the same project as the disappearance of nations. From the forgetting of the roots to the destruction of the roots, the distance is minute: this is what the officially involuntary fire of Notre Dame de Paris shows. The centuries-old oaks frame of Notre Dame de Paris can burn, as accidentally, it is not at all a disaster, it is even an interesting opportunity. She will be rebuilt in a few years. She will even be better: it will be made of concrete, and brand new. She can always be kept on the World Heritage List. What are the retrograde spirits complaining about who are obscurely attached to the past?
Official contemporary art is an art specially designed for uprooted, emigrated, immigrant, mixed peoples: Nothing reminds of their origins, their specific cultures, their former territories. Their symbols, even the most expensive ones, will be destroyed, intentionnaly burned down. It is the globalist project whose ideology and politics are reflected in the official contemporary anti-aesthetics.
7° The Obsessional Art.
The obsession we are talking about here is that of Modernity, the New, Change, Revolution, Progress. It is mandatory to paint, sculpt, install, everything and anything, on the sole condition that it has never been done before! Toilet paper rolls on the floor? That's a great idea! On one condition: you have to be sure that this has not already been done! And if this has been done, it is possible to do the same thing, but with real or artificial soiling, in addition. It will be even more novel and a real improvement!
This obsession with novelty here too is in line with the dogma of the "Table Rase" and is inspired by the doctrine of the denial of the Past, which is a fundamental point of the catechism of the extremist Enlightenment. The direct consequence of this monomania is obviously the over-valuing of the present and the future: a permanent agitation, a feverish irritation, without any real purpose, without prudence, without good sense, a sterile effervescence and even destructive of the major balances needed. It is "le Bougisme" (The Febrile Agitation), by Pierre André Taguieff (Résister au Bougisme. Fayard 2001). In inventing this neologism, Pierre André Taguieff rightly denounced the morbid cult of change for change. This absurd ideology of mandatory novelty, at any price, obviously causes its devastation in art, as elsewhere in Western society.
Even if the beginning of the 21st century is beginning to raise alarm bells about human nuisance, the obsession with Change and Progress through human action remains a constant in all official speeches and one of the first commandments of ideological and "artistic" catechism.
Conclusion: The Artificial Art. The Dead Art.
The seven-point specifications that are imposed on contemporary artists determined to build a reputation in official art have an obvious consequence: Official Contemporary Art is a totally no sincere art, a summit of artifice and conformity. European art as well as universal art has always been commissioned art for thousands of years. In the entire history of civilizations, indeed, art has only existed on commission. It is always the ideological and political elites who have inspired, guided and financed the art of different civilizations. With one notable exception, in Europe, during the Modern Art period. We have said why in other texts: in a word, ideological diversity. But art on commission, in ancient times, even when a single ideology dominated, did not exclude that artists could create with sincerity, and therefore freely, an art that was commissioned, but authentic and shared. The entire history of European painting since medieval times is proof of this
This is what has obviously changed with official contemporary art since the second half of the 20th century. To be forced to create the ugly, the absurd, the sad, to be forced to provoke and disturb the peoples at the base of the pyramid, is obviously very overwhelming for the official artists themselves. Even when honors and profits are at the end of the road. Their art is artificial, it does not carry any living truth. An art on command, but a dead art.
The sincerity, the good faith, of the artist is a condition, certainly not sufficient, but absolutely necessary for art. We see well in the ancient arts, when the painter, even talented, no longer believes in what he paints. This feeling is very clearly found in religious art, at certain times, in some artists even of great talent. In ancient art, it is an individual or cyclical phenomenon.
On the other hand, in official contemporary art museums, the lack of sincerity, inauthenticity, falsity, duplicity is general and structural: the spectator is immersed in an atmosphere of constant lies, constrained artifice, hypocritical affectation, deadly boring complacency. This is exactly the meaning of the title of Aude de Kerros' book "L'Imposture de l'art contemporain" Eyrolles 2017.
Official Contemporary Art is an Imposture because it is an imposed posture, an obligatory behaviour, a deadly constraint for the freedom of creation.
A Beautiful art that is understandable by peoples, the sharing of a living and positive emotion with the public, this is not the problem of the "artists" of official contemporary art. Their only interest, obvious to the visitor, is their social success. These artists paint, sculpt or "install" to enter the museums. All sincerity is dismissed as dangerous for the success of this company. It is necessary to meet the conditions to be accepted by decision-makers : to do at all costs, the new one and ugly, and to achieve the most absolute provocation.
It is clear that authenticity, sincerity, remain alongside of this road imposed on artistic creation. Some opportunists are perfectly comfortable with these constraints , because it is a demanding set of specifications, but it does not require any strictly artistic talent. Others many artists are constraining themselves, in order to obtain public recognition. Still others refuse to play this game and do not enter the great museums. These constraints and refusals certainly have an aesthetic cost at the level of the global society.
Sincerity was a criterion of the European aesthetic of the past. It did not matter whether the belief was false or true, or more or less true, not in conformity with rationality as we understand it today. It is a historical fact that all the great religions have been, for millennia, at the origin of authentic, sincere, beautiful, significant arts, shared with peoples and recognized by time. The evidence is that with Official Contemporary Art, authenticity is dead, and the sharing it with it of course. The attendance of contemporary art museums shows that there is no current between artists, their official patrons and the majority of the public, who can freely decide on its activities.
"The majority of opponents of contemporary art are totally invisible and voiceless. Artists and amateurs who compose it act as if Contemporary Art does not exist. They consider it so void that it is not necessary to pay any attention to it, nor to make any critical effort."
Aude de Kerros L'Art Caché. Eyrolles 2013.
These opponents are right about the aesthetic nullity of official contemporary art. But they are wrong to remain speechless, because this art is a revelation of the state of mind of the ruling elites. The governed must pay very close attention to the visions of art, and therefore of the world, of their rulers, because they concern them directly. The "Massacre of the Innocents" is a current situation, not just an anecdote from the New Testament. An ideological and political elite that has made a profession of faith to massacre beauty, meaning, sincerity, art in general, and proclaims its right to disturb peoples, is suspect. The massacre of painting, the massacre of art is the announcement, the prefiguration of the massacre of peoples (the "Yellow Vests") by their ideological and political elites. Recent history has shown that explicitly totalitarian, Nazi and communist, genocidal societies have been unable to create an authentic and sincere art. The vast majority of artists have fled them.
The liberal capitalist society, triumphant in our time, has acted in a much more politically subtle way by creating an Official Mandatory Anti-Art. Is it an effective and sufficient antidote against totalitarianism, that this society has allowed reserves for beauty, meaning, sincerity in other fields such as photography or street art, or in a private art not accredited, adventitious? It would be wise to seriously doubt this.
Shopping Stadsfeestzaal
The "Stadsfeestzaal" from Antwerp was in earlier years an event hall for different occasions. A bookfair or a Christmasfair, exhibitions, studentparties,... A big fire in 2000 destroyed the whole "Stadsfeestzaal".
It took 7 years to rebuild this spectacular location. It was reopened as a shopping mall in October 2007.
Emile Bernard. 1868-1941. Paris.
La baignade. Bathers. 1904
Colmar. Musée Unterlinden.
L'ESQUISSE ou L'ART DU FLOU
L'Art Moderne, annoncé bien avant le début du 20è siècle par les pré-impressionnistes, les impressionnistes et les post-impressionnistes, a été un facteur tout à fait remarquable de renouvellement des formes, dans la peinture européenne.
L'Art a toujours été, une manière de rêver le monde réel. Mais les nouvelles techniques de l'Art Moderne, s'éloignent toutes, de manière très intentionnelle, volontariste, de la représentation exacte du réel.
Les peintres tendent à créer un art dans lequel l'interprétation du réel l'emporte sur sa reproduction.
L'artiste moderne ne reproduit plus guère le réel, il le rêve, ou l'invente. Ces tendances ont abouti à l'art non figuratif, autrement appelé l'art abstrait.
Ce renouvellement des formes en peinture a apporté de nouvelles possibilités, très intéressantes, et très belles, d'expression artistique.
Parmi les techniques développées au cours du 19è siècle l'Esquisse a été une des meilleures expressions de l'Art du Flou.
L'Art du Flou a été pratiqué de manière géniale par Léonard de Vinci. Le "Sfumato" est, dans le cadre d'une peinture très figurative et parfaitement finie, comme la Joconde, les Vierges au rocher, ou Saint Jean Baptiste, une ébauche d'art du flou.
L'Esquisse a été dans l'histoire de la peinture un projet, une étude préparatoire, qui permettait à l'artiste de s'assurer de la cohérence et de l'équilibre de son tableau fini. Dans ce cas, le plus souvent, le flou n'est qu'une approximation, un brouillon, le témoin d'un art incomplet qui demande à être achevé.
Mais de nombreux artistes, au cours des siècles passés, ont parfaitement compris que l'esquisse pouvait, parfois, exceptionnellement, être une oeuvre achevée.
C'est à dire une oeuvre dont une grande majorité de spectateurs, experts ou non, ressentaient impérieusement que RIEN ne devait lui être ajoutée. Ce n'est pas une définition mathématique, mais c'est la meilleure.
L'esquisse n'est une oeuvre achevée que lorsqu'elle est créatrice d'une atmosphère singulière, particulièrement suggestive, porteuse d'une poésie qui lui est propre, unique. Quand il apparaît de manière évidente que plus de précision dans le dessin fermerait les portes à l'imaginaire, au mystère, et détruirait un équilibre subtile entre le rêve et la réalité.
Le dessin trop précis peut en effet fermer les portes à l'imaginaire, alors que le flou qui caractérise l'esquisse peut les ouvrir. Les photographes le savent bien aussi : Le flou peut être simplement flou, mais il peut aussi être une invitation à ressentir un mystère et à participer à une énigme. Le spectateur est invité à meubler par son imagination le flou qui lui est proposé.
Mais c'est une alchimie dont seuls les grands artistes, peuvent, exceptionnellement, pénétrer le secret.
Le grand maître de cette technique, et celui qui, le plus précocement, l'a poussé le plus loin, a été sans doute William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix a été aussi, un peu après Turner, un des grands précurseurs de l'art de l'esquisse. Par exemple dans la "mort de Sadarnapale" mais aussi dans bien d'autres tableaux. Mais Delacroix est aussi un exemple des limites de cette technique. Toutes les techniques rencontrent, à un moment ou à un autre, leurs limites.
L'Art de l'esquisse est redoutablement difficile, car il ne suffit pas de dessiner schématiquement un sujet pour faire une belle oeuvre. De même qu'en photographie de nos jours, il ne suffit pas de dessiner et de peindre flou pour créer une oeuvre d'art.
L'Europe a découvert avec les romantiques (Delacroix, Turner Constable) et les impressionnistes l'art de l'esquisse et ses charmes particuliers, mais nous voyons de nos jours de l'esquisse à profusion, au point que l'on peut poser la question : Et si on revenait, aussi, à de la peinture finie, comme celle des artistes du MEAM de Barcelone ? Combien d'artistes depuis les impressionnistes on fait de l'esquisse par facilité ?! En fait pour être capable de peindre une esquisse vraiment artistique, il faut être capable de peindre un tableau bien dessiné, totalement achevé et peint, et d'y ajouter une beauté indéfinissable, en ne le finissant pas ! Ce n'est pas donné à tout le monde.
Le flou peut n'être qu'une esquisse ou une approximation, dont finalement la valeur marchande ne tient qu'à la signature d'un grand nom.
Il est vrai que l'esquisse peut dégager une certaine puissance expressive, avoir une puissance évocatrice, une poésie de l'inachevé. Une force expressive que le tableau, bien fini, bien dessiné et bien peint, achevé, peut effectivement perdre. Mais la magie poétique de l'art du flou ne peut pas être systématique.
Le flou, c'est aussi beaucoup une question de mode. Une habitude du regard. Une culture.
L'esthétique de notre époque est un peu trop focalisée sur l'esquisse.
On finit par ne plus voir que des esquisses dans les galeries de peintures modernes ou contemporaines.
En réalité les artistes ne sont pas les seuls responsables de cette situation. Au 19è siècle la société occidentale est entrée dans une culture qui fait de la réussite, matérielle, économique, et de l'Argent ses valeurs principales. Dès lors des esquisses, qui ne seraient pas sorties des brouillons personnels de l'artiste, pendant les siècles précédents, sont devenues de marchandises sources de profits. Ces marchandises, se trouvent même dans les musées. Picasso avait très bien compris ce mécanisme économique.
Bien sûr cette évolution est habillée de Grands Principes : Il n'est pas question d'Argent, mais de l'Artiste, de la Liberté de Création, du Progrès des Arts, d'une "sensibilité nouvelle", de "vivre avec son temps" etc...
Cette omniprésence de l'esquisse reflète non seulement des habitudes du regard mais des valeurs éthiques. L'Art du Flou est devenu aussi l'Art de faire, vite, de l'Argent.
Valeurs morales positives ou négatives. Nous vivons dans un monde un peu trop pressé !! Pour aller où ?
THE SKETCH OR THE ART OF BLUR
Modern Art, announced well before the beginning of the 20th century by the pré-impressionnists, impressionists and post-impressionists, was a factor quite remarkable renewal forms in European painting.
Art has always been a way to dream the real world. But the new techniques of modern art, are moving away all so very intentional, deliberate, of the exact representation of reality.
The painters tend to create an art in which the interpretation of reality trumps its reproduction.
The modern artist is hardly reproduces reality, it's dream or invent. These trends have resulted in non-figurative art, also called abstract art.
This renewal forms in painting is total. He brought new possibilities of artistic expression.
Among the techniques developed during the 19th century, the sketch was one of the best expressions of the Art of Blur.
The Art of Blur has been practiced ingeniously by Leonardo da Vinci. The "Sfumato" is in the context of a very figurative and perfectly finished painting, like the Mona Lisa, the Virgin on the rock, or John the Baptist, a draft of art of blur..
The sketch was in the history of painting, a project, a preparatory study, which allowed the artist to ensure the coherence and balance of the finished table. In this case, usually, the blur is only an approximation, a preform, a draft, witnessed an incomplete art which needs to be completed.
But many artists, over the centuries, have understood perfectly that the sketch was sometimes, exceptionally, be a finished work.
That is to say a work, of which a large majority of spectators, experts or not, imperiously felt that NOTHING was to be added to it. This is not a mathematical definition, but this is the best.
The sketch is a finished work, only when it is creative, from a singular atmosphere, particularly suggestive, carrying a single poetry. When he appears, with evidence, that more precision in drawing, closes the doors to the imagination, of the mystery, and destroy a subtle balance between dream and reality.
The tto precise drawing can, in fact, close the doors to the imagination. While the blur, characteristic of the sketch, can open these doors. The photographers also know well: The blur can be simply fuzzy, but it can also be an invitation to feel a mystery and to participate in an enigma. The viewer is invited to furnish the blur proposed to him, through his imagination.
But it is an alchemy that only great artists have exceptionally found the secret.
The great master of this technique that the earliest, pushed him, foremost, was William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix was also a little after Turner, one of the major precursors of the art of the sketch. For example in the "death of Sadarnapale" but also in many other paintings. But Delacroix is also an example of the limitations of this technique. All techniques meet, at one time or another, their limits.
The Art of the sketch is terribly difficult, because it is not enough to draw schematically a subject to make a beautiful work. It is not enough to draw and paint blur, or photographing blur, to create a work of art.
Europe has discovered with the Romantics (Delacroix, Turner Constable) and the Impressionists the art of sketching and its particular charms, but today we see the sketch in profusion, to the point that we can ask the question: What if we came back to finished the painting, like the artists of the MEAM from Barcelona? How many artists since the Impressionists have sketched for ease ?! In fact, to be able to paint a really artistic sketch, one must be able to paint a well-designed, completely finished and painted picture, and add an indefinable beauty to it, by not finishing it! It's not given for everyone.
The blur can be only a sketch or an approximation, which ultimately market value is up to the signing of a big name.
It is true that the sketch can release a certain expressive power, have an evocative power, a poetry of unfinished. An expressive force that the painting, well finished, well designed and well painted, completed, can actually lose. But the poetic magic of Blur Art cannot be systematic.
It is also very much a question of fashion. A habit of look. A culture.
The aesthetics of our time is a little too focused on the sketch.
We finally see only sketches in the galleries of modern and contemporary paintings.
In fact the artists are not the solely responsibles, for this situation. In the 19th century Western society has entered a culture that makes of the success, physical, material, economic, and of money, its main values. Therefore the sketches, which would not come out of personal drafts of the artist, in previous centuries, have become merchandises, and sources of profits. These goods are found even in museums. Picasso understood very well, what economic mechanism.
Of course this evolution is dressed in Great Principles: There is no question of Money, but of the Artist, of the Freedom of Creation,of the Progress of the Arts, of a "new sensibility", "to live with her time "etc ...
This omnipresence of the sketch reflects not only the look but the habits of ethical values.
positive or negative moral values. The Art of the blur has also become the Art to do, quickly, of the money.
We live in a world too pressed !! To go where ?
La mañana irisada, como fino cristal
se curvó sobre el ancho campo reverdeciente.
A la abismal succión del azul transparente,
agriétase la carne de un ansia germinal.
Y a la blondez purísima de su desnudez tierna,
la mísera corteza se nos cuartea en congoja,
y un sollozo nos sube desde la honda cisterna
en sombra donde el párpado su penitencia moja.
(Josefina Plá / Amanecer)
'The Folkton drums'
4,500 to 4,100 ybp
Found in a barrow a few fields to the south of the Mesolithic site of Star Carr - so near to the east coast of England and just under to North York Moors. 7,000 years of prehistory buffer the finds of the two sites and direct links are too frayed and fuzzy to be of relevance. What can be said is that a geography was enjoyed for a period of time, one that slowed man down to a semi-stop in the post glacial Mesolithic, and gave communities the space to ornament and enjoy far into the then neolithic future.
The solid ornamented chalk cylinders are considered to be unique. The ornamentation offers an insight into decorative tastes for carved wood, sewn leather and woven fabrique from around the dates of Stonehenge.
I have posted three adjacent pictures of the Folkton drums and, for the following musing about their ornamentation, it is worth jumping between these, and other available images :
The sides of the cylinders are decorated with reassuring near abstractions of great elements. The middle drum is stationary with a flat surface to the ground, and shows a fish diving between two triangles of dynamic water. Stories of jumping salmon, diving between salt and fresh water may have passed through this image. The tail of the 'fish' seems to have a plasticity of signification and may have equally served to illustrate a second story of a whale or seal spout - poetical gestation of sea wind and so on. The largest and smallest cylinders have sides that include eyes, with the smallest in counter relief and the larger cylinder's eyes in bas relief. This lucid mix of techniques seems to show that today's unique examples were yesterdays practiced expressions. Whilst it is easy to think about the bird-eye statue menhirs from a similar period on continental Europe (for example 'La statue-menhir des Roumanis') the eyes of the Folkton drums seem closer to ideas of 'hills having eyes'. Curving and rolling hills with dots for the 'look' - 'eyes' that are not threatening, one set with a lozenge as a half smiling mouth that seems to be coming from an abstraction of day and night. The Folkton drums came from a period of prehistory when great stones were moved - from glacial erratics clearance to saracen stones dragging and mounting to round barrow digging, shifting and shaping - so much activity, that it is near impossible to imagine a crofting communitie's strength of people avoiding earthwork and monolith 'production' duties during punctuated periods of the year. Round barrows were artificial hills with a known deceased individual at the heart. This may be contrasted with natural hills with local anamistic signification (goat hill, the hill of the blackbird or thief and so on). The idea that a child is watched over by eyes that allude to natural rolling hills and man-made tumuli may show that spirits of the past buttressed the present and once again, rich idea lines for flexible stories. A vast number of stories might have been illustrated by these open lines of personified hills : an omnipresence of value and skill, danger and provision. The passage of time may have been made available to illustrate a story via the exchange of day and night textures between sliding diagonals. Whilst the drums final decorations may look like interstitial ornemental afterthoughts, the beaker culture village decorations of wicker, cloth, weave and pottery may all have found illustration within these rectangles of line and texture. Were the Folkton drums to have been carved for children's attention, then their capacity for 'story time' might have illustrated between images seeded in the minds eye and concreted by the drum's open-ended lines.
The tops of the Folkton drums have decorations of pre-Celtic lyricism with concentric and interlocking circles and swirls. These can be compared to certain petroshere decorations and Irish petroglyphs (New grange). It would seem to me that the top surfaces may allude to transcendental and 'political' relations in contrast with the episodic potential of the sides. Ideas of "sun, moon and pools of water' - decorative lines of living with vigor.
The drums are on display in the British museum.
24mm prime on a Pentax K-50 through glass..
The Theatre of Dionysus (500 BC), on the south slope of the Athenian Acropolis, was where the works of the great tragic and comic poets of antiquity were first staged. The theatre was dedicated to Dionysus, the god of wine and the patron of drama and it hosted the City Dionysia festival. Among those who competed were the dramatists of the classical era whose works have survived: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander.
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The Aghori (Sanskrit aghora)[2] are ascetic Shaiva sadhus. The Aghori are known to engage in post-mortem rituals. They often dwell in charnel grounds, have been witnessed smearing cremation ashes on their bodies, and have been known to use bones from human corpses for crafting kapalas (skullcups which Shiva and other Hindu deities are often iconically depicted holding or using) and jewelry. Because of their practices that are contradictory to orthodox Hinduism, they are generally opposed by other Hindus.[3][4]
Many Aghori gurus command great reverence from rural populations as they are supposed to possess healing powers gained through their intensely eremitic rites and practices of renunciation and tápasya.
Contents [hide]
1Beliefs and doctrines
2History
3Adherents
4Spiritual headquarters
5Medicine
6In popular culture
7References
8Further reading
Beliefs and doctrines[edit]
Aghoris are devotees of Shiva manifested as Bhairava,[5] are monists who seek moksha from the cycle of reincarnation or saṃsāra. This freedom is a realization of the self's identity with the absolute. Because of this monistic doctrine, the Aghoris maintain that all opposites are ultimately illusory. The purpose of embracing pollution and degradation through various customs is the realization of non-duality (advaita) through transcending social taboos, attaining what is essentially an altered state of consciousness and perceiving the illusory nature of all conventional categories.
Aghoris are not to be confused with Shivnetras, who are also ardent devotees of Shiva but do not indulge in extreme, tamasic ritual practices. Although the Aghoris enjoy close ties with the Shivnetras, the two groups are quite distinct, Shivnetras engaging in sattvic worship.
Aghoris base their beliefs on two principles common to broader Shaiva beliefs: that Shiva is perfect (having omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence) and that Shiva is responsible for everything that occurs – all conditions, causes and effects. Consequently, everything that exists must be perfect and to deny the perfection of anything would be to deny the sacredness of all life in its full manifestation, as well as to deny the Supreme Being.
Aghoris believe that every person's soul is Shiva but is covered by aṣṭamahāpāśa "eight great nooses or bonds" - sensual pleasure, anger, greed, obsession, fear and hatred. The practices of the Aghoris are centered around the removal of these bonds. Sādhanā in cremation grounds destroys fear; sexual practices with certain riders and controls help release one from sexual desire; being naked destroys shame. On release from all the eight bonds the soul becomes sadāśiva and obtains moksha.[citation needed]
History[edit]
Aghori in Satopant.
An Aghori man in Badrinath smoking hashish or Cannabis from a chillum in 2011.
Although akin to the Kapalika ascetics of medieval Kashmir, as well as the Kalamukhas, with whom there may be a historical connection, the Aghoris trace their origin to Baba Keenaram, an ascetic who is said to have lived 150 years, dying during the second half of the 18th century.[6] Dattatreya the avadhuta, to whom has been attributed the esteemed nondual medieval song, the Avadhuta Gita, was a founding adi guru of the Aghor tradition according to Barrett (2008: p. 33):
Lord Dattatreya, an antinomian form of Shiva closely associated with the cremation ground, who appeared to Baba Keenaram atop Girnar Mountain in Gujarat. Considered to be the adi guru (ancient spiritual teacher) and founding deity of Aghor, Lord Dattatreya offered his own flesh to the young ascetic as prasād (a kind of blessing), conferring upon him the power of clairvoyance and establishing a guru-disciple relationship between them.[7]
Aghoris also hold sacred the Hindu deity Dattatreya as a predecessor to the Aghori Tantric tradition. Dattatreya was believed to be an incarnation of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva united in the same singular physical body. Dattatreya is revered in all schools of Tantra, which is the philosophy followed by the Aghora tradition, and he is often depicted in Hindu artwork and its holy scriptures of folk narratives, the Puranas, indulging in Aghori "left-hand" Tantric worship as his prime practice.
An aghori believes in getting into total darkness by all means, and then getting into light or self realizing. Though this is a different approach from other Hindu sects, they believe it to be effective. They are infamously known for their rituals that include such as shava samskara or shava sadhana (ritual worship incorporating the use of a corpse as the altar) to invoke the mother goddess in her form as Smashan Tara (Tara of the Cremation Grounds).
In Hindu iconography, Tara, like Kali, is one of the ten Mahavidyas (wisdom goddesses) and once invoked can bless the Aghori with supernatural powers. The most popular of the ten Mahavidyas who are worshiped by Aghoris are Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi, and Bhairavi. The male Hindu deities primarily worshiped by Aghoris for supernatural powers are manifestations of Shiva, including Mahākāla, Bhairava, Virabhadra, Avadhuti, and others.
Barrett (2008: p. 161) discusses the "charnel ground sādhanā" of the Aghora in both its left and right-handed proclivities and identifies it as principally cutting through attachments and aversion and foregrounding primordiality; a view uncultured, undomesticated:
The gurus and disciples of Aghor believe their state to be primordial and universal. They believe that all human beings are natural-born Aghori. Hari Baba has said on several occasions that human babies of all societies are without discrimination, that they will play as much in their own filth as with the toys around them. Children become progressively discriminating as they grow older and learn the culturally specific attachments and aversions of their parents. Children become increasingly aware of their mortality as they bump their heads and fall to the ground. They come to fear their mortality and then palliate this fear by finding ways to deny it altogether.[8]
In this sense, the Aghora sādhanā is a process of unlearning deeply internalized cultural models. When this sādhanā takes the form of charnel ground sādhanā, the Aghori faces death as a very young child, simultaneously meditating on the totality of life at its two extremes. This ideal example serves as a prototype for other Aghor practices, both left and right, in ritual and in daily life."[9]
Adherents[edit]
Though Aghoris are prevalent in cremation grounds across India, Nepal, and even sparsely across cremation grounds in South East Asia, the secrecy of this religious sect leaves no desire for practitioners to aspire for social recognition and notoriety. [1]
Spiritual headquarters[edit]
Hinglaj Mata is the Kuladevata (patron goddess) of the Aghori. The main Aghori pilgrimage centre is Kina Ram's hermitage or ashram in Ravindrapuri, Varanasi.[10] The full name of this place is Baba Keenaram Sthal, Krim-Kund. Here, Kina Ram is buried in a tomb or samadhi which is a centre of pilgrimage for Aghoris and Aghori devotees. Present head (Abbot), since 1978, of Baba Keenaram Sthal is Baba Siddharth Gautam Ram.
According to Devotees, Baba Siddharth Gautam Ram is reincarnation of Baba Keenaram himself. Apart from this, any cremation ground would be a holy place for an Aghori ascetic. The cremation grounds near the yoni pithas, 51 holy centers for worship of the Hindu Mother Goddess scattered across South Asia and the Himalayan terrain, are key locations preferred for performing sadhana by the Aghoris. They are also known to meditate and perform sadhana in haunted houses.
Medicine[edit]
Aghori practice healing through purification as a pillar of their ritual. Their patients believe the Aghoris are able to transfer pollution and health to and from patients as a form of "transformative healing", due to the believed superior state of body and mind of the Aghori.[11][verification needed]
In popular culture[edit]
This is an incomplete list of prominent Aghori recognition.
The Aghoris and their spiritual home Varanasi heavily influenced the 2016 British suspense thriller film Feast of Varanasi (2016 film) where a reclusive priest called NANA, who lives on the outskirts of Varanasi plays a significant role in film. The character was played by Indian Actor Ashwath Bhatt.
The Aghoris were referred to in the 2016 horror film The Other Side of the Door and were portrayed as a creepy tribe that seem to pop up multiple times to foreshadow otherwordly incidents.
The Aghoris were featured on the first episode of the new Ripley's Believe It Or Not television series, hosted by Dean Cain. The program highlighted the Aghori's rituals.
In Tad Williams' Otherland series, the main member of the resistance group the Circle, Nandi Paradivash, spent several years as an Aghori ascetic while preparing for the final confrontation with the Brotherhood.
In 2006 a Greek documentary by the name of "Shiva's Flesh" shows a Varanasi Aghori by name Black Boom Boom Baba and the existing faith around Aghoris in Varanasi.
The television program Wildboyz starring Steve-O and Chris Pontius featured a segment in which the duo learned about the Aghori culture firsthand. Chris and Steve-O were given the ritualistic alcohol from a skull and were covered in remains of a corpse in the form of ashes. One Aghori also demonstrated the drinking of urine. They hinted that more was filmed but censored when Steve-O remarked "Now imagine what we weren't allowed to show you."
Director Jeff Tremaine, responsible for the Wildboyz, Jackass, etc. felt the bit on the Wildboyz was so successful he wanted to re-shoot it for Jackass Number Two. This time they sent in Dave England, Chris Pontius, and Steve-O. When an Aghori started mutilating his own leg, and jumped at Dave England with the blood everyone decided it was far more than they had planned on, and wanted out. This 'bit' ended up in Jackass 2.5, as Johnny Knoxville foreshadows in the taping of the 'bit'.
On the Dirty Sanchez TV show, in a season called "Sanchez Get High", Welshmen Matthew Pritchard and Lee Dainton meet up with an Aghori ascetic, and shows Pritchard drinking alcohol from a skull.
In popular Finnish Television series Madventures protagonists Riku Rantala and Tuomas Milonoff encounter Aghoris at Varanasi and indulge rituals with them. This segment can be seen in Season 3 of the show.
In the Tamil film Naan Kadavul by Bala, Arya essays the role of an Aghori which won him 2 National awards.
In the Hindi film Raaz: The Mystery Continues by Mohit Suri, J. Brandon Hill plays the role of an American executive who becomes an Aghori.
In the block-buster Telugu film Arundhati, Sonu Sood, the antagonist is a converted Aghora.
A popular novel in Kannada Aghorigala naduve (Life with Agoris) was published in 1980. In that novel one of the popular sites for Aghoris in south India is near Chamundi Hills at Mysore, Karnataka state.
British death metal band The Rotted wrote the lyrics to the song Just Add Nauseam about the Aghori, and the cover of the album it features on Ad Nauseam features a six-armed, three-faced demonic figure loosely based on Indian artwork.
An Aghori was the main character in an episode of Adaalat, an Indian courtroom drama television series. The episode was called "Qatil Aghori", meaning "Murderer Aghori".
An Indian psy-trance DJ and Composer known as Aghori Tantric of Sonic Tantra Records plays dark psy tracks usually over 180BPM.
Swedish Black Metal band Dissection has a song "Maha Kali" which is a dark prayer to the Goddess Kali, the final stage of
The older districts of Montreal are rife with two and three story row houses. There are several different means of accessing the upper floors, this being one typical style.
From the Cape Breton Post, 02 April 2012:
MONTREAL (CP) — With their medley of twists, swirls and curves, Montreal’s unique outdoor stairways have weaved their wrought-iron railings into the city’s fabric.
For more than a century, the sinuous staircases have slithered to Montreal sidewalks from doorsteps above, like all the features of a Snakes and Ladders game rolled into one.
A recent poll dubbed this architectural anomaly, found in few places outside Montreal, as the symbol that best represents Canada’s second-largest city.
The exact origin of the residential staircases remains murky.
Theories explaining their rapid spread across the city include everything from public-hygiene concerns, to anti-adultery precautions imposed by once-powerful Roman Catholic clergy.
But despite their omnipresence, unknowing visitors to the city can easily miss these unusual works of craftsmanship.
The stairs, which spill from duplexes, triplexes and larger multiplexes in bedroom neighbourhoods, are usually found off the beaten tourist paths.
Those who know the stairways, however, see their S, Y and T shapes as distinct emblems of Montreal.
An online survey conducted by a local museum ranked them ahead of recognizable symbols including: the Olympic Stadium, the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, Old Montreal and the cross atop Mont Royal.
The staircases captured more than a third of the 3,000 votes cast for 37 Montreal symbols, says a spokeswoman for the Pointe-a-Calliere museum of archeology and history.
They edged the Olympic Stadium by about 20 votes, a victory that surprised museum staffers, Catherine Roberge said.
“We expected to see the Olympic Stadium a bit because it’s a Montreal icon,” said Roberge, who acknowledged the poll was geared for fun and not scientific accuracy.
“That people went with... something that is not necessarily a place or a site, but an image we see of Montreal, I think that’s what is interesting.”
The staircases, which lead up to small doorstep balconies, line streets in many boroughs, including the hip Plateau-Mont-Royal, the working-class Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and the monied Outremont. All these neighbourhoods are just outside the downtown core.
Their existence begs a question: How did outdoor stairways become popular in a city where harsh winters can transform such steep, winding steps into ice-coated safety hazards?
The exact explanation escapes many in the city, but experts believe it’s likely due to a combination of factors.
Dinu Bumbaru, a director at Heritage Montreal, said the first exterior staircases appeared in the first half of the 19th century, a period when British builders imported similar patterns from places like Newcastle and Edinburgh.
He said more stairways popped up in the late 1800s during the city’s population boom, which lured people to Montreal from rural areas.
Montreal’s thickening density meant newcomers had little choice but to move into multi-level buildings. Many new citizens preferred abodes with individual doorways, so they could still enjoy the feel of the single-family country homes they had left behind.
Bumbaru said the fast expansion of the city also stirred up sanitation concerns. They are believed to be a reason why Montreal introduced regulations in the late 1800s to set new buildings back from the road, which slightly reduced the interior floor space.
So builders saved space by installing the stairways outside, with artisan-crafted steps, cornices and balconies stretching over the gap between the facades and the sidewalks.
Many of these staircases have since been splashed with another layer of artisanship: colour explosions from bright paint jobs and flower pots.
“This is the architectural grapevine of Montreal — it grows from the ground up,” said Bumbaru, noting the array of designs, and in some cases colours, blend nicely in the cityscape.
“Sometimes harmony doesn’t mean similarity, sometimes they are very different one to the other, but they communicate.”
Other theories about their origins abound, including the cost savings of not having to heat an indoor stairway.
But there’s a far more titillating explanation that is frequently bandied about by Montrealers. A popular hypothesis states that the construction of open-air staircases was encouraged by the Catholic church in order to limit privacy.
After all, an outdoor staircase would make it more difficult, for example, for the milkman or an unemployed neighbour to make an illicit visit to a housewife during the day.
Or so the legend goes. One local expert suspects the theory might have some truth to it — but he has yet to find documented proof.
Jacques Lachapelle, an architecture professor at Universite de Montreal, said that, as with so many other components of pre-Quiet Revolution Quebec, the church might have had an influence over Montreal’s particular architecture.
The stairways, and adjoining balconies, have also snaked their way into literature, musical lyrics, plays and poems.
Lachapelle described them as semi-public spaces, where people hung around in full view of neighbours.
“It was like a theatre performance of the urban life that these balconies and these stairs allowed,” he said.
But the stairways, which spread across the city until the 1930s, weren’t popular with everyone.
Some criticisms compared them to unsightly ladders and others complained about their wintertime safety risks.
Bumbaru said the city reacted in the 1930s by modifying its regulations to ban the staircases from new buildings. He added that Montreal reversed the decision in the 1970s after people began to realize they had become icons of the city.
Today, Heritage Montreal fears the stairways are threatened by new construction, decay and a shortage of artisans to do the necessary repair work.
Bumbaru said some boroughs have passed bylaws to protect the staircases, but he questioned how many resources have been dedicated to inspections.
“Yes, of course,” he replies when asked if he’s worried about the future of the local landmarks.
“And regularly we get messages from our members or the general public expressing the same concern.”
Emil Nolde 1867-1956 Germany
Danse autour du veau d'or
Tanz um das Goldene Kalb
Dance around the Golden Calf 1910
Munich Pinakothek der Moderne
On n'est pas dans ce tableau tout à fait dans l'art bâclé, mais on en est très proche. La sincérité de l'artiste est évidente et son style est vigoureux.
We are not in this picture quite in the botched art, but we are very close to it. The artist's sincerity is obvious and his style is vigorous.
DE L'ESQUISSE ET DE L'ART DU FLOU A L'ART BÂCLÉ
" Mais Robert, vous faites des esquisses depuis si longtemps, ne pourriez vous terminer un tableau ?".
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) à Hubert Robert (1733-1808)
"But Robert, you've been doing sketches for so long, could not you finish a painting?"
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) to Hubert Robert (1733-1808)
L'Art Moderne, annoncé bien avant le début du 20è siècle par les pré-impressionnistes, les impressionnistes et les post-impressionnistes, a été un facteur tout à fait remarquable de renouvellement des formes, dans la peinture européenne.
L'Art a toujours été, une manière de rêver le monde réel. Mais les nouvelles techniques de l'Art Moderne, s'éloignent toutes, de manière très intentionnelle, volontariste, de la représentation exacte du réel.
Les peintres tendent à créer un art dans lequel l'interprétation du réel l'emporte sur sa reproduction.
L'artiste moderne ne reproduit plus guère le réel, il le rêve, ou l'invente. Ces tendances ont abouti à l'art non figuratif, autrement appelé l'art abstrait.
Ce renouvellement des formes en peinture a apporté de nouvelles possibilités, très intéressantes, et très belles, d'expression artistique.
Parmi les techniques développées au cours du 19è siècle l'Esquisse a été une des meilleures expressions de l'Art du Flou.
L'Art du Flou a été pratiqué de manière géniale par Léonard de Vinci. Le "Sfumato" est, dans le cadre d'une peinture très figurative et parfaitement finie, comme la Joconde, les Vierges au rocher, ou Saint Jean Baptiste, une ébauche d'art du flou.
Mais l'Esquisse a été surtout dans l'histoire de la peinture un projet, une étude préparatoire, qui permettait à l'artiste de s'assurer de la cohérence et de l'équilibre de son tableau fini. Dans ce cas, le plus souvent, le flou n'est qu'une approximation, un brouillon, le témoin d'un art incomplet qui demande à être achevé.
Mais de nombreux artistes, au cours des siècles passés, ont parfaitement compris que l'esquisse pouvait, parfois, exceptionnellement, être une oeuvre achevée.
C'est à dire une oeuvre dont une grande majorité de spectateurs, experts ou non, ressentaient impérieusement que RIEN ne devait lui être ajoutée. Ce n'est pas une définition mathématique, mais c'est la meilleure.
L'esquisse n'est une oeuvre achevée que lorsqu'elle est créatrice d'une atmosphère singulière, particulièrement suggestive, porteuse d'une poésie qui lui est propre, unique. Quand il apparaît de manière évidente que plus de précision dans le dessin fermerait les portes à l'imaginaire, au mystère, et détruirait un équilibre subtile entre le rêve et la réalité.
Le dessin trop précis peut en effet fermer les portes à l'imaginaire, alors que le flou qui caractérise l'esquisse peut les ouvrir. Les photographes le savent bien aussi : Le flou peut être simplement flou, mais il peut aussi être une invitation à ressentir un mystère et à participer à une énigme. Le spectateur est invité à meubler par son imagination le flou qui lui est proposé.
Mais c'est une alchimie dont seuls les grands artistes, peuvent, exceptionnellement, pénétrer le secret.
Le grand maître de cette technique, et celui qui, le plus précocement, l'a poussé le plus loin, a été sans doute William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix a été aussi, un peu après Turner, un des grands précurseurs de l'art de l'esquisse. Par exemple dans la "mort de Sadarnapale" mais aussi dans bien d'autres tableaux. Mais Delacroix est aussi un exemple des limites de cette technique. Toutes les techniques rencontrent, à un moment ou à un autre, leurs limites.
L'Art de l'esquisse est redoutablement difficile, car il ne suffit pas de dessiner schématiquement un sujet pour faire une belle oeuvre. De même qu'en photographie de nos jours, il ne suffit pas de dessiner et de peindre flou pour créer une oeuvre d'art.
L'Europe a découvert avec les romantiques (Delacroix, Turner Constable) et les impressionnistes l'art de l'esquisse et ses charmes particuliers, mais nous voyons de nos jours de l'esquisse à profusion, au point que l'on peut poser la question : Et si on revenait, aussi, à de la peinture finie, comme celle des artistes du MEAM de Barcelone ? Combien d'artistes depuis les impressionnistes on fait de l'esquisse par facilité ?! En fait pour être capable de peindre une esquisse vraiment artistique, il faut être capable de peindre un tableau bien dessiné, totalement achevé et peint, et d'y ajouter une beauté indéfinissable, en ne le finissant pas ! Ce n'est pas donné à tout le monde.
Le flou peut n'être qu'une esquisse ou une approximation, dont finalement la valeur marchande ne tient qu'à la signature d'un grand nom.
Il est vrai que l'esquisse peut dégager une certaine puissance expressive, avoir une puissance évocatrice, une poésie de l'inachevé. Une force expressive que le tableau, bien fini, bien dessiné et bien peint, achevé, peut effectivement perdre. Mais la magie poétique de l'art du flou ne peut pas être systématique.
Le flou, c'est aussi beaucoup une question de mode. Une habitude du regard. Une culture.
L'esthétique de notre époque est un peu trop focalisée sur l'esquisse.
On finit par ne plus voir que des esquisses dans les galeries de peintures modernes ou contemporaines.
En réalité les artistes ne sont pas les seuls responsables de cette situation. Au 19è siècle la société occidentale est entrée dans une culture qui fait de la réussite, matérielle, économique, et de l'Argent ses valeurs principales. Dès lors des esquisses, qui ne seraient pas sorties des brouillons personnels de l'artiste, pendant les siècles précédents, sont devenues de marchandises sources de profits. Ces marchandises, se trouvent même dans les musées. Picasso avait très bien compris ce mécanisme économique.
Bien sûr cette évolution est habillée de Grands Principes : Il n'est pas question d'Argent, mais de l'Artiste, de la Liberté de Création, du Progrès des Arts, d'une "sensibilité nouvelle", de "vivre avec son temps" etc...
Cette omniprésence de l'esquisse reflète non seulement des habitudes du regard mais des valeurs éthiques. L'Art du Flou est devenu aussi l'Art de faire, vite, de l'Argent. Nous vivons dans un monde un peu trop pressé !! Pour aller où ?
En partant de l'art du flou et de l'art suggestif, évocateur, allusif de l'esquisse, l'esprit de système, la soumission à la mode, ont conduit beaucoup d' artistes à l'art facile, à l'art bâclé.
FROM THE SKETCH AND THE ART OF BLUR TO BOTCHED ART
Modern Art, announced well before the beginning of the 20th century by the pré-impressionnists, impressionists and post-impressionists, was a factor quite remarkable renewal forms in European painting.
Art has always been a way to dream the real world. But the new techniques of modern art, are moving away intentionally, deliberately, of the exact representation of reality.
The painters of the Modern Art tend to create an art in which the interpretation of reality trumps its reproduction.
The modern artist no longer reproduces the real, he dreams it, or invents it. These trends have resulted in non-figurative art, also called abstract art.
This renewal forms in painting is total. He brought new possibilities of artistic expression.
Among the techniques developed during the 19th century, the sketch was one of the best expressions of the Art of Blur.
The Art of Blur has been practiced ingeniously by Leonardo da Vinci. The "Sfumato" is in the context of a very figurative and perfectly finished painting, like the Mona Lisa, the Virgin on the rock, or John the Baptist, a draft of art of blur..
But the sketch was especially in the history of painting a project, a preparatory study, which allowed the artist to ensure the coherence and balance of his finished painting. In this case, usually, the blur is only an approximation, a preform, a draft, witnessed an incomplete art which needs to be completed.
But many artists, over the centuries, have understood perfectly that the sketch was sometimes, exceptionally, be a finished work.
That is to say a work, of which a large majority of spectators, experts or not, imperiously felt that NOTHING was to be added to it. This is not a mathematical definition, but this is the best.
The sketch is a finished work, only when it is creative, of a singular atmosphere, particularly suggestive, carrying a singular poetry. When he appears, with evidence, that more precision in drawing, closes the doors to the imagination, to the mystery, and destroy a subtle balance between dream and reality.
The tto precise drawing can, in fact, close the doors to the imagination. While the blur, characteristic of the sketch, can open these doors. The photographers also know well: The blur can be simply fuzzy, but it can also be an invitation to feel a mystery and to participate in an enigma. The viewer is invited to furnish the blur proposed to him, through his imagination.
But it is an alchemy that only great artists have exceptionally found the secret.
The great master of this technique who first, the most precocally , pushed him, above all, was William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix was also a little after Turner, one of the major precursors of the art of the sketch. For example in the "death of Sadarnapale" but also in many other paintings. But Delacroix is also an example of the limitations of this technique. All techniques meet, at one time or another, their limits.
The Art of the sketch is terribly difficult, because it is not enough to draw schematically a subject to make a beautiful work. It is not enough to draw and paint blur, or photographing blur, to create a work of art.
Europe has discovered with the Romantics (Delacroix, Turner Constable) and the Impressionists the art of sketch and its particular charms, but today we see the sketch in profusion, to the point that we can ask the question: How about we go back to the art that finishes his paintings? Like the artists of the MEAM from Barcelona? How many artists since the Impressionists have sketched for ease ?! In fact, to be able to paint a really artistic sketch, one must be able to paint a well-designed, completely finished and painted picture, and add an indefinable beauty to it, by not finishing it! It's not given for everyone.
The blur can be only a sketch or an approximation, which ultimately market value is up to the signing of a big name.
It is true that the sketch can release a certain expressive power, have an evocative power, a poetry of unfinished. An expressive force that the painting, well finished, well designed and well painted, completed, can actually lose. But the poetic magic of Blur Art cannot be systematic.
It is also very much a question of fashion. A habit of the look. A culture.
The aesthetics of our time is a little too focused on the sketch.
We finally see only sketches in the galleries of modern and contemporary paintings.
In fact the artists are not the solely responsibles, for this situation. In the 19th century Western society has entered a culture that makes of the success material, economic, and of money, its main values. Therefore the sketches, which would not come out of personal drafts of the artist, in previous centuries, have become merchandises, and sources of profits. These goods are found even in museums. Picasso understood very well, this economic mechanism.
Of course this evolution is dressed in Great Principles: There is no question of Money, but of the Artist, of the Freedom of Creation,of the Progress of the Arts, of a "new sensibility", "to live with her time "etc
This omnipresence of the sketch reflects not only habits of gaze but ethical values. The Art of Blur has become also the Art of making money fast. We live in a world a little too hurry !! To go where ?
Starting from the art of blur and suggestive art, evocative, allusive of the sketch, the system spirit, the submission to fashion, led many artists to the sloppy art, to the botched art.
This distinguished looking lady seemed to be everywhere in the expo. I crossed paths with her numerous times.
Australian International Tattoo Expo.
Moore Park, Sydney, Australia (Saturday 12 March 2016)
One of three murals
The Hilton Chicago is a famous luxury hotel in Chicago, United States. The hotel is a Chicago landmark that overlooks Grant Park, Lake Michigan, and the Museum Campus. It is the third-largest hotel in Chicago by number of guest rooms; however, it has the largest total meeting and event space of any Chicago hotel.The hotel has housed every president of the United States since its opening in 1927.
The Stevens Hotel
The hotel, designed in the Beaux-Arts architecture style, originally opened in 1927 as the Stevens Hotel, across Balbo Street from the older Blackstone Hotel. At the time, the Stevens was the largest hotel in the world.[5][6] The hotel was developed by James W. Stevens, his son Ernest, and their family who ran the Illinois Life Insurance Company and owned the Hotel La Salle. The Stevens featured 3,000 guest rooms, cost approximately $30 million to construct (more than ten times the cost of Yankee Stadium only few years earlier), and boasted of a virtual "City Within a City". The Stevens housed its own bowling alley, barber shop, rooftop miniature golf course (the "High-Ho Club"), movie theater, ice cream shop, and drug store.The first registered guest was Vice President Charles G. Dawes
The Conrad Hilton
As World War II drew to a close, Conrad Hilton purchased the hotel from Healy in February 1945. The board of directors changed the name of the hotel, branding it after Conrad Hilton himself in November 1951. Conrad continued to use his Hollywood connections to entice film stars, politicians and royalty to the hotel
NRHP S Michigan Area
Shopping Stadsfeestzaal
The "Stadsfeestzaal" from Antwerp was in earlier years an event hall for different occasions. A bookfair or a Christmasfair, exhibitions, studentparties,... A big fire in 2000 destroyed the whole "Stadsfeestzaal".
It took 7 years to rebuild this spectacular location. It was reopened as a shopping mall in October 2007.
Joyeuse St. Valentin à tous!!!
Happy Valentine's Day!!!
Franz von Stuck 1863-1928 München
Étang à truites Trout pond 1890
Wien Leopold Museum
DE L'ESQUISSE ET DE L'ART DU FLOU A L'ART BÂCLÉ
" Mais Robert, vous faites des esquisses depuis si longtemps, ne pourriez vous terminer un tableau ?".
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) à Hubert Robert (1733-1808)
"But Robert, you've been doing sketches for so long, could not you finish a painting?"
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) to Hubert Robert (1733-1808)
L'Art Moderne, annoncé bien avant le début du 20è siècle par les pré-impressionnistes, les impressionnistes et les post-impressionnistes, a été un facteur tout à fait remarquable de renouvellement des formes, dans la peinture européenne.
L'Art a toujours été, une manière de rêver le monde réel. Mais les nouvelles techniques de l'Art Moderne, s'éloignent toutes, de manière très intentionnelle, volontariste, de la représentation exacte du réel.
Les peintres tendent à créer un art dans lequel l'interprétation du réel l'emporte sur sa reproduction.
L'artiste moderne ne reproduit plus guère le réel, il le rêve, ou l'invente. Ces tendances ont abouti à l'art non figuratif, autrement appelé l'art abstrait.
Ce renouvellement des formes en peinture a apporté de nouvelles possibilités, très intéressantes, et très belles, d'expression artistique.
Parmi les techniques développées au cours du 19è siècle l'Esquisse a été une des meilleures expressions de l'Art du Flou.
L'Art du Flou a été pratiqué de manière géniale par Léonard de Vinci. Le "Sfumato" est, dans le cadre d'une peinture très figurative et parfaitement finie, comme la Joconde, les Vierges au rocher, ou Saint Jean Baptiste, une ébauche d'art du flou.
Mais l'Esquisse a été surtout dans l'histoire de la peinture un projet, une étude préparatoire, qui permettait à l'artiste de s'assurer de la cohérence et de l'équilibre de son tableau fini. Dans ce cas, le plus souvent, le flou n'est qu'une approximation, un brouillon, le témoin d'un art incomplet qui demande à être achevé.
Mais de nombreux artistes, au cours des siècles passés, ont parfaitement compris que l'esquisse pouvait, parfois, exceptionnellement, être une oeuvre achevée.
C'est à dire une oeuvre dont une grande majorité de spectateurs, experts ou non, ressentaient impérieusement que RIEN ne devait lui être ajoutée. Ce n'est pas une définition mathématique, mais c'est la meilleure.
L'esquisse n'est une oeuvre achevée que lorsqu'elle est créatrice d'une atmosphère singulière, particulièrement suggestive, porteuse d'une poésie qui lui est propre, unique. Quand il apparaît de manière évidente que plus de précision dans le dessin fermerait les portes à l'imaginaire, au mystère, et détruirait un équilibre subtile entre le rêve et la réalité.
Le dessin trop précis peut en effet fermer les portes à l'imaginaire, alors que le flou qui caractérise l'esquisse peut les ouvrir. Les photographes le savent bien aussi : Le flou peut être simplement flou, mais il peut aussi être une invitation à ressentir un mystère et à participer à une énigme. Le spectateur est invité à meubler par son imagination le flou qui lui est proposé.
Mais c'est une alchimie dont seuls les grands artistes, peuvent, exceptionnellement, pénétrer le secret.
Le grand maître de cette technique, et celui qui, le plus précocement, l'a poussé le plus loin, a été sans doute William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix a été aussi, un peu après Turner, un des grands précurseurs de l'art de l'esquisse. Par exemple dans la "mort de Sadarnapale" mais aussi dans bien d'autres tableaux. Mais Delacroix est aussi un exemple des limites de cette technique. Toutes les techniques rencontrent, à un moment ou à un autre, leurs limites.
L'Art de l'esquisse est redoutablement difficile, car il ne suffit pas de dessiner schématiquement un sujet pour faire une belle oeuvre. De même qu'en photographie de nos jours, il ne suffit pas de dessiner et de peindre flou pour créer une oeuvre d'art.
L'Europe a découvert avec les romantiques (Delacroix, Turner Constable) et les impressionnistes l'art de l'esquisse et ses charmes particuliers, mais nous voyons de nos jours de l'esquisse à profusion, au point que l'on peut poser la question : Et si on revenait, aussi, à de la peinture finie, comme celle des artistes du MEAM de Barcelone ? Combien d'artistes depuis les impressionnistes on fait de l'esquisse par facilité ?! En fait pour être capable de peindre une esquisse vraiment artistique, il faut être capable de peindre un tableau bien dessiné, totalement achevé et peint, et d'y ajouter une beauté indéfinissable, en ne le finissant pas ! Ce n'est pas donné à tout le monde.
Le flou peut n'être qu'une esquisse ou une approximation, dont finalement la valeur marchande ne tient qu'à la signature d'un grand nom.
Il est vrai que l'esquisse peut dégager une certaine puissance expressive, avoir une puissance évocatrice, une poésie de l'inachevé. Une force expressive que le tableau, bien fini, bien dessiné et bien peint, achevé, peut effectivement perdre. Mais la magie poétique de l'art du flou ne peut pas être systématique.
Le flou, c'est aussi beaucoup une question de mode. Une habitude du regard. Une culture.
L'esthétique de notre époque est un peu trop focalisée sur l'esquisse.
On finit par ne plus voir que des esquisses dans les galeries de peintures modernes ou contemporaines.
En réalité les artistes ne sont pas les seuls responsables de cette situation. Au 19è siècle la société occidentale est entrée dans une culture qui fait de la réussite, matérielle, économique, et de l'Argent ses valeurs principales. Dès lors des esquisses, qui ne seraient pas sorties des brouillons personnels de l'artiste, pendant les siècles précédents, sont devenues de marchandises sources de profits. Ces marchandises, se trouvent même dans les musées. Picasso avait très bien compris ce mécanisme économique.
Bien sûr cette évolution est habillée de Grands Principes : Il n'est pas question d'Argent, mais de l'Artiste, de la Liberté de Création, du Progrès des Arts, d'une "sensibilité nouvelle", de "vivre avec son temps" etc...
Cette omniprésence de l'esquisse reflète non seulement des habitudes du regard mais des valeurs éthiques. L'Art du Flou est devenu aussi l'Art de faire, vite, de l'Argent. Nous vivons dans un monde un peu trop pressé !! Pour aller où ?
En partant de l'art du flou et de l'art suggestif, évocateur, allusif de l'esquisse, l'esprit de système, la soumission à la mode, ont conduit beaucoup d' artistes à l'art facile, à l'art bâclé.
FROM THE SKETCH AND THE ART OF BLUR TO BOTCHED ART
Modern Art, announced well before the beginning of the 20th century by the pré-impressionnists, impressionists and post-impressionists, was a factor quite remarkable renewal forms in European painting.
Art has always been a way to dream the real world. But the new techniques of modern art, are moving away intentionally, deliberately, of the exact representation of reality.
The painters of the Modern Art tend to create an art in which the interpretation of reality trumps its reproduction.
The modern artist no longer reproduces the real, he dreams it, or invents it. These trends have resulted in non-figurative art, also called abstract art.
This renewal forms in painting is total. He brought new possibilities of artistic expression.
Among the techniques developed during the 19th century, the sketch was one of the best expressions of the Art of Blur.
The Art of Blur has been practiced ingeniously by Leonardo da Vinci. The "Sfumato" is in the context of a very figurative and perfectly finished painting, like the Mona Lisa, the Virgin on the rock, or John the Baptist, a draft of art of blur..
But the sketch was especially in the history of painting a project, a preparatory study, which allowed the artist to ensure the coherence and balance of his finished painting. In this case, usually, the blur is only an approximation, a preform, a draft, witnessed an incomplete art which needs to be completed.
But many artists, over the centuries, have understood perfectly that the sketch was sometimes, exceptionally, be a finished work.
That is to say a work, of which a large majority of spectators, experts or not, imperiously felt that NOTHING was to be added to it. This is not a mathematical definition, but this is the best.
The sketch is a finished work, only when it is creative, of a singular atmosphere, particularly suggestive, carrying a singular poetry. When he appears, with evidence, that more precision in drawing, closes the doors to the imagination, to the mystery, and destroy a subtle balance between dream and reality.
The tto precise drawing can, in fact, close the doors to the imagination. While the blur, characteristic of the sketch, can open these doors. The photographers also know well: The blur can be simply fuzzy, but it can also be an invitation to feel a mystery and to participate in an enigma. The viewer is invited to furnish the blur proposed to him, through his imagination.
But it is an alchemy that only great artists have exceptionally found the secret.
The great master of this technique who first, the most precocally , pushed him, above all, was William Turner (1775-1851).
Delacroix was also a little after Turner, one of the major precursors of the art of the sketch. For example in the "death of Sadarnapale" but also in many other paintings. But Delacroix is also an example of the limitations of this technique. All techniques meet, at one time or another, their limits.
The Art of the sketch is terribly difficult, because it is not enough to draw schematically a subject to make a beautiful work. It is not enough to draw and paint blur, or photographing blur, to create a work of art.
Europe has discovered with the Romantics (Delacroix, Turner Constable) and the Impressionists the art of sketch and its particular charms, but today we see the sketch in profusion, to the point that we can ask the question: How about we go back to the art that finishes his paintings? Like the artists of the MEAM from Barcelona? How many artists since the Impressionists have sketched for ease ?! In fact, to be able to paint a really artistic sketch, one must be able to paint a well-designed, completely finished and painted picture, and add an indefinable beauty to it, by not finishing it! It's not given for everyone.
The blur can be only a sketch or an approximation, which ultimately market value is up to the signing of a big name.
It is true that the sketch can release a certain expressive power, have an evocative power, a poetry of unfinished. An expressive force that the painting, well finished, well designed and well painted, completed, can actually lose. But the poetic magic of Blur Art cannot be systematic.
It is also very much a question of fashion. A habit of the look. A culture.
The aesthetics of our time is a little too focused on the sketch.
We finally see only sketches in the galleries of modern and contemporary paintings.
In fact the artists are not the solely responsibles, for this situation. In the 19th century Western society has entered a culture that makes of the success material, economic, and of money, its main values. Therefore the sketches, which would not come out of personal drafts of the artist, in previous centuries, have become merchandises, and sources of profits. These goods are found even in museums. Picasso understood very well, this economic mechanism.
Of course this evolution is dressed in Great Principles: There is no question of Money, but of the Artist, of the Freedom of Creation,of the Progress of the Arts, of a "new sensibility", "to live with her time "etc
This omnipresence of the sketch reflects not only habits of gaze but ethical values. The Art of Blur has become also the Art of making money fast. We live in a world a little too hurry !! To go where ?
Starting from the art of blur and suggestive art, evocative, allusive of the sketch, the system spirit, the submission to fashion, led many artists to the sloppy art, to the botched art.