In July 1989 I arrived in Cairo, our Embassy then was in Garden City just off Midan Tahrir in the centre of the City, on Mohammad Fahmy Al-Sayed street. The British Embassy was just up our street with its Victorian Gates and the US Embassy was one street over, a gigantic complex. Garden City has the name implies was built in what was before the 1952 Revolution, the vast garden of a Royal Palace. I lived in the middle of the Nile river on the Island of Zamalek, a beautiful area just to the North of Garden City.
There was always occasions to discover the arts and culture in Egypt and many modern artists at the time were still working. One artist who had designed many large modern sculptures in Cairo and Alexandria lived in one of the out suburbs of the city. From the outside you could not tell what was behind the great wall but once inside it was a beautiful riotous garden of greenery, flowers and art work.
The artist Adam Henein, b.1929 had a gardener to look after his house garden. He nicknamed him Monsieur Malesh. What a funny name, he explained that if he ever asked his gardener about the garden or something needing attention, the reply would be ”Malesh”. The word malesh in Egyptian Arabic means no matter, not to worry, you hear it all the time. Of course when you say Malesh your facial expression must match the meaning of the word, in speaking Egyptian Arabic you quickly learn the hand gestures and the facial expression which conveys the meaning of what you are saying.
Adam Henein captured in stone sculpture his gardener and named it Monsieur Malesh. When I saw it in his studio I knew he had to come home with me. Monsieur Malesh is one of my remaining souvenir of Cairo and Egypt. He has been in our gardens and amongst plants ever since.
Many activities on the Island are organized in January to entertain people around a cultural or artistic activity. One of the craft Beer companies organized Art after Dark. So our friends DS and PS and C O’G organized a Art after Dark of our own and we went up the streets to our friends house to paint and have food and drinks. Will made a wonderful chicken meatloaf, it was quite good.
C O’G brought her artistic organizational skills and supplied the already primed canvas, we had tons of paint brushes, paint tubes etc and a glass of wine for inspiration.
Here are the results of this fun evening.
Homage à Gaugin on an Asian theme, Holly in a pot, domestic happiness
Homage à Marc Chagall or where is the fiddler on the roof.
Pot de fleur sur la nappe à carreau
Homage à Jack Bush or Brackley Point Beach at night.
There are about 10 other paintings but the artists took them away.
For those of you who read this blog and my not have noticed yet that in 6 weeks we are moving to Prince Edward Island, the birthplace of Canadian Confederation 1864, I have been asked what would be my choice of music to bring to a deserted Island. Now PEI is far from deserted, some 145,000 people live there year round and the Island is the size of the Netherlands.
So my choice in no specific order:
Mussorgsky Pictures at an exhibition, the arrangement of this piece by Maestro Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977). A wonderful interpretation by Stokowski who in my mind was a great maestro. This arrangement by Stokowski is very different from the usual traditional arrangement, it has more gusto and reminds me of how paintings at an exhibition can affect you with their colours and composition.
Songs of Charles Aznavour who is 91 years old, the great Armenian-French singer who to me is timeless in his interpretation of a style of French songs written as poems in music. His songs bring so many memories of a time in my life and the world the late 1950’s and 60’s.
Max Raabe and his Palast Orchester, so much of this fun, silly music of the Weimar Republic 1919-1933. Night Clubs Berlin, sophisticated and fun. Raabe has his own interpretation and style of singing typical of that era.
Jazz Music by Jacques Loussier now 81 years old, the great jazzman who has made so many wonderful arrangements of Classical like J.S.Bach set to jazz or other classical composers not to mention modern jazz. All pleasant to the ears.
Operetta Music by Franz Lehar in Hungarian and German, so light, so old world pre 1914, charming, romantic, elegant, old Budapest and old Vienna, think Stephan Zweig.
Guitar music by Andrés Segovia who interprets so beautifully music by Joaquin Rodrigo, by Torroba, Mompou, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Enrique Granados and so many others. Very relaxing music and so entertaining.
French Opera arias with Canadian Tenor Ben Heppner who had this powerful voice and beautiful diction.
Songs interpreted by Zarah Leander, 1907-1981, Swedish artist who made a career in Germany for many years including those of the Nazi Dictatorship 1933-45. She sings mostly Cabaret and Movie theme songs which were popular in Europe at the time.
Master of the Bel Canto Ryszard Karczykowski, Polish tenor, with a beautiful voice interpreting Italian Operas.
Italian Opera Arias mostly Puccini and Verdi by various great artists.
As you can see it is diverse and a mix of various styles.
I am sure that there is much more music I would enjoy and will enjoy on PEI.
I did say to friends that I could take up learning to play bagpipes since there is a school in Charlottetown. However someone said to me; The sign of a true gentleman is one who knows how to play the bagpipes but won’t.
For those of you who read this blog, you will have noticed that I write a lot about the City of Rome. It is the City that was for 1000 years the Capital of the known world. Much more so than Athens which was a City-State but never became the centre of a vast Empire, despite the many gifts Athens gave the world, Democracy, Theatre, Rhetoric, Philosophy, etc… which shaped the development of the Western World.
Rome like Sleeping Beauty falls into a 900 year sleep when Emperor Constantine for political and administrative reasons decided to move the Capital to Ravenna and then create a new Capital Constantinople (Istanbul) in 330 AD. Ushering the Middle-Age, a period of illiteracy and superstition, knowledge left the world only to be reborn in 1300 with the Italian Renaissance which brought back Humanist values and a re-birth of the old ideas of Greece and Rome.
Equestrian statue of Emperor Constantine (272 AD to 337 AD), in the entrance portico of the Cathedral of San John Lateran in Rome.
This brings us to Rome today, with all its infrastructure problems and the building of Line C of the Metropolitana, the subway system, 7 years late and 3 billion Euros over budget. Rome is a city of 3 million people in a small dense area, crammed with cultural and artistic treasures everywhere you look. Rome today was re-built largely at the time of the late Renaissance (1490-1560) and the age of the Baroque (1600-1720) re-modelling buildings of antiquity and late Middle-Age. The next big construction spurt came between 1860 and 1938. Rome being what it is suffers from procrastination, City Officials, the political class, Academics, Archeologists, Historians and everyone in between has an opinion as to what to do in terms of development but decisions are slow to come and never quite final. So since 1960 it has been far easier to develop the outlying areas some 20 Km from the centre than the centre itself. The only man who dared demolish on a grand scale the centre of the City to open it up to new development was Benito Mussolini who has dictator in 20 years in power did develop the infrastructure of the City without taking into account what others had to say. Everyone including the tourists benefitted from these great civic works. What you see today in the Forum area is his doing, around the Vatican, and the new neighbourhoods outside the Aurelian Walls and EUR including the metro system all his doing. But this was achieved only through the demolition of entire neighbourhoods and created employment for thousands of men at the time of the great depression.
Demolition of neighbourhoods to create Via dell’Impero known today as Via dei Fori Imperiali.
Today things are different, I subscribe to a blog Rome – The Imperial Fora: Archaeological News and Related Studies 2010-2015 which devotes all its entries to Rome and what is happening in the City, four to five times a day I will get long blog entries in Italian, sometimes in English written by people who are researchers, archeologists and historians, the host is Martin G. Conde, (I do not read it all it’s often too laboured) on a project delay or a scandal involving a construction site. https://rometheimperialfora19952010.wordpress.com
Presently Line C of the Metro is crawling towards its connection with San Giovanni Laterano on Line A. Last year 12 stations opened all at once from Pantano to Parco di Centocelle, this year the line is extended from Mirti to Lodi. The Station at Lodi is 1 Km from San Giovanni. Next year it will finally be connected to Line A of the Metro system. This new line has been in construction for 15 years. Now for the difficult part and the fight with historians, archeologists, tree lovers and Romans who have an opinion on the matter, well they all do.
The next phase will see Line C go towards the historical section of the Roman Forum and Piazza Venezia and then down Corso Vittorio Emanuelle towards the river Tiber and the Vatican on the other side. You could walk the distance in about 40 minutes. The metro tunnels are some 60 meters underground, one would think it’s deep enough to avoid any artifacts from Antiquity. Not so. In 2008, 2009 at Piazza Venezia which is the centre of Rome, archeologists preparing the ground for the arrival of the metro tunnel discovered the long forgotten or lost Academy of Emperor Hadrian and another building connected to the Forum of Emperor Trajan next to it. Both buildings where just a few meters below the street surface and all that is left are brick walls and the inlaid coloured marble floors. Well this discovery stopped all work on the metro line for 4 years. Then discussion papers were presented and long meetings and conferences held with a host of archeologists, historians and all kinds of experts on antiquity, what to do, some proposed to cancel the metro stop all together at Piazza Venezia. Others pointed out that Mussolini had a Metro station built at the Colosseum, yes but he was a dictator. Others also pointed out that the tunnels are so deep they cannot come in contact with the two buildings at Piazza Venezia. Yes but those buildings are important witness of the past and should not be disturbed though they are now reburied under the street. Does this make any sense? Is it practical to think thus? Cost overruns and delays should trump such concerns given that all the necessary research work has been done.
So here you have it the eternal question for the Eternal City, Is Rome a city for the living or is Rome a vast Museum to the glory of the Imperial past.
If you are wondering the tunnel work has resume on the section between San Giovanni and Colosseo and Piazza Venezia. Each day the blog publishes photos of the progress of the work along Via Fori Imperiali and along the ruins of the Temple of Venus and Rome to the great disapproval of the experts. But the discussions and gnashing of teeth goes on and on and on. In the end I predict that the metro line will be opened and work completed despite it all. Italians are very attached to the past but in the end things do get done.
Part of my volunteer job at the National Gallery of Canada also know in French as the Musée des beaux-arts du Canada in Ottawa is the activity called Docent’s Choice.
Each month my colleague docent (guide) and I will chose individually pieces of art we would like to study and present to the public. First thing is to ensure the piece of art is still on display, so I walk the galleries and look for something I would like to present in a mini-lectures 10 minutes. I then study it and the artist who made it. It is a long process for such a short presentation time but it is well worth it. The artists come alive, suddenly you learn about their frustrations and difficulties, their personal lives and their struggles. Many artists were geniuses who early in life displayed a lot of talent, it was either recognized by their family or not, they often travelled or went to schools known in French as Académie des arts where they had to study under teachers who taught a style of painting or sculpture but were not inclined to accept rebellion or new styles. Their life as artists was a job, a career, not something they did as a hobby.
Depending of the historical time they lived in, they were often looked down upon by their patrons and clients who were the wealthy aristocracy. Per example when the Sun King Louis XIV was told that Molière had died, a play write he loved and appreciated. His reaction was indifference, he said ”well he cannot be of any use to me anymore”.
Michealangelo who created so much works of art for the Popes and other Sovereigns was resented by them because he was a prima donna given to temper tantrums. He was kept at arms length. On the other hand Gian Lorenzo Bernini who decorated the inside of Saint Peter Basilica including the great bronze baldachin over the Papal Altar during a 10 year period and would go on to do more major works in Rome was a smooth affable man much liked by the Popes.
In the coming weeks I will be presenting works by Gustave Doré, Thomas Couture, Auguste Rodin, Paul Gaugin and Lucas Cranach the Elder.
Last Summer we had a retrospective on Gustave Doré who is mostly known as an Illustrator, there is the Doré Bible and the illustrations for the stories of Charles Perrault, the Fables by Lafontaine etc… But Doré who was a child prodigy wanted to be acknowledged as a painter, no matter how hard he tried the Critics in the Salon would have none of it and constantly minimized his works with vicious attacks.
In the last few months the NGC bought one of Doré’s painting Memories of Loch Lomond which was done while on a fishing trip to Scotland with the Equerry of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. A very romantic style painting, a style Frederick Lord Leighton would later take up with great success. But poor Doré no such luck. The Critics at the time were stuck in a mind frame, they had conservatives taste and would dictate to Society at large what was acceptable or what was good art.
We still have this frame of mind today amongst the popular press and a certain segment of Society in general. One painting at the NGC which has been controversial since it was bought is the famous Voice of Fire. To this day we still have people coming in going to see it on the second floor as a vindication that Abstract art or Contemporary art is bunk.
Voice of Fire is an acrylic on canvas abstract painting made by American painter Barnett Newman in 1967. It consists of three equally sized vertical stripes, with the outer two painted blue and the centre painted red.
The purchase of Voice of Fire by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa for its permanent collection in 1989 at a cost of $1.8 million caused a storm of controversy. Some residents mocked the purchase with striped T-shirts and ties that mimicked the painting. A book called Voices of Fire: Art Rage, Power, and the State, edited by Bruce Barber, Serge Guilbaut and John O’Brian, and published in 1996, discusses the issues around the purchase of the painting.
Commissioned for Expo 67, the International and Universal Exposition that took place in Montreal during Canada’s 1967 centennial, Voice of Fire was part of the US pavilion organized by art critic and historian Alan Solomon. The exhibition, American Painting Now featured the work of twenty-two artists installed in the US Pavilion a geodesic dome designed by engineer Buckminster Fuller. Explicitly oriented to Solomon’s directions, Voice of Fire’s 18 foot length was vertical to echo the size of the dome. This was the first time Newman worked on this scale in a vertical format. The paintings were displayed along other symbols of American progress, an Apollo space capsule and red-and-white striped Apollo parachutes, photographs of the moon and large-scale photographs of movie stars.
In the spring of 1987, Brydon Smith, then assistant director of the National Gallery of Canada contacted Newman’s widow Annalee to ask if she would consider lending it to the gallery for a temporary exhibition the following year to coincide with the completion of a new museum building.
In May 1988 Voice of Fire was installed in the newly constructed National Gallery of Canada with little media attention or controversy. It was displayed in a large, high-ceiling space, with only a few other works by American artists Milton Resnick, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Tony Smith. In this display of post-war US art, Voice of Fire “was given pride of place” as the centrepiece. In March 1990, the National Gallery announced its purchase of the painting for $1.8 million, which ignited a “firestorm” of media attention and controversy in Ottawa mostly around the question of if the work was worthy of being called art.
Other artists in their time like Auguste Rodin and Claude Monet had to fight to become established and to shut the Critics up. When Rodin produced his first sculpture The Age of Bronze, Critics attacked him saying that it was impossible for Rodin to have made that sculpture, it was, they said, nothing more than a plaster cast made from the body of the male model, Rodin was a fraud according to them. The model was a young Belgian Soldier and Rodin had made sketches prior to doing his sculpture, his problem with the Critics was based on the fact that he was departing from established academic school of sculpture. Rodin was able to show that it was a true sculpture and this launch his career, he is regarded today as the Father of Modern Sculpture.
The vanquished or the Age of Bronze
Monet had the same problem by presenting a new way of painting, Impressionism. It took him years to become established and accepted. Years of great difficulty, he could not sell his art work, no one would buy them, it was considered bad art. Lucky for Claude Monet he had friends like Edouard Manet who having studied with Thomas Couture was able to introduce Monet to the Salon and finally prominent French Politicians started to show interest in him and he was accepted.
It is to my mind a continuous battle for artists to push society out of its comfortable way of thinking. Think of the 1200 artists, many great names of the XXth century who with the rise of the Nazi Dictatorship in Germany found themselves on the list of Degenerate Artists whose works were confiscated or destroyed.
So in my presentations I try to introduce certain ideas and concepts, to let people think about what they are looking at and maybe gain a new appreciation for the artist and the work they are looking at. I honestly believe that art is a wonderful way for people to understand where they are now and what happened before. You can gain so much from looking at Art and trying to understand the world. I always say to visitors, look at the colours and the forms for abstract art, look for the emotions it evokes in you. For other art such as portraits, the eyes, the faces, the hands, it will help you understand if the painter is presenting a moral lesson or being a Society artist flattering his clients. In landscapes look at the sky, the composition and the play on light. It will help you understand the message of the artist.
Here is a video made by the BBC in 1992 with Sister Wendy Beckett. Who is an Art Historian. The Nun who knows about art. Sister Wendy said; If you do not know about God, art is the only thing that can set you free.
She is also a great friend of Chef Delia Smith. I love the BBC World Service and BBC 4 they have such great programming, like the one by our dear friend David Nice on Art Desk. You can find on You Tube more about program recorded for the BBC on Art by Sister Wendy. It is delightful.
This second video is very interesting in how she interprets the paintings she is showing you.
When you travel you get to see a lot of interesting architecture in various cities, from works of stone or steel or urban design. Some cities plan and study how they will built and develop, often taking specific steps to ensure uniformity and beauty. However most cities go about in a haphazard way with no thought to the future or looks. City Hall and Developers work hand in hand, the city wants tax revenues, developers profits, so a design, cookie cutter is presented to the City and is approved. Ottawa is notorious for this type of development by accident. It sometimes has to be dressed up with pseudo fancy words and notions which do not hold up to scrutiny but that really does not matter. Developers will say that this is what people want, they will mention green space and throw in the word ”vibrant” or ”cutting-edge” these words are very popular in Canadian Cities, though the final result is mediocre at best and will not age well but that does not matter since the developers and the City Officials have moved on. A good example of this is the planned Windmill project, a forest of condos for the very rich over a national historic site at the Chaudiere Falls in the centre of Ottawa. The promised green park will occupy about 5% of the area. It will be a mostly gated community and difficult to access.
I often like to stroll in a City I am visiting or lived in and admire simply the architecture, just walk the street and look at the buildings, do they have an history, do they belong to a period in architecture, who was the owner, why was it built. Same thing for streets what did they connect to. Monuments are also interesting, their history is not always known, too old and forgotten. A park is also a great place to explore, why was it built and what can you find in terms of elements urban planning. Many parks in European Cities or in Latin America were built to allow people to escape their small apartments and simply walk or sit.
In North America, with the wide expanses of land and homes with big gardens, City parks were not a priority or if we design one nowadays it has to be for kids, why would adults want to sit in a park.
Here are some great buildings, with character and architectural features telling a story.
Street view in Old Quebec City c.18th century
Berlin Mitte (central) architecture c.1900, buildings that survived the bombing of the Second World War and were restored.
So many beautiful streets and buildings in Berlin, restoration and reconstruction has been steady since 1991.
But other Cities like Rome also have architecture on a human scale.
Rome by the Forum of Trajan with its Pines
From this rocky hill where Pericles convinced the Athenians to built the Acropolis, by paying extra taxes, he told them it was their sacred duty as Citizens of a democratic State.
You do not have to go to a museum to see beautiful things just look around you.
Tiergarten, Berlin an immense garden, once a private forest for the King of Prussia in the heart of the Capital.
New statues of bathers boy and girls on the river Spree behind the Lutheran Cathedral, Berlin
With the New Year I am preparing monthly a series of mini-lectures (10 minutes) on art works I select in the National Gallery of Canada. With the works selected and as a Volunteer Docent, I present these works between 11am and 1pm during the week on days when I am on duty. I am not the only one doing this, there is a group of us volunteer who throughout the week will present works.
Now the public who listens to these presentations are usually over +50 some not many are -35 but that is rare. What I always wonder and what I would like to know is this; Can you tell me if you were my audience, what is it you would like to know about the artwork? Your personal knowledge about art or artists or art history is not necessary, audiences come to learn or simply to enjoy themselves.
A) Do you want to know about the artist and his life (a short synopsis)
B) Do you want to know about the person in the picture or the sculpture? The history, the myth or who this person was.
C) Do you want to know about the technique or school which produced this artwork?
D) none of the above. I just want to hear in general about art.
E) I would prefer if you just gave me hints or general info and let me discover the piece by myself.
created 1763.
Created 1632.
In January I am presenting 2 art works, one is A distant view of Rome from Monte Mario by Richard Wilson
Marble bust of Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) by Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Both works are from a different age, the Bust of Urban VIII is from the Baroque Period, the Age of Princes, whereas the landscape is in the Italianate style much in fashion then in England, some 130 years separate the two artworks.
If you wish to reply just tell me which would apply to you A,B,C,D or E with a comment. I thank you in advance for your reply.
Dedicated to the history of Charlottetown Harbour and yachting on Northumberland Strait on Canada's East Coast. Winner of the Heritage Award from the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation and a Heritage Preservation Award from the City of Charlottetown
