Saturday, December 16, 2017
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
Three Japanese waterfalls.
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| Landscape with Waterfall, Nakabayashi Chikutō |
Rocks and water, fundamental elements in Japanese gardens, are combined in waterfalls not only to create enchanting decorative effects, but also to inspire with the different shapes and sizes of the rocks, and the energy and purity of the running water that conveys the constant changes of the universe.
In the following three waterfalls, movement, reflection and the sound of water, or better its absence, are linked to ancient traditions.
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| Ryumon-no-taki |
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| Kinkaku-ji |
The waterfall to the north of the Golden Pavilion at Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto is called "dragon gate waterfall", Ryumon-no-taki. The central stone represents a carp that is swimming upstream.
According to the Chinese and Japanese mythology, if it succeeds in climbing the rapids and passing the Dragon Gate, the tenacious carp is transformed into a Dragon. The idea of the carp as symbol of success and social advancement, of courage and wisdom is reinforced by its scales seen as a warrior's armor.
Kinkaku-ji was created in 1397 by the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu.
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| Sengetsu-sen |
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Ginkaku-ji
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Autumn moon, the harvest moon, was celebrated with popular moon-viewing parties, offerings of sweet potatoes, cakes and miscanthus grass, poetry and dances.
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| Karetaki |
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| Kyū Shiba Rikyū Garden |
Photos:
painting:
Landscape with Waterfall, Nakabayashi Chikutō (Japanese, 1776–1853), 1841
Hanging scroll; ink on paper
https://www.metmuseum.org/
Further reading:
Japanese Gardens, Gunter Nitschke, Hohenzollernring, Germany: Taschen, 1991
Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shrane, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Words in pictures: Autumn by Mikhail Vasilievich Nesterov.
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| Autumn Landscape, Осенний пейзаж , 1906 |
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| Autumn birches, Осенние березы |
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| Autumn Landscape, Осенний пейзаж, 1934 |
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| In the Autumn Forest, В Осеннем лесу |
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| Autumn in the Village, Осень в деревне, 1942 |
Paintings by Mikhail Vasilievich Nesterov (1862 – 1942)
Autumn Landscape, Осенний пейзаж , 1906
Autumn Landscape, Осенний пейзаж, 1934
Autumn birches, Осенние березы
In the Autumn Forest, В Осеннем лесу
Autumn in the Village, Осень в деревне, 1942
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Blachernitisse contemporanee, Villa Pisani, Stra
Formal gardens are easily overlooked in autumn: the seducing idea of a perpetual spring turns into unnatural immobility when, elsewhere, every leaf reveals its more intimate shades. But, inside the geometric order of alleys guarded by ancient statues, the sun warms trees lined up behind trimmed evergreen hedges, and vibrant red and yellow leaves create unusual ribbons between the blue sky and the glossy lawn.
This is autumn at Villa Pisani at Stra near Padua, one of the most famous villas built along the Brenta River by the Venetian aristocracy between the sixteenth and eighteenth century.
In 1911, the Hydrographic Institute of the University of Padua built a long and very deep pool between the villa and the stables to conduct scientific experiments. Some statues and a trilobate basin were added later to soften the impact.
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| Blachernitissa outside St. Mark's Basilica |
Today, the elegant pool is a perfect background for the exhibition of contemporary art entitled: Blachernitisse contemporanee, Contemporary Blachernitisse. The Blachernitisse are marble bas-reliefs representing the Virgin in prayer, with her hands upraised. Of Byzantine origins, they were placed near sacred sources, as a promise of life, purification and salvation. They were, in fact, Virgin-fountains, as a hydraulic system allowed water to flow from the holes in their palms and from different parts of their body. Introduced in the thirteenth century, the seven Blachernitisse in Venice are almost forgotten among marbles and decorations of the St Mark's Basilica and two other churches. The holes in their hands are closed and they may have lost their spiritual and practical function, but not their inspiring and quiet beauty.
Seven artists were asked to interpret their history: the Mediterranean sea, Byzantium and Venice, culture and faith, travel, immigration and survival, fresh water and salt water, female body, life. They have worked with different materials, from hay and polycarbonate to wood and glass, creating essential shapes and colours to restore the communication between past and present.
In the autumnal light, the quiet surface of the pool at Villa Pisani does not reflect just the changing colours of the trees and the sky but 'images from the Mediterranean'.
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Lorella Salvagni
“Solcare il Mediterraneo” |
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Candida Ferrari
“Acqua di Bizanzio” |
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Heidi Bedenknecht
“Incontro tra Oriente e Occidente” |
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Maria Grazia Rosin
Carla Milesi
“Sources” |
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| Livio Seguso
“Contemplazione”
|
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Giulia Alberti
“I movimenti dell’acqua uniscono il cielo e la terra” |
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| Julia Artico “Mothers” |
Photos:TravelinaGarden, Villa Pisani, September 2017
Link:
‘Blachernitisse contemporanee’
Bisanzio – Venezia Immagini dal Mediterraneo
(Byzantium - Venice Images from the Mediterranean)
21 September 2017 – 26 November 2017 Villa Pisani – Stra
Curator: Simonetta Gorreri – ARTLIFE for the World
http://www.artlifefortheworld.it
Villa Pisani National Museum
Via Doge Pisani 7 - 30039 Stra (Venezia)
http://www.villapisani.beniculturali.it
Monday, October 23, 2017
"I have been talking to the vines," said the great Goethe...
'...The mind indeed becomes contracted by dwelling only on a limited number of objects, and those all in what may be called an artificial state; while, on the contrary, it is expanded, and noble feelings are elicited, by communion with nature.
"I have been talking to
the vines," said the great Goethe after paying a
visit to the country, "and you cannot think what
beautiful things they have said to me."
Seek
nature then, my dear Annie; leave your trim
flower-garden, and your tame poultry, and wander
in the woods, admiring the poetry of forest scenery,
and watching the habits of the various creatures which people what seems to the careless observer
only one vast solitude. ...' (p.354-55)
Book IV. Rural Walks. Letter XVII.
Jane Webb Loudon (1807-58), The Lady’s Country Companion: or, How to enjoy a country life rationally, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1845.
https://ia600202.us.archive.org/
Jane Webb Loudon (1807-58), The Lady’s Country Companion: or, How to enjoy a country life rationally, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1845.
https://ia600202.us.archive.org/
Photos: TravelinaGarden
Sunday, September 24, 2017
Three bonbonnières from the exhibition 'Vittorio Zecchin: Transparent Glass for Cappellin and Venini', Venice
Three bonbonnières from the current exhibition Vittorio Zecchin: Transparent Glass for Cappellin and Venini, held on the Island of San Giorgio in Venice.
The exhibition focuses on the work of Vittorio Zucchini (1878-1947) for the glassware company Cappellin and Venini, of which he was artistic director.
Essential, classical lines and colours feature his production of vases, bowls, plates, fruit stands and dinner services, and these three bonbonnières designed between 1921 and 1926.
Simple transparent glass boxes to be filled in with sweet confetti, in light-blue, green and dark amethyst colours with lids decorated with fresh and cheerful applied flowers and leaves in glass.
Photos:Link:
Vittorio Zecchin: Transparent Glass for Cappellin and Venini
Curated by Marino Barovier
11 September 2017 - 7 January 2018
Le Stanze del Vetro/ Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
http://lestanzedelvetro.org
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Clouds in Bikaner
Yesterday, I read this tweet by Robert Macfarlane:
@RobGMacfarlane "Forty names for clouds": remarkable photo-essay by @AratiKumarRao on language & land in the Thar Desert, NW India
I clicked on the link of the article and I was there.
I was again in India, in the Thar Desert, in the city of Bikaner, in the Junagarh Fort, in a room called Badal Mahal whose walls and ceiling are painted with rain-bearing clouds and lightings. A room, they said, decorated to show the children of the royal family what a storm was like. To prepare them, mist was sprayed from an opening in the wall and metal plates beaten, outside the room, to mimic the threatening sound of the thunder.
Because children did not know rain and clouds as they seldom come in the Thar Desert.
I wonder if even these swollen rain clouds painted on the walls have a name like those in the sky beyond the ramparts and the city.
Photos:
TravelinaGarden, Jaisalmer/Bikaner, India, August 2010
Further reading:
Arati Kumar-Rao, Forty Names Of Clouds,
http://peepli.org/stories/names-of-clouds/
Further reading:
Arati Kumar-Rao, Forty Names Of Clouds,
http://peepli.org/stories/names-of-clouds/
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
About 'Flag of truce' by Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Just a quick note about the painting: A Flag of truce, included in the exhibition "Lawrence Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity", held at the Leighton House Museum in London.
The oil painting is dated 1900, and was donated by the Dutch-born painter to the Artists' War Fund for a charitable exhibition organised to support the widows and the soldiers of the Boer War.
In the painting, a woman raises a vase full of white flowers. She has a crown of brown hair, rosy cheeks and the shade of a smile soften her concentrated expression. Her blue eyes are focused on the flowers, whose stems are pressed into a simple, tall glass vase.
There are two bunches of flowers: the unmistakable trumpets of the lilies and smaller, bowl-shaped starry flowers that, because of the connection of the painting with South Africa, remind me of the chincherinchees, Ornithogalum thyrsoides.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, these flowers became a profitable trade: they were collected in the damp areas along the Cape west coast and sent to England, where they flowered during the winter months, from Christmas until Easter. Their successful introduction is a female story. When, in 1880, the family of the Governor of the Cape, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, returned to London, the formidable Miss Hildagona Duckitt began to sent these flowers to his daughters, who loved them so much and made them famous in the British capital.
In the background of the painting, red and golden brush strokes reveal details of the painter's studio, his fascination for Oriental and Classical antiquity, a different story to explore in the other paintings of the exhibition.
Painting:The oil painting is dated 1900, and was donated by the Dutch-born painter to the Artists' War Fund for a charitable exhibition organised to support the widows and the soldiers of the Boer War.
In the painting, a woman raises a vase full of white flowers. She has a crown of brown hair, rosy cheeks and the shade of a smile soften her concentrated expression. Her blue eyes are focused on the flowers, whose stems are pressed into a simple, tall glass vase.
There are two bunches of flowers: the unmistakable trumpets of the lilies and smaller, bowl-shaped starry flowers that, because of the connection of the painting with South Africa, remind me of the chincherinchees, Ornithogalum thyrsoides.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, these flowers became a profitable trade: they were collected in the damp areas along the Cape west coast and sent to England, where they flowered during the winter months, from Christmas until Easter. Their successful introduction is a female story. When, in 1880, the family of the Governor of the Cape, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, returned to London, the formidable Miss Hildagona Duckitt began to sent these flowers to his daughters, who loved them so much and made them famous in the British capital.
In the background of the painting, red and golden brush strokes reveal details of the painter's studio, his fascination for Oriental and Classical antiquity, a different story to explore in the other paintings of the exhibition.
Flag of truce, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) oil on canvas, 1900https://www.wikiart.org/en/
Links:
Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity
Leighton House Museum
7 July - 29 October 2017
https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites
Further reading:
The Smallest Kingdom, Plants and Plant Collectors at the Cape of Good Hope
Mike and Liz Fraser, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2011
Quadrilles and Konfyt, The Life and Journal of Hildagonda Duckitt, Mary Theodora Kuttel, Cape Town, Maskew Miller Limited, 1954
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Real and imaginary: the Eighteenth century at Villa Pisani, Stra.
It is easy to imagine elegant ladies with voluminous eighteenth century dresses strolling in small brigades in the park at Villa Pisani in the small town of Stra, near Padua.
It is easy to imagine a sparkling and whimsical life taking place in the 114 rooms of the imposing Villa owned by the noble Pisani family, one of the richest and most powerful families in Venice.
Just go back to the early eighteenth century, when two brothers, Almoro' and Alvise Pisani, started works to transform their modest country residence along the Brenta River into a princely villa. There were many beautiful villas along the banks of the river, where Venetian nobles and rich merchants spent their summers, but Villa Pisani was the most impressive. Its model was Versailles, visited by Advise Pisani during his stay as Venetian ambassador at the court of King Louis XIV between 1699 and 1703, but adapted to the available space, delimited by a river bend, and, above all, to the family's financial resources. Alvise Pisani was appointed Doge of the Republic of Venice in 1735 and Villa Pisani was completed in 1756, but, by the end of the eighteenth century, the family was in serious financial troubles, worsened by the economical and political decline of the Serenissima.
Alvise had to sell the property to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807. In subsequent years, new owners succeeded following the turbulent political events, but its original formal design and meaning were not compromised.
Unlike Versailles, they were not connected to the Villa but to the Exedra, an extravagant pavilion with six concave faces crossed by six alleys that disappear in the park. The capricious building is crowned by a terrace, with a perfect round opening in the centre, and six couples of statues, dedicated to the arts, around the balustrade. The Exedra was the focus of the park, the center from which radiated the geometry of alleys and perspectives, and which celebrated not only the power and wealth of the Pisani but the local traditions of leisure, culture and productive activities strictly associated to the Venetian villas.
There were many other interesting things in the park: a coffee house, later surrounded by a ring of water, an intricate maze with central turret, where elegant ladies indulged in loving games, a precious collection of citrus fruits in huge pots, fruits trees and vineyards, statues of ancient gods along the alleys that, through windows and decorated portals in the boundary walls, expanded in the countryside.
The area between the Villa and the sumptuous horse stables, was decorated with a parterre de borderie. Illustrious guests could admire its intricate arabesques from the piano nobile of the Villa. The list of their names is as impressive as the accounts of their fabulous parties, more and more extravagant while decline inexorably approached.
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| "Figure nel parco", Emma Ciardi. Oil on canvas |
Alvise had to sell the property to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807. In subsequent years, new owners succeeded following the turbulent political events, but its original formal design and meaning were not compromised.Unlike Versailles, they were not connected to the Villa but to the Exedra, an extravagant pavilion with six concave faces crossed by six alleys that disappear in the park. The capricious building is crowned by a terrace, with a perfect round opening in the centre, and six couples of statues, dedicated to the arts, around the balustrade. The Exedra was the focus of the park, the center from which radiated the geometry of alleys and perspectives, and which celebrated not only the power and wealth of the Pisani but the local traditions of leisure, culture and productive activities strictly associated to the Venetian villas.
There were many other interesting things in the park: a coffee house, later surrounded by a ring of water, an intricate maze with central turret, where elegant ladies indulged in loving games, a precious collection of citrus fruits in huge pots, fruits trees and vineyards, statues of ancient gods along the alleys that, through windows and decorated portals in the boundary walls, expanded in the countryside.
The area between the Villa and the sumptuous horse stables, was decorated with a parterre de borderie. Illustrious guests could admire its intricate arabesques from the piano nobile of the Villa. The list of their names is as impressive as the accounts of their fabulous parties, more and more extravagant while decline inexorably approached.
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| "Dama in rosa" Emma Ciardi. Oil on canvas, 1909 |
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| "Dame in giardino" Emma Ciardi. Oil on canvas, 1916. |
Emma Ciardi did not know this world. Born in Venice in 1879 in a family of solid artistic traditions, she devoted her life to painting, travelling in Italy and abroad to find new inspiration and exhibit her works. She painted Venetian views and landscapes, full of people and movement and she visited the old villas fascinated by their formal gardens. Dark hedges, green architectures, fountains, huge staircases and statues were became the perfect background for delicious figurines of elegant ladies and mysterious men. There are no faces or stories, just shades, lights and bold colour brush strokes to recreate an imaginary life.
Photos:
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| "The golden sedan chair", Emma Ciardi. Oil on canvas, 1923 |
paintings by Emma Ciardi (1879-1933):
"Figure nel parco" (Figures in the park), Oil on canvas
https://www.fidesarte.it/
"Dama in rosa" (Lady in pink), Oil on canvas, 1909.
https://www.farsettiarte.it/
"Dame in giardino" (Ladies in the garden), Oil on canvas, 1916
https://www.the-saleroom.com/
"The golden sedan chair" Oil on canvas, 1923
http://www.pandolfini.it/
Links:
Villa Pisani, Stra, Padova
http://www.villapisani.beniculturali.it/
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