Thursday, December 26, 2019

The Mississauga Civic Centre: Photo Exhibit


Below are photographs of my recent exhibition at the Mississauga Central Library, from October 7 - October 31, 2019.

These photographs are close ups of the award winning Mississauga City Hall (the Civic Centre), which is across a large grass mall opposite the library. As well as my photographs, I showcase in a glass display case a review through images of the Civic Centre's inauguration in 1987, with Mayor Hazel McCallion.

I have presented in the display case the book cover of my accompanying booklet: The Mississauga Civic Centre and The Beginning of Mississauga.

The Canadiana Room in the Mississauga Central Library has a wealth of information on the origins of the city of Mississauga, and subsequent important events, including photographs, newspaper clippings, and city government documents. I have been frequenting this small research centre for two years now. Most of the information for this booklet comes from the Canadiana Room collections.

The staff at the Canadiana Room have asked for a copy of this booklet, to put in their collections.













Glass Display Case:

The typed script in the middle row, which has a portrait of Mayor Hazel McCallion, from 1987:
On behalf of members of council, it is my sincere pleasure to extend an invitation to you to attend the opening ceremony of our new Civic Centre to be held on July 15 - July 18, 1987.

This community organized event reflects our spirit and pride in our Civic Centre - and our city...

Come and join the celebration - let's share the excitement!

Sincerely,

Mayor Hazel McCallion




The bottom row of the display case also has the cover copy of my upcoming booklet:

The Mississauga Civic Centre and The Beginning of Mississauga


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Original Photos:










[Book cover photo]

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Friday, August 23, 2019

The Power of Beauty Conference: "Reclaiming Beauty: Winning Back Our Western Civilization”


[Presentation at The Power of Beauty Conference, Saturday, October 25, 2014]

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This is one of the first photographs of me after my family and I left Ethiopia.

Champs de Mars, Paris. Six months after we arrived in France.

This picture was taken about a year before the terrible, and still damaging, “Ethiopian Revolution” when Emperor Haile Selassie was unceremoniously removed from his throne, and soon after, a vicious communist regime ran the country for almost two decades.

I am ten in this photograph. My brothers and I were in English-language French schools, since we knew no French having received our primary education in English.

We lived close to the Bastille, in the city-center. Ironically, this is the center where the French Revolution started. But, we were oblivious to these political turmoils. We had turmoils of our own: How to make sense of this new and bewildering country.

We often went to Champs de Mars, the park where the Eiffel Tower is located. We went there to walk in the garden, to ride the various carts and ponies, to eat some ice cream. Pistachio was my favorite.

From this photo, it is clear that I was still in some kind of shock over my new environment. I wonder what it was that had caught my attention. A little girl, who could be a friend? People quarreling in that strange guttural language which I would soon learn to speak? A flower or plant I had never seen before? I don’t remember.

But this expression, and this curiosity, coupled with a deep desire to understand and make sense of my surroundings, has been my way of life ever since.

And Paris became my standard: For language, for food, for art, and for cities.

As I got used to the city, I became a devout museum-goer. Friends and families coming to visit us, would be told “Kidist can take you to the Louvre.”

I got to know Paris so well, and especially the older city-center, that I could get around through its small side-streets and alleyways. I would use the large boulevards for quick maneuvers to specific shops and locations and not for adventurous discoveries.

The juxtaposition of the small and intimate with the large that is so much part of Paris, became my standard for gauging a city. Wherever I went, I would look for the intimate and the grand. “This is how a city should be,” I thought.

It was in Paris that I got to love art, and Western art. Non-Western art was few and far between, and only occasionally would a visiting troupe of dancers or a theater ensemble come from an Asian or an African country. I don’t remember seeing any exhibition of African art. My informal education took took on Western orientation. And in my formal education, through my parents’ belief that it was better we learn English than French, and since my father’s UNESCO post paid for our primary and secondary education, my brothers and I were educated in British boarding schools, in the beautiful county of Kent.

By age eleven, I had acquired a Kodak Instamatic camera. Rather than take endless shots of family, pets (of which we had none anyway in our cramped Paris apartment, although I had two! dogs over my short life in Addis Abeba), or friends, I mostly used my films to take pictures of Paris: The Louvre, The Tuileries Gardens, the Seine, and here the Madeleine.


View from Eglise de la Madeleine [Photo By:KPA]

Here, even then, in my juvenile amateurship, I seemed to know something about perspective. The view is from the steps of the Eglise de la Madeleine, and looks all the way down to Place de la Concorde.

But Paris is a dictator. She tells us exactly what we should be looking at, and what we should be taking. Such a confident city! So sure of her beauty! That was when I began to form my ideas about beauty. I realized, or internalized the idea, that beauty takes time, that it has its standards, and that people love beauty. The same way that they love Paris.


Paris from our balcony [Photo By:KPA]

(I had a Parisian friend in Toronto, who just couldn’t bear to be apart from her beautiful city. She was too polite to say that she couldn't find Toronto beautiful, but she compared everything with Paris).

Fortunately, I was never like her. Firstly, because I had seen other beautiful places, however different they were from this enchanting Paris. My young school years were in England, in the lovely Kent valley, then in the port city of Dover, with the spectacular White Cliffs, and the volatile and at times dramatic English Channel.


Cliffs of Dover and the English Channel [Photo By:KPA]

I saw that there was beauty in other environments. That nature could be beautiful also, and leave us as enchanted as cities like Paris.

By about fifteen, while in Dover, I had graduated to a better camera, where I could focus, adjust the focal point and shutter speed. The cliffs deserved better! And I joined a photography group at school. My first “real” photograph, which I shot, processed and printed myself, is of the doorway of the school’s library. This was probably my first real attempt at making art.


Dover College Library [Photo By:KPA]

While taking this photograph, I deliberated whether the door should be closed or open, and decided on “half open.” The the next pressing issue was from which angle to take the shot: From the side, from the front, from afar, from nearby. I didn’t realize then that this was all about “composition.” Then finally once taken, the photograph had to be developed, and the decision became how I would print the picture. Should I darken the door? Should I crop the top? Is there enough contrast in the bricks?

It became clear to me that image making is a long process, with many points of deliberation. So the image being taken better be worth all that trouble!

While in England, although I never won an art prize, or even streamlined into the arts (I entered the sciences), I still participated in the school drama and music activities, all separate from the academics. I was in school choirs all through my high school years, and I won the music prize and received the complete Mozart’s piano sonatas, the musical notes, that is, not the records! I studied and performed at least one of them. And I received the poetry prize one year, and through the gift card I received, I chose a book on the impressionist painters which had so impressed me while I acquired my informal art education in Paris. I even won third place in a ballet competition, for which I received a tiny, but cherished book on the fundamentals of ballet.


Dover College School Choir

Then, following another of my parents’ idiosyncratic decisions, I went to America to continue my post-high school studies. I went first to a college in the mountains of the Susquehanna valley. There I was surrounded by nature, but different from the wild English waters. This time, it was undulating valleys and mountains, which became my focus on, and no longer the city (for now, at least). I became an expert bike rider, and would travel through the farms in the quiet country roads, surrounded by those mountains.

Bike ride through the Pennsylvania countryside


Susquehanna Valley [Photo By:KPA]


University of Connecticut, with the Nutritional Sciences building in the background

But then I discovered another city, New York City. I had various relatives who lived there, who like us had left Ethiopia during those years of turmoil, and I would stay with them during the holidays, since my parents still lived in France. Its size, and lack of the intimacies that Paris offered struck me at first.

But I loved the grand avenues, those infinite perspectives both horizontal and vertical, the friendly, energetic people, the largeness of everything, including the museums, which I proceeded to visit. This was another confident city, confident in its unique identity. Paris was never on the lips of New Yorkers. Who wants Paris when you’ve got New York?

And I saw the charms of this city. Despite its largeness, it is very much a city of neighborhoods, offering intimacy in its coffee houses, the side streets, uptown or downtown, east or west. There were neighborhoods, where each had its own character. Looking up at skyscrapers, I noticed the care and attention they got from their architects and designers, despite the chances that few people will look up to notice the details.






Riverside Drive [Photo By:KPA]

I began to understand that beauty, and beautiful objects, had to exist whether they were noticed or not, since they add to the overall dignity and aesthetics of their surroundings. People can feel beauty.


Northern Spirit: Toronto's Harbourfront [Photo By:KPA]

When I arrived in Toronto, during the vicious period of the Marxist government in Ethiopia, when my parents decided that we would never go back to Ethiopia, I abandoned my “formal” education and training of the sciences, and took on, finally, my formal study of the arts, first by enrolling in the film and photography program in Ryerson University, in Toronto, and then taking several years worth of drawing, painting classes at part-time, night courses, until I finally landed on textile design. But was well prepared for this, since all through my formal education of the sciences, I had been informally studying art: Taking courses in photography, dance, theater, and eventually painting and drawing.

But never graduated from my film/photography (BS) program, leaving when I had one year to go. Once again, I took the informal route for formal art studies. If I had enrolled in drawing or painting courses in a university, I would have left with little skill or capability, given the anti-art anti-technique mood that had started to permeate through colleges and universities for of "post-modern" rhetoric. Instead went to "night school." My night school teachers were adept artists, but the modern world of non-art had rejected them and their talents, leaving them to scrape along a in fiercely negative climate. One may say that this has always been the lot of artists, but I think that our era is especially vicious and destructive.

I thought I had finally landed in my field in textile design, and I thought I had nothing more to worry about, other than to learn this craft, and produce my creations.

But no. One of the biggest challenges I faced, and which I naively and bravely fought off, was people’s insistence, or assumptions, that I would do something “Ethiopian.” It was too long for me to explain that I had no real, physical or even emotional attachment to the country. But, that shouldn’t matter in Toronto, the epicenter of multiculturalism! Indian and Chinese students, who were born in Canada, spoke fluent, accent-less English, who were wearing the latest MTV costumes, were churning out their “Indian/Chinese/Vietnamese/etc.” heritage pieces, and gaining high praise.

Finally, as I had always done, I retreated into myself, left behind teachers' advice to “do something Ethiopian.” I set up a mini-studio in my mini-apartment and developed my grand ideas.

I produced works on the landmarks around me: the Allan Gardens Conservatory; the triangular shapes of the Toronto gables; the reeds alongside Lake Huron; small spring flowers; large lilac bushes. And finally, the national flower of Canada, the trillium.


Toronto Gables [Design By:KPA]


Allan Gardens Conservatory [Design By:KPA]


Lake Huron [Design By:KPA]


Lilac Bush [Design By:KPA]


Trillium and Queen Anne's Lace [Design By:KPA]

But it wasn’t just a matter of creating these pieces. I spent hours bent over design and drawing books to teach me how to reproduce these images through ink, pencil and paint, which the clever but clearly unskilled textile design teacher wasn’t able to do.

And it was while I was doing the Trillium piece that many things came together.

Art needs to be local. We need to “see” what we’re representing. That art needs to have an aesthetic dimension - it has to be beautiful. And that there is a spiritual dimension to art, not always, not aggressively, but still subtly and present.

I realized that modern artists were discarding these elements, and creating works that people couldn’t identify with. That their purpose was not to create works with beauty, rooted in reality and with a transcendent element, but to recreate their own godless transcendence, their own reality, and they were discarding beauty as something frivolous which distracted from their own serious messages, usually of doom and gloom. The less talented of them went on with post-modernism, which was a distorted assemblage of objects to produce their “ironic” commentary on the world around them.

And multicultural artists were throwing away the reality that surrounds us, in Canada, and were bring in their own reality for their far-away lands, imbued with a strange and alien aesthetics.

When I put these two together, multiculturalism and modernism/post-modernism, I realized what was at stake here was the art I know, which I have studied and participated in from a very young age ever since my fateful journey to that most beautiful city. It was Western art that was at stake, made vulnerable by these aggressive demands. “Hey, hey, Ho ho, Western Culture’s Gotta go.”

I didn't clearly articulate this then, but soon after, I started a blog called Camera Lucida working on the words “Chamber of Light” where (rather immodestly!) I thought I could shed some light on the world around me. And a few years later, after many postings, altercations with readers, and a maturity of my thoughts, I started my blog (about a year and a half ago) Reclaiming Beauty.

I started the blog on January 1, 2013 (a new blog for a new year), and on February 5, 2013 I wrote at Camera Lucida:
I have started a new project. It is bigger than a website.

I hope to reclaim beauty from the avant-garde, nihilistic environment that surrounds us. Rather than fight it, I thought I would start a site that would be study of beauty, a critique our our current beautiless, or anti-beauty, environment, as well as a place to give and receive practical guides and accounts on how to acquire and reclaim the beautiful. I hope to have a list of regular contributors to the site, who will eventually become a part of a bigger movement.
And on September 29, 2013, I posted at my Reclaiming Beauty blog my proposal for a book, but with a bigger vision of starting a Beauty Movement:
My book Reclaiming Beauty aims to document the contribution that beauty has made toward our Western civilization, from the earliest records of God’s love of beauty, to a young child who sees beauty almost as soon as he is born. Our civilization thrived, prospered and matured because of beauty. Our great artists, architects, writers, philosophers and scientists have always referred to beauty with awe and wonder. It is in the modern era that beauty began to be undermined and eventually neglected by artists and other intellectual leaders.

Reclaiming Beauty will show that the abandonment of beauty leads to the death of culture, and eventually society. Modern man’s neglect of beauty has initiated the cult of ugliness, leaving us with bleakness and nihilism.

But, people want beauty. And they will surround themselves with some kind of aesthetic quality. Still, beauty is the business of the knowledgeable. The man on the street may be able to recognize beauty, but he would not be able to explain why it is beautiful. That is the task of the experts.

With Reclaiming Beauty, I aim to present my ideas, observations and analyses on beauty, and to provide a guide for recommendations on how to remove oneself from the nefarious influences of our beauty-rejecting world. This way, we can build a parallel world which will eventually form a growing movement of beauty-reclaiming individuals, who can start to shape a world where beauty is not minimized and rejected.

Reclaiming Beauty will be the first book on beauty to make a comprehensive, historical, cultural and societal review of beauty. It will describe the moment (or moments) when beauty was not only undermined, but eventually abandoned, as a paradigm of civilized life. Rather than attributing beauty to a Godly goodness, philosophers, writers and artists began to view beauty as their enemy, and as their nemesis. They saw God as a judge who would not let them do as they wished. In order to pursue the image of beauty they desired, they began to look elsewhere. They began to abandon God, and by abandoning God, they began to change their world, filling it with horror and ugliness.

I maintain that this was not their objective, which was merely to look for a different perspective on aesthetics. This realization may have come too late, and too weakly, from the cultural leaders, but ordinary people, who are most affected by these changes in worldview, are already incurring changes. But they cannot make useful inferences, and hence necessary changes. They still need an elite to help them materialize their desires and observations.

A new elite that is pro-beauty needs to take the cultural reins, to guide and return our world back to its awe and wonder of beauty. To this end, Reclaiming Beauty will add an element which no other book on beauty has attempted: guidelines on how to renounce this world of anti-beauty, and how to progressively bring beauty back into our culture.

The book will be a manifesto for concrete references to these basic ideas. Along with the book, a website will be developed that will be an interactive continuation of the book. On the website, members can post their original articles, shorter commentaries, articles and excerpts from other authors, and encourage feedback and comments from other members. At some point, this group can develop into a more formal society, which can meet in a physical locations a few times a year, building beauty societies, whose purpose would be to develop ideas and strategies for bringing beauty back into our culture.

Part of the book will revised versions of what I've been developing over a number of years in my blog posts at Camera Lucida, Reclaiming Beauty and Our Changing Landscape, and from my full-length articles from Kidist P. Asrat Articles.

All images that head the chapters will be from my own collection of photographs and designs. Some of these images can be found at Kidist P. Asrat Photographs and Well-Patterned. Others I will choose from my collection of photographs, mostly in negatives and prints. Others I will take as the project progresses.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge some people who have helped me define, and refine, my ideas:

Larry Auster
Writer at the blog:
-View from the Right
Author of:
-The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism
-Huddled Cliches: Exposing the Fraudulent Arguments That Have Opened America’s Borders to the World
-Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation

James Kalb
Writer at the blog:
-Turnabout: Thoughts in and out of Season
Author of:
-The Tyranny of Liberalism
-Against Inclusiveness

Laura Wood
Writer at the blog:
-The Thinking Housewife

Judith Hakimian
Writer at the blog:
-GalliaWatch

My brother Menelik Asrat
Who funded a large part of my trip here to Steubenville.
And someone that I admire, for his brave resumption of the flute (which he played as a teenager). And despite his long hours as a pharmacist, finds the time to practice and play music by Bach, Eric Satie and many others

And for the organizers here at Steubenville, who made my trip possible.


Cloisters, New York [Photo By: KPA]

Thursday, August 22, 2019

Well-Patterned Exhibit

The following exhibition, titled Well-Patterned, is a selection from my textile and pattern designs, on view at the Mississauga Central Library (Ontario Canada), from May 7 - May 31, 2019.

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Bio of Kidist Paulos Asrat in display case

Kidist Paulos Asrat
Artist, Designer and Writer

Kidist Paulos Asrat has an extensive background in the arts. She has studied film and photography at Ryerson University, and textile design at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Her film and photography have been exhibited in Canada and Europe. She has designed unique material for various organizations. Her contributions to the arts community include Board of Director for Trinity Square Video, a non-profit video art organization in Toronto, and as a member and writer for The Botanical Artists of Canada.

Kidist has participated for two consecutive years, in 2016 and 2017, in the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals annual conference in New York as a workshop presenter. These workshops addressed culture and the empowerment of Ethiopian girls. She assisted in developing the concept and material for the workshop programs.

She regularly engages in the intellectual discourse on beauty, and was invited to present a paper at the Power of Beauty Conference at the Franciscan University in Ohio in 2014, to discuss her upcoming book ”Reclaiming Beauty: Winning Back Our Western Civilization.”
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Introductory note in display case

ETHIOPIAN RELIGIOUS ART:
Its Significance and Forms of Expression
Warszawskie Studia Teologiczne XII/2/1999, 47-4
Stanisław Chojnacki
University of Sudbury, Ontario

The advent of Christianity to Ethiopia in the 4th century marks the beginning of a tradition of religious painting that continues to this day. Until recently, however, the art of Christian Ethiopia has remained relatively unknown outside its borders. This has been due in part to the geographical position of the Ethiopian nation and its people who for centuries have lived on their high East African plateau removed from the currents of world history. Yet, in course of the past centuries Ethiopian artists produced a prodigious body of manuscript miniatures, church murals and icons. These works hold a unique position in the history of art.
[Read the rest here]
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Exhibition Images





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Top Shelf - ETHIOPIA SERIES:

Item description in display case
- Orthodox Christian neck crosses
- Small woven basket with lid
- Shawl border embroidery

Photographs by Kidist Paulos Asrat
- Ethiopian woman in traditional shawl and dress pouring coffee
- Orthodox Christian Church in rural region north of the capital city Addis Abeba
- Priest standing before church



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Middle Shelf - TORONTO GABLE SERIES:

Item description in display case
- Tablecloth
- Wall hanging
- Banner
- Greeting cards
- Toy Mobile



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Bottom Shelf - TRILLIUM QUEEN ANNE'S LACE SERIES:

- Wallpaper
- Lampshade
- Book cover
- Clock
- Cushion
- Box

Vermeer's Discerning Light


It is probable that Vermeer traced his images projected from the camera obscura - that precursor to the photographic machine. We feel that his paintings are attentive to every detail in the frame, as though he had the luxury of viewing and contemplating these domestic scenes day-in and day-out. We do know that Vermeer took many liberties with his compositions, and not all details are articulately present, and some might even have been invented. Nonetheless, what lures us into his paintings' sense of completeness is light. His paintings invite us into the glowing chambers of the camera obsucra by gently receding the heavy curtains that cover the entrance into that magical box.

Vermeer floods his paintings with light. It is not the harsh glare of the spotlight, or the diluted glow of foggy ambience, but the honest light that touches upon everything and reveals all of the subjects and objects in equal clarity. It is almost as thought Vermeer were rebelling against the drama of his countryman Rembrandt, whose light was inseparable from the composition, and who was still in the thralls of the biased chiaroscuros. Vermeer's light is separate from his compositions. It is the illuminant or the revelation to his paintings. What influences us to what is worth seeing isn't just the arrangements of the objects, but the light which puts things into view. Vermeer separated (or freed) light from the painting and made it the master instead.

Vermeer's light-infused paintings always take us aback. We as moderns are used to the illuminated, light-dependent photographs, and their infinite points of detail. It is always a surprise that a painting seems to do the same. Perhaps it is his view-finder the camera obscura, which like our modern-day camera cannot produce anything in the dark, that influenced Vermeer to use light in such a way . What he saw through the camera obscura, and probably tried to copy, was its uncanny ability to make images and colors exceptionally vivid and saturated, as thought they are bathed in light. Like the figures we see on a piece of photographic slide or the incredibly fluid and concentrated images that are on film celluloid, it is the light that makes them work. This democratic lighting system, imbuing everything within its reach, is no longer a tool, as in the chiaroscuro tradition of composing a picture, but rather is an aesthetic device – the aesthetic device - of Vermeer’s painting. And I strongly believe that when Vermeer saw everything so clearly through his camera obscura, he fell into the spell of the all-illuminated picture. His was a clear, dispassionate view that had few of the dramatic shadows and glaring spotlights so popular of his contemporaries and predecessors .

But here lies the genius of Vermeer's art. We can see everything of say the beautiful Lacemaker down to the last workings of her industrious fingers. But do we really know who she is? Light may externally illuminate her, but the secret makings of her inner world remain a dark mystery to us. Vermeer's dispersed light exposes this subtle contradiction, and make his paintings all the more poignant. We may see all the details, yet that still doesn't make us any closer to the subjects (or objects). Rembrandt's emotional chiaroscuros (even, or especially, the darkened corners) reveal more of the characters of his men and women than Vermeer's photographic light ever does. In the ambiguities of Vermeer’s art it is all exposure but little revelation. Upon freeing light from composition (and emotion), Vermeer has turned light into a warden of his subjects. He has frozen them in the enclosure of his perfect light. Yet Vermeer's strategy is a blessing in disguise. Since his unfaltering, unexcitable light cannot make his subjects tell us who they are and how they feel, his subjects become our symbols instead. We begin to idealize them. We put our own generalized labels upon them with words like “industrious”, “heroic”, or even merely “faithful”. They become our emblems of an unswerving humanity.

In our modern world, with all these light-dependent image recording devices available at any corner store, subway station, mobile telephone and even the now good old-fashioned tourist's camera, we are in constant reach with reproduced images. At one time image production was sacred or at least time-consuming. Now the recorded image (the photographic image and now the digital image) occurs at the click of a finger and of course with the cooperation of the surrounding light. Yet we know as little or perhaps even less about ourselves as we do about Vermeer's personalities. Our quick photographic light may illuminate, but it doesn't make us any wiser? And photography, for all its modern prowess as revelation and information, still refuses to give us what the subject doesn't want us to know.

Eminent painters like Vermeer understood this and used this with such patient finesse. Some of his paintings took years to finish. He labored hard to make his emotionally distant figures into iconic representations for the human race. Unlike Vermeer, we haven’t really learned the art of patient discrimination. Everything still has to happen at the quick click of the finger. Vermeer may have been generous with his light, but he was very discerning about who received it. The Milkmaid, the Astronomer, the Lacemaker, all have somehow earned his prejudice, and with that given us an enlightened world.

Reference:

Steadman, Philip. Vermeer's camera : uncovering the truth behind the masterpieces. Oxford University Press, 2001

Turner's Contrasts


Turner never resorts to melodrama. Yet, with the pastel contrasts of a “Sun Setting over Lake” through the turmoil of "The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons", he gives us all the range of colors and emotions possible to set up real drama.

Most art critics of his time, expect Ruskin, called Turner's painting the works of the Devil. Not for their darkness and sobriety, but for their sensuousness in color, light and texture, and for their apparent elusiveness and lack of finish. In their view, a painting had to be a completed drawing with sombre, even moralistic themes. But Turner's paintings are much more elemental than what his critics could imagine. His celestial and ephemeral inclinations (the colourful sensuousness that were undermined) are not biased towards the Devil's bright lures, but are contrasts to the heavy and important subjects of Good verses Evil, Light versus Dark. In fact these were the oppositions which he studied throughout his paintings.

Turner’s gentle pastel colored canvasses do not shy away from these contrasts. In "Sun Setting over Lake", the blue of the sky (intermingled with the white and pale mauve clouds) provides a close to perfect diagonal mirror image to its opposite orangish-yellows. The center of each, with the tiny dot of a sun and its halo on one side and the small swirl of clouds on the other, equidistant from each other, once again suggesting a relationship of opposites. The pale blue seems to be softly pulling us farther and deeper into some unknown realm, whereas the bright firey yellows are inviting us to plunge in. Could it be a commentary on Heaven and Hell?

His contrasts are bolder in "The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons". The blue is deeper and darker, and the yellow contrast is much clearer. His white (the bridge in this case) is now contrasted with darker elements on the opposite sides of the canvass - both in the sky and in the crowd. Once again, there is a dividing diagonal, dramatic sweep across the painting. And we are left with the eerily white architecture. It is not clear whether the fury of the flames will destroy it, or some saving Grace in the form of rain or wind from the skies might save it still.

“The Dogano, San Giorgio, Citella Steps of the Europa” from his Venice paintings is like a silk embroidery of buildings glistening in a hazy, light pink sky. But the contrasts, true to their polar opposite whites, have to be dark; and they are. The deep brown patches of barges and people seem to ground us back to the earthly ports (or at least onto the secure boats) away from the ethereal castles and silvery water-skyscape. There is even a tiny dark dog, giving us the details of the mundane. These dark areas remind us how beautiful and unreachable are these airy wonderlands. But Turner has been there, or at least has felt their presence, so there is hope yet for the rest of us.

A tiny statue of Napoleon is surrounded by a pool of swirling reds and yellows in “War: The Exile and the Rock Limpet” (Red, yellow, blue, light and dark being the most important hues and values of Turner's work). The bluish mauve in the sky provides that hopeful glint beyond the carnage of the red, but it is also a technical contrast to the abundant golden yellows. Napoleon’s greatness off-centered and giving space to the even greater sun is further diminished by the shadow of a single soldier. Napoleon is also closer to the pool of yellow, and soon to be engulfed into this burning gold, as is already his reflection. The heavens, in contrasting blues and mauves are beyond his reach, radiating farther upwards as he sinks slowly below. Napoleon has entered a hostile terrain, where he has only himself and his loyal shadow to contend with.

In "Shade and Darkness and "Light and Color", Turner painted two panels of what seem to be a before and after sequence. Rather than use color as the contrasting elements, his focus this time is strongly on dark and light. It is also toward the end of Turner's life (he is to die in 1851 and he was already an elderly 68 at this point) and he must be concerned with such opposing forces. It has been suggested that his spiral paintings resemble ceiling frescoes, adding a further touch into the mysteries of the heavens where the viewer is forced to look up. But besides this technical and historical prop, the swirls add to the emotional and dramatic urgencies of these paintings.

In "Light and Color", the darkened populace is swooped around and off the edges of the painting, out of the canvass. The light also seems to be a centrifugal force, gaining strength from the right, and pushing the darkness and all its elements off the canvass. We would expect the scene to eventually project nothing but pure light.

Moses sits in the middle - or close to the middle of the bright halo in "Light and Color". Yet what is at the dead center is the snake. What are we to make of this except to wonder at Turner's insecurities about his final destination. Further, Turner's main character in this painting comes from the Book of Exodus where: Exodus 20:21-22 The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was. Then the LORD said to Moses, "Tell the Israelites this: 'You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven'.

It seems that Turner is placing Moses in the earthly, ungodly, bright turmoil, which is also home to the serpent, exactly as his contemporary critics must have viewed the world. It is the dark sombre core where God is housed. With all these ambiguities, one hopes that Turner finally reconciled his Light and Dark/Good and Evil meditations which seemed to have taken on an urgency, and perhaps an uncertainty, toward the end of his life.

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Article inspired by the Exhibition: Turner, Whistler, Monet: Impressionist Visions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada.

Reference:
Colour in Turner : poetry and truth. By John Gage. London : Studio Vista, 1969

Strand of Connection


Paul Strand’s basic idea never changed throughout his photographic career. Starting with his early, slightly out-of-focus 1916 prints to his much later views in "Time in New England" as well as his huge collection of portraits, his underlying theme has always been to connect.

Photography is a visual medium. But modern artists have a tradition of cross-referencing the sensations – known as synaesthesia. The most famous being Scriabin's Clavier a Lumières. He worked out a system of 'playing' colored lights with the keys of the piano where certain notes would cause certian colored lights to project, thus merging visual and aural experiences. Many other examples abound of artists describing colors that elicit tastes, and sounds that conjure up smells.

The sensation of touch is the least openly discussed of the modern artists' exploration of synaesthesia. Perhaps it is the most sublime or subconscious. And the most personal. It is easier to talk about more distant ideas like the color of sounds or the taste of shapes. To incorporate touch into one's art, both as a physical act and an emotional condition, suggests a vulnerability and a lack or human associations. It no longer becomes an idea, but a necessity.

I believe this is where modern art makes one of its most hidden contributions. When perspective and depth, refined in the Renaissance painters (but still present in some form before this geometric discovery), was slowly removed from the artist's technique, the canvass or the surface started to take on an important role. The surface, which started to become so important with the early modernists, continues to be so even today.

Many modern artists talk about the material or the medium (the paint, the canvass, the paper) of their art as having equal importance as the colors, forms, concepts and any other dimensions that helped them complete the piece. Modern painters often evoke the surface of their canvass by adding layers of paint to distort the smoothness of the painting and to encourage us to touch these hanging pieces of sculptured paint. This exploration of the surface, both for the artist and the viewer, becomes an important part of the piece.

We see this reliance on surface in Strand's earliest photographs. His 1916 "Chicken: Twin Lakes, Connecticut" achieves this by the slightly out-of-focus, grainy quality of his print where the softened surface and tiny spots provides a textural as well as a visual effect. The photograph is also flattened, with no clear perspective, and the chicken dotted around as though patterns on a flat piece of cloth.

His later abstracted - but still recognizable - works appear to lose this soft, dusty effect with their clean-cut and sharply focused prints. Yet, they too are very much concerned with the surface. Under the influence of the cubists, Strand would start to experiment with the geometric shapes that so befitted the angular buildings and streets of his New York series. As in his 1915 "Wall Street" shows, he is using pure basic shapes of rectangles and straight lines (with his famous angled shots) to lead us into abstraction. His shadowy people act more as linear props than human characters. "City Hall Park" is still using formal structures with the curves and weaves of the linear footpath, and the more willowy human figures. This would finally lead to his almost unrecognizable "Chair Abstraction" in 1916.

But we shouldn't be deceived by these dehumanized figures and distorted daily objects. Although they do play a structural role in his photographs, the whole exercise is still about touch. The geometry and scattered patterns once again flatten the image, guiding us to explore the surface (and touch it if the museum wardens would let us), rather subsume us deeper into the picture.

All these ideas, I believe, lead to Strand's most beautiful work: "Time in New England". Its themes, the most important of which I think is connecting with America, can be glimpsed in this 1916 precursor "White Fence" shot in Port Kent, New York. Besides the iconic image of the idealized American fence, this is a photograph of pure geometrics. Rhythms and basic shapes (squares and rectangles) dominate to give us once again that disconcerting flatness where we expect conventional perspective. We are invited to connect with, touch, this image of an American landscape.

Strand’s "Time in New England" was part of his life-long interest in taking pictures of specific locations. He was an avid traveler and took photographs in nearby Mexico and Quebec and as far afield as Morocco and Ghana. Yet "Time in New England" touches us the most. After all, it is his home. It is America. These were the years when he was concerned for his America out in the war fronts in Europe as by what was happening (in his views) internally. He had just completed "Native Land"; his patriotic documentary. “I wanted to look with vivid and intimate clarity into the past” says Strand in "Time in New England". All the more need to connect with those things that appeared to have been lost and bring them back to the surface, and to the present.

His most memorable photograph in this series is plainly titled “Church” which he took in Vermont in 1946. Once again, it appears to be a simplistic view of a quintessential American landscape – the plain New England wooden colonial Church. One can now call it iconic. It seems at though Strand were physically constructing this little church by placing the basic shapes – squares, triangles, the tiny circular window and even the swirls of clouds and scrawled of branches - directly onto the photographic paper. Perhaps it is something he wishes he could actually do, rather than click the aperture and make such a quick reproduction without contact with the parts.

We are also made to feel as though we could pick up these pieces of plank and build our own version, reuniting us with the pioneers who sawed and nailed the wood with their own bare hands. The rhythmic repetition of the horizontal planks provide a roughened texture to be stroked, much like a piece of fabric made out of coarse wool or flaxen. The distorted angle reminds us that we’re looking at a recreated structure, refusing us a suspension of disbelief that a perfected, right-angled building would induce. We are looking at, rather than into, this photograph. Finally, the croppings on the side and on top are an invitation for us to complete the picture, in our computer screens, in our own imagination or into our living rooms. Strand’s pictorial guides encourage us to be part of this picture, to touch it and connect with it, and to reach back into history and perhaps feel the energy and effort put by the plain folk who made this historic contribution. We have touched them, and Strand has touched us.


References:

Paul Strand. Time in New England: Photos.Text selected and edited by Nancy Newhall. New York : Aperture, 1980.

Robert Adams. Why people photograph : selected essays and reviews. New York : Aperture, 1994.

Minimalist Art and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial


War memorials are an integral part of civilizations and their histories. One just has to look at the resplendent and grandiose Arc de Triomphe standing tall, at the center of a star-shaped street structure in Paris, to see how it affects the city and the people around it. The more dignified Trafalgar Square holds its distinction with lions, fountains and Nelson on the pedestal, and its vast public esplanade.

War memorials have always been about honoring their dead. And it isn’t false honor, since the mere dedication of a sculpture or a square is indicative of some outstanding effort that was made, whether it be winning a battle, holding a front, or just staying the course for so long.

This is why the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is such a disappointment. History is slowly exposing the real costs and gains behind that war, including the ultimate winners and losers. And the balance lies more on the American side. Yet, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is all about expiation and loss.

Maya Lin, who designed the wall, envisioned the memorial to be a gaping wound that would heal over time. “A scar… Take a knife and cut open the earth, and with time the grass would heal it” she is quoted as saying. Lin was working on a college project for a funerary design when she submitted her winning entry,

There was fierce opposition to the memorial from the start, where statesmen, veterans and the general public demanded that a more heroic symbol be built. One of the most poignant outrages was that nowhere on the monument is the word Vietnam carved, as though the place never existed, and the soldiers fought a non-existent war.

This controversy precipitated the erection of another monument. Sculptor Frederick Hart, whose base-reliefs adorn the great Washington National Cathedral, constructed a three-man composition which he called “The Three Soldiers”, clearly Vietnam soldiers standing in their combat gear and rifles. Lin was displeased by this new addition, and demanded that it be placed as far away from her contribution as possible. And no flag to render her area like a golf course, she declared. A flagpole was nonetheless placed near the Three Soldiers with the fitting inscription: “This flag represents the services rendered to our country by the veterans of the Vietnam War.”

What eventually happened was that the memorial garnered popularity as a focus for grief. Even Lin acknowledges her subtle coercion when she says: “I actually feel like I controlled it a little too much… I knew that one's first immediate reaction… could very well be that you were going to cry.” Her design was to create a repository for unappeasable mourning, and in the end, that is what became of the granite wall.

Lin continues in the art world with sporadic contributions as an abstract, minimalist sculptor, and architect of a few lackluster buildings. She was one of the jury for the 911 memorial competition, and a strong promoter for the design that won. Once again, the winning design was a commemoration to insatiable grief as symbolized by two 30-feet deep holes at the spots where the towers stood. The contending design was more serene and spiritual, evoking enveloping clouds and sparkling lights. It is still hard for Lin to leave the black wall of death. Her original idea describing the wall: “I had a general idea that I wanted to describe a journey...a journey that would make you experience death…” holds to this day.

But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, or the wall, as the case may be. More recent memorials are giving credence to their lost heroes. The Korean War Veterans Memorial, unveiled in 1995, is a triangular field of 19 stone soldiers with a clear dedication to the veterans. And the National World War II Memorial, which opened in 2004, also includes a wall with symbolic stars representing the fallen soldiers.

Frederick Hart, on meeting Lin, confidently told her “my statue is going to improve your memorial.“ Time will only tell, but the collection of photographs at the veteran-ran Wall-USA website emphasizes the Three Soldiers statue more than the wall, and uses the granite wall many times as a backdrop to reflect this statue. Lin had worried about this usurpation since the statue’s installment.

The original memorial celebrated its 25th anniversary this November, and it already looks quite different from its initial granite wall concept. Lin’s minimalist abstraction, which only succeeded in making the wall an empty repository for grief, is slowly being improved by more concrete and tangible elements. A Women’s Memorial was added, and a new plaque commemorating the veterans who died after the war lies near the Three Soldiers statue. There is not much to be proud about war, but there is pride and honor due to the soldiers who fight in them.

Goethe's Morality of Color

Unpublished

Newton tried to keep color in the realm of an independently provable entity by analysing that light refracted from a prism was separated into a spectrum of colors. He tried hard to maintain objective observations and had an assistant help him make his readings to avoid his own subjective perceptions. He avoided “colors in a dream or what a mad man sees”, and emphasized a quantifiable, objective analysis of color. His works on color and light were published in the much celebrated "Opticks" showing that light was made of colored rays.

It is chemical and physical scientists who have shown the most interest in measuring and studying color, and not the artists who would rather use it rather than analyze it. Yet, alongside the very lucrative paints (and other color industries) which they propagated, these same chemists have realized that the history of color is not just a numerically speculative phenomenon, but involves other values such as emotions and morals to which artists espouse. In fact, the history (or the understanding) of color is closely intertwined with these objective scientists and the more subjective artists.

If one were to place Goethe in this continuum, he would definitely figure at the other end with the artists and other poets of color. Goethe insisted that color should be studied as the human eye perceives it, rather than as instruments measure it. In his unparalleled “Theory of Color Theory”, he spent many experiments trying to show the role our eyes (our perceptions) play in determining the effects of color.

For example, he studied the phenomenon that is now called ‘after-images’ where after looking for a prolonged time at a certain color, when switching to a blank white canvass, we see the ‘contrasting’ color on that white canvass – blue instead of yellow. His premise became that color is not a fixed entity, but depended on many other human and non-human factors in order to be seen. Goethe was convinced that color affects us morally, physiologically, and psychologically; that we react subjectively to color. He eventually started to establish his theory on the ‘morality’ of colors, introducing us to his color polarities starting out with specific colors, and incorporating subjective values on to them: Yellow vs. Blue; Force vs. Weakness; Brightness vs. Darkness; and one is tempted to add Good vs. Evil. Of course, these may only be his subjective views, and another artist may decide that it is red and green that are in such opposition.

Goethe’s emphasis on the perceptions of color, what colors meant, emoted, symbolized, how they affected our senses, feelings and morals influenced the direction and importance of color in painters from there on. Color, up until then, had been give a secondary role to drawing, where line, light and shade dominated. Earlier painters had always delegated a secondary role to color finding no way of equating it with line and form. If Newton were to critic Goethe, I’m sure he would side with these earlier artists and put more emphasis on the straightforward drawing, rather than Goethe’s elusive perceptions of color.

Despite the differences that Goethe found between his and Newton's work, he eventually reconciled these differences, asserting that both objective and subjective views were possible. Newton also had never rejected the idea that color can be a subjective phenomenon. Ultimately, it is this supreme interest in color that unites Newton and Goethe. But Goethe was perhaps more right than wrong in emphasizing the elusive nature of color, and in disagreeing so vehemently with Newton at the beginning of his studies. Color has continued to be as elusive, subjective and ephemeral as he had suspected it to be. Perhaps both Goethe and Newton opened a pandora's box when they decided to put color at the fore-front of their inquiries.

Still , in just a matter of decades, we go from Newton’s predominantly ‘objective’ "Opticks" to Goethe’s ‘subjective’ "Theory of Color". From quantitative measurements to subjective perceptions. How did this come about? Why was Goethe interested in demonstrating the subjective, while Newton insisted on the objective?

I believe it has to do with transcendence. Both Newton and Goethe profoundly understood the human 'will'. Newton wanted it subservient to and Goethe wanted it at the center of man. Newton stressed, in his method of inquiry, that something beyond man determines things. Goethe’s central figure is man himself, and man’s perceptions are the primary factor in his life. It really was a battle between the supremacy of God, and the supremacy of man. In Goethe’s world, man finally wins. By allowing man to focus on his will and whim, Goethe put a stop to this transcendence. Color became the easiest way for artists to win this battle (if they were fighting it in the first place). It was no longer necessary to accurately depict lines and, in Newton’s heroic attempt, colors. Artists no longer had to describe, as best they could, our natural, external world. They could only be expected to personally interpret it, where willful perceptions finally take over.

Color became a manifestation of the artist’s personal feelings, personal will, personal interpretation and personal desires. Goethe’s "Theory of Color" became the gateway for artists to focus on the much easier human will rather than on Godly transcendence. This led to color being the most important element in painting, and eventually dominating the whole canvass. Later on, this would also result with the distortion of line, form and even content subject to the artist’s interpretation. Color released the artist from any outside commitments, and allowed him to be accountable only to himself. This is essentially the attribute of the modern artist. “What does this mean?” becomes a common question directed at most modern paintings.

Since color is really a manifestation of the modern artist’s personal interpretations, it becomes all about the artist’s feelings. Thus, emotions (or sensations) play a very large part in these paintings. Monet may have attributed his bluish/pinkish haystacks to the time of day, and type of sunlight falling on the dried grass, but it is essentially his subjective and exaggerated interpretation of that particular moment of the day. This later became much more pronounced in his Rouen series, where a blue Cathedral finally exists. This is only a step before Van Gogh’s who tried to “express the terrible passions of humanity by means of reds and greens…” in his Night Cafe. No longer are we subjectively describing a scene, but expressing and interpreting it emotionally as well. Artists even suggested choosing colors "from their palette than from nature".

Feelings are naturally unstable – one is not always happy, or always sad, or always angry. Van Gogh’s deep sense of alienation in red and green could just as soon turn into the calm accommodations of pastels, which he did use in his "Almond tree in Bloom". With nothing to ground these paintings, and focusing on shifting personal sentiments and emotions, artists can say and paint anything they want, and then change their minds about them. Kandinsky, after seeing Montet's variously hued haystacks said, "Deep within me the first doubt arose about the importance of the object as a necessary element in a picture". Now, even the object, the epitome of form, is no longer required as a reference to the external world. The artist can draw anything he wants, and color it anything he desires. Even the title to Kandinsky's paintings is indicative of this belief.

With no external responsibilities, or a sense of transcendence to force these artists beyond the self, this battle of relevance has now raged for more than a century. I think it all started when color, that fickle, deeply personal, ephemeral quality, took precedence over the drawing. When previous attempts at objectivity were superseded by subjectivity. This unwillingness to face the difficult external world, and perhaps humbly attribute it to something greater than oneself, changed the focus of the artist from the external world to his internal landscape. The color field artists of the 1960s epitomize this attitude, where nothing but color dominates the whole canvass. This has been the saga of modern art.


References:

Gage, John. Color and culture : practice and meaning from antiquity to abstraction. Boston ; Toronto : Little, Brown and Co., c1993

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Goethe's color theory / Arranged and edited by Rupprecht Matthaei. New York : Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971.

Botanical Art and the Decorative Arts


The earliest recorded botanically accurate illustrations date around 372-286 BCE in Enquiry into Plants by Aristotle’s student Theopharastus. Although no documents exist from this period, images survive on frescoes, mosaics and architecture. One of the most popular was the acanthus plant, which the 19 th century textile and decorative arts designer, William Morris, was to repeatedly use in his works.

The Greek influence of realistic botanical representation on Ancient Rome was highlighted in Pliny the Elder’s encyclopedic Natural history, where he tackles every imaginable aspect of nature from cosmology to precious stones, including several books on the medicinal values of plants (ten of the 37). What survive of Roman homes show us some uncanny, realistic fruits, flowers and trees on mosaic and fresco decorations.

The Late Antiquity physician, Pedanius Dioscorides (first century AD), continued with the these empirical botanical investigations in his De Materia Medica . Although no original manuscript survives, many copied, illustrated versions circulated around Europe and were used well into the 15 century as the authority on plants as pharmaceuticals.

The early medieval period drew upon these Greek and Roman texts and illustrations to substantiate the medicinal usefulness of plants, but the botanical arts concentrated on the spiritual and symbolic aspects of plants and flowers. Later medieval periods were greatly influenced by St. Francis of Assisi’s love of the natural. St Francis was able to release plants from their purely symbolic and religious values, and was an important precursor to the natural study of plants which was revived in the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

One of the most enchanting mergers of scientific observation and religious symbolism are the tapestries of the Hunt of the Unicorn. These tapestries are covered with the late Medieval tradition of fields of millefleurs. When analyzed carefully, many of these flowers are clearly identifiable, in their correct environment. The Madonna Lily, depicted in The Unicorn in Captivity tapestry, is both a religious symbol of the purity of Mary and also a medicinal plant that treated burns, ulcers and ear infections, amongst other things.

It was around this time that the scientific study of nature, apart from religious symbolism, was undertaken by the German “Father of Botany” Otto Brunfels. He recorded his work in the Herbarium vivae eicones (illustrated by Hans Weiditz). Brunfel’s work was revolutionary because he primarily used his own observations to publish his works, although he still used the ancient Roman and Greek texts for comparisons.

The Medici family’s love of gardens and great patronage of the arts perfectly combined the arts and sciences in Renaissance Florence. Their gardens provided both a botanical repository as well as inspiration for their fine and decorative art pieces. Symbolism and religious identifications were no longer prevalent, and plants was admired for their intrinsic, natural qualities.

It was around this time that the scientific study of nature, apart from religious symbolism, was undertaken by the German “Father of Botany” Otto Brunfels. He recorded his work in the Herbarium vivae eicones (illustrated by Hans Weiditz). Brunfel’s work was revolutionary because he primarily used his own observations to publish his works, although he still used the ancient Roman and Greek texts for comparisons.

The Medici family’s love of gardens and great patronage of the arts perfectly combined the arts and sciences in Renaissance Florence. Their gardens provided both a botanical repository as well as inspiration for their fine and decorative art pieces. Symbolism and religious identifications were no longer prevalent, and plants was admired for their intrinsic, natural qualities.

Imagery on textiles were achieved mostly through arduously long processes of weaving or embroidery until the late 1700 and early 1800s. With the industrial revolution, new methods of printing on textiles for larger productions were invented. One of the most important was the engraved roller printer, where even the most delicate lines could be repeatedly printed on yards of fabric. This precision in printing, colours and dyes, combined with the reinvigorated scientific illustrations of plants and flowers, resulted with some of the most realistically rendered botanical prints on textiles.

Plants brought by adventurers and travelers from around the globe coincided with the golden age of botanical art in England in the 19 th century. Domestic as well as exotic plant illustrations increased greatly in number and quality. One of the most prolific of the interior designers to take advantage of these images was the ubiquitous designer William Morris. He was able to market his simple daisy on a wallpaper as easily as his upholsteries of the exotic Mediterranean acanthus.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, designer Candace Wheeler was influenced by Morris’s Arts and Crafts movement when she founded her own “Society of Decorative Arts of New York”. She incorporated many local plants and flowers in her uniquely American designs, creating a domestic arts and crafts culture and identity.

The Canadian artist Joyce Wieland used the unique techniques of American quilters and embroiders when she created her 1971 “Water Quilts”. Delicate embroideries of arctic wildflower on thin gauze cover printed texts of environmental concern. Their message was simple: if we are to relish the beauty of the flora, and especially such delicate ones as northern wildflowers, we have to take care of them. And after all, without them, there would be no botanical art.


References:

Steadman, Philip. Vermeer's camera : uncovering the truth behind the masterpieces. Oxford University Press, 2001

Shalimar: Senses in a Bottle

Sight, sound, touch, taste, and of course smell combine together to make Shalimar.

Guerlain, one of the oldest fragrance companies in the world, introduced its famously exotic perfume ‘Shalimar’ in 1925. A combination of flavorful spices, aromatic woods and smooth, powdery florals gives this perfume a distinctive fragrance. A secret ingredient called Guerlinade, which goes into all the Guerlain perfumes, was added to seal the final product.

As perfumeries (and individuals) were gathering their favorite scents over the centuries, spices, florals, woods, roots and animal scents were combined in non-discriminate manners, with their scents being the decisive factors. Spices (for food) and perfumes were only recently separated as serving the two distinct senses. Vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and even cloves have always been part of perfumes, and contninue so today. Some perfume manufacturers even bring in whole foods such as ‘pumpkin pie’ to add to the ever-enlarging perfume vocabulary. Shalimar, true to this ancient practice in perfume making, includes the versatile vanilla as one of its ingredients.

The ancient Greek botanist Theophrastus considered these compounded scents to be the most sophisticated and successful fragrances, and even suggested that perfumes be considered along musical terms. Modern-day structuring of the various scents considers the whole product in terms of a musical chord. Top notes are the most short-lived of the odorants, followed by the more enduring middle notes, or corps odors, and finally the clinging bottom notes, or the fonds. All this in an effort to balance out the real substance of the perfume which are the bottom notes. Left on their own, these bottom notes can be initially overpowering, and rely on the two other higher ‘chords’ to gradually introduce their heavier scents, and soften them over time.

According to its compositional notes Shalimar’s ‘notes’ are: Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, hesperidies. Middle notes: Rose, Jasmine, Iris, Patchouli, Vetiver. And base notes: Vanilla, incense, opoanax, sandalwood, musk, civet, ambergris, leather.

Guerlin realized that a visually styled flask would elevate their perfume to the status of art. By collaborating with Baccarat crystal to form the now famous Shalimar flask, Guerlin displayed its perfume to the public for the first time, in its perfect bottle, at the famous Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Paris in 1925. Shalimar and Art Deco were thus inaugurated. But as always, in the history of perfume, Shalimar was only following an ancient tradition where the flask is just as important as the fragrance.

Scents and fragrances have always been a mixture of pomades, oils, waters, and creams. Shalimar is no exception. In addition to the exclusive perfumes and sprays, lotions and creams promise to deliver smooth powdery textures which are imbued with the famous Shalimar scent.

Shalimar the perfume has come full circle. Not only as a fragrance but as a visual, aural, tactile and even flavourful concoction. As with most artistic attempts to appeal to the feminine, Shalimar has diverged into as many senses as possible to make the apparently simple experience of a perfume into a rich and complex one.


Refrences:

- Barille, Elizabeth. Guerlin. New York : Assouline, 2000

- Kennett, Frances. History of Perfume. London : Harrap, 1975.

Ontario Views Paintings

Lake in Winter with Ice Formations
Bay with Lake
Lakeside Fir in Early Morning Snow
Summer Lake Birch
Dusk-Hued Valley with Lake
Lake in Summer with Wave and Pebbles
Ontario doesn't have the dramatic mountains of British Columbia and Alberta, the endlessly shimmering prairie fields of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, nor the clear blue coast lines of the Atlantic provinces. But we do have lakes. Lakes in every corner. Small lakes and big lakes. Lakes that should be oceans. Hidden lakes for idyllic summer days. Lakes by gentle hills. Lakes surrounded by trees. Lakes that transport cargo ships to towns and cities.

Ontario Views Exhibit











Paintings are here at Ontario-views.blogspot.com. I excluded Dusk-Hued Valley with Lake for the exhibition.

The exhibits are prints of originals.



Exhibit Notes:

Kidist Paulos Asrat has studied the visual arts, including painting, textile design and photography.

Her watercolors “Ontario Views” are a homage to the Group of Seven Canadian artists who dedicated their artistic visions to the Ontario landscape.

Ontario doesn't have the dramatic mountains of British Columbia and Alberta, the endlessly shimmering prairie fields of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, nor the clear blue coast lines of the Atlantic provinces. But we do have lakes. Lakes in every corner. Small lakes and big lakes. Lakes that should be oceans. Hidden lakes for idyllic summer days. Lakes by gentle hills. Lakes surrounded by trees. Lakes that transport cargo ships to towns and cities.


Here are my views.

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Ontario Views: instagram.com/ontario_views

Ontario Views: https://ontario-views.blogspot.com/2019/06/about-ontario-views_29.html

Art by Kidist: artbykidist.blogspot.com

Setting Foot in Group of Seven Country:
northernontario.travel/algoma-country/setting-foot-in-group-of-seven-country



Book Display Alongside the Exhibition:

1. Canadian Art from its Beginning to 2000, Anne Newlands
2. A.y. Jackson: The Life of a Landscape Painter, Wayne Larsen
3. The Group of Seven in Western Canada, Ed. Cathernine M. Mastin
4. Ted Harris Collected, Intro by Robert Budd
5. Inward Journey: The Life of Lawren Harris, James King
6. The Idea of North: The Paintings of Lawren Harris, Curated at the Art Galley of Ontario by Steve Martin
7. Canada's World Wonders, Ron Brown
8. The Good Lands: Canada through the Eyes of Artists
9. Kim Dorlan, Katrina Alanassova
10. The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson: An Introduction, Anne Newlands
11. Alex Colville: Return, Tom Smart
12. The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century, Ed. Anne Whitelaw
13. Love Letters to Art, Robert Genn
14. A Concise History Canadian Painting, Ed. Dennis Reid
15. Sunday Morning with Cass: Conversations with A.J. Casson, Ted Herriott
16. Canadian Art: The Tom Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario