The Venus figures

 Some interesting thoughts:  how will people from another historical period react to the art from my time?  How will they react to my opinion on their art?  I’ll be able to say to a person from the Middle Ages that I really like their paintings, sculpture and architecture.  But let’s jump 25,000 years … what would I say to these people about the Venus figures that have been found, especially since the 19^th– century in Europe?

Here is the Holhe Fels Venus that was found in Germany in 2008, part of a European collection of more than 200 similar figures.  What is notable about this, yes, grotesque figure of a woman, is that it is the oldest representation of a human being.  There is an older figure that is half human half lion.  The Hohle Fels Venus is estimated at between 35,000 and 40,000.  The hips and breasts are enlarged which suggests, as with other figures like this, that fertility and longevity was being evoked.

From between 20,000 and 26,000 years ago, the figures display certain changes in style.  There is more unity in the image, more harmony e.g. the Venus figures show a more lens-shaped form.  Still, these figures are without faces.  The Venus of Willendorf in Austria has something covering her face.

 

Here is a figurine found in France and estimated at 26,000 b.c.

 

This is the Venus de Lausel, with her rams horn, probably a symbol of authority.  Estimated at 25,000 years ago.

 

Here is the “Mother Goddess” in Ankara Museum, Turkey.  Estimated at 6,000 years b.c.

In Catal Höyük, Turkey, a remarkable prehistoric site, there is the image of a woman called “Mother Goddess”, again with the amplified breasts and with images of lions on either side of her throne.  She has facial features.  She is also the centre of a controversy amongst archaeologists:  is this figure evidence that the status of women was different in these times?   The figure, measuring 17 cm. in height, is estimated at 5,500 – 6,000 b.c.

The figures of women from the Cycladic Island, Greece, are not normally regarded as Venus figures, a name that is in any case ill-contrived.  In the period of Cycladic culture, they have not found any similar figures of men.  These Cycladic figures have always struck me as “modern”, in their stark design.  They are estimated to be 3,000 years b.c.

 

 © Will

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

December, 2020

 

Sources

Wikipedia : Venus figurines, Catal Höyük, Hohle Fels Venus

 

Images

I’m afraid I don’t have the sources of these images.

 

 

Three pieces of music

It is a strange sense I sometimes get of being entirely alone with an experience and yet still wanting to share it with others.  The reader will have to go to a bit of trouble with this post by looking up the three pieces on You Tube.  I would suggest that, if you don’t know the music, that you listen more than once.  Then too, there will be those who will say I don’t feel like sad music.  Fine.  For me the music goes through sadness and out at the other end.  But I suppose it is a matter of taste.

Rachmaninoff’s Tears“or in French Les Larmes.  I love the way the motif begins so simply and gradually portrays emotions of complexity, returning to the soft fall of the theme.

Schubert’s Trio, Op. 100, andante.  Like many others, I became aware of this music in seeing Kubrik’s film Barry Lyndon.  It is used in a funeral scene, lending a brave sadness.

Yanni’s One Man’s Dream.  I first heard this music years ago in the free movement group I belonged to.  It was an experience to move freely to this music.

© Will 

http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

June, 2020

 

Images

Robert Delaunay

 

Car badges

The second in a series of two

Opel

This seems like a bolt of lightning on its side, suggesting human dynamism, speed, rather than something from the heavens.  What is different is that the “lightning” pierces the containing circle unlike many other designs.

Peugeot

It is certainly unusual to use an African animal like a lion on a European car and in fighting mode, at that.  The other elements are the rather elegant tail and the man-like legs.

Toyota

The superimposed ovals suggest mechanical harmony.  My first impression,however, remains  –  I can’t help seeing a man in a cowboy hat, something, I imagine, that would appeal to an American market.

Volkswagen

This design is an exploitation of the diagonals of the V and the W, making the former grow out of the latter.  If diagonals are busy, the cirtcle contains this “movement”.

Seat

I’m not sure which country Seat comes from, apparently pronounced Say-Aht.  As a design, I find the upper and lower parts of the S “heavy” while there are “skid marks”, as it were across the S, though this could also suggest “downhill racing”.  The containing frame is inventive.

Skoda

Certainly a brave attempt to do what no one else has done.  The wings of this stylized bird are quite mechanical, even heavy.  I’m not sure whether that hole is part of the original design.

Renault

The Renault icon was designed by Victor Vasserely, the leader of the Op Art movement.  This was in 1972.  True to his style, Vasserely created an illusion design  –  the left side seems to be overlapped by the right side which seems to be overlapped by the left side.  I’m not sure how it supports car sales, but it certainly is one of the most interesting designs.

©  Will

http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

May, 2020

 

My photographs

Tilman Riemenschneider – sculptor

Tilman Riemenschneider (1460-1531) is considered as a sculptor between two ages – the Gothic and the Renaissance.  He lived his life in material comfort and was also an entrepreneur in business in Wurzburg where I was privileged to see some of his work.  A political shake-up —the crushing of a peasants’ revolt —caused him to lose most of his material property.  He had been in great demand as a sculptor in his time — altar pieces and portraits of saints — and after many years of neglect, the work was rediscovered in the 19^th century and is greatly respected.

Self-portrait?

This figure, as part of an altar setting, is considered to be a self-portrait.  Some of his work was destroyed by Protestants, but enough has survived for him to be considered among the great sculptors.

St John

 

Steve Collins calls him “a great master of the northern Renaissance.  His work is among the first and the best to challenge the ‘heavenwards’ emphasis in the art of the Middle Ages and to sculpt actual people and their feelings on earth.”

Kenneth Clark says that the Riemenschneider figures “clearly present the character of the northern people at the end of the fifteenth century.  Firstly, the earnest of personal piety, and secondly, the serious approach to life itself.”

St Mark

His style is characteristic.  For me there is a gentleness in the flowing lines, almost a longing, even sadness in the visages.  I can remember that one of the wooden figures that I saw from close up, the headpiece of a saint, had holes suggesting that at one time insects had done the rounds there.  Is there an advantage to eating the wood that portrays a saint?

“Adam”, 1493

© Will

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

January, 2020

 

Sources

Wikipedia Tilman Riemenschneider

Steve Collins, “Tilman Riemenschneider”, Church Times

Kenneth Clark, “Civilisation”, BBC, 1969

 

Images

The self-portrait, Wikipedia

“Adam”, Clark: Civilisation

The other images I have had from the age before computers became general and I don’t have their sources.

 

LYRICS – vitamins for the spirit

  The first in a series of four

With a subject this broad, I confess that I take only a few lyrics that have had an immediate impact on me.  I leave out an enormous amount.  I suppose, like everyone, I could write a book about it.  If these informal notes serve to prick interest for someone to consider lyrics, I’m happy.

Coventry Carol, one of my all-time favourites, from the 16^th-century was not originally associated with Christmas, as it is now.  The lyric, a lullaby, deals with the massacre of the innocents at the time of Christ’s birth, hardly a joyous theme for the season.

That woe is me, poor child, for thee

And ever mourn and may

For thy parting neither sing nor say

‘Bye bye, lully lullay’.

It is the intimacy of this lyric with the lilt of the melody that touches me.  The performance to hear is by Mediaeval Baebes.

Glossing over the magnificence of the lyrics and the music of the 17^th and 18^th-centuries, perhaps a subject for another time, I randomly choose from the lieder by German poets and composers.

Heinrich Heine

Franz Shubert

The Doppelgänger was written by Heinrich Heine (1798 – 1856) and set to music by Franz Shubert in 1828, shortly before the composer’s death.  The idea of this lyric has had wide influence — a man views the home of the beloved who has left.  Near him he becomes aware of someone weeping and on approaching him, discovers the man has his own face.  Why do you ape the pain of my love  /  which tormented me upon this spot? 

© Will van der Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

October, 2019

 

Sources

Wikipedia Coventry Carol

Wikipedia The Doppelgänger

 

Images

Renaissanceluteplayer.com

Heinrich Heine – wikipedia

Franz Shubert – YouTube

 

 

 

 

More than homage – sacred art in the 20th-century

It is sometimes said that we live in a post-Christian era.  I wonder about that.  One of the things that makes me wonder is contemporary sacred art, something that my Protestant childhood didn’t really tell me about.

The modern artist in sacred art is pressured as never before in circumstances that change at a bewildering pace.  S/he creates from anguish.  Perhaps the images of Christ from this anguish are enigmatic and strange.

This image of Christ is by the Mexican artist Sequericos.  I find it powerful though the visage has sadness.

This image of the meal at Emmaus is by the Polish artist Yugolski.  I find it quite expressionist with stylized figures.  The radiance draws the eye.

This relief image of the Last Supper done by a Greek artist in 1960 verges on abstract expression.  I find the movement prompted by the forms restless around the central figure of Christ which stands tall above the swirling lines.

Paul Klee, the Swiss-German artist, did this image of Christ the king in 1926.  I find the features delicate and the eyes, unrealistic as they are, hypnotic.

Bernard Buffet did a number of sacred images and this crucifixion scene in 1970.  It is said that the figure on the right is a self-portrait.

This image of the cricifixion by Italian artist Boudini is upsetting for me and he would probably feel, So it should be.  The traditional crucifixion scenes have held emotion.  This one screams in agony.

This delicate, even fragile image of the crucifixion is found on the altar in the chapel at Vence, in the South of France, designed by Henri Matisse.

This image of the Last Supper by Salvador Dali intrigues me in that the body of Christ is transparent and in the background you see the landscape that Dali knew as a child.

This image was also painted by Dali.  It seems to me that the lighting is electrical, judging from the shadow of the arm.  The hairstyle of the Christ figure is contemporary.  The agony of the back is for me unparalleled in the history of art.

Epstein produced this sculpture of Christ in bondage in the 1950s and it is set in the ruins of cathedral at Coventry that was bombed in the Second World War.  It is a departure from traditional images of Christ.  There is for me an ancient primitive force here, reminding me of images from central America and Africa.  I spent time looking at this figure and the experience has inspired me to do this blog.

(c) Will van der Walt

http://www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

March, 2019

 

Images

Some of these images come from a book named “He had a face”, though I do not have the book with me at present and will add in the details at a future date.

I have had other images before computers became public and have lost the sources.

 

The artist is Wimmer, a German.  The year is 1951.  I find this image haunting in that, if the body is tortured, the face stands the pain.

Bernward’s Doors, Hildesheim

At Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, I was privileged to see the well-known Bernward’s Doors at the St Michael’s Church.  I must be honest, I remember almost nothing about the interior of the Church except its Romanesque arches.  It was the figures on the Doors that absorbed me and remain with me.  They are dated at 1015 a.d.

The panels on the left depict scenes from the Old Testament; the panels on the right, scenes from the New Testament.  These doors, remarkably, were cast in gunmetal with copper and lead, amongst others.  The style is said to be between Ottonian art and early Romanesque.

Adam and Eve at the Tree

 

Adam and Eve expelled

This art, these figures, seem removed from the Greco-Roman world and are distinct from the styles produced by Byzantine art five hundred years before.  In its context it is a new art, the art of rising Europe, with the naïvité of the world of a child.  Yet there are subtle features — the heads of these figures are disproportionate to the bodies and the eyes are large.  The latter feature would remain influential in art until Barlach in the 20^th-century.

Abel with offering

 

God as judge

 

 

And there is drama.  Very few of these panels are, as with  later Romanesque, static portraits.  There are scenes of action —  Cain killing Abel; God expelling Adam and Eve from Paradise.  They are busy, these figures.

The Annunciation

 

Joseph the Child and Mary

The sacred art of the centuries to come, Gothic in particular, would become static and solemn.  But Romanesque art, where it features, intrigues us with its youthful vitality.

© Will van der Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

March, 2019

 

Source

Wikipedia Bernward’s Doors

 

Images

Doors – wikipedia

Adam and Eve – prezi

Adam and Eve’s shame – source lost

Annunciation –  flickr

Joseph, Mary and Child – Kahn Academy

God in judgement – hippostcard

Madonna and Child – mariendom Hildesheim

 

 

 

Germany

German Baroque – two cathedrals

Coming from a Protestant tradition, I found the interiors of European baroque cathedrals overwhelming.  I was ambivalent about it at first and this also came from seeing this highly ornate style through the lens of modernism, known for its relentless pilgrimage to the essence, stripped of clutter.  But I have mellowed and my access to baroque cathedrals in Nice has changed me.  I share my experience of two German cathedrals.

Vierzehnheiligen Cathedral, near Bamberg

This pilgrimage cathedral, designed by Balthasar Neumann and built between 1743 and 1772, is a place of supplication for healing.  It takes its name from the Fourteen Holy Helpers of the Black Death in the 1440s.  The characteristics of baroque in contrast with gothic are there:  the prolific ornamentation, the architectural emphasis on light and the broader nave.  I remember at the time I felt more impressed by the exterior aspect of the cathedral.

Vierzehnheiligen, exterior

It was perhaps the day itself that enhanced my visit to Wies in Bavaria.  Patches of snow lay by the countryside roads and the Swiss Alps under a fresh blanket of snow rose in the background.  The Church itself, far from any city, town or even hamlet, had cows grazing by the majestic doors.

As always, the interior was spectacular, with much gold decoration.  I remember the grand old pews, huge, handcarved and worn smooth by the centuries.  It was designed by the Zimmerman brothers and built between 1745 and 1754.

My clearest memory was of a choir of young people in jeans and t-shirts assembled for rehearsal in front of the pews under the centuries-old splendour.  I’m sure what they sang and how they sang it must have made angels envious.

© Will van der Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

December, 2018

 

Sources

Wikipedia Vierzehnheiligen and Wies

 

Images

Wikipedia

Kenneth Clark: Civilization

 

 

 

Ernst Barlach

Ernst Barlach (1870 – 1938) was a German sculptor during the Modernist period.  He was regarded as an expressionist and it was probably this that brought him into disfavour with the Nazi leaders from 1933.   The First World War had changed the way he saw the world.  When he was appointed to do sculpture about the war, authorities were dissatisfied by what he did — the figures carried the tragedy of the war.  What they had wanted was images of heroism.

I saw work by Barlach in Lübeck, but did not have a camera with me.  I have always thought that his work has echoes of the style of Romanesque in the Middle ages of Europe.

 

 

As with other artists after the war, well-deserved recognition of Barlach’s work was reinstated.  Today there is critical opinion that regards him as the greatest pre-war sculptor in Germany.

 

 © Will van der Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

December, 2018

 

Source

Wikipedia:  Ernst Barlach

 

Images

tuttart.com

1stdibs.com

enews.tech

Head – source lost

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

There are probably few places on earth as woven into pivotal history as the Brandenburg Gate.  I visited it when it was darkly shrouded by the Berlin Wall.  For me it was a depressing experience.  Years later West Berliners with hammers and banners would clamber over it and chisel out their freedom.

Dark and dusty

Here the Nazi leadership was saluted as the river of uniform steel helmets marched through the Gate.  When Berlin was razed to the ground by bombing, the Gate, mercifully, survived.

Up to May, 1961, traffic through the Gate moved freely.  Then, overnight, the Wall was erected.  The Quadriga (the four bronze steeds on the Gate) were reversed to face eastwards.  Different from the way the architect Langhans and sculptor Schadow had planned it in the late-18^th-century.

Not far from here, in 1961, John Kennedy delivered his historical speech “Ich bin ein Berliner”, support for the divided country.  In the seriousness of the moment — possible military confrontation with the Soviet Union — he made a grammar mistake that West Berliners would tolerantly have smiled at:  “ein Berliner” refers to a typical Berlin pastry, a cookie.  Correct, it would have been “Ich bin Berliner”.  Someone has also said that it was a good thing Kennedy didn’t make this speech in Hamburg.

Germany has been reunited for almost 30 years.  The Gate was restored at great expense.  The Quadriga again faces west.  The Brandenburg Gate is again the centre point of Berlin.  After two hundred and twenty years of tumultuous history, the Berliners and the Germans as a whole feel that the Gate can now be a symbol of peace.

 

© Will van der Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

November, 2018

 

Images

Brandenburg Tor – postcard

Quadriga – freetourskyfoot.com

Gate with soldier – historyimages.blogspot.com

Gate with West Berliners  –  airbmb.fr

Gate with sun –  arounddeglobe.com

 

COMMENT BY MANSELL UPHAM

In some bizarrely indirect way, the Gate … as well as the proto-Prussian Magraviate of Brandenburg … also has bearing of sorts on South Africa’s own violently induced historical ‘make-up’ … Originally erected as the Friedenstor by the House of Orange-descended Friedrich Wilhelm, following the fragile peace established by the so-called Batavian Revolution which led to the Cape of Good Hope being ‘restored’ to a revolutionary, reconfigured ‘new’ Dutch Republic … Orange-Hohenzollen collaboration meant that many folk from a Huguenot-bolstered Brandenburg emigrated to the Cape of Good Hope … with its own Huguenot diaspora … one man in particular is most deserving of remembrance … Joachim Nikolaus von Dessin (1704-1761) … once page and later gentleman-in-waiting of the margrave Albrecht Friedrich of Brandenburg … who with the bequest of his wonderful library … laid the foundations of what has become South Africa;s National Library  –      Mansell Upham