A VIRTUAL PUB SCRAPBOOK ... from the archives ...

 

... to be continued ...

who couldn't love a pea pod carved from box wood in around 1500 and illustrating several scenes from the book of genesis ? ( rhetorical question )

https://recherche.smb.museum/detail/2031737/betnuss-in-gestalt-einer-schote-mit-f%C3%BCnf-erbsen?language=de&question=Buchsbaum+Erbsenschote&limit=15&sort=relevance&controls=attachments&collectionKey=KGM*&objIdx=0

 

here's a post i made for THE VIRTUAL PUB that was refused by facebook a few days ago ...

 

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE ... WITH TWO EFFS ...

 Georgia O'Keeffe - Wikipedia

Georgia O’Keeffe My Front Yard Summer – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

... to be continued ...

a bit of patrick caulfield, for old times' sake ...

 

alfred stevens and botticelli and bronzino ...

 

Holbein's startling painting of the dead Christ discussed by some anatomists ...

 

Religions | Free Full-Text | Anatomical Analysis of Holbein’s Dead Christ in the Tomb and Corresponding Theological Commentary (mdpi.com)

MOLE

ANDREW YOUNG ... A Dead Mole

Strong-shouldered mole,

That so much lived below the ground,

Dug, fought and loved, hunted and fed,

For you to raise a mound

Was as for us to make a hole;

What wonder now that being dead

Your body lies here stout and square

Buried within the blue vault of the air?

     All but blind
        In his chambered hole
     Gropes for worms
        The four-clawed Mole.

     All but blind
        In the evening sky
     The hooded Bat
        Twirls softly by.

     All but blind
        In the burning day
     The Barn-Owl blunders
        On her way.

     And blind as are
        These three to me,
     So, blind to Some-one
        I must be.

Light on her toes ...

Ceramic goddess figurine known as the Venus of Draguseni, dated ca 4050-3900 BC it’s 20 cm high and belongs to Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture. 

Found in the hills around Drăguşeni, northeast Romania.

Tanaquil Le Clercq ...

Here she is in Irving Penn's famous photo with Corrado Cagli, Vittorio Rieti, and her husband George Balanchine.

Tanaquil Le Clercq - Wikipedia

Calligraphic mastery ... inscribing an Islamic text into the outline of a horse ... the THRONE VERSE ... AYAT-AL-KURSI

 

Now kept in the Museum of  Islamic Art in DOHA

Here are the notes from the Sotheby's auction of 2011 ...

A further top lot, The Throne Verse (Ayat-Al-Kursi) in the Form of a Calligraphic Horse, India, Deccan, Bijapur, circa 1600 exemplifies the art of calligraphy at its most accomplished.

 The artist has written the entire Throne Verse, one of the most popular verses in the Qur’an, forming the gold letters and words in an inventive and skilful manner into an elegantly prancing horse. This extraordinary technical achievement sold to a telephone bidder for £2,057,250 (lot 99, est. £20,000-30,000).

THE THRONE VERSE (AYAT AL-KURSI) IN THE FORM OF A CALLIGRAPHIC HORSE, INDIA, DECCAN, BIJAPUR, CIRCA 1600. Photo Sotheby's

Ink, opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 16.7 by 25.8cm. (6 5/8 by 10 1/8 in.). Estimate 20,000—30,000 GBP. Lot Sold 2,057,250 GBP to an Anonymous

PROVENANCE: Formerly in the Firouz Collection

EXHIBITED: Indian Drawings and Painted Sketches: 16th through 19th Centuries, The Asia House Gallery, New York, 1976
Calligraphy in the Arts of the Muslim World, The Asia Society, New York; the Cincinnati Art Museum; the Seattle Art Museum; the St. Louis Art Museum, 1979-80
Birds, Beasts and Calligraphy, Harvard Art Museums, 1981
Line and Space: Calligraphies from Medieval Islam, Harvard Art Museums, 1984
Inscription as Art in the World of Islam, Hofstra University, Hempstead, 1996

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES: Welch 1963c, p.31
Welch 1976, no.31, p.70
Welch A. 1979, no.77, pp.180-181

NOTE: This is a calligraphic masterpiece, displaying the art of calligraphy at its most accomplished. The artist has written the entire Throne Verse, one of the most popular verses in the Qur'an, forming the gold letters and words in an extraordinarily inventive and skillful manner into an elegantly prancing horse. The technical achievement is superb and the artistic achievement inspiring.

The text of the Throne Verse begins at the horse's head; the first half of the verse is written in the area in front of the saddle; the second half of the verse is written in the area behind the saddle, and the final words are spread across the area below the saddle from the hind quarters to just above the vertical front leg.

The text of the Throne Verse is as follows:

"Allah is He besides whom there is no god, the Ever-Living, the Self-Subsisting, by whom all subsist; slumber does not overtake Him nor sleep, whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth is His; who is he that can intercede with Him but by His permission? He knows what is before them, and what is behind them, and they cannot comprehend anything out of His knowledge except what He pleases; His knowledge extends over the heavens and the earth, and the preservation of them both tires Him not, and He is the Most High, the Great."

(The Holy Qur-an, translated by Maulvi Muhammad Ali, Lahore, 1920)

In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Calligraphy in the Arts of the Muslim World, Anthony Welch discussed the possible symbolism of this calligraphic horse, suggesting that the mighty horse depicted here symbolises God's omnipotence and omniscience as described in the specific words of the Throne Verse, which carries the miniscule rider, so much smaller in scale than the horse, representing the human soul.

Other examples of pious calligraphic animals are known, but the majority are in the form of birds or lions (see, for instance, a lion made up of the words of the Nadi' Ali, in the Aga Khan Museum Collection, see Paris 2007, no.51, p.146). Horses are very much rarer, and the amount of text involved has produced amongst the most complex and dramatic examples known.

In the lower part of the saddle cloth, below the central lobed medallion, is the remnants of a signature of the artist. The only legible word is kamtarin and the rest is rubbed and illegible. Below the belly of the horse on the plain background is an inscription reading sahib indicating a past owner.

my only daytime sober-minded hallucination

Gilt-bronze Cinerary Container of Ina-no-Omura - Masterpieces of the KNM - Kyoto National Museum (kyohaku.go.jp)

I went to Kyoto in September one year and found this 1300 year-old object displayed under some very small lights in a large dark gallery.

It was very hot and humid day, debilitating, so entering the air-conditioned twilight of the gallery was a mood-enhancer.

There is, it seems, nothing else like this object in Japan, which surprised me because they often do such simple things so beautifully.

This photograph does no justice to its deeply-coloured patina and the finely-incised text.

And whilst it was clearly ancient, it seemed startlingly modern and it instantly compelled the kind of alertness that sometimes afflicts people who happen unexpectedly to encounter remarkable art.

Having understood the wish of the cremated official to have his ashes taken to his home village, and being so very far from home myself, I lingered over it for a few minutes.

To have commissioned such an object, which doesn't really comply with Japan's closely-followed funerary conventions, spoke to me touchingly of a man with some independent originality of thinking.  It spoke to me of the essence of modesty because it was so small and was devoid of ornament.

And here's the hallucinatory consequence.

As I turned to walk to the next display cabinet, so the apparently solid ghost of my mother came towards me holding the same container out to me in cupped hands and smiling.

That hallucination probably only lasted two or three seconds yet it remains etched into my memory.

byam shaw ... i was interested in his art and was puzzled when i found this drawing ... it turns out to illustrate some lines from a robert browning poem about a mysterious old man in valladolid ...