.........JOYFULL AND TRIUMPHANT...................

.............and as a postscript to the last posting , there was a fascinating programme on over Christmas on Fra Fillipo Lippi's painting ' The Madonna In The Woods ' , a nativity scene now hanging in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin.

Originally painted for the private chapel of Cosimo di Medici within the Palazzo di Medici in Florence   (mentioned in the last posting as the original home of Ucello's triptych ) , the painting is most unusual insofar as the setting is not that of the traditional stable / manger , but puts the Madonna and Child within a dark forest, overseen by the Holy Trinity of The Father , The Son and The Holy Ghost .  Having survived in its original location for some three hundred years or so , it was bought - quite legitimately - by a Prussian wood trader and ended up in Berlin , a most apposite location given that the physche , the folk memory of the German people is most firmly located within the forests of Northern Europe ( Goring going so far as to re-invent himself in the style of a traditional German land-owner / hunter in leiderhosen and feathered hunting hat ) . Venerated by the Nazis and hidden away for the duration of the war ,the painting was appropriated  - arguably illegitimately - by the U.S. as part of  their war plunder and resided in Washington for three years , finally going on show and touring the country together with other paintings from the German collection before reason prevailed and the collection - and the painting - was finally repatriated back to Berlin. It hangs now in its own gallery , its original location over the alter in the chapel in the Palazzo di Medici occupied by a copy .

Again the question of real or copy , location or displacement occurs . Is it important ? , does it de-value the painting if it is removed from its original context ? Does reproduction devalue it ?

...........and the painting, the image , appears one further time over Christmas as ' Assassins Creed Brotherhood ' goes live , the picture living on in a virtual world as our hero desperately searches the Medici chapel for that hidden lever, the painting now acting as backdrop in a form ,  in a global existence that neither Cosimo di Medici or Fra Fillipo Lippi could ever have envisaged.

Some paintings do indeed live mysterious lives.

......O COME ALL YE FAITHFULL............

.......It's Christmas week, well at least it is here in the UK, and we managed to avoid the worst of the commercial excess by going off to France, which seems to have a much more civilised and austere approach to the festivities. The painting that I thought appropriate to discuss this week , however , is Italian , and seems to me in both its simplicity and its setting  to capture both the innocence and clarity of the nativity as seen through the eyes of a society untrammelled by the ravages of consumerism.

Fra Angelico's painting of the Nativity is a fresco adorning the walls of Cell 23 in the monastery of San Marco in Florence, at once both priceless and worthless, one of a complete series of frescoes adorning this most sublime and spiritual of buildings. Worthless as because it cannot be removed from its setting it exists outside of the art world, priceless because of where it is, painted by a master. The upper floor of the Monastery of San Marco, a retreat from the secular world, is adorned by the fresco series painted by Fra Angelico ; mounting the stairs, rounding the corner of the half landing, one approaches his masterpiece, The Annunciation , from below , as if rising to meet the Holiest of Holy scenes, Ground Zero for the fresco series to follow. The monks cells branch left and right then, off the central corridor, each cell a plain, simple room , a small window - and in each a single fresco to contemplate. The quiet, the peace , the simplicity of the setting all serve to enhance the spiritual nature of the singular image which now becomes the focus of the monk's world.

I think what appeals to me about frescoes , outside of their particular artistic content , is the fact that in most instances they remain in situ, still in the context for which they were painted - and still belonging to the people for whom they were painted, Thus one can still see Giotto's frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Massacio's frescoes at the Brancacci Chapel , Tiepolo's ceiling frescoes in Venice, particularly the one in the Church of Santa Maria dei Gesuati  where the painting is designed to be lit by the reflected light off the adjacent canal outside.
Compare these to Duccio's altarpiece in Sienna , much restored but with some component parts lost , some scattered all over the world, including a small panel that is now in the National in London, or Ucello's series of three paintings The Battle of San Romano , painted for the Medici Palace in Florence but again  now scattered - one, again , in the National, one in the Louvre and one in the Uffizi. The chances of seeing the three together again in their original context is zero, and to an extent the dynamic narrative of the series is now lost.

Frescoes still exist within their original context , belonging to the people, their public. Still in their place , still with their message to deliver, and this to me gives them a uniqueness , a sense of place as well as purpose.

Adeste fideles , laeti triumphates , Venita , venite in Bethlehem.

....ROCKETMAN...

Uh uh............time again for that annual bean-feast that is the BBC Sports Personality of the Year......Lets just dispense with the voting altogether this time -just give it to the Manx Rocket.

Who ? What ?

At about the time that what passes for the England football team were either slinking home from their World Cup fiasco or disappearing off to their house in the Bahama's / wherever, exhausted after playing 90 x 4 minutes of totally ineffective football , the real men were riding out through France , upwards of 150 km per day , often in temperatures approaching 40c. Sprained wrists , cuts , grazes bruises , cracked or broken collar bones were about par for the course. David Millar rode on with cracked ribs ..." It's not too bad on the flat, but the ends of the ribs tend to grind together when I'm climbing ". Climbing ? I get sickness and vertigo just driving up the climbs. And amongst all this effort and carnage,  the Manx Man rocks up in Paris with another 5 stage wins under his belt. Way to go!!

Go on - Mark Cavendish , Sports Personality of the Year. You know it makes sense.

HANDLE WITH CARE...

The last blog I posted dealt with the reality - or otherwise - of  'replicas' and whether the experience of viewing them is compromised by the awareness that what you are viewing is not the 'original'. The artifact I want to discuss this week is undeniably real, undeniably 'original' - in so far as there will never be a copy made of it - but an original  'what'  is more open to question...and is it real or is it a fake?

An artifact moreover that the art world chooses to ignore almost totally, on the grounds that if it's a fake it would overturn pretty much all current beliefs and understanding of artistic development in Europe prior to the Renaissance... a 'fake' causing trouble ? ..........and if it's real it causes even more trouble...........   hhhhmmmmm........ so lets see...

The Turin Shroud has been kept in a protective casket in Turin since around 1550; it purports to be the winding cloth - or ' shroud ' - of a male who was crucified some 2000 years or so ago. However, its claim to be a genuine artifact has assumed to be largely discredited since the findings of carbon dating tests undertaken in 2001 appear to indicate that it dates from circa 1260/1390. A fake . Case closed. End of investigation, end of interest - just a cheap medieval counterfeit.

I think what I find frustrating here is that those people who go for the ' fake ' option seem to think 'thats it , sorted ' . Unfortunately it isn't. Lets have a look at a reasonable analogy - faking a fossil . A genuine fossil is the realisation of a natural process ; dinosaur approaches river, falls in or is caught by flash flood, dies , is buried under mud or silt ; flesh decays, and over eons the skeleton is preserved in strata that is slowly compressed into rock , to reappear during future erosion of the land form. A natural process, no third party or other agent involved. To produce a fake fossil, however....ah...you have to have a full and total understanding of the structure of the ' fossil animal ', a full understanding of what would be preserved, a full and clear understanding of the context in which it is found - i.e. the right rocks from the right geological period - and above all the technique to be able to physically produce at the very least a passable facsimile in the right material context.  A lot more complicated that just falling over and dying in the river.

Let's return to the Shroud . Housed as we have said in Turin Cathedral since around 1550 , a fairly well established historical provenance for the previous 150 years or so dates it back to around 1390 - the end of the ' carbon dating ' window. So if we assume its a fake, then the questions that arise are How ? By Who ? Why ?  How........given that the artifact dated to this point is almost exactly contemporary with the work of Giotto. it bears no resemblance whatsoever to any known form of pictorial representation from this period ;
furthermore, the process and technology through which the image is primarily recognised, that of the photographic negative , did not even exist for another 450 years or so....so why would someone go to all the trouble of producing an image that is this obscure ? Detailed analysis of the image shows no trace of any pigment either lying on the surface of the material or within the individual strands of the weave , and at this moment no one is still quite sure how the image is formed ; the nearest anyone can get to it is ' some form of scorching '. Further , increasing doubts over the veracity of the carbon dating issues suggest that even the dating of the ' fake ' may be questionable.

The Shroud and its' history, its ' physicality ' , is more than adequately documented on the internet - http://www.shroud.com/ - so what interests me here I suppose is the question of authenticity............... either ' real ' or 'fake ' , both alternatives require verification to justify their status - the ' fake ' option raising as many questions as the ' real ' option, and it is not sufficiant to just accept ' fake ' as the default position without acknowledging the inherent questions that lie therein . It seems to me that the burden of proof here lies with both options ; the artifact, however continues to exist as an enigma and it may well be  that its very power lies in its continuing unresolved state -  ' the inherent power of the Mystery '.

" Once you eliminate the impossible , whatever remains , no matter how improbable , must be the truth "  Sherlock Holmes

IS THIS THE REAL THING, OR JUST A FANTASY?

I commented a few weeks ago on the status of Francis Bacon's studio and was it still his 'real' studio now that it had been re-located in its' entirety from Kensington to Dublin? All the contents, the artifacts and debris are undoubtedly original, so I suppose it's the re-location that calls the uniqueness into question. On a somewhat larger scale, are the Temples at Abu Simbel still 'real', having being re-located and re-constructed some 500ft higher up above their original location on an artificial hill in the late 1980's, to avoid being flooded by the construction of a dam and the creation of Lake Nasser ?

This question came to mind when we visited the Tutankhamun exhibition last week, currently located at the Trafford Centre, Manchester until the end of February next. 'Tutankhamun - his Tomb and His Treasures' is , I have to say at the outset, an outstanding exhibition. Taking you briefly, via specially shot film clips, through a brief history of his life together with the story of the discovery of the tomb in the 1920's, the exhibition opens up into a full size replica of the anti-chamber, the tomb chamber and the treasury. The exhibition then goes on to show full-size replicas of all the shrine-rooms, the sarcophagus, the mummy cases, the headpiece, and a full exposition of the entire tomb contents. Amazing.

I suppose however, the key word here is 'replica'. There is nothing 'original' here, nothing 'real'; all the artifacts and exhibits on show being beautifully crafted replicas, the entire exhibition is founded on the complete reproduction of the tomb and its contents. Given the fact that it is most unlikely that the original pieces will ever tour again and the only way to see the authentic, unique items would be to go to Cairo and join the scrum in Cairo museum, I personally don't have a problem with this; I have visited both Cairo and the Valley of The Kings and from a visual / educational / accessibility point of view, this exhibition in Manchester is still outstanding. It allows for a full viewing experience and a closeness to appreciate the amazing detail that is just not available elsewhere other than through photographs, all supported by informed background information. Up to date display techniques enhance settings, resulting in a very hands-on experience... the full-size reproduction of the three Tomb rooms together with all the contents in-situ I found particularly interesting and again this part of the exhibition cannot be found anywhere else.

 
Given the vast explosion in cheap flights and tourist traffic over the past thirty years or so, this question of accessibility to unique historical installations and artifacts resulting in increasing deterioration and damage has become an major curatorial concern; high quality replicas are now seen as a way to resolve this access problem. Michelangelo's statue of David has long been removed from its original location out in the open air and been replaced with a replica; I would never have been able to see the outstanding cave paintings at Lascaux if the authorities had not committed to constructing a perfect underground replica adjacent to the original caves - likewise the cave paintings at Altamira. 'Replicas' should not however be confused with 'Reproductions'; the essence of an artifact lies in its singularity, its uniqueness, and whilst this is compromised by the production of a replica, the replica itself - in the context of this discussion - is still unique, produced to the most exacting standards both materially and artistically. The quality of the replicas at the exhibition in Manchester bear witness to this, being produced by Egyptian craftsmen using the same techniques and materials as the 'originals' to provide a stunning display. The 'uniqueness' of the item still implies a journey to view.

'Reproductions', however good they are, increasingly devalue the item to the point of visual wallpaper, stripping the unique artifact of its ritualistic, shamanistic quality and reducing it to the level of applied decoration - viz. Van Gough's Sunflowers and Raphael's Cherubs - allegedly the most reproduced works ever. The replicas currently on show in Trafford Park I felt did not compromise the viewing experience; no, they cannot replicate the experience of seeing the ( now empty ) tomb in the Valley of the Kings , but they can replicate - very closely - the experience of viewing the treasures now housed in the Cairo Museum, and
can indeed enhance the experience through state of the art display techniques. A show not to be missed.

http://www.tutenkhamunmanchester.com/

I LOVE THE SOUND OF BREAKING GLASS

Soooooo.....................the students are becoming political activists again at last , even if they are motivated by self-interest and the rising cost of tuition fees .

Given that my time at college was spent against a backdrop of CND marches, the Hornsey Affair and student sit-ins , the Grosvenor Square rally and the Paris riots of '68 , all to a soundtrack of  ' Street Fighting Man ' and ' Won't Get Fooled Again ' by the Stones and the Who respectively, it all seems fairly mild by comparison . Where were the student riots protesting against Afghanistan , Iran , the Banking System ?.............and why is it all sound-tracked to the bland anodyne product that seems to be taking over the world via the Simon Cowell Corporation ?.........what happened to creativity , individualism , freedom of expression ?.......maybe each generation gets the music - and the politics - it deserves.............. 

.....BAD MOON RISING...
 ........and the situation across the Atlantic doesn't seem to be any better. ...........for the country that saw out the tail-end of the sixties to the protests against Viet-Nam and a sound track of  Neil Young's ' Ohio ' and Buffalo Springfield's ' For What It's Worth ' ,  what's left of the radical / intellectual left seems to be paralysed like a rabbit in the headlights of the on-coming juggernaut that is Sarah Palin..."  We must stand by our allies North Korea at this time of conflict " .....whhaaaat  ?.....the thought of her running for President in 2012 quite frankly scares the shit out of me.........the Mayan calendar shows the world ending in December 2012, about a month or so into the Palin Presidency . What if they knew something we don't - yet ?..........Christ, get me out of here .

For those are interested in political activism / rock music in the sixties and early seventies, I can highly recommend ' There's A Riot Going On ' by Peter Doggett.............for the rest of you, I wouldn't bother making any long term plans just yet.