MMaxi

More Bernini | 09 octobre 2007

Publié par MMaxi à 20:05:37 dans Art | Commentaires (0) | Permaliens

Bernini | 09 octobre 2007

Publié par MMaxi à 03:43:57 dans Art | Commentaires (0) | Permaliens

The Jewish bride by Rembrandt | 04 octobre 2007

An elegantly dressed man and woman are in a vague, dark room. The man has lovingly placed his arm around the woman's shoulder and a hand on her breast. Very carefully she touches his hand with her fingertips. Both are staring straight ahead, they seem deep in thought. A few objects can be recognised in the obscure background: beside the woman is a plant in a pot and behind her an architectural fragment. The picture, called the 'Jewish Bride', was painted by Rembrandt in 1667. It is one of the most famous and mysterious paintings in the museum's collection.

Jewish bride?

The painting became known as the 'Jewish Bride' in the early nineteenth century after the Amsterdam art collector, Van der Hoop, identified the subject of the painting as a Jewish father hanging a necklace around his daughter's neck on her wedding day.
Today, no one sees this man has the woman's father anymore. It is clearly a couple, although who they are is not clear. The faces appear to be portraits, but the clothes are unusual for the time. Perhaps they were contemporaries of Rembrandt's who posed as characters from the Bible.

Publié par MMaxi à 01:00:30 dans Art | Commentaires (0) | Permaliens

Days Go by | 02 octobre 2007

Days go by

Why? Why? Why?

Do we even listen to this CRAP?

And the council of Europe questions why?

We don't trust them.

Shame shame shame




Patriarch Alexy of Russia assails gays in speech at Council of Europe

By Stephen Castle
Published: October 2, 2007

STRASBOURG: Russia's senior religious leader assailed homosexuality as a sin and an illness Tuesday and urged Europe to rediscover its Christian values.
Speaking to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a body that polices human rights in Europe, Patriarch Alexy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, made few concessions to West European sensibilities as he called for a return to Christian values.
Alexy's visit to Strasbourg came before a planned meeting Wednesday with French bishops and President Nicolas Sarkozy. Though he has travelled before to countries that are predominantly Roman Catholic, this visit is his highest-profile trip to Western Europe and another step toward better relations with the Vatican, from which the Orthodox Church has been estranged for almost a thousand years.
In a recent newspaper interview, Alexy suggested that a meeting with the pope could take place within two years, though he has also emphasized that difficulties remain, in particular the activities of Catholic missionaries in Russia.
Alexy's speech to the assembly in Strasbourg echoed the Russian government's condemnation of acts of terrorism and its resistance to independence for Kosovo.
"There are many monuments that are sacred to the people of Serbia," the patriarch said of Kosovo, "and we cannot silently stand by when those monuments are being destroyed, despite the fact that they are under the protection of Unesco and were built in the 12th, 13th or 14th century."
But in a 50-minute appearance Alexy focused mainly on the need for Europe to rediscover its Christian values and abandon moral relativism, arguing that there was a "break between human rights and morality, and this break threatens the European civilization."
"We can see it in a new generation of rights that contradict morality, and in how human rights are used to justify immoral behavior," Alexy said. He has called for an alliance with the Roman Catholic Church on moral issues.
Alexy's comments on homosexuality provoked the most direct challenge to West European liberal thinking and the ideas of nondiscrimination pioneered by the Council of Europe, among other bodies.
Asked by the British Liberal Democrat council member David Russell-Johnston about the Orthodox Church's opposition to a planned gay pride march in Moscow, Alexy said that his religion told him to "love sinners despite their sins."
He added, however, that "no one should force me and my brothers and sisters in faith to keep quiet when we call something a sin when it is a sin according to the word of God."
Homosexuality is, he continued "an illness" and a "distortion of the human personality like kleptomania." The patriarch portrayed the gay rights parade in Moscow as advertising for immoral behavior and asked: "Why don't we have advertising for kleptomania?"
The comments drew applause from a number of council members from Orthodox countries including Russia, which is a member of the Council of Europe.
Russell-Johnston said later that the analogy drawn between homosexuality and kleptomania was "ridiculous."
The patriarch had, Russell-Johnston said, "repeated his aggressively intolerant position."
"What was regrettable was that a lot of people applauded him," Russell-Johnston said. This contradicted the position of the parliamentary assembly that "homosexuals and lesbians have human rights and their dignity should be respected."
In May 2006, violence against homosexuals prompted Terry Davis, secretary general of the Council of Europe, to urge the Russian authorities to prosecute those involved in the attacks which, he said, were "neither isolated nor spontaneous."
After the patriarch's appearance Tuesday, Davis, who held a 30-minute private meeting with Alexy, described the reference to kleptomania as an "unfortunate analogy." He praised Russell-Johnston for raising the issue, but added that the patriarch was "entitled to his view as a religious leader." Gay rights were not discussed during their private meeting, Davis said.
Davis also highlighted other areas of Alexy's speech, including his criticism of the growing gap between rich and poor in Russia, and the growing materialism of Russian society.
Other senior figures in the council also emphasized the symbolism of the patriarch's appearance for the cause of intercultural dialogue. René van der Linden, president of the Parliamentary Assembly, said that through his "strong public condemnation of xenophobia, extremism and ethnically motivated crimes," Alexy had demonstrated his "commitment to peace and mutual respect."

Publié par MMaxi à 22:24:35 dans A'dam connection | Commentaires (2) | Permaliens

Jan Havicksz. Steen | 02 octobre 2007

Title
Interior of an Inn with an Old Man, the Landlady and Two Men Playing Backgammon, known as 'Two Kind



Year
c. 1636-79


A group of men are having fun in a tavern. A young man is drinking beer, draining his tankard, while a couple of others are playing backgammon. Like cards, this popular game was associated with idleness and folly. On the left, another game is being played: an old man tries to pull a young woman (the landlady) onto his lap. The woman resists him half-heartedly. Her red stockings, however, suggest that she would not have been all that worried about her morals: red stockings often indicated the woman was a prostitute. Taverns were sometimes disguised brothels and this place certainly has a rather dubious air. The lute on the wall, the dog, the pipe on the firepan and the mussel and eggshells on the ground suggest debauchery, lust and idleness.


Jan Havicksz. Steen (1626-1679)

Jan Havicksz. Steen was born in Leiden in 1626, the son of a brewer. Educated at a Latin school he enrolled in 1646 at Leiden university, although he was never to actually graduate. Little is known for certain about Steen's apprenticeship as a painter. Early eighteenth-century biographers of artists record that he was taught by various painters: Nicolaus Knupfer, Adriaen van Ostade as well as landscape painter Jan van Goyen, whose daughter he married in 1649. One year earlier he had registered as a master painter with the Leiden guild of artists, indicating that his apprenticeship was now over.

Publié par MMaxi à 14:26:10 dans Art | Commentaires (0) | Permaliens

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