Tag: Art
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Bird’s-eye view (1)
As you can see, I was interested here in the black and white pattern of the floor in this courtyard. It is made of small round pebbles, a kind of simple mosaic that can be observed in some places in Greece. This particular courtyard is inside the monastery of Panormitis on the island of Symi.…
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Non-objects
My criticism of the large number of mirror works by Anish Kapoor in last week’s post, doesn’t do him justice sufficiently. He has made other, different works that deserve attention. Nevertheless I start here again with a distorting mirror work. Kapoor has named it a Non-Object, a title that fits many of his works and…
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Distorting mirrors
I remember with delight the fun-fair that once a year pitched its tents in the small Dutch town in which I grew up. One of the attractions sometimes was a tent full of concave and convex mirrors in different sizes and combinations that showed the strangest, distorted reflections when one stood in front of them.…
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The art is not our thing
Art critic and politician Vittorio Sgarbi was chosen as curator of the Italian pavilion at the 54th Biennale in Venice (2011). Since he is known not to like modern art and even less its organizational “mafia”, his nomination was rather controversial. He decided not to select the works for the exhibition himself but to ask…
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Art is my thing
The experience of art in all its manifestations (literature, music, visual arts) is occupying a privileged place in my mental and intellectual life. I could say: in my spiritual life, but I always hesitate using that word since it has these strong religious connotations I’d like to avoid. With acknowledgement and approval I quote what…
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Fall of man
Adam and Eve, thrown out of paradise by an angry god. What had they done wrong? They had committed the first, original sin. They had eaten the fruits from ‘the tree of knowledge of good and evil’ which god had explicitly forbidden. As a consequence the first man and woman lost their innocence and they…
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Silent witnesses
When I walked between the old Khmer monuments of a thousand years ago, the guardian deities with their introverted faces on the gopuras looking out over the land in the four directions, I couldn’t help seeing them as silent witnesses of the horror that had swept the country of Cambodia only a few decades ago.…
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Angkar, Angkor
Two similar images, two similar words, but referring to two very different memorable episodes in the history of Cambodia. Angkar (“the organisation”), being the name the Khmer Rouge used for its own leadership. Between 1975 and 1979, Angkar’s regime of terror caused the death of approximately one quarter of the total population of 8 million…
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The art of tea
Looking at the photos in each of the last four posts, I highlighted a concept that is central to Zen or – in broader terms – to traditional Japanese culture. With the photo of the display in the Tokonoma I brought the word ‘harmony’ into focus, but ‘respect’, ‘purity’, or ‘tranquillity’ would not have been…
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Tranquillity
Zen rock gardens are oases of tranquillity. They are not intended as places we set foot in, but places we quietly contemplate from the outside. They are places for meditation, created in the precincts of Zen Buddhist temples. Ryoan-ji, the rock garden in the picture, dates from the end of the 15th century. With its…
καιρός remembered 