Saturday, June 10, 2017

The Figurative Sculpture of Northern Portugal: Part One - Praça da República, Porto

Northern Portugal is filled with interesting figurative sculpture. Mostly in bronze, they range from 19th century pieces up to the contemporary. I am not sure how the Portuguese managed to continue this wonderful tradition while the rest of Europe fell to the curse of the postmodern but I suspect it may have to do with the strong Catholic traditions embeded in the culture while Salazar was ruling the country. From the city to small village you will find interesting and often beautiful works.

To start this series lets take a look at Praça da República in Porto.The square was opened in the latter half of the 18th century. Shortly after the military headquarters was built on the north side and the area was used for military maneuvers. In 1910, upon the proclamation of the Republic, the square was further developed with the addition of flower beds and the sculptures below.




According to the plaque,  this Bacchus was erected in 1916 to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the Republic of Portugal. The sculptor was António Teixeira Lopes. 



This sculpture is titled, "Padre Américo". Américo Monteiro de Aguiar, better known by Father Américo (Penafiel, Galegos, 23 October 1887 - Campo, Valongo, July 16, 1956), was an important Portuguese benefactor who dedicated his life to the most deprived. Sculpture  by Henrique Arujo Moreira.




This allegorical sculpture by Bruno Marques commemorates the 100 anniversary of the Portuguese Republic. She is holding a palm branch (signifying peace) and a crest of Portugal. 







Sunday, April 16, 2017

THE RESURRECTION OF THE SON OF GOD

Alleluia. Christos Anesti. Christ is Risen!


The Passion and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the very heart of Christianity. As the Gospels and the Old Testament must be interpreted in  light of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, so too must our lives.
The important news of the Resurrection needs to be affirmed and confirmed. The modern world’s misunderstanding of the meaning of the Passion and the Resurrection is profound. As predicted by St. Paul in 1, Thessalonians 4:13: “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope.”1 Many around us are “without hope and without God in the world.”(Ep 2,12). The disintegration of the family, abortion, the rise of euthanasia, and an ever increasing desire to satisfy only the flesh are a reflection of the denial of the redemptive power of suffering. In his Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris, Pope John Paul II offers enlightening words in this regard. Human suffering, has reached its culmination in the Passion of Christ and at the same time it has entered into a completely new dimension and a new order: it has been linked to love, to that love which creates good, also drawing it out from evil by means of suffering, just as the supreme good of the Redemption of the world was drawn from the Cross of Christ, and from that Cross constantly takes its beginning. The Cross of Christ has become a source from which flow rivers of living water.
Despite tremendous advances in health care and comfortable lives, we face something we cannot control: death. The more energy we spend soothing ourselves, the further we move away from an understanding of our true end and a denial of the resurrection.
And yet, the gospels speak:
"It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon." Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you. "They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, "Do you have anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence. (Lk 24,34–43)
Myths, scattered throughout world history, speak of resurrection. In
Egyptian culture, concepts of an afterlife first appear with the sun gods. Later, the myth of Osiris has him brought back to life by Isis and become the judge of the dead. The eastern concept of reincarnation is related to resurrection. In Mesopotamia, we hear the story of Tammuz who was banished to the underworld but revived six months later. Attis was reborn as an evergreen tree, an event celebrated March 25 in the Phoenician civilization. The Greco- Roman world had Adonis. According to Homer when the ancient classical world spoke of bodily resurrection they only did so to deny it. Death could not be undone.3 Writers of the time maintained that the dead were in fact non-existent. Plato proposed a radically different view of resurrection. For Plato, the soul is the true form of the person. The body is temporary while the soul is forever. When a person dies his soul goes to Hades and there, judgment is passed on him.
The Judaic belief regarding life after death fall into three categories:
Initially, there was an absence of hope for life after death. Slowly, the idea that God’s love endures even after death developed, indicating some kind of afterlife. The final version built on this concept by including bodily life after death.4 Despite such beliefs, resurrection makes few appearances in the Old Testament. Into these worldviews Christianity was born. The first Christians insisted that Christ did rise bodily from the dead. This hope was at the center of Christianity. It was, at its core, a resurrection movement and its entire theology rested upon that one event: Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead in a transformed body.5 In the Resurrection of Christ, myth and history meet and reality is transformed. 
As noted by by C.S. Lewis:
The heart of Christianity is a myth, which is also a fact. The old myth of the
dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens - at a particular date in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical person under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle...this is the marriage of Heaven: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact, claiming not only our love and obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar and the philosopher.
Details may differ and lengths vary, yet all four gospels share the story of a visit to the tomb by Mary Magdalene on the first day of the week. What she found was an empty tomb. Shortly thereafter, Christ begins to make appearances. The Lord appeared first to Mary Magdalene who did not recognize him. “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” (Jn 20,15). It was not until Jesus spoke her name that she recognized him. On the evening of that first day, “Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.” (Jn 20,19–20). In Emmaus he remained unrecognized by the disciples until he broke bread.
The bodily resurrection continues the love shown by God in the Incarnation and affirms the goodness of God’s created realm. It demonstrates the importance of this created realm and more specifically the value of the body. It was upon this value that history was written for the last two millennia. For art history, the body became subject supreme as artist used it to express man’s place in the world and his relationship to God. Christ transformed body is revealed to us through the sacraments. We know from the experiences of the apostles that this revelation is not immediately visual. It takes place in the heart. “Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.” (Lk 24,31).
Modern psychology denies sin and rejects the idea of man’s fallen nature. Science disallows the possibility of resurrection and the comfort of modern life sees little meaning in it. It is true, we do not “believe” in the Resurrection because it is not the result of intellectual inquiry. It is supernatural and a mystery, the place where God and humanity overlap. Rather we come to faith in the Risen One and when we do, we discover who we are and what it means to be human.


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Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Poet in Cinema

I have talked about the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky on this blog before. His film,  Andrei Rublov is the best movie about art making and perhaps my favourite movie. If you have not seen it I highly recommend it. You can watch it online here: http://sovietmoviesonline.com/en/drama/73-andrey-rublev.html

Tarkovsky's views on art are very interesting and go counter to what we are told is art in our post-modern culture. I, for one, find myself agreeing with him.

Part One:


Part Two:

A link to a condensed version on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/35352497



Tuesday, March 14, 2017

The Superficiality of Modern Art and Architecture

"There is no such thing as understanding art in any period apart from the philosophy of that period.  Philosophy inspires art, and art reflects philosophy.  We can never tell what the art of an age is unless we know what is the thought of the age.  If the thought is lofty and spiritual, art will be lofty and spiritual; if the thought is base and material, art will be base and material.  If the thought is of the heavens and heavenly, art will be of the heavens and heavenly; if the thought is of the earth and earthly, art will be of the earth and earthly.  In that period of Grecian history, for example, when Plato and Socrates and Aristotle were giving eternal truths to men, the clear lines of the Parthenon and the airy Ionic of the Erechtheion served as so many petrified incarnations of their thought.  Closer to our own times, when Rousseau set loose this exaltation of the ego and the romanticism of sense-passion, artists were found drinking at his fountain the shallow drafts of hatred for academic tradition, a license of inspiration, and a glorification of fleshy sensibilities.  And now in our own day, what is the philosophical inspiration of Futurism and its wild love of novelty and 'absolute commencements,' motion for motion's sake, but the thought of Henri Bergson?  What is the philosophical inspiration of Cubism, with is unrelated blocks, but the philosophy of Pluralism, which maintains that the multiple does not imply the unit?  What is the whole inspiration of modern art but a Subjectivism introduced by Kant and his school, the heritage of which is a belief that no work of art itself is beautiful, but that it is our psychic or mental states that are beautiful, either because we project these states to the object, which is the Einfühlung theory, or because they harmonize with the tastes and commandments of society, which is the sociological theory, or because they produce intersecting reactions, which is the Pragmatic theory?  If modern philosophy explains modern art, medieval philosophy explains medieval art.  If we are to understand why they painted and why they sculptured and why they built a certain way, we must ask ourselves how they thought, for art is the lyrical expression of philosophy.  Their civilization was much different from our own; in the thirteenth century, Christendom knew but one Church.  There was just one Faith, one Lord, one Baptism, one Church.  Since it was one in its rule of faith, it is easy to extract those basic principles of medieval life which served as the inspiration of their art.  These principles are threefold: (1) Impersonalism, (20 Dogmatism, and (3) Sacramentalism."
-Old Errors and New Labels by Fulton J. Sheen, c. 1931.

In architecture is reflected a philosophy of life. The philosophical basis of the contemporary world is materialism, that is, the negation of the spirit. If, however, no other world exists, only what can be seen, palpated and scientifically analyzed, then it is clear that there can never be architectural ornamentation as ornamentation is a symbol of communication with the immaterial through matter. Ornamentation implies or assumes that there is another world beyond this around us. The buildings of modern architecture therefore resemble glass cages and boxes of giant shoes, built on stilts. They are purely functional buildings since the only function in a materialistic civilization is the business or exchange of things of this world.


When civilization was inspired by a more joyful philosophy, when things visible were appreciated as external expressions of invisible things, the architecture was ennobled with countless ornaments: the pelican feeding the children with the very blood of its veins symbolized the sacrifice of Jesus Christ; the lion breathing life into dead offspring represented the Resurrection; the fox, peering at the door of his den, served as a prescient warning of Satan's traps. With his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, Our Lord said that if the men were steadfast in their faith in God, even the very stones would proclaim His triumph. This actually came to pass in the the Gothic cathedrals!


Now, the stones no longer speak, because men today do not believe in the existence of another world, do not expect for themselves other destination than the same of inert stones. With faith in the spiritual lost, architecture ceases to express or symbolize.

Fulteen J. Sheen. Os problemas da vida. Porto: Livraria Fugierinhas, 1956, p. 66.

*my addition

I was unable to find this passage in the original English.