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Craft, Faith And Narrative

Craft, faith and narrative all fuse,
creating medieval art;
if you add the inspiration of the muse
you get the Bible. À la carte,
it serves you narratives and laws and psalms
created with both faith and craft,
but ultimately it’s the muses’ charms
that turn the inspiration’s draft
into a record of encounters made
with God by people searching for
a destiny that they cannot evade
by writing, their esprit de corps.
Its manuscript is not illum-
inated, since it comes from ages
that though dark became the wonderwomb
whose generations are its pages.

Roberta Smith writes about the renovation of the medieval galleries in the Metropolitan Museum (“Illuminating the Dark Ages, ” NYT, December 5,2008) :
Of the three great artistic histories that extend for many centuries, and galleries, from the Great Hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Byzantine-Medieval epic is the most discreet. The Egyptian and the Greek and Roman wings are signaled by highly visible statues and tombs that start waving hello almost before you clear security. In contrast, the story of art starting in Bronze-Age Europe lies mostly out of sight in galleries that lie beside and behind the Grand Staircase…. As part of the Met’s original, central structure, the new Medieval Art gallery has always been a heavily trafficked intersection. It shouldn’t really work as a gallery of sacred art and yet it does. Its many small objects draw you close, away from the bustle, into a realm where craft, faith and narrative were

© 2008 Gershon Hepner 12/5/08

poem by Gershon Hepner
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I'd like to do a story about the medieval ages where in every scene you'd sort of feel that you were in the 12th century. That would be great to get that feeling.

quote by Oliver Stone
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It was then, I think, that I discovered that the best way of bringing a medieval subject home to my generation was not to be medieval in its treatment.

quote by Laurence Housman
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Clay Feet

“D’you think God knows what He is doing? ”
a few bold angels dared to ask
when He created Man. At their first viewing,
they saw that He had botched this task,
because He’d left Man’s legs unfinished,
and though his brilliant brain held sway,
his human stature was diminished
because he stood on feet of clay.

A golden oldie now, Man’s not
improved in time, and every gate
of paradise is closed, and what
the angels said explains his fate.
God made his brain more brilliant than
the apes from which he had descended,
but giving feet of clay to Man
made him than angels far less splendid.
Roberta Smith (“Golden Oldies with a New Sparkle, ” NYT, October 30,2007) writes about an exhibition of three of “The Gates of Paradise” by Lorenzo Ghiberti at the Metropolitan Museum:
Most of the historic sculptures, frescoes and edifices of early-15th-century Florence are not the least bit portable. It’s simple: You want to see them, you go to Florence. But right now nearly a third of one of the city’s greatest glories can be seen without leaving town, by visiting “The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This show presents 3 of the 10 gilded bronze reliefs that decorate the doors created by Ghiberti from 1425 to 1452 for the 12th- to 13th-century Baptistery of San Giovanni. Newly cleaned, they have never looked more golden or less oldie. One of the treasures of the early Renaissance, the 17-foot-high doors depict Old Testament scenes in a radically new fusion of physical action, emotional intensity and narrative complexity. Especially the three reliefs at the Met. Their subjects are Adam and Eve, Jacob and Esau, and David and Goliath. Each is pictorially unified and yet, in a different way, almost cinematic in effect… Ghiberti’s feeling for physical detail and emotional nuance keeps his surfaces alive, edge to edge. As Adam and Eve’s story unfolds, for example, angels register everything from joy to skepticism to alarm. (An angel watching God awaken Adam seems to be asking, “Does he know what he’s doing? ”)

10/31/07

poem by Gershon Hepner
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What Is Your Favorite Work Of Art?

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE WORK OF ART?

What is you favorite work of art?
The answer that I'd like to hear is "You! "
You've been my favorite still the start
of our relationship, and when I view
you even in a reproduction
made by a camera I want to touch
the source of this work's great seduction,
the work of art I love so very much.
Even if you don't say "You! "
and your answer doesn't correspond
to mine, please do not look askew
at me while you are looking far beyond.

Kate Murphy interviews the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.in the NYT,4/29/12. He tells her:

I first heard Rufus Wainwright by accident about five years ago. I was doing research at Hampton Court in England and I came out one summer afternoon and he was doing a sound check. I heard him sing a song called "The Art Teacher, " which just happens to be about a girl falling in love with an art teacher at the Metropolitan Museum and looking back on this experience in her middle age. It's such an evocative and brilliant song, and I've loved his music ever since.
There are the song's lyrics:
THE ART TEACHER

There I was in uniform
Looking at the art teacher
I was just a girl then;
Never have I loved since then

He was not that much older than I was
He had taken our class to the Metropolitan Museum
He asked us what our favorite work of art was,
But never could I tell it was him
Oh, I wish I could tell him -
Oh, I wish I could have told him

I looked at the Rubens and Rembrandts
I liked the John Singer Sargents
He told me he liked Turner
Never have I turned since then
No, never have I turned to any other man

All this having been said,
I married an executive company head
All this having been done, a Turner - I own one
Here I am in this uniformish, pant-suit sort of thing,
Thinking of the art teacher
I was just a girl then;
Never have I loved since then
No, never have I loved any other man

4/29/12 #10,032

poem by Gershon Hepner
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The medieval hall house was very primitive when it became the characteristic form of dwelling of the landowner of the Middle Ages.

quote by Stephen Gardiner
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I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth.

quote by Lewis H. Lapham
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The Craft Of Life

I tried to study it for just a while:
All of the potions, from oysters to seducing smiles.
But I've found it's already inside me:
A big round bubble of sensuality,
Dared to be burst,
But worried about getting hurt.
I know how you like to kiss.
I'll ask you what you're thinking.
Silvers in our dark hair.
The sheets are soaked by your tiny fish.
The craft of life,
The craft of life,
The craft of life,
The craft of life,
Oo-ooh...
Tears spring to mind when I go back in time.
All those lost bodies just seeking security.
Jittering strangers with smutting hands,
Heavy and clever and full of demands.
Well I'm similar to you:
We're familiar with what to do.
I know how you like to kiss.
I'll ask you what you're thinking.
Silvers in our dark hair.
The sheets are soaked by your tiny fish.
The craft of life,
The craft of life,
The craft of life,
The craft of life,
Oo-ooh...

song performed by by Kate Bush
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Born In Africa

I am born in Africa with the odd triangle,
But that is not the end of my story with you;
And i have the hope of meeting up with stars one day.
Across the ages of history are the ages of mankind,
And across the stages of my age are my dreams;
For i have to take the steps of meeting you one day.

He brews with his people and,
Every son was thrown into the river!
But the daughters were saved for love.

I have made up my mind towards you and,
My age will lead me on to the mountain of love;
For i was born in Africa with the odd triangle but,
The dreams of my mind will lead me on.

Kish, fish, dish;
1611 to the King James Version of the Bible;
But the Roman Pope ssent Augustine to convert England in 596.

I am born in Africa with hope,
And of the struggles that have made me very strong!
But like a celibate mate in a compact car,
I will rise up high above all things to meet the stars.

Of much medieval canon laws and,
What i can do in this life;
But in the era of 325,
The Council of Nicaea condemned Arianism.

How can a war be 'holy' when, people are being killed?
Maybe it is like a political inoculation to the immune system;
But, i will make it to the stars one day.

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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Blunt And Instructive

Words can be blunt and instructive,
but frequently they are destructive.
Far better perhaps to be Trappist
than savagely, hip-hoppy rappist,
but silence is no vow I’m able
to take, so I put up with Babel,
and hope you, also, dear reader,
accept like a Lebanon cedar
that destruction of forests cannot
be avoided when you have a lot
set aside for a temple. The same
applies to the words that we maim
when writing a poem, but silence
is, passive-aggressively, violence.
You have to destroy when instructive;
if not, you will be counterproductive.

Michael Kuczynski in Bryn Mawr Review reviews Sandy Bardsley’s “Venomous Tongues: Speech and Gender in Late Medieval England, “ Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,2006:

Speech, Chaucer explains in the House of Fame is only broken air. The definition is intended (however scientifically accurate) as
pedantic: it's spoken by a burlesque Dantean eagle, one of many instances in the poem of ironic understatement. Joking aside,
however, medieval poets, like such modern novelists as Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie, know that there's nothing soft about language. In satire, especially, it's often wielded as a weapon. And outside the literary ambit, in life, it can get even more unruly. Courts of law have to concern themselves constantly with the blunt and destructive social impact of words. How they do so, and the often self-serving aims behind their policing efforts, is in any age a complex cultural narrative.

Sandy Bardsley's fascinating new book is not so much interested in medieval satire (there is a brief interlude on literary texts, on
which see below) , but rather in historical fact, insofar as incomplete medieval records allow this to be reconstructed. She uses case
documents from medieval courts of law, both firsthand and by means of previous investigators' forays, to demonstrate how a particular kind of violent speech, scolding, became matter for jurisdiction in late medieval England. More specifically, she emphasizes a key cultural moment in post-plague England when women were losing access to an informal but respected means of drawing public attention to outrageous crimes, the 'hue and cry, ' while at the same time enduring demonstrable 'overrepresentation in the scolding category' (89) . Within this jurisdictional frame, Bardsley argues, scolding came to be associated primarily if not exclusively with women, although pre-plague it was an offense just as likely to be charged against men. Through careful analysis of patterns of litigation, she is able to show the extent to which male society, in the venues of both secular and church courts, worked to silence women's dissenting discourse by labeling it as mere nagging: a stereotypical rather than idiosyncratic vice. Her argument is richly supported with statistics drawn from more than 600 late medieval records and graphs that represent convincing patterns inferred from these numbers.

12/9/07

poem by Gershon Hepner
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In My Craft or Sullen Art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art

poem by Dylan Thomas
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Maimed but still magnificent... Europe's mightiest medieval cathedral.

quote by R.W. Apple, Jr.
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Whereas there's a wealth of galleries in Australia, everyone's got a gallery in Australia or wants your work. Because the art scene is smaller in Indonesia, there's not so much competition.

quote by Andrew Jack
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Maha Sati

Maha Sati*

She grew up
In a happy family
She sacrificed
All her ambitions
And every comfort
For the wellbeing
Of everyone in family

She was married
With some difficulty
For less Education
Her in-laws and spouse
Of a modest family!

She made no complaints
Tried to live happily
Whatever came her way
Destiny tested her
And her relations!

She fell chronically ill
Couldn’t afford treatment
At her husband’s place
Came to her parents
Her in-laws forgot her
Left to her fate
She did not complain!

One day we saw
She took a drastic decision
Self immolated herself
To spare every one
Trying to help her
Instead of her husband
She was Maha Sati!

*Great Sati (Sati system was earlier prevalent in Central India, in the medieval period; where women would self-immolate them after the death of their husband

poem by Udaya Pant
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My view is that climate changes have happened in the last 80 years, that is, the world has got a little bit warmer, although not as warm as it has been in Medieval times, or the Bronze Age.

quote by Piers Corbyn
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I Travel

Cities, buildings falling down
Ideal homes falling down
These pictures I see on the wall
Timeless leaders stand so tall
Assassin in a hit and run
Asia steals a new born son
Evacuees and refugees
Presidents and monarchies
Travel round
I travel round
Decadence and pleasure towns
Tragedies,luxuries,statues,parks and galleries
Europe has a language problem
Talk, talk, talk, talk, talking on
In central europe
Men are marching
Marching on and marching on
Love songs playing in the restaurants
Airport playing bi some lo
Travel round
I travel round
Decadence and pleasure towns
Tragedies,luxuries,statues,parks and galleries
Europe has a language problem
Europe has a language problem
America has a language problem
I travel
Euro-bureau-interpol
Making love to the criminals
Asia has a language problem
I travel
And on and on and on and on and on and on and on

song performed by by Simple Minds, music by Simple Minds, lyrics by J. Kerr
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A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.

quote by Vince Lombardi
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On the Building of Springfield

Let not our town be large, remembering
That little Athens was the Muses' home,
That Oxford rules the heart of London still,
That Florence gave the Renaissance to Rome.

Record it for the grandson of your son —
A city is not builded in a day:
Our little town cannot complete her soul
Till countless generations pass away.

Now let each child be joined as to a church
To her perpetual hopes, each man ordained:
Let every street be made a reverent aisle
Where Music grows and Beauty is unchained.

Let Science and Machinery and Trade
Be slaves of her, and make her all in all,
Building against our blatant, restless time
An unseen, skilful, medieval wall.

Let every citizen be rich toward God.
Let Christ the beggar, teach divinity.
Let no man rule who holds his money dear.
Let this, our city, be our luxury.

We should build parks that students from afar
Would choose to starve in, rather than go home,
Fair little squares, with Phidian ornament,
Food for the spirit, milk and honeycomb.

Songs shall be sung by us in that good day,
Songs we have written, blood within the rhyme
Beating, as when Old England still was glad, —
The purple, rich Elizabethan time.

Say, is my prophecy too fair and far?
I only know, unless her faith be high,
The soul of this, our Nineveh, is doomed,
Our little Babylon will surely die.

Some city on the breast of Illinois
No wiser and no better at the start
By faith shall rise redeemed, by faith shall rise
Bearing the western glory in her heart.

The genius of the Maple, Elm and Oak,
The secret hidden in each grain of corn,
The glory that the prairie angels sing
At night when sons of Life and Love are born,

Born but to struggle, squalid and alone,
Broken and wandering in their early years.
When will they make our dusty streets their goal,
Within our attics hide their sacred tears?

When will they start our vulgar blood athrill
With living language, words that set us free?
When will they make a path of beauty clear
Between our riches and our liberty?

We must have many Lincoln-hearted men.
A city is not builded in a day.
And they must do their work, and come and go
While countless generations pass away.

poem by Vachel Lindsay
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Darkness Left

Don’t think I walk
in medieval dark.
I walk in shadow shade.
Still searching convert
for transmuting light.

The advantage of shade?
I don’t get burnt dismayed.
Totally needlessly
indiscriminately darkened done.
By scorching ray of inferno sun.

Still searching shadow creation
transmutation scientific revelation.

poem by Terence George Craddock
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What is faith and belief? .....

Although, we say that a man with faith
can win the world without trouble
But faith is believing something is not seen
We do exercise believe in faith everyday
But believing in reality is more truth than faith
We cannot see most things that we have faith
even they are existing like a faith in God.
When we become lack of belief in ourselves
then we become nothing but weakening in our soul
Most of the people dream to have something
and they want them to come true within their faith
They don't want to achieve them through belief in reality.
Some think faith and belief are part of evolution
It is true that success in life need to have both faith and belief
but belief is the way of searching for the truth or reality
Faith is known as trust on something but absence of proof
But belief is built with knowledge and a reality is proofed.

Ravi Sathasivam / Sri Lanka
Copyright @2008 Ravi Sathasivam

poem by Ravi Sathasivam
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There Goes My Inspiration

They say pain can bring out the artists best
But since youve been gone, I just cant care less
Common sense doesnt realize
It can hurt so bad
Everyday I sit in my garret staring at the floor
But my heart isnt in it anymore
There goes my inspiration
My reason for creation
There goes my inspiration
I felt it fly away when you said goodbye
Me and gaugin used to party down
I was hung in the louvre, I was renoirs pal
Vincent van gogh used to joke with me
Now they dont come round
Its all over town that the masters lost his touch
Im so lost I can hardly hold a brush
And now my palette is a sorry mix of grey and brown
And all the other art lovers stay away
cause Im bringing them down
Now I wander the left bank every day
Searching for my muse in sad cafes
Peddle my oils to the galleries
But they turn me down
Everybody says Im a master of technique
But the style and the sentiment is weak

song performed by by Utopia
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