Colours of India

 

The current exhibition at Pointe-à-Callière, the Montreal Museum of Archeology and History is on display from November 8^th 2011 to April 22^nd 2012.

India, a geographically, socially, and culturally diverse country, expresses its heritage and traditions by means of its different religions, clothing, theatre, celebrations, religious ceremonies, and its daily life customs.

This exhibition  represents “a voyage into a mosaic of landscapes, ethnicities, and beliefs that have shaped Indian life, artistic expression, and culture. Through this exhibition—which coincides with the Year of India in Canada—Pointe-à-Callière is seeking to convey the importance of India’s cultural and religious heritage.”

Objects on display are sculptures, works of art, textiles, clothing, and finery. There are also presented film excerpts and soundtracks depicting major Indian ceremonies and rituals which complete and enrich the visitor’s experience.

One hundred objects deplayed at the Pointe-à-Callière come from  the collections of the Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet in Paris.

The vibrantly coloured Indian textiles on display - including saris, shawls, veils, odhnis, turbans, and coats from the 18th and 19th centuries - come from their impressive textile collection, mainly from the personal collection of Krishna Riboud, the great-grandniece of Nobel laureate for literature Rabindranath Tagore. Krishna Riboud , well aware of the textiles’ priceless heritage value, worked for many years to preserve various fabrics, costumes, and clothing that today are part of this collection. Since the days of antiquity, India has been world-renowned for its variety of textiles.

Other objects on display are captivating terracotta, stone, bronze, and wood statues dating from the 2nd to the 19th century AD, representing kings or mythical gods, deity ornaments, or objects associated with rites. A dozen objects from The Royal Ontario Museum complete the collection of artefacts presented in Montréal, at Pointe-à-Callière.

The great gamut of colour at the exhibition is supplied by superb works of a French photographer Suzanne Held, which were carefully chosen from a vast collection of photos taken by her over 40 years of her travel to India. 

In the following video Suzanne Held speaks about her photos she took in India and exhibited at Musée des Arts Asiatiques at Nice. You can see many of those photos now in Montreal.

Suzanne Held, Inde éternelle

You will find more about the Montreal Museum of Archeology and History at Pointe-à-Callière, about their opening hours and their other activities, at the PAC museum website.

List of Photos as they appear in the text

1. Visual of the exhibition created by Dominique Boudrias from Pointe-à-Callière. ©Suzanne Held

2. View of the exhibition room, Photo by Alain Vandal

3. A woman cuts rushes in Agra. The Taj Mahal is a tomb to the memory of Mumtaz Mahal, favourite wife of the Mogul emperor Shah Jahan, the “king of the world.” She died giving birth to her fourteenth child, a girl who did not survive. In his despair the inconsolable emperor, his hair turned white overnight, summoned 20,000 labourers and master craftsmen to build the tomb. After 17 years the work was finished, but the State’s coffers were empty. Shah Jahan lost his throne and was imprisoned until his death by his son Aurangzeb. ©Suzanne Held

4. View of the exhibition room and textiles, Photo by Alain Vandal

5. Ganesha is the god who removes obstacles, very popular in India because he ensures the success of any undertaking. According to legend, Ganesha was decapitated in error by his father, Shiva. To atone for his mistake, Shiva decided to replace Ganesha’s head with the head of the first living creature he came across. © Musée Guimet, Paris

6. Srirangam temple (17th century) stands on the small island of Koledam, in south India, Dravidian India. This vast religious complex, dedicated to Vishnu, is a microcosm where hundreds of priests reside. The horse courtyard contains 953 pillars sculpted in the round representing armed horsemen mounted on rearing horses. Each statue, six metres high, is carved from a single block of granite. ©Suzanne Held

MMFA – New Bourgie Pavilion

Today, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) inaugurated the new Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion, which will become the home for the museum’s permanent collection of Quebec and Canadian Art. The pavilion also features a new 444-seat concert hall - Bourgie hall - build into the nave of the former 1894 heritage Erskine church, recognized for its excellent acoustics.

The new Bourgie pavilion is architecturally quite amazing. The old church masonry is combined with modern structures of large white marble sheets, glass and steel.

The Bourgie Pavilion of Quebec and Canadian Art

It is spread over 6 levels with 600 works. There are 4 stories above the ground level and one below. Starting from the top, this is how the collection is subdivided:

Level 4 – Inuit Art, featuring 100 works from rich collection of sculpture and prints.

Indian Art and colonial period portraits in the background to the left, Bourgie Pavilion, Level 3.

Level 3 – Founding Identities theme – will feature contemporary and historical Ameridian Art as well as  works of colonial period (1700 to 1870s), dominated by portraiture and religious art.

Alfried Laliberté, Lost in Though, 1924.

Bourgie Pavilion, Level 2.

Level 2 -  Features the Annuals Exhibition Era (1980s – 1920s), and such artists as for instance Maurice Cullen, Ozias Leduc, James Wilson Maurice and Alfred Laliberté.

Lawren S. Harris, Log Cabin, 1923.

Bourgie Pavilion, Level 1.












Level 1 – Towards Modernism (1920s - 1930s) - present the Montreal’s Beaver Hall Group and its Quebec cityscapes and landscapes. This level also highlights the paintings from the Toronto based Group of Seven, and painters like Emily Carr and Marc-Aurèle Fortin.

Paul-Emil Bourdua, Composition 44, 1944. Bourgie Pavilion, Street Level.

Sherbrooke Stree Level -  The Age of the Manifesto (1040s - 1960s), with artists Paul-Emile Bordua and Alfred Pellan. A special place is also devoted for the works of Jean-Paul Riopelle (from 1947 to 1977).

Bourgie Pavilion, The Undeground Level. 

The underground Level – “The Mountain Gallery” – a thick layer of the mountain rock had to be removed to open this space to house the art from 1960s to 1970s with such artists as Louis Archambault, Greg Curnoe, Jean McEwen, Guido Millinari, Michael Snow and Calude Tousignant among others. This level leads directly into the underground passage that links all three MMFA pavilions.

The Bourgie Concert Hall

The artistic highlight of this hall ate magnificent Tiffany stained glass windows, along with the stained glass windows by Haworth and Charles William Kelsey.

Tiffany Stained Glass Windows, Bourgie Concert Hall.

The Hall has two Steinway & Sons’ Grand Pianos. One is on the stage of the concert hall, and the other one is in the practice room below the concert hall. This ensures that if a piece written for two pianos were to be performed, this Bourgie Hall would easily accommodate it.

Bourgie Concert Hall - the back of the Hall, Parterre and Balcony.

125 concerts have been scheduled for this Inaugural Season, spotlighting local musicians. The performances will include classical music as well as jazz, world and new music. Bourgie Hall will also hold a number of concert series with renowned musical ensembles.

For more information visit the Bourgie Hall website

http://www.sallebourgie.ca/

Also visit the website of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

http://www.mbam.qc.ca/en/index.html

Canadian International Organ Competition

Montreal Notre-Dame Basilica Organ

This is the second edition of
CIOC - the Canadian International Organ Competition


It will be held in Montreal, Canada, between October 5 and October 16, 2011. It will feature 16 top young organists from 11 countries: 4 women and 12 men, between 24 and 33 years of age.

- The first round of the competition will be held on October 5, 6 and 7 at the Church of the Immaculate Conception.


- The second round will be held on October 10 and 11 at the Saint-Jean-Baptist Church.


- The final round will be held on October 14 at the Notre-Dame Basilica.


The 2011 edition will close with a Gala Concert honouring the prizewinners on Sunday October 16, 2011 at Notre-Dame Basilica.


The winners will receive the following cash prizes:

First Prize:       $25,000

Second Prize:   $15,000

Third prize:      $10,000


Admission to the Competition Rounds and certain activities is free.  Suggested donation is $10. The general admission for the Gala concert is $20.


See the CIOC website for more information

http://www.ciocm.org/index.php?lang=e

World Press Photo Montreal 2011

The exhibition is being held at Marche Bonsecours between September 8 and October 2, 2011.

This is the 54^th edition of World Press Photo 11. It presents large-scale works of 54 photographers of different nationalities, arranged by 10 categories such as world news, art, nature, sports, portraits and everyday events. Two important selection criteria ware journalistic importance and the aesthetic merit of the work.

In the past there was heard a criticism that too much violence is portrayed in the photos. This simply reflects what is happening in the photo media at large, what photo journalists are covering and what they are obsessed about. Yet the impression of the predominantly violent photos is relative. The photos this year fall into three categories:

1. 6 %      Actual violence happening at the moment.
2. 20 %    People under duress – consequences of violence, natural disasters, and disease.
3. 74%     Non-violent, non-duress situations.

So although the number of works with the content of actual violence or people under duress is only about one quarter off all photos, it is remarkable the impact they have on the viewers who come out of the exhibition overwhelmed by the immediate impact of those photos.

The World Press official poster above features photo by Joost van Den Broek. It is a portrait of a 16 year old cadet Kiril Lewerski from a Russian naval ship Kruzenshtern. The innocent and direct gaze of the young cadet obscures effectively the fact that he is being trained in the art of war, how to kill, and how to destroy.

A question could be raised, is photo-journalistic photography just a direct representation of reality, simply an act of clicking a camera, or is there artistry involved. I am of the opinion that a successful photo with a high potential to impact a viewer is definitely art and has aesthetic merit. It represents a photographer's point of view. He is not only a window on the world's reality, but a filter of it. He selects the focus, the angle, the distance, the light aspects of his picture, and is guided in this process by his emotion, intellect and the desire to express what he thinks and feels about what he sees. He is the one who chooses the subject and the subject matter, he makes the adjustments, he chooses the eye level and the angles of the shoot in order to express what he sees in all its complexity. The final result is not simply a realistic picture but a totality of a story it narrates. It is an artistry to make photos that are not simplistic prints but become symbols of forces beyond the immediate representation.

The photo to the left is by Feisal Omar. It is of a man carrying a shark through the streets of Magadishu, Somalia. Somalians generally do not eat shark, but dry and salt its meat for export. The destroyed street, the shelled remains of the buildings that surround the man, and his huge load cry out of the heavy burden of the sharks of this world that ordinary Somalians carry on their shoulders amid the imposed devastation.

This photo by Ed Kashi is of a 9 year old Vietnamese girls Nguyen Thi Li who suffers from disabilities believed to be caused by the defoliating chemical Agent Orange used by the US forces during the Vietnam War. Notice the artistic quality of the photo, the lines, the light, the play of light and shadow, and the fact the subject is off-centre. This photo with painting-like composition definitely has a high aesthetic value.

The centrepiece of the Montreal's exhibition is the photo by a South African photographer Jodi Bieber seen on the left next to her World Press winning photo of the year 2010. It shows a young 18 year old Afgan girl Bibi Aisha who was disfigured, as punishment, after fleeing the violent treatment in her husband's family home. Her nose and ears were cut off, and she was abandoned in the mountainous clearing. She was later rescued, almost dead, and taken to a shelter in Kabul. She now lives permanently in Queens, New York and awaits a reconstructive surgery.

The photo is remarkable. Although the photographer states it deals with domestic violence, it is really about much more than that. It projects the shear strength of the girl's character, who apparently now walks in the streets without covering her face. Although she has a temporary protease, she does not like wearing it, since it makes her feel uncomfortable.

The photo appears to be a traditional three-quarters portrait. Yet, the lighting is natural day light, not studio lights, though it certainly does not give that impression. The girl is sitting in front of a window, and Jodi's assistant used a screen to direct the day light onto girl's face. The effect is quite stunning. The right side of the photo is all dark, to remind us of the dark and horrible act the girl has endured. Yet her face is illuminated and radiates light, and is symbolic of her inner strength. Moreover, to the left and above her head there is light which looks like a hallo, bringing the photo into spiritual realms where a comparison to a religious painting of the Madonna could be invoked.

Another serious subject matter is portrayed by the photographer Benjamin Lowy. He captured images of the oil floating to the surface after the explosion of the Deep Water horizon oil-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. These four photos give an impression of being abstract paintings that portray the deceptive beauty of a horrific act of massive pollution.

In the category of sport, the photo by Adam Pretty stands out. It captures the 2000-metre steeplechase event at Youth Olympics at Bishan Stadium, Singapore, in August 2010, when Brazilian athlete Ioran Etchebury trips and falls head-first.  Although the main subject seems to be the fall of the runner, the overall effect of the photo, the flying arms and legs, the splashing water, the athletes' small heads, the diagonal lines of the limbs, and the central prominence of legs that do not touch ground create an interesting effect where the athlete, the person, seems to take a background role to the overall aesthetic composition of the photo with the subsequent subtle comment on this human activity.

Visit he World Press Photo website.

DÉJÀ - The Collection on Display

Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art (Musée d'art contemporain deMontréal) is located right next to the Quartier des Spectacles at the very heart of Montreal. If you will attend any of the numerous free concert offered this summer at the Quartier, do not forget to drop into the Museum. Here is their website http://www.macm.org/en

Until September 4, 2011 the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, or MAC as it is called by the Montreal art aficionados, is solely featuring works from their own collection, amassed since 1964 when the Museum was first established. Their collection consists of over 7,000 works by more than 1,500 Quebec, Canadian and international artists. It encompasses many branches of artistic expression: painting, sculpture, installation, photography and works on paper. Many works also incorporate audio, video and film elements.

The diversity and uniqueness of works presently on display is quite remarkable. You will get a sparse overview of it from the video link at the bottom of this article. Yet, even that short video hints eloquently at the treasures to be discovered at the museum. For a more profound experience, visit the museum in person.

I will discuss only one of the works on display, just enough to entice you to attend the exhibition.















Louise Bourgeois, The Red Room – Child, 1994
Collection du Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
Photo : © Succession de Louise Bourgeois/Sodrac (Montréal), Vaga (New York)

The installation by Louise Bourgeois "The Red Room - Child" is not only a visual experience but an intellectual one as well. The meaning of the work is to be discovered by yourself. Look through the window pane in one of the doors that encircle an intimate space inside. What is behind that circle of closed doors? The predominant colour is red, as of fresh blood. Red thread from a number of spools stretches through the space. Are they blood vessels or are they raw threads of life still waiting and ready to be unwind from the stationary spools? Two cylindrical spools are of blue colour. Do they represent a royal blue blood or rather a hope for heavenly-like life?

Also inside are red hands truncated at mid-arm. They are made of wax and are of the same colour as the red thread. They are male, female and child hands. To the right, two child hands are enclosed by a man’s and a woman’s hands. At the back, on two iron pedestals, are placed two vase-like objects made from thick red wax ropes. The ropes resemble intestines. The vases’ shapes are somewhat feminine. Do they represent a mother and her female child?

Also at the back, a red lantern obscures the cut-off head of a lamb equally made of wax but of white colour with red blood stains. Is this a head of a sacrificial lamb? Are there religious connotation?

What does a red painted ladder-like object at the background below the blue spools represent? Trying to climb up on the path of one’s life? Striving towards the sky, towards one’s spiritual perfection?

You can ask a question: Are the cut-off hands and the blooded head of the lamb simply gross images, or do they signify the raw realities of life that in our everyday preoccupations we choose to be blind about, blotting them from our field of perception?

This conceptual installation by Louise Bourgeois generates more questions than answers. One can weave a story about it. One can project one’s own life s into it. One can interpret it according to one’s personal taste and one's emotional makeup. Bourgeois’ art is made in such a way that her aesthetic, emotional and intellectual sensibilities as well as her personal story woven into this piece will trigger a personal and even intimate response in a spectator.

Come and discover what you can find behind the closed doors of the Louise Bourgeois’s sculpture, as well as behind the open doors of the Montreal Museum of the Contemporary Art.

Here is the video I mentioned above

Déjà Exhibition Hightlights (Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Iui11tDfqI

Because you read this article this far, I will give you a hint. MAC is free of charge on Wednesday nights after 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. But you should really visit the Déjà exhibition during the regular hours on Tuesdays to Sundays between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. to support the museum.

FIFA 29th Edition: Anich Kapoor - Spiritual Sculpture

The Year of Anish Kapoor

(UK, USA, Netherlands / 2009 / 55 min. / Director Matthew Spingford)

The Year of Anish Kapoor was designated to be the closing film of the 29th edition of FIFA – International Festival of Films on Art, held in Montreal every year in March. Kapoor, a world renown sculptor, dazzles public with color, monumental sculptural designs, and the play on inverting and containing space. The film deserves the focused attention of the public since it brings into the forefront a very accomplished sculptor with a one-of-the-kind spatial and sculptural aesthetics, and it also raises a number of pertinent questions.

The concept ‘spiritual’ and ‘spirituality ‘ is heard throughout the film. Anish Kapoor says of his work, “Just as you can’t set out to make something beautiful, you can’t set out to make something spiritual. What you can do is recognise that it may be there. It normally has something to do with not having too much to say. There seems to be space for the viewer, and is sometimes something we identify as being spiritual. And it is all about space.”

This perception of spirituality being all about space is very specific to Kapoor. A number of questions could be asked in regard to the statements made in the film by him and others about spiritual aspect of Kapoor’s work:

-Is space spiritual?

-Is enticing you to enter into an artistically created, modified, and even distorted space a spiritual act?

-Are the feelings spectator experience vis-a-vis such artificial artistic spaces of a spiritual nature?

-Does artificial activity of shooting paint in to a corner in a gallery and thus visually reconstructing the space and the perception of it, represent a spiritual activity and a spiritual experience?

-Is a sculptural object placed in the middle of a countryside, in the middle of nature, that reflects, or distorts, or enhances nature a spiritual statement?

-Is the distortion of real space as perceived either on the surface of a sculpted object or in the inner cavities of it an act of creation of an illusive spiritual space?

-Could the abstractly represented dismembered body of a Saint, and the spectators walking between the separate body parts, be equated to an experience of a Christian pilgrimage?

-Would the act of creation itself, of creating a unique artistic object, give an artist a consciousness that he is involved in a spiritual act?

- Is our modern society so spiritually starved that it would seeks to find spiritual experiences and sensations through artistic statements of contemporary artists and through inanimate aesthetic objects they create?

The photo at the top, at the very beginning of this article is that of “Cloud Gate” (2004-2006), Chicago. Kapoor sais about it, “Distorts, people see themselves in, see the city, plays with your mind like a woman, simple and beautiful outside, complex and perhaps discovery inside.” Discovery of what? Of the sculpture’s souls or perhaps simply of the sculpture’s aesthetics?

Below are several examples of sculptures presented and discussed in the film.

Above, Kapour’s sculpture “C Curb” (2009) near Brighton is set in the middle of a field. It reflects, distorts and inverses the natural space in its mirror surface. It is a very remarkable sculpture with a playful theme, and liked by public. But does it offer a spiritual experience or only an aesthetic one?

The sculpture above is called “Dismemberment of Jeanne d’Arc” and was presented at Brighton Festival in 2009. It is bright read. Kapoor states, “One is literarily walking in her, through her, through her body. The implication is that the viewer is involved – something fundamental to sculpture. One body, one person responds to another, the memories of various parts of the body… It is as if this body is laid out in almost religious way. A kind of pilgrimage, as if somebody is to go to Santiago de Compostela.” Why red? Kapoor explains, “it makes it kind of black the way blue does not. It’s the black you see when you close your eyes. It’s something you know intuitively. And that sort of knowing… is the real subject of the work.”

So what is true spiritual knowing? Is is not supposed to be of Light rather than of blackness?

Kapoor’s above sculpture “Svayambh” (Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, 2007) is a structure made of red wax that passes through museum’s doors, where wax is subtracted and then added again . Kapoor comments about it “Self generated, leaving a trail, violent, collecting stuff, dropping stuff… Spiritual… What is a physical experience and metaphysical experience? … Terminology of spiritual… Spiritual powerful effect on you … dimension away from rational… You are forced to feel something.”

Site-specific Work at the Farm, Kaipara Bay, New Zealand 2009, is build into landscape, restructuring, enhancing, and “beautifying” the natural landscape. Kapoor comments about it, “Somewhere deep in my heart is a Wagnerian will to the grand.” Is it possible that it is this type of will that could be mistaken for spirituality?

I will conclude this article with a question I asked already earlier: Is our modern society so spiritually starved that it would seeks to find spiritual experiences and sensations through artistic statements of contemporary artists and through inanimate aesthetic objects they create?

FIFA 29th Edition: Emily Carr – Spiritual Painting

Winds of Heaven: Emily Carr, Carvers and the Spirits of the Forest

(Canada / 2010 / 90 min. / Director - Michael Ostroff / Screenplay - Michael Ostroff / Cinematography - Leigh Uttley)








The film presents an eloquent portrait of the Canadian painter Emily Carr (1871-1945). It focuses on her creative journey, on the reasons for her artistic drive, as well as her choice of themes, style, and colours. It is generously interlaced with the quotations from Carr’s own writings. What comes to the forefront is her search for something that would satisfy her fully and not being able to find it.

She searches for it in the nature, in the Canada’s vast British Columbia forests. Right at the beginning of the film she is quoted asking herself this question, “What do these forests make you feel? What is it you are straggling for? What is the vital thing that woods posses that you want? Why do you go back to the woods unsatisfied, longing to express something that is there, being unable to find it? It’s in there, yet so far away. You cannot reach it. Oh, you old fool, do not try to force these great forests, woe them.’

Thought Carr had rejected the organized religion at an early age, she never rejected her spiritual needs, “No church, no philosophy, you have to travel the road for yourself, you must find for yourself.”

She embraces loneliness, not finding consolation in the human crowds.

“What most attracts me in those wild, deep, solitary places – nobody goes there. The loneliness and quiet are unbroken. The loneliness repels them, the dug smells, the awful solemnity of the aged old tree makes you feel perfectly infinitesimal. They stay outside and talk about it. It’s bad for them but good for those who enter because holiness and quite are unbroken. I see clearer what I am away from humans in the woods.”

The film makes it obvious that Carr is searching for her own spirituality through the act of painting. It is as if by trying to capture on a canvas the spirit of the woods and wilderness, and the spirits that animate the Indian totem poles and carvings, she tried to reclaim her own spirituality and her connection to the ‘holiness’, a word used repeatedly throughout the film when quoting her writings.

Native Americans believed that the spirit of a person got caught in a picture, and this is why they refused to be photographed. Was it the same principle by which Carr was trying to capture the spirit of the nature, of the woods, and of the totem poles and imprint them onto her paintings, trying to repossess them for herself in an attempt to reconnect to her own spirituality? Is this why she is using the brush strokes, colours and shapes in such a novel way for her times so they would portray that all illusive spirit she is searching for?

Her art was too avangard for her times. It was not accepted and she stopped painting for 15 years. This changed when the National Gallery approached her to exhibit her art and when she discovered the Group of Seven and began a long lasting correspondence with Lawren Harris.

“Oh God, What have I seen! Something had spoken to the very soul of me! Wonderful! Mighty! Not of this world! Oh, these men, this Group of Seven, what have they created? If I knew where to find the God, a God to pray to, I would pray. God Bless the Group of Seven.” She also wrote about Lawren Harris’ paintings, “There is holiness about them, something you cannot describe but just feel.”

After seeing Emily Carr’s works, Lawren Harris tells her that she is one of them. Encouraged, Carr begins to paint, but this time, advised by Harris to depart from the native motives and to find herself instead ( He wrote to her, “Put aside Indian motives, strike out for yourself. ” ) she focuses more on painting the nature and the woods.

In another letter, Harris also tells her, “We are only content when all our sails are full with the winds of heaven. I hope all your winds are up and full of the winds of heaven.” This statement makes it obvious that both Harris and Carr perceived their creative impulse as that of being of heaven, as being spiritually inspired.

Carr once again embarked on a vigorous search of the spiritual through her painting. Yet there comes a startling realization: “the great forest, full of unseen things, and great silence…..and when I look at my paintings, there is nothing in it.... Oh, I am frightened when I look over at my paintings. There is nothing to it, just paint, dead and forlorn. I want my things to rock and sway with the fluids of life. But there they sit, weak and still.” And once again he asks herself in desperation: “What is it you are struggling for? It’s there … but I cannot catch hold of it.” Then she states, “I do not believe in the supernatural beings. Still, who understands the mystery of the forest?”

When in the middle of the night, all alone in the woods, she steps into a flowing water she exclaims, “I stand alone on my own perfect good feet in the stream at night, Life, Life, Life.” With this realization she begins to attempt to catch the light and the movement of the forest, her brush strokes becoming more free, fluid, and flowing.

“Everything is waiting and still. Colours you have not noticed come out.”

“I am looking for something so light, so tender, as mysterious as a tear.”

“Slowly things begin to move and slip into their places, groups and lines tie themselves together. Colours come out … Everything is alive, air is alive, sun is alive, silence is full of sound.”

At the end of the film a quotation is read, “I never before realized the relation between one’s pictures and oneself. Maybe the Indians were right and that something of you can get trapped forever in the picture as long as it lasts.”

Did Carr succeed in discovering her own spirituality or did she simply leave us something of herself permanently trapped in her paintings? Or maybe they are simply the spirits of the woods and of the Indian sacred objects as seen through her eyes that got caught in the paintings?

Can one’s spirituality be found by means of the creative act of painting? Can light and life be created through artistic means, through a person’s will for them to be expressed on canvas?

There are two short videos with excerpts form the film Wind of Heaven posted on YouTube:

EMILY CARR: WINDS OF HEAVEN

FIFA 29th Edition: Antwerp Central Station - Spiritual Architecture

Antwerp Central Station 

A 90 min. film directed by Peter Krüger, starring Johan Leysen (the narrator), shot by Rimvydas Leipus (2010).

The film goes beyond presenting the history of why and how the station was build at the end of the 19th century by King Leopold II of Belgium, and beyond discussing its main architectural features. Right from the start the focal statement is pronounced “It was clearly the intention to be overwhelmed by the feeling of holiness in a cathedral devoted to world trade and traffic.”

The station, dubbed by the Belgians the ‘Railway Cathedral’, is truly an architectural marvel caught in stunning shots by the cameramen. What is shown is the real as well as a specifically focused perspective, the play of light, the architectural details, the movement of passengers through space and time, as well as the intimate mood of the narrator, the presenter of this architectural gem to the viewer.

The magnificence of the station’s exterior architecture is even surpassed by the interior design and décor. There is a lot of marble: decorative columns, balustrades, balconies, galleries, regal stairways, and the floor, laid out in a squared pattern composed of 3 different kinds of Belgian marble. This train station is indeed “a place of beauty and glory” as stated by the narrator.

The camera zooms on to and lingers over the architectural details that one finds in Christian cathedrals. The imposing Dome which lets in the light is not unlike that of the St. Peter’s cathedral in Rome. And then there is a choir standing on the marble stairway singing about Devine creation: “Let there be light, and there was light.”

The narrator chooses to compare the train station’s dome to that of the Pantheon. He comments that the dome’s supporting walls are not decorated as in the Pantheon (not with Roman Gods) but rather with the sculpted symbols of trade and commerce. He notes that “in the place where in the Pantheon an emperor’s image would be located, is placed a clock…These are the Gods of the 19th century looking down at the visitors.”

The film forces one to ask a question, if the power of trade and commerce is so strong that it runs our modern life from the late 19th century to the present, why did the architects of this building resorted to incorporate the traditional elements that were part of the spiritual worship into a seemingly mundane public building of a train station?

The train station's main building was designed in the 19th century by the Bruges architect L. Delacenserie. What was his vision in conceiving it in such a monumental way? Did he consider that the commerce and trade would be becoming the Gods of the future centuries, the new objects of “worship”, requiring therefore the new type of a cathedral? Is this why he incorporated elements from the traditional places of worship into it, to signify the continuation of time and space through which a society moves forward?

What is also spiritualized in this building, through architecture, the interior reliefs, and the exterior roof sculptures, is the regal power of the state. The stone Belgian lion on the roof, the replica of the royal crown above the archway, and the live lion let roam freely at night in the empty station’s hall, called by the narrator “the income hall”, state that not only the past but also the present Belgian power is alive, well and strong.

Beside the Christian monotheistic and early Roman pantheistic elements of spirituality encompassed in the architecture of the station, the narrator also discovers that this monument also includes metaphysical concepts such as those of non-existence of time, the blending of time and space, and space being dissipated by areal lines and emptiness. The linear platforms covered by an immense expanse of iron and glass of the vaulted ceiling create a strange type of a perspective causing one to question what is real and what is not regarding time and space.

The station recently underwent extensive reconstruction. A new open concept was added: two new lower levels of platforms for high speed trains, passing underneath the city. This brought the light down into the underground, allowing it to be lit from above, in addition to lighting panels. The narrator comments, “By adding lighting panels one never has the feeling of descending in the underworld.” So the building’s architecture denies the existence of the underworld as well as of time and space, the same as these concepts are denied by the metaphysics.

The hall has now become a social place where people meet, have coffee, and participate in cultural events: choir singing, tango dancing, etc. The new Gods of the present century are usurping the train station’s space, and they are the Gods of culture and art.

This short video on YouTube is a series of images from the film:

ANTWERP-CENTRAL / MIDDENSTATIE by PETER KRÜGER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swUsnrjQSvM

The photo at the very beginning of this article is from blog.petaflop.de

Harold Pinter - Modern Drama at Its Best

The Caretaker 

The Centaur Theatre’s production of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker is a must to see. This play, no doubt, contributed to Pinter’s winning of the Noble Prize for literature in 2005. The play opened on March 29, 2007, and the performances will continue until April 22, 2007.

You might be interested to know that the play had real-life origins. Pinter became acquainted with two brothers who lived together. One of them brought an old tramp to the house for a brief stay. At the time Pinter himself had very little money, and therefore somewhat identified with the tramp, with whom he spoke occasionally.

Pinter - a contemporary, modern dramatist - has created a play that might not readily appeal to those who like vigorous physical action on stage. In The Caretaker, a much subtler type of forward movement is achieved, surprisingly created with total silences or words and phrases uttered seemingly out of the blue. The play, often identified as absurd, in fact very much resembles life. As in real life there are discordant words and conversations, uninterested and self-absorbed listeners, misunderstood and misconstrued statements. The characters often talk past each other rather than conversing. They also dishonour confidences, play power games, manipulate to gain advantage, not realizing that in the process they “bite the hand that feeds them”. Worst of all, they are blind to caring gestures by others, either taking them for granted, or dismissing them altogether as a nuisance.

Though the play is often compared to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in that nothing really happens regardless of an implied sense of expectation, there is however a significant difference between the two plays. The Caretaker’s characters are not waiting for anybody (like Godot) and therefore doing nothing because of it, as in Beckett’s play. They are simply procrastinating, regardless of their plans and projects. Such plans and projects are totally absent in the Beckett play. However, what makes both plays similar is the sense of expectation, of some impending change to shortly take place which, of course, never happens.

Pinter’s play is about people with mundane plans that have absolutely no chance of ever materializing. Beckett’s play is about people without any plans but with a hope of seeing Godot (some critics postulate that Godot is actually God), and this hope also never materializes.

The Caretaker has the power to make you question your life, and to examine your own projects which have been shelved, where they have been gathering dust. Though nurtured periodically in your thoughts, they remain right where they are, non-materialized. This play might also force you to take a better look at your interactions with those close to you. It could even propel you to be more attentive to others, more appreciative and grateful for any gestures of kindness and concern.

Where:
Centaur Theatre Company453 St.
François-XavierMontreal QuebecH2Y 2T
www.centauretheatre.com
Box Office Telephone: (514) 288-3161

Photo Above:
An earlier photo of Harold Pinter
by Martin Rosenbaum