RUSSIA: CUTE AS SOCKS ON A ROOSTER

I wasn't the only one in our tour group that was sort of creeped out by the .... well.... whatever they were    -   guarding the door of .... whatever it was.  Although after about three seconds I fell in love with them.  I mean really - I've never seen anything like this before, and won't again.  

Anyhow, one of the ladies asked the tour guide what the heck these things were - and she answered with a perfectly straight face:  they are sphinxes.  (As if to say like duh, couldn't we tell??)  St. Petersburg has a few beautiful authentic mysterious and downright fabulous sphinxes around the city, but I'll do a separate posting on them.  So don't go thinkin this is what the Russians think a sphinx is but damn - I actually I like these better than the real ones.  

I mean hey - in Finland, this is the kind of decoration they have outside of their stores and restaurants, but you see what I mean?  Not that I don't like this, but it got nothing on the two ragamuffins that the Russians came up with.  

DENMARK: BE PREPARED TO BE CONFUSED

Okay, so there's this statue in Aarhus Denmark that looks fairly innocent at first glance.  I was standing behind it, and it looked like a classical statue, and actually it is a take off on an ancient Greek sculpture of Hermes and the infant Dionysus dug up in the 1800s.  So far so good.  However...

The name of the piece is Madame and you might notice that he has one sandal on, and one women's shoe.  Turn around and look at the front and what do you know - no boy parts.  

So now I'm wondering what this is all about, and I just can't understand what the artist was getting at, and as far as I can understand, its not really about gender. 

 


The statue is in a public park area with people around and kids playing on it all the time - so its there for the touching.  Then there's that Braille lettering at the bottom "Noli me tangere".  It means "don't touch me".  Hmm - okay - I guess that's kinda clever.   

 






Original sculpture (left).  He was holding grapes and the child was reaching for them.



The German / Danish artist Christian Lemmerz is well known in that part of the world because he once had an art installation comprised of dead pigs in glass containers.  Viewers could watch them decompose.  There was a public outcry and I think they were taken away - mostly due to the smell.  The public wasn't so happy about this piece of art either, but by the sounds of it, it could have been worse. 





Actually, looking at his work - there is one I really like....   Maybe not appropriate for a public park, but I think its done well, that's for sure.

RUSSIA: THE RIZAS

Sigh.  One of my all time most beautiful favorite things I've ever seen are (drum roll please) the Rizas at the Faberge Museum in St. Petersburg.  A riza is a metal cover protecting an icon.  They are  usually made of gilt or silvered metal with precious stones and pearls. 

The purpose of a riza is to honour and venerate an icon.  It also protects the painting under it because candles and oil lamps were often burned in front of them.

The riza is designed specifically for the icon it is to cover.  It leaves open spaces where the face, hands, and feet of the icon's subject can be seen.  


The rizas usually have elaborate robes, haloes and crowns.  Older ones sometimes just cover the halo (venets) or have a stylized neck ring (tsatas). 

A few of the late Byzantine ones were designed with a riza from the beginning, so only the areas not covered by the riza needed to be painted.  

We saw big ones and tiny ones, and one the size of a grandfather clock that was fully decorated with pearls.  If I recall, most of them were the size of a large book.  

There's just something about them.  So precious to whoever owned it at the time.  So beautiful!

AMSTERDAM: THE MOCO

The kids really enjoyed the Moco (Modern and contemporary museum).  This is where you'll see works by Koons, Hirst, Haring, Warhol, Lichtenstein and of course Banksy.  

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

Banksy

TALLIN: BLACK ANGUS AND THE STONE PIGEONS

These white stones seemed to be all around randomly - so I thought I'd better look them up once I got home.  They are the Stone Pigeons made originally by Simson von Seakyll for a group exhibition called "Minu kallis paranoia" (My dear paranoia).  I think we are supposed to come across them and think of them as secretly talking to each other.  I didn't really see them that way - or I guess if they were talking to one another they were saying nice things.

There were 97 of them made initially.  Pigeons like these are indeed scattered all over the city, but they aren't random - they serve as barriers (ie: places one shouldn't drive).  I read that lately many of them are being removed because people are either moving them, stealing them, tripping over them or driving into them.  I think they are pretty cute.  

Here's another cute guy that lives in Tallinn.  His name is Black Angus.  

Here's a better photo of him - from the internet...

HELSINKI: KOLMEN SEPAN PATSAS

You know, usually when I pass by a statue or landmark I don't know a thing about it - so I have to wait until I get home to figure out what I saw.  I guess the Three Smiths Statue (Kolmen sepan patsas) located in the city center between the famous Stockmann department store and the Vanha (University of Helsinki student union office) is a well known meeting place for the people of Helsinki. 

The piece represents cooperation between people.  The statue was commissioned by the Pro Helsingfors Foundation, which was founded by an iron merchant.  The figures are bronze and they are on a red granite base.   Felix Nylund created this in 1932.

It depicts three larger-than-life smiths hammering on an anvil. The lead blacksmith is holding a rod of iron on the anvil with his left hand and a small handled sledgehammer in his right hand. The model for this was a brick layer.  The facial features are from the poet Arvid Morne.  


The other two blacksmiths are using large handled sledge hammers to pound the metal rod.  The smith raising the hammer is a self portrait of the young Nylund, while the third smith was modeled on the stone cutter Aku Nuutinen; an important assistant to him. 

Strangely enough, rumor has it that if a virgin passes a hammer will hit the anvil.  Even stranger is that nobody has can remember hearing it.  In the second world war the base was damaged during a bombing and an anvil of a smith still has a hole from the shrapnel. 

THE HAGUE / MAURITSHUIS: HET PUTTERTJE (THE GOLDFINCH)

I'd say this is one of my favorite paintings in one of my favorite galleries, but I always say that - don't I?

The painting is quiet and simple. The goldfinch is perched on its feeding box, which is against a whitewashed wall.  Fabritius' signature is written at the bottom, in grey paint - along with the date.  

Mignon, Fruit Still-Life with Squirrel and Goldfinch

Goldfinches were common pets - as early as the Roman Empire.  They sing beautifully, and can, believe it or not, be taught to perform tricks.  People often taught them to open their own feeding boxes and to draw up drinking water with a tiny bucket the size of a thimble.  They were nicknamed het puttertje - from the Dutch putten (means to draw water from a well).  So I think that the entire name would mean 'little water drawer'.  

I think one reason why I like this so much is that Fabritius painted the bird as though he were painting a portrait of a person.  He was the first artist to do that.  Many artists painted goldfinches in their genre paintings and landscapes, or they'd have dead birds in their still lifes. 

The bird's feeding box is unadorned.  Sometimes this type of bird could be a religious symbol because of the splashes of red (blood) and because they eat thistle seeds. (In the bible - 'along with thorns, only thistles will grow after the fall of man'.)  But that's not the meaning of this painting.  Its simply a portrait of a particular goldfinch.  He is seen chained to his box - which was common in those days.  Kinda sad hey?

So about Fabritius - he was born in Amsterdam in 1622, married the girl next door and was a student of Rembrandt.  However, we're talking the 1600s, so ya - he lost his first child in 1640 and his second in 1643.  His wife died later that year.  

Years later, he married a widow from Delft.  He died in a terrible accident (the Delft Thunderclap - hey - I'll tell you about it sometime).  He was only 32.

DENMARK: LAMBORGHINI ART EXHIBIT

I don't know one car from another, but apparently this is a fancy car (Lamborghini Gallardo) and is worth $236,486.00 Canadian.  Actually, the owner of the car - Norwegian artist Dolk - says it might be worth more than that now because its a piece of art.  
 

My son walking around the car

I knew this exhibit would be at the  ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, but I didn't realize the "interactive" part of it was finished.  Not that I would have contributed.  


So this is the deal.   The beautiful black Lamborghini was placed in the gallery and viewers were asked to scratch it as part of an art project.  Basically, the artist wanted to send a message that people "leave their marks" in the world.  But after three weeks, the artist realized he had to put a stop to the vandalism and tell people the exhibition was over, because - well - let's just say the visitors were "very enthusiastic".  People started scratching the windows, pulling off the lettering, and if left any longer the car would be completely white.  

In September, the artist will take back the car, but won't have it repainted.  

RUSSIA: FABERGE MUSEUM

If you're not into eggs all that much, this museum also has more than 4,000 works of decorative applied and fine arts.  However - hey - I didn't think I was "into" eggs either, but the more I read about them, the more intriguing they sound.

I have a tour of The Faberge Museum booked, and it has a group of nine imperial easter eggs created for the last two Russian Tsars; the Emperors Alexander III and Nicolas II.  Interested?  How about if I told you these nine eggs were bought quite a few years ago for $100 million American dollars.  Yikes.  Now I'm afraid to even look!

Every year Tsar Alexander III gave his wife a new and unique egg - each containing some kind of "surprise" within it.  

I think this Lilies of the Valley Egg is my favorite. 

Materials: Gold, green-gold, translucent rose pink, and green enamel, diamonds, rubies, pearls, rock crystal, watercolor on ivory

This gold, art-nouveau style egg is enameled translucent rose on a guilloche field and supported on four dull green-gold cabriolet legs, composed of overlapping leaves veined in rose-cut diamonds. The egg is surmounted by a rose-cut diamond and cabochon ruby Imperial crown set, with two bows and quartered by four lines of rose-cut diamonds and decorated with lilies of the valley in pearls and rose-cut diamonds. The stalks are lightly engraved green gold, and the leaves are enameled translucent green on gold.

The surprise consists of three oval miniatures of Nicholas II in military uniform and the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana, his first two children. It rises from the top of the egg by means of a geared mechanism and spreads into a fan when a gold-mounted pearl button at the side is turned. A turn in the opposite direction automatically folds and returns the miniatures back to the interior of the egg. The Julian date, April 5, 1898, is engraved on the reverse of the miniatures. Johannes Zehngraf painted the miniatures on ivory; the egg retains its original fitted velvet case.
A lover of flowers, Alexandra Fedorovna regularly had trainloads of blooms brought to St. Petersburg from the Crimea to adorn the Alexander Palace. Lilies of the valley were among the tsarina’s favorite flowers, as were pearls her favorite jewels.

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/lillies.html