Author Archives: Jotsna Jari

Venice National Archaeological Museum
*1523 by the Cardinal Domenico Grimani

(writer : jotsna jari )

The history of museumsis, in effect, the history of the collection and classification of objects.

💙 COLLECTING IN HISTORY : 

Collections have a longer history than do museums.

Collecting began with the earliest human societies,and there were established collecting traditions in Africa,Arabia and Asia long before collecting developed inEurope.

Ancient collections were assembled for a variety of purposes, including for prestige, as economichoards, and to promote group loyalty.

One of the oldestdocumented collections dates from ca. 530 BCE in theancient Sumarian city of Uruk, located in present-day Iraq,about 120 miles north of Basra.  Excavations of atemple site there by C.L. Woolley and his colleagues inthe early 1900s unearthed a collection of antiquities datingback to 2000–2500 BCE that included a boundary stone, a

mace head, fragments of a statue, a clay foundation cone,and clay tablets. The objects were documented by inscriptions on a clay drum cylinder on which a scribe hadrecorded that they were “found in the ruins of Ur, the workof Bur-Sin, King of Ur, which while searching for the

ground plan [of the temple] the governor of Ur found, andI saw and wrote out, for the marvel of beholders.” 

By the third millennium BCE, there were extensivecollections in the Sumarian state archives at Ebla, and by

the second millennium in Mesopotamia, collections of oldinscriptions were being used to teach scribes how to make

records. 

During the Shang dynasty in China (ca. 1600–1025 BCE), gold and bronze artifacts were collected; by the time of the Tang dynasty (CE 618–907), collecting had become very popular among the ruling elite. 

In what is now Iraq, Nebuchadnezzar (605–562 BCE) acquired a

large private collection that included antiquities and natural history specimens, and Nabonidus (555–539 BCE) of

Babylonia kept collections of antiquities and natural history objects. 

Tuthmosis III (1504–1450 BCE) of Egypt

had an extensive collection of art, antiquities, flora, andfauna from Asia. In an Egyptian tomb, a fossil sea

urchin from the Eocene was found that was inscribed inhieroglyphs with the date, name of the collector, and locality where it was collected.

Art collecting was anancient Greek custom, associated with the exhibition of

paintings and sculptures in the entrance peristyles andporches of temples in an area known as thepinakotheke or picture gallery. 

Wealthy Roman citizenscollected paintings and objects that were considered to be“unusual and curious.” Several private collections ofexotic sea shells have been found during the excavationof the ruins of Pompey, and collections of fossils havebeen found in ancient Greek and Roman cities, as well ascollections of precious stones, decorative objects, andantiquities. 

           Oldest Museum :-  Shōsō-in

The oldest continuously functioning
museum in the world is probably the Sho¯so¯in at the To¯dai Temple in Nara, Japan, founded in the eighth century,which still exhibits secular and sacred artworks.

Dedicatory records of Tōdai-ji temple, 756

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  “THE EMPEROR & I” : ABBAS KIAROSTAMI MEETS AKIRA KUROSAWA, 1993

🌹Abbas Kiarostami  :-

(born June 22, 1940, Tehrān, Iran — died July 4, 2016, Paris, France).

He was Iranian filmmaker who was known for experimenting with the boundaries between reality and fiction throughout a four-decade career.

“My films have been progressing towards a certain kind of minimalism, even though it was never intended. Elements which can be eliminated have been eliminated.”

“I don’t have very complete scripts for my films. I have a general outline and a character in my mind, and I make no notes until I find the character who’s in my mind in reality. When I find the character, I try to spend time with them and get to know them very well. Therefore my notes are not from the character that I had in my mind before, but are instead based on the people I’ve met in real life. It’s a long process, it may take six months. I only make notes, I don’t write dialogs in full. And the notes are very much based on my knowledge of that person. Therefore when we start shooting I don’t have rehearsals with them at all. So, rather than pulling them towards myself, I travel closer to them; it’s very much closer to the real person than anything I try to create. So I give them something but I also take from them.” 

💚 Notable Works :

* Where is the Friend’s Home?

* Close-Up

* Through the Olive Trees

* Taste of Cherry

* The Wind will Carry Us

Trivia :

* Received the UNESCO Fellini-Medal in Gold for his achievements in film, freedom, peace & tolerance.

* In 2004 he received the Japan Art Association’s Praemium Imperiale prize for theatre/film.

Trademark :

Shoots his films mostly with non-actors and without any script

Awards :

41 wins & 41 nominations.

💙 Abbas Kiarostami, the multi-award-winning Iranian director whose 1997 film Taste of Cherry was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival, has global reputation :

* Peter Bradshaw – Abbas Kiarostami is a highly sophisticated, self- possessed master of cinematic poetry.

* Asghar Farhadi (Oscar-winning Iranian film-maker) :-

“He definitely paved ways for others and influenced a great deal of people. It’s not just the world of cinema that has lost a great man; the whole world has lost someone really great.”

* Mohsen Makhmalbaf :- “Kiarostami gave the Iranian cinema the international credibility that it has today. But his films were unfortunately not seen as much in Iran. He changed the world’s cinema; he freshened it and humanised it in contrast with Hollywood’s rough version.”

* In 2003, The Guardian ranked him the sixth best working director.

* Akira Kurosawa have often been quoted saying, “When Satyajit Ray passed on, I was very depressed. But after seeing Kiarostami’s films, I thanked God for giving us just the right person to take his place.”

❤️

💚 writer : jotsna jari

writer : jotsna jari

“Painting a young maiden is similar to cavorting with great abandon. It is the finest refreshment.” – Peter Paul Rubens 

.

💚 Peter Paul Rubens  🔼

 (Dutch: 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640)

 He was a Flemish artist and diplomat.

 He is considered the most influential artist of Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens’s highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history.

 His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation.

 Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of Frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.

 Alongside Raphael, Rubens was pivotal in establishing the concept of a thriving artist’s studio into the art lexicon. His large studio in Antwerp was a production hub for paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe. His bustling workshop employed many artists and apprentices who would help accomplish a large and prolific volume of work.

 About thirty-two years old, the artist presented himself dressed in chivalric elegance while Isabella, age eighteen, wears a luxurious, richly embroidered dress of heavy wine-colored taffeta silk, an enormous ruff, and a high-crowned hat.

 They pose here as a respected couple in Flemish middle-class life, perhaps in their inner open air courtyard where Isabella planted gardens of flowers, herbs and vegetables.

 Rubens designed the stone benches, brought in Classical busts on pedestals, Doric and Corinthian columns, statues, and small fountains.

 They are sitting in the shade, hand-in-hand, as they lean toward each other but gaze politely toward the viewer. They are surrounded by symbols of love and marriage: the honeysuckle bushes and garden are both traditional symbols of love while the holding of right hands represents union through marriage. The gentle, conservative and loving approach to the painting reflects the intimacy of the occasion.

 Rubens’ biographer Kristen Lohse Belkin called this piece “…one of his most delightful pictures…” She also noted that this painting is much larger, almost 5 feet by 4.5 feet, than previous portrayals of married couples with the figures shown in half-length poses.

 The 19th-century French Romantic

 painter Eugene Delacroix wrote that Rubens “carries one beyond the limit scarcely attained by the most eminent painters; he dominates one, he overpowers one, with all his liberty and boldness.”

Artist- Peter Paul Rubens  

Year- 1610

Medium-  Oil on canvas

Movement- Flemish Baroque

Subject- Massacre of the Innocents

Dimensions- 142 cm × 183 cm × 1.9 cm (56 in × 72 in × 0.75 in)

Weight- 93.9 kilograms (207 lb)

LocationArt Gallery of Ontario, TorontoAccession2014/1581

Art Market :- 

At a Sotheby’s auction on 10 July 2002, Rubens’s painting Massacre of the Innocents, rediscovered not long before, sold for £49.5 million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Thomson.

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