Florence: Great Art Without the Crowds

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Susan Lewis

Everyone knows that there is great art in Florence, Italy. What the Taj Mahal is to India, Big Ben to London, and the Eiffel Tower to Paris, the Uffizi, Accademia, and Duomo are to this Tuscan city. Here throngs of tight-packed tourists from all over the world follow in the wake of their multilingual guides, anxious for a chance to finally see the Birth of Venus by Botticelli, Michelangelo’s David, and Brunelleschi’s Dome. Unfortunately, the Birth of Venus is hidden by a pane of glass and so badly lit that it looks better in reproductions; the David is magnificent but the space around it usually packed with other viewers. The dome of the Duomo is indeed fabulous outside and in, but disappointingly located in a cathedral from which most of the original decoration has been removed to a museum, now closed for renovation.

Yet Florence offers other treasures, less famous and far less crowded, but equally rewarding. In fact, although these works of art are not among those featured on 72-hour tours, they are easier to spend time viewing. In particular, we recommend three under appreciated places to enjoy art in Florence: the Orsanmichele, the Magi Chapel of the Medici-Riccardi Palace, and the Bargello. In all three, without reservations or long lines (without even an entry fee at Orsanmichele), you can spend the time it really takes to study and enjoy artwork in a peaceful setting. The three little-known artists we highlight here are Orcagna (Andrea di Cione, c.1308-1368), Benozzo Gozzoli (c.1421-1497), and Desiderio da Settignano (c.1428-1464).

Orsanmichele, Florence

Florence’s Orsanmichele is a common tourist stop, but most groups come only for a look at the famous statues on the outside by Donatello, Verrocchio, and Giambologna (ironically, all copies). Originally constructed as a place to store and sell grain, the ground floor was converted into a church in the 14th century. Here Orcagna (the leading painter, sculptor, and architect of Florence at the time) was commissioned to create a tabernacle to house a sacred image of the Madonna and Child by Bernardo Daddi. This painting replaced a fading fresco by an unknown artist, a picture of the Virgin which had attracted its own following through miraculous powers. Not accidentally, Daddi’s masterpiece, known as the “Madonna della Grazie,” was completed in 1347, a year after the Black Death struck Florence. It is a masterpiece of Italian Gothic painting, yet not as unique as the ornate structure that frames it.

The preservation and restoration of this tabernacle is so amazing that it seems to have been built in the Gothic revival style of the 19th century, not in the actual medieval period more than 650 years ago. The marble glows, the inlays of glass and lapis lazuli sparkle, the gold accents glint, reflecting the gold leaf of the halos and throne on the painting it houses. The Madonna seems to be enclosed in a tiny chapel of her own, a church within a church. Intricate yet harmonious, the carvings intersperse religious scenes and figures with decorative patterns.

The interior of the Orsanmichele is perfect for the quiet contemplation and appreciation of a Gothic masterpiece. Perhaps because Florence is primarily known for Renaissance art, Orcagna’s tabernacle (and Daddi’s Madonna) remain overlooked gems.

Our next stop, however, takes us into the Renaissance and even into the palazzo of the patrons most associated with Renaissance Florence, the Medici. The palace known today as the Medici-Riccardi, conceals within its massive walls — so typical of Florentine architecture — another uncrowded surprise.

Medici-Riccardi Palace, Florence

Benozzo Gozzoli is far from a household name in the United States, even for art aficionados. Yet this Medici palazzo owes its appeal to a single room decorated with his frescoes. The walls of the “Chapel of the Magi” (1459-61) create a magical space where the three Wise Men — here interpreted as elderly, mature, and youthful kings — their courtly followers, horses, servants, and pet animals (including a cheetah) wend their leisurely way toward Bethlehem. Dressed for display in the sumptuous brocades that made Florence wealthy, they pose attractively amidst a landscape of rocks, where a long cavalcade of of travelers climb and descend among picturesque hills and valleys. In fact, with their handsome mounts and weapons, they seem more like nobles on their way to a hunt or a joust than the mystic scholars of the bible story.

In fact, Gozzoli, a pupil of Fra Angelico and an assistant to Ghiberti, incorporated several portraits in this scene which stretches around three walls of the small chapel. Art historians don’t completely agree on the identifications, but it seems that the figure in black (below) is Cosimo the Elder (1389-1464), founder of the dynasty and patron of this work, on a modest donkey. The figure next to him, on the white horse, is his son Piero, father of Lorenzo di Medici.

Cosimo I (in black)

Other identifications are less certain. The young king has often been called an idealized portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was only a boy at the time. Another boy in the cavalcade has been called Guiliano, his younger brother who was later killed in the Pazzi Conspiracy.

The fresco even includes portraits of the artist — Gozzoli himself — one wearing a red hat, and another holding up his hand as if to say he made this work.

The Bargello, Florence

The third site we recommend for art appreciation is the Bargello, Florence’s museum of sculpture. The Bargello is to Florentine sculpture what the Uffizi is to Florence’s painting. In fact, many of its works were formerly part of the Uffizi Collection. Here you may recognize well-known masterpieces of the Renaissance by Donatello, Verrochio, and Michelangelo. We recommend that you widen the scope of your discoveries to include the work of Desiderio da Settignano.

A Renaissance sculptor who attained popularity at about the same time that Gozzoli was painting the Chapel of the Magi, Desiderio is known for particularly graceful and sensitive portraits and relief sculptures. At the Bargello, you will see his portrait of Maria Strozzi, a head of John the Baptist, and a beautiful Madonna and child — among other notable works. Once you recognize his style, you will be able to identify other sculptures as well.

Of the three artists we have focused on here, Desiderio is best represented in collections outside of Italy – for instance, you can find his work in the National Gallery of Art, in Washington D.C.

Great art is everywhere in Florence; these are only a few examples of where to find it “off the beaten track.” If you prefer to enjoy your art without crowds of tourists more intent on selfies than the masterpieces in front of them, we recommend venturing to one of these locations and immersing yourself in more relaxing art appreciation.

The Horse from the Battle of Little Big Horn

Posted on June 11, 2015 by Richard Lewis

Joseph No Two Horns, He Nupa Wanica (Hunkpapa Lakota), Horse Effigy, c. 1880. Wood (possibly cottonwood), pigment, commercial and native-tanned leather, rawhide, horsehair, brass, iron, bird quill. Length: 38 1/2 in. South Dakota State Historical Society, Pierre.

Joseph No Two Horns‘s Horse Effigy is not only a powerful sculpture, but a portrait of a beloved horse ridden to victory in the Battle of the Little Big Horn. In a recent exhibition of Plains Indian art with hundreds of objects at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, it regularly drew the biggest crowds. His horse’s death in that battle haunted the artist for the rest of his life.

Joseph No Two Horns, 1939. Notes from Colonel A.B. Welch.

In 1876, No Two Horns or He Nupa Wanica, was a 24 year old Hunkpapa Lakota warrior following his chief and cousin, Sitting Bull, when he fought in the most famous battle of the Great Sioux War. Popularly known as Custer’s Last Stand, it is called The Battle of Greasy Grass by the Lakota. On June 25th, General George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh Cavalry were scouring the Montana territory looking for about 800 “hostiles” as reported by his scouts. Custer expected to easily drive them back into their reservations. Instead, when the Seventh Cavalry attacked what they thought was a small village, Custer and his men found themselves facing the combined forces of thousands of Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors.

Drawing by Joseph No Two Horns. c. 1876.

Joseph No Two Horns, Death of Blue Roan Horse. c. 1876. Drawing on paper, 8 x 10 “. State Historical Society of North Dakota.

In the battle, No Two Horns’s blue roan suffered seven bullet wounds before collapsing, but not before carrying No Two Horns to victory over the army of General George Custer. For the rest of his life, until his death in 1942, he portrayed this event in colorful drawings and paintings, as well as sculptures.

This wooden sculpture from 1880 shows his galloping horse is in the midst of battle. It stretches and strains, fighting to keep moving as death nears. His eyes are brass tacks, his leather ears are pulled back. Bullet wounds across his body run red. His mouth is covered in blood and red dyed horse hair dangles to represent blood running from his mouth. Like a skilled animator, No Two Horns pulls the horse’s torso into the long line of its motion path.

The love of horses is an important part of Plains culture and one of the many atrocities of General Custer’s Seventh Army was their systematic slaughter of Plains Indian ponies. The Lakotas were a warrior society and these effigies or Dance Sticks were used in ceremonies and dances to prepare for battle or celebrate victories. This is, however, the only existing Dance Stick that shows the entire body of a horse.

No Two Horns remains one of the most famous artists of the Plains Indians and his effigies the model for many other Plains artists. Today, his Horse Effigy is not only the most prized object in the collection of the South Dakota State Historical Society but their symbol.

While a veteran of more than forty battles, Joseph No Two Horns did not brag about his exploits. In 1926, No Two Horns participated in the ceremonies honoring the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He said he danced for the ‘soldiers who were so brave and foolish.’

[Thanks to Danyelle Means for corrections to this story.]

Flash photos in the museum – is everything we thought wrong?

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Richard Lewis

A typical day in front of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre museum in Paris. Photograph: Lydie France/EPA

In recent years, the battle lines between tourist photography and museum guards have been shifting. Once entirely verboten, more and more museums have given up the cause under an onslaught of mobile phones with built-in digital cameras. First, the old cry of “No photo!” gave way to “No Flash!” Now, is this last bastion about to fall, too?

I must admit that for some time I have been engaged in a private mission to protect masterpieces from the threats of a thousand suns exploding. Horrified at the laissez faire attitude of museum guards (the Louvre is a prime offender) unable or unwilling to stop the fireworks, more than once I’ve thrown myself between a tourist’s flash and a Monet Waterlilies or a Van Gogh landscape. I’ve even felt compelled to berate an innocent father and lecture startled teenagers on the dangers they posed to the artwork they purported to love. I reminded them of the fate of the colored construction paper on their elementary school bulletin boards at the end of each school year. Remember when the teacher pulled the posters off, you could see how much the colors had faded because of the bleaching effect of sunlight? Passionately, I’d rant, “imagine what that beautiful Matisse is going to look like in a couple of years after being blasted by hundreds of sunbursts every single day!”

But recently, I was startled while reading an aside in a discussion on controlling photography in the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) forum. An Executive Director, who shall remain unnamed, wrote, “There used to be some concern about damage to textiles from camera flashes, but that’s not an issue with smartphones [my italics].”

Huh?

After doing some research (on the web, of course), I found the big question put succinctly on reddit.com’s Ask Science forum, “To what degree, and how, does flash photography damage museum exhibits?” To my horror, the answer appears to be — it doesn’t.

While ultraviolet light or strong sunlight does bleach colors,

In general…the light from a properly UV-filtered flash is no more harmful to art than the ordinary gallery lighting, but many galleries and museums maintain a ban on flash photography out of an excess of caution.

Apparently, almost all flash units on cameras today have UV filters on them. Especially consumer grade cameras. Not because manufacturers share our concern about art. They are trying to avoid lawsuits by protecting people’s eyes from being damaged.

Museumgoers snapping photos of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, 1889, at MoMA. ©2013 REBECCA ROBERTSON

In 1995, the National Gallery in London conducted experiments that concluded that flash photography was dangerous to artworks. But their conclusions have since been disputed. One problem with their study was they tested only with watercolors, which are notoriously light-sensitive and generally kept in darkened rooms. They used some heavy artillery, too. Powerful flash guns were set to fire every seven seconds from three feet away and they even removed the UV filter from one of them. After months of this and more than a million flashes, the only visible damage was to the watercolor hit by flashes from the unfiltered gun.

Martin H. Evans, a British researcher, after examining this study and others points out with irony that, despite the scientific evidence, curators continue to ban “photographing things like Pharaonic Egyptian relics that have been bathed in the intense UV light of desert sunlight for over 3000 years.”

Reddit.com has a long discussion on this topic. I encourage you to read it. While much of what I once believed lies in tatters on the ground, I take some small comfort that there remains general agreement that flash photography is unnecessary and annoying. Of course, there is also the fact that flash photographs of art generally look terrible.

Still, if I could only find that humiliated father in the Metropolitan Museum to apologize to….

Turner the “Fire King” and Accounting

Posted on December 26, 2014 by Richard Lewis

J.M.W. Turner, Burning of the Houses of Parliament, 1835. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Oddly, one of J.M.W. Turner‘s greatest subjects, the Burning of the Houses of Parliament, was the result of the modernization of accounting.

According to the October 17, 1834 issue of the Times of London:

“Shortly before 7 o’clock last night the inhabitants of Westminster…were thrown into the utmost confusion and alarm by the sudden breaking out of one of the most terrific conflaglarations that has been witnessed for many years past…The Houses of the Lords and Commons and the adjacent buildings were on fire.”

The inferno was not an act of terrorism, but a result of human error – overloading a furnace with too much wood. The wood was not ordinary fire wood, however. Two cartloads of tally sticks have been jammed in the furnaces of the House of Lords by an impatient workman.

Tally sticks were one of the earliest accounting methods, perhaps going as far back as the Stone Age. Debts were marked with cuts on a thin piece of wood, the depth of a cut corresponding to the seriousness of the debt. After the cutting was complete, the stick was split lengthwise. The loaner was given the longest part (or ‘stock‘ — the source of the word, “stockholder”), the debtor getting the smaller half or, in essence, “the short end of the stick.”

Tallying didn’t require literacy and was tamper-proof. No notches could be added later by an unscrupulous money-lender because the halves wouldn’t match. As an extra safety measure, one could check that the grain of the wood across the parts tallied.

English tally sticks.

In England, the official use of tally sticks went back nearly to William the Conqueror. His son, King Henry I, established the system when he took the throne in 1100 AD and expanded its use to the collection of taxes (by sheriffs, like the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham). For more than 700 years, the British Empire’s financial backbone depended on these thin slices of wood, so accuracy was critical. The Chancellor of the Exchequer prescribed the following system of cuts:

“The manner of cutting is as follows. At the top of the tally a cut is made, the thickness of the palm of the hand, to represent a thousand pounds; then a hundred pounds by a cut the breadth of a thumb; twenty pounds, the breadth of the little finger; a single pound, the width of a swollen barleycorn; a shilling rather narrower than a penny is marked by a single cut without removing any wood”.

The tally stick system was abolished in 1826 and replaced by paper notes backed with gold controlled by the new Bank of England (though in some small European towns, tally sticks continued to be used into the twentieth century).

But how did they cause such a terrible fire eight years later? We’ll let Charles Dickens explain:

…In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? ….The sticks were housed in Westminster [Parliament], and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who lived in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they should never be, and so the order went out that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes…

Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 1834, watercolour study (Tate Gallery, London)

J.M.W. Turner was one of the tens of thousands of Londoners who lined the south bank or crowded onto bridges across the Thames River to witness the burning of the Houses of Parliament. He filled two sketchbooks. He made drawings and watercolors from several positions, even hiring a boat to take him down the river. He would complete two oil paintings in his studio based on the national tragedy,earning him the nickname ‘the fire King.’

Detail, Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, (Philadelphia Museum) Photo: Wayne Stratz

Detail of The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (Philadelphia Museum) Photo: Wayne Stratz/Flicker

Once can easily see why the scene so captivated Turner, a man who believed in nature’s sublime and terrible magnificence. What a subject for a Romantic artist! The brilliant fire’s golden light illuminates the night, sending sparks across the canvas, reflecting in the water below, framed by a vortex of billowing clouds of smoke. What better symbol of the awesome power of nature, one that makes the hordes of people who line the edges look quite small and insignificant? The sturdy and impressive Westminster Bridge on the right appears to disappear near the hellish blaze. The Houses of Parliament, a symbol of Western civilization and government, are no match for nature’s fury and seems puny in contrast to the flames. These grand Gothic buildings that had housed the British governing body for centuries (and English kings before them), the center of the great British Empire, are quickly swept away.

Rebuilding took thirty years and millions of pounds. Turner, as well as the architects, would not live to see construction completed. In a strange irony, the terrible fire resulted, not just in a masterpiece of Romantic painting, but in the creation of London’s most famous symbol, the new Parliament’s clock tower by Augustus Pugin, known today around the world as ‘Big Ben.’

Note: Mr. Turner, Mike Leigh’s biographical picture on the great English painter, opened in the U.S. on December 19th and continues to receive excellent reviews.

The Clark’s New Clothes: “We’re so confused.”

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Richard Lewis

The new museum wing and reflecting pool. Photo: Tucker Blair

The Clark Institute’s new museum wing and reflecting pool.
Photo: Tucker Blair

On July 4th, the long awaited $145 million addition and renovation of the Clark Art Institute opened. A beloved museum in the Berkshires, the Clark has been for decades everyone’s secret discovery. Planning began in 2001 and all signs (including a recent review in the New York Times) pointed to an extraordinary success.

Sadly, it is far from that. Like the Brooklyn Museum’s new entrance unveiled in 2004, the addition is an unfriendly imposition that ignores the spirit of the original architecture and is at odds with the collection it houses. Designed by Tadao Ando, the extension and landscaping dishonors its founders with an anonymous space that could be any museum in the world, not one of the crown jewels of New England. It seems far too meaningful that the Styrofoam backed panels on “The Clark Story” and the portraits of the founders, are now relegated to the basement (sorry, Lower Lobby) — with the rest rooms.

Continue reading →

A visit to Frida Kahlo’s studio

Gallery

Posted on July 5, 2014 by Richard Lewis

This gallery contains 14 photos.

Frida Kahlo‘s home and studio, La Casa Azul in suburban Mexico City has been renovated in time to celebrate her 107th birthday. On the second floor, one can visit her studio just as she left it when she died in … Continue reading →

Mr. Turner, a new film, and the Varnishing Day Incident

Posted on May 31, 2014 by Richard Lewis

England’s greatest painter, J.M.W. Turner, is the subject of a new film by Mike Leigh. On May 15th, Mr. Turner premiered at the Cannes film festival and received rave reviews. Its star Timothy Spall won the best actor award for his portrayal of the artist. [Spall is best known in the U.S. as Peter Pettigrew or Wormtail in the Harry Potter films.]

The film covers the last twenty-five years of Turner’s life. The trailer includes a famous incident from life of the eccentric and notoriously competitive artist — when he took advantage of the Royal Academy of Art’s ‘Varnishing Day.’ In the 1800s, the Academy was the center of the British artistic world. No artist could truly succeed without being a member and no exhibition was more important for one’s reputation than the annual Summer Exhibition.

Joseph Mallord William Turner was one of the few child prodigies in the history of art. One year after he began classes at the Academy, he was made a member of the Academy. He was only 15. By the time he was 17 he could support himself with the sale of his pictures. In comparison, the great landscape painter, John Constable, who was about the same age as Turner, struggled financially his entire life and didn’t earn membership until he was 53.

Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy, Punch magazine 1877.

The Varnishing Day incident concerns both painters. The day was a tradition at the Royal Academy. Each year after the Summer Exhibition was hung by the jurors, artists were allowed inside to put the final protective varnish on their paintings before the show opened. This was not just a necessary stage in finishing a work but a bit of a social event. The tradition continues to this day and the entrance of the artists includes a parade, a religious service, canapes and champagne. Once inside, the painters chat amongst themselves as they apply their varnish and a few last touches.

Just as important as putting a protective layer on a painting, Varnishing Day allowed the artists to preview the exhibition before it opened to the public and to learn whether their pictures had been hung in a good location and discover whose work was hung nearby. While it was an honor to be chosen, if your picture was put very high up or to the side of a doorway, it meant the jurors did not consider it an important picture, which could damage your reputation.

In 1832, both Turner and Constable’s pictures were hung in good positions, but unfortunately next to each other. Constable’s Opening of Waterloo Bridge was the largest painting he had ever painted for an exhibition, nearly seven feet long. He had worked on it for thirteen years. When Turner arrived on Varnishing Day and saw his painting next to Constable’s, he began pacing, disturbed not only by its commanding size but by how exciting and colorful the Constable painting was.

John Constable, The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, 1832 (Tate Gallery)

As a fellow member of the Academy, Charles Robert Leslie personally observed:

Constable’s Waterloo seemed as if painted with liquid gold and silver, and Turner came several times into the room while [Constable] was heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and flags of the city barges. Turner stood behind him, looking from the Waterloo to his own picture, and at last brought his palette from the great room where he was touching another picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word. The intensity of the red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of his picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of Constable to look weak.

William Parrott, Turner on Varnishing Day, 1846 (Museums Sheffield)

Constable was horrified at this breach of Varnishing Day etiquette and said to Leslie after Turner left, ‘He has been here…and fired a gun.’ He knew the damage had been done. Turner’s painting and its bold red spot at the center would command the attention of anyone walking into the Painting Gallery. Turner returned to the room later. With a swipe of a rag, he trimmed the red ‘gob’ and declared it a buoy.

This flourish was greeted with applause by his fellow artists. At least, according to the movie. Mr. Turner opens October 31st in the U.K. and December 19th in the U.S.

How King’s Dream was born

Posted on May 18, 2014 by Richard Lewis

The Dreamer Dreams. Washington DC. 1963. Photo: Bob Adelman

The speech was good, the speaker nervous. Mahalia Jackson, behind Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, heard him hesitating. She yelled out, “tell them about the Dream, Martin!” King came alive and started adlibbing from his prepared text. It grew from its planned seven minutes to become one of the greatest speeches in American history.

Jackson, an internationally known gospel singer who had been with the movement through its most difficult days, was the only woman seated in the podium party. King, who had invited her, was the final speaker, a spot no one else wanted because they assumed that news reporters would have already left after a long day of speeches and song. But the press and the crowd of nearly 250,000 did wait and were rewarded by a thrilling moment of inspiration that climaxed the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Fittingly, after King’s speech was finished, Mahalia Jackson returned to the podium and closed the event with a final song, “How I got over.”

“I’m surprised that of all that pain, some beauty came.” – See more at: http://www.laborarts.org/collections/item.cfm?itemid=347#sthash.AILwy2r9.dpuf

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King outside Montgomery on the Fourth Day of the March, Alabama Route 80, 1965.
Photo: Bob Adelman.

I learned about this day and much more at a memorable exhibition of photographs called The Movement at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale. The photographs were all by Bob Adelman and follow the Civil Rights Movement and King from 1961 to the leader’s death in 1968. According to the curator, between 1963 and 1968, Adelman was a photographer for the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and other civil rights organizations. Among the many magazines that have published his work are Esquire, Time, Life, New York, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, and Paris Match.
On August 28, 1963, Adelman was known not as a photographer but as a young activist in the movement. Since he wasn’t considered a member of the press, he had unusual access to the podium during the March of Washington. He was there to “see all my heroes, the people who were on the front lines.” At the exhibition, a blow up of his contact sheet of podium shots puts you up there along with Adelman as the speech unfolds.

Protestors attacked with hoses by police. Photo: Bob Adelman

Protestors attacked with hoses by police, 1963. Photo: Bob Adelman

Not only do his images bring you inside the Civil Rights movement, but they are tremendous photographs. According to Adelman, after King saw his images of protestors being sprayed by police hoses in Birmingham, he said, “I’m surprised that of all that pain, beauty came.”

“I’m surprised that of all that pain, some beauty came.” – See more at: http://www.laborarts.org/collections/item.cfm?itemid=347#sthash.AILwy2r9.dpuf

The last room is devoted to King’s funeral ceremony at Morehouse College and is heart-breaking. His casket was carried in a procession from KIng’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in a simple mule drawn cart, like one you might see on a share-cropper’s farm. In what I believe are never published photographs, Adelman shows us the faces of the King’s family and other mourners as they pass in front of his open casket. We learn that Rosa Parks cried through the whole ceremony.

It is hard to calculate how much impact King’s speech had on the nation. President John F. Kennedy had never heard King give a speech before the March on Washington. Later that day, he invited King and the other organizers to the White House. When King entered the Oval Office, Kennedy shook his hand up and down, repeating, “I have a dream.”

Penguin out to destroy artist’s book

Posted on March 27, 2014 by Richard Lewis

Miriam Elia, a British artist and comedian, and her brother, Ezra, recently published We Go to the Gallery, a book on art that parodies contemporary art in the style of a children’s first reader in England. The publishing giant Penguin want to destroy all copies of it.

Like the Dick and Jane books in the U.S., England has the Peter and Jane series published by Ladybird, a division of Penguin Publishing. In Elia’s book, Peter and Jane go to look at contemporary art in a gallery with their mother. Funds to publish the book were raised using Kickstarter and she printed 1,000 copies.

According to Penguin’s lawyers, the book violates the publisher’s copyright. They are willing to allow Elia to sell enough books to pay off her costs as long as she burns the remaining copies herself or turns them over to them, so they can destroy them.

Elia is refusing “to bend to their depravity” in a statement that ends with:

They will never find the books they seek to pulp, and if they take me to court, I will fight them, however long the battle takes. But I am need of your help. If you like the work and wish to see it properly published, please email wegotothegallery@gmail.com. I will shortly be starting a petition, and may have to devise a fighting fund to help with legal costs.

The full statement can be found on Elia’s website.

Below is a gallery of some of the pages of Elia’s book. (Click on an image to see a slide show.) Take a look while you still can.

: “We go to the gallery” cover

Color ecstasy — the Holi Festival

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Richard Lewis

March 17, 2014 was marked with two ecstatic celebrations where color plays an important role. One, St. Patrick’s Day, has long been identified with the color green. But in the Hindu world, the arrival of Spring is greeted with a mad riot of colors during the festival of Holi.

Celebrated in India and other nations with large Hindu populations, it welcomes the end of winter with wild ceremonies. During this Festival of Color, men and women chase each other through the streets and throw handfuls of bright pigments or squirt colorful paint on each other. Crowds of revelers sing and dance in town squares as priests with huge hoses spray magenta, blue, or red paint from above. Young and old, rich and poor have fun together and no one is immune from being doused with color. Even tourists who find themselves in the midst of the festivities will soon be drenched in wet paint by young children with spray bottles. By mid-day, the air is filled with dense clouds of color and the smell of sweet perfumes added to the pigments.

Each year spectacular pictures of the Holi Festival are published in newspapers and magazines around the world. Below is a gallery of some of them (click on a picture to go to slide show).

[Text from The Power of Art, Chapter 2.]

: Holi Festival

: Holi Festival (Photo:AFP)

: Holi Festival (Photo: Shuriame)

: Hindu priests throws colored powder at the devotees during Holi celebrations at Bankey Bihari temple in Vrindavan, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. (Reuters/Ahmad Masood)

: A student of Rabindra Bharati University reacts as her fellow students apply colored powder to her face during celebrations for Holi in Kolkata. (Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri}

: A boy drags another on the floor of an apartment as they play with colors during the Holi festival in Chennai, India. (Arun Sankar K/Associated Press)