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THE FLOOR OF MARIA E DONATO, MURANO

from: Ruskin, Stones of Venice

...and we feel giddy at the first step we make on the pavement, for it … is of Greek mosaic, waved like the sea, and dyed like a dove’s neck.

The pavement is of infinite interest, although grievously distorted and defaced. For whenever a new chapel has been built, or a new altar erected, the pavement has been broken up and readjusted so as to surround the newly inserted steps or stones with some appearance of symmetry; portions of it either covered or carried away, others mercilessly shattered or replaced by modern imitations, and those of very different periods, with pieces of the old floor left here and there in the midst of them, and worked round so as to deceive the eye into acceptance of the whole as ancient. The portion, however, which occupies the western extremity of the nave, and the parts immediately adjoining it in the aisles, are, I believe, in their original positions and very little injured: they are composed chiefly of groups of peacocks, lions, stags, and griffins, - two of each in a group, drinking out of the same vase, or shaking claws together, - enclosed by interlacing bands, and alternating with chequer or star patterns, and here and there a attempt at representation of architecture, all worked in marble mosaic. The floors of Torcello and of St. Mark’s are executed in the same manner; but what remains at Murano is finer than either, in the extraordinary play of colour obtained by the use of variegated marbles. At St. Mark’s the patterns are more intricate, and the pieces far more skilfully set together; but each piece there is commonly of one colour: at Murano every fragment is itself variegated, and all are arranged with a skill and feeling not to be taught, and to be observed with deep reverence, for that pavement is not dateless, like the rest of the church; it bears its date on one of its central circles, 1140, and is, in my mind, one of the most precious monuments in Italy, showing thus early, and in those rude chequers which the bared knee of the Murano fisher wears in its daily bending, the beginning of that mighty spirit of Venetian colour, which was to be consummated in Titian.

MEDIOCRITY

From: David Pye, Nature and Aesthetics of Design

Why should all the resources of design have been exhausted by now, after a mere ten thousand years of civilisation? The truth is that too many people are trying to be greater artists than God ever intended them for. The giants who change the whole face of art come very seldom but ordinary artists are not rare, and any one of them can do something worth doing if he only finds out and accepts the limits of his talent. Most of us can only do one or two things well. But it is the aggregate of the work of ordinary artists which has made by far the larger part of what is best in the environment we have inherited. To be an artist of limited scope is not to be a mediocre artist.

IBEX DROPPINGS:

In the seventeenth moon collect some ibex droppings. Take as much as you can grip with one fist, provided the number of turds is an odd one. Place them in a mortar and add twenty-five finely crushed peppercorns, then a measure of wine, about two-eighths of best honey and two sextaria of best very old wine. After crushing the ibex droppings mix everything well and place it in a glass vessel. However, to ensure that the effect is successful, you must do this in the seventeenth moon. When applying the medication, start on a Thursday. Prescribe it throughout seven uninterrupted days, moreover in such a way that the patient drinks it in a chair facing east. This potion, as written down, applied and observed, even if the patient is in all limbs and his coccyx sick, contracted, paralysed and hopelessly ill, ensures that he walks on the seventh day.

Marcellus, minister to the emperors Theodosius I and II in his book De Medicatmentis

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE:

Gothic = pointed arch; flying buttress; vaulting rib; moulding.

In gothic architecture the outward thrust of the fireproof stone roof was resisted by external buttresses rather than thick walls. The wall between the buttresses was gradually pared away and replaced with glass. Gothic was a carved architecture - each stone was shaped for its place and decorated - shaped for maximum load bearing with minimal weight. The stones all had their place in an overall decorative scheme.

The pointed arch meant that vaulting ribs no longer had to be semicircular but could be more or less steeply pointed which meant the vaulting bays no longer had to be square as they always were in Romanesque. The pointed arch, by making possible rectangular and irregularly shaped bays completely emancipated the plan. A multiplicity of vaulting ribs could spring from one shaft and their curvature individually adjusted so they rose to whatever height needed by the overall vault plan. Awkward junctions of ribs at different angles were covered by bosses. More ribs simplified the construction by reducing the size of each cell of the vault as well as being a decorative device. Rectangular bays distributed the total weight of the building over twice as many supports. The thrust was more precisely concentrated and distributed to give a lightening of the whole structure. The technical possibilities of the pointed arch made possible the aesthetic qualities of Gothic e.g. window tracery.

SENSATIONALISM:

(a disorganised collection of notes that I made taken from an unrecorded source)

Ernst Mach, 19th C. philosopher and scientist: “sensationalism” – our external reality is a chaos of sensations which our brains filter to make it manageable and this function helps us to understand the world better as the more we understand this principle and improve it, following the efficient lines of least resistance, the more we can comprehend and manipulate the world.

Shklovski: de-familiarisation (also Rodchenko und Moholy-Nagy):
“The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.”

“The sounds of the sea vanish for those who live by its shores, as the thousand voiced roar of the town is vanished for us, as everything familiar, too well known disappears from our consciousness.

Automisation corrodes things. Clothing, furniture, one’s fear of war. And so that a sense of life may be restirred, that things may be felt, so that stones may be made stony, there exists what we call art”

Moholy-Nagy: The camera gives new access to objective truth not by showing things as they are but by countering our ways of knowing. Our mind processes the world falsely according to conventional ways of seeing that have become invisible and pre-conscious. The lens, as opposed to the eye, won’t do this processing.

FROM: KENNETH CLARK, LANDSCAPE INTO ART:

(read March 1994)

On the symbolising faculty of the mediaeval mind:
We who are heirs to three centuries of science can hardly realise a state of mind in which all material objects were thought of as symbols of spiritual truths or episodes in sacred history. Yet unless we make this effort of imagination, mediaeval art is largely incomprehensible…

The end of landscape painting?
…how far can an art form retain its vitality when it rests on the passive consent of the mass of informal opinion, but is not supported by the active conviction of an informed minority? The difficulty of this question arises from the fact that never before has there been such a complete divorce between popular and informed taste. And, although in the past popular taste has ultimately always conformed to that of the minority, it may now seem that the extremely esoteric and specialised work which meets with the approval of the few is so lacking in fundamental humanity that it will die of inbreeding. This is a tenable view, but I believe it to be mistaken. Whether or not the more specialised forms of modern art are permanently valid, we can hardly doubt that the living art of a period must reflect the ideas of the more active spirits, and not of the indifferent masses, for whom art is, at best, a mildly satisfying social convention.

Socrates in Plato’s Philebus:
I will try to speak of the beauty of shapes, and I do not mean, as most people would suppose, that shapes of living figures or their imitations in painting, but I mean straight lines and curves and the shapes made from them by the lathe, ruler or square. They are not beautiful for any particular reason or purpose, as other things are, but are eternally, and by their very nature, beautiful, and give a pleasure of their own quite free from the itch of desire; and in this way colours can give a similar pleasure.

Expressionism is the art of the individual and is his protest against the restraints of society…As an old-fashioned individualist I believe that all the science and bureaucracy in the world…will not entirely destroy the human spirit; and the spirit will always succeed in giving itself a visible shape.

CHODEREAU:

(lecture notes 28/06/93)

Male gender identification is threatened by intimacy and attachment through having to identify themselves as “other” to their mother; female is threatened by separation. Girls have empathy built into their primary definition of themselves.

FROM: ROBERTSON DAVIES, THE CORNISH TRILOGY:

“….just about everything is in books….we recognise in books what we’ve met in life. But if you’d read a few books you wouldn’t have to meet everything as if it had never happened before, and take every blow on the chin. You’d see a few things coming.”

HOME:

The emotions felt towards “home” by the new settlers in New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Australia were, one imagines, a confusion of bitterness, affection, cynicism and longing.