Velha "Old" Goa World Heritage Site

Velha Goa was founded in the 15th century and till the 17th century was one of the largest most cosmopolitan cities in the world, larger than London or Paris.  This Portuguese colonial city was also a beachhead for Catholicism in Asia.  St. Francis Xavier, one of the first Jesuits, arrived in 1542 and proceeded to agressively proselytize over much of Asia.  A year after he died in China his body was brought back to Goa where it now resides (next pic) in a silver casket in the Basilica of Bom Jesus.  You can see the shriveled body through the gold encircled windows.  Every few years the local archbishop brings him down to ground level for a while so the devoted, and curious, can get a closer look.

capiz shell shutters

some more nice wall painting that survived the whitewash

Where to start? Goa

It is very different and overwhelming.  My son and I are living in a dusty town that, maybe, sees a few non-Indian/white people come through for the seaside view each day.  Foreigners on extended stays in India must register with the government; for us, at the police station in nearby capital city, Panaji.  The registration office is piled so high with paper in/on every cupboard, corner, counter and desktop that it seems like a movie set (can this be real?).  Please fill out forms in triplicate and attach multiple copies of this, that, and the other.  To stay at a hotel for one night next weekend we will need to provide multiple copies of passport, visas, and 4 passport photos each to the hotel staff for government purposes.  India puts "red tape" into perspective....

Tomorrow...a world heritage site and the very famous person who is not buried in Goa.

Anjuna Beach, Goa, India

Ground zero for the trance music movement of the 90s....

Late morning coffee over the Arabian Sea

The path down to the beach.

View from Lilliputian Bar and Restaurant

beach cow hanging in the sun

The Corporate State

A friend sent me this youtube link that captures, more than anything else I've seen/read, what the Occupy Wall St movement is protesting against.  The bit about the Berlin wall is very interesting.

As any card-carrying Morris fan knows, in the 1880s our William was one of the founding members of the British socialist movement.  In the extract below from "How I Became a Socialist" Morris shares his views on the link between the welfare of the working class and the vitality of art.

"A last word or two. Perhaps some of our friends will say, what have we to do with these matters of history and art? We want by means of Social-Democracy to win a decent livelihood, we want in some sort to live, and that at once. Surely any one who professes to think that the question of art and cultivation must go before that of the knife and fork (and there are some who do propose that) does not understand what art means, or how that its roots must have a soil of a thriving and unanxious life. Yet it must be remembered that civilization has reduced the workman to such a skinny and pitiful existence, that he scarcely knows how to frame a desire for any life much better than that which he now endures perforce. It is the province of art to set the true ideal of a full and reasonable life before him, a life to which the perception and creation of beauty, the enjoyment of real pleasure that is, shall be felt to be as necessary to man as his daily bread, and that no man, and no set of men, can be deprived of this except by mere opposition, which should be resisted to the utmost."

You can read the entire essay here.

Quasicrystals Quite Unquadrate

(Image Eric Heller)

 

(Image J. W. Evans)

(image)

(Image Mark Grundland)

(Image Eric Weeks)

 

This week Dan Shechtman won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of quasicrystals, ordered but not periodic crystal mineral structures that lack traditional symmetry.  Many people have since noted that Islamic tiles exhibit similar ordering.  I took the last pic above at the Alhambra, built in the 14th century. 

Here's a funny quote from Shechtman's wikipedia page.  "(he) experienced several years of hostility toward his non-periodic interpretation (no less a figure than Linus Pauling said he was "talking nonsense" and "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.")"

Occupy Wall St.

....a Tea Party for the rest of us.  The spirit of William Morris, tireless crusader for the working class, is in Zuccotti Park this month.

 tried to fact-check this but couldn't find the data....

Jalani, 16 yr old with a 4.0 GPA, sleeps in park with his grandma (click here).

RIP Steve Jobs

Neue Galerie, NYC

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907, 138 cm x 138 cm (54 in x 54 in)

A few yards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the Neue Galerie, a house museum that showcases Austrian and German art and design from the early 20th century.  I made the pilgrimage to see this Gustav Klimt painting which sold in 2006 to the Neue Galerie for 135 million dollars....basking in its gold glow, I was not disappointed.  Can there be a more gloriously beautiful portrait of a woman?  Of course there are many, but this one is right up there.

I found this somewhat sad passage on the museum website....one of the few written statements (undated) ever left by Klimt:

Linger over a cappuccino in the museum's Cafe Sabarsky, surrounded by Josef Hoffman period lighting fixtures, Adolf Loos furniture, and Otto Wagner fabrics, and ponder how excellent it would be if we could travel back and time and tell people like Klimt and Morris what an amazing influence they are having on people a century later.

A Quilt from the Met

Pieced wool quilt, ca. 1900, probably from Ontario, wool front, cotton back.  What a great design....would be so easy to replicate.

Heather MacCrimmon's Project Runway

I've always loved Project Runway, the reality show that searches for the next fab fashion designer ("One day you're in, the next you're out").  If you don't know it, each week presents a new competitive sewing challenge where the contestants have, let's say, 5 hours to shop for fabric and make 3 outfits that can be worn to a ball by Serina Williams (or some such).   When I saw an article about costume designer Heather MacCrimmon I couldn't help but think what a great PR challenge this would be.....namely, she takes the fantasy drawings of children too young to be influenced by the fashion industry and turns them into real clothes.  How utterly adorable!  Check it out....

Artist and model: Anne Marie Perlewitz, age 7

 Artist: Ella Ottersbach (photograph by M. Luder)

You are awesome Heather!!  (read the full article here).  I'm thinking I should fire up the old sewing machine and make the William Morris outfits my aunt Anne designed for me last year!

Yup!  It is fashion week in NYC again....

Camille Paglia on Pre-Raphaelite Art

The Golden Stairs, Edward Burne-Jones, 1876-1880, Tate Gallery

 

The Wheel of Fortune, Edward Burne-Jones, 1863, Musée d'Orsay

"Burne-Jones' transsexual world is populated by one incestuously self-propagating being. We are in another Late Romantic bower, shadowless under a grey sky. The ritual limitation on his sexual personae is a Decadent closure, denying our eye right of access to other human types.  The Golden Stairs (1880) expands Rossetti's triplets and quadruplets. We drown in a shower of identical women, eighteen in all, cloning themselves and assaulting the eye. Beauty in excess makes Decadent dyspepsia. The sadomasochistic tableau of The Wheel of Fortune multiplies the male. Giant Fortuna turns her torture wheel, chaining a row of beautiful young men, male odalisques in Michelangelo's troubled late style. Each seems languid twin of the next, limbs stretched in sensual suffering.

   "Burne-Jones' embowered nature begat Art Nouveau, which flourished from the 1880s to World War I. Then modern machine culture geometrized Art Nouveau's organic patterns into Art Deco. So Spenser's dynasty, extending through High and Late Romanticism, unexpectedly ends in the Chrysler Building and Radio City Music Hall. Burne-Jones' serpentine line comes from Blake, whose rapacious flamelike flowers reveal the covert sexual meaning of Art Nouveau's arabesques. The copious histories of Art Nouveau lack psychological insight. Twenty years ago, I was struck by Art Nouveau's popularity among male homosexual aesthetes, for whom neither it nor Beardsley had to be revived, since they had never been forgotten. In every star, style, or art work celebrated by these Alexandrine homosexuals, there is always a secret hermaphroditism. So with Art Nouveau, the most epicene style since Mannerism."

.....read the rest by Camille Paglia.

 

Chant d'Amour, Edward Burne-Jones, 1866-1873, Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

The Depths of the Sea, Edward Burne-Jones, 1887, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University

The Perseus Series, The Doom Fulfilled, Edward Burne-Jones, 1884-1885

 The Tree of Forgiveness, Edward Burne-Jones, 1881-1882, Liverpool Museum

Hogweed Bonking Beetles....

...in local parlance.  Officially known as common red soldier beetles who like to hang out and bonk on the hogweed in the Irish hedgerows (click to enlarge, parental guidance suggested).  I wonder why Morris never included insects in his wallpaper or fabric designs--they have a certain repetitive geometry and beauty.

Makes me proud to be a scientist...

If you have a few minutes to be inspired, this video, part of the Periodic Table of the Videos series, exemplifies everything that is wonderful and good in science.

 William Morris would be a great supporter of the narrator Dr. Poliakoff who is a leader in the field of green chemistry, which designs products and chemical processes that avoid introducing hazardous substances into our environment and lives.