Talk about being Ornate...

The Lindau Gospels

Religion is clearly what was most important in the Romanesque period. I mean this piece ( how much it must be worth aside ) is so meticulously designed that when light hits it just so it glows. The style in which it was made is amazing; all of the gold figures created by repousse. I can not imagine the stress of creating this thing, if they messed up its almost like they have to start all over.

The crucifixion, while being a major theme of medieval book covers, i find to be a bit creepy. I'd typically expect someone in that position to be in agony, but it looks as though he is at peace, almost smug for a few moments. Its haunting.

The thing i love about this piece is how near perfect the symmetry of it is, everything is just so. All of the stones inlaid have one to match it on the other side. It must have taken Forever.

Kuya must have one hell of a voice....

...If his words are visible.

This piece to me is pretty amazing. To start out ( and i don't wanna sound like a sheltered child ) the only Buddhist artwork i had ever seen was sculptures of fat Buddha and nothing else. So me seeing anything but that threw me off a little. This piece out of all the other Buddhist art stood out though. I think that may be that simply the fact that Kuya's words are visible and he appears as though he is singing them.

I love how lifelike figure is. His pose is the slightest bit slouched and he is supporting himself with his deer antler staff. It looks like he is about to ring his gong when he began preaching. And i'll say it over and over my favorite part about this piece is how his words are visible; I feel it gives a sense of the power of Kuya's preaching.

Giant Columns...

make me feel short. The first thing i thought when i saw this column is "Gee I'd like to stand on the top of that column. I bet there is a nice view at the top" that was of course until i saw that it was 97 FEET TALL, at which point i thought "Holy S***, that thing is massive." 

625 feet of sculpture encircling this thing. My god. I don't think I've even drawn/sculpted/etc that much in my entire life altogether. The most remarkable thing ( in my opinion anyway ) is that this is only one story about Trajan ( even though it has several chapters on the column ). I can't imagine how much more detailed, or for that matter how much larger this column would have been had it displayed another military victory of Trajan's. As a side note, I enjoy that Trajan was not an arrogant military commander. He did not make himself to be a larger than life hero of Rome, but a strong leader against a formidable opponent. For that reason he gets much more of my respect.

So its finally come to that time...

...where i actually review something. I want to start out with the funerary mask of Tutankhamen.

Let me start off by saying this guy must have been pretty damn awesome. In life he was one of the youngest pharaohs ever, and in death he has the most extravagant piece of artwork i think i have ever seen. Honestly it looks like they took his weight in gold (literally) and shaped it in his glorious image. Not only does this mask have more gold on it then a garbage dump full of cheap jewelery; it has just about every semi precious stone known to man. Now that I'm finished ranting about how rich this guy was, I'll move on to what i like about this piece.

The amount of color in this piece is spectacular. An entire spectrum, all without looking like a mess. (which since I'm a man with a limited sense of color, might be a bold statement.)

That aside i enjoy how almost god-like Tut's face appears. While he looks very stern, he is also incredibly calm. I feel it truly gives the sense of how important he really was. Something that I'm a bit curious about is the weight of this thing. The mask has so much stuff on it; it has to weigh a ton.

Introduction Post

So this will be the first time I've ever blogged about anything, (Facebook doesn't count) but should be good to start out my blogging days with something i love. Art. I'll be honest sometimes i can be a bit of a smart a** when it comes to writing, but I'll be trying my hardest to tone it down and focus on how i feel about and how i reacted to the art that i will review.

(Garden of Earthly Delights. Probably my most favorite painting)