art

Role model: art teaches us the way to live

This video

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/feb/24/ukraine-president-viktor-yanukovych-palace-video

shows a first look inside one of the palaces of President Yanukovych of Ukraine. There are no subtitles for the Ukrainian voiceover, but you will recognize the word Голлівуд.

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“But,” inquired John curiously, “who did plan all your wonderful reception rooms and halls, and approaches and bathrooms — ?”

“Well,” answered Percy, “I blush to tell you, but it was a moving-picture fella. He was the only man we found who was used to playing with an unlimited amount of money, though he did tuck his napkin in his collar and couldn’t read or write.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz”

 

 

 

“Lapis Lazuli”: the short view and the long

1. The short view:

I have heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and the fiddle-bow,
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out,
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.

 

2. Wyndham Lewis, a contemporary of Mr. Yeats who views himself as a destructive mechanism, charges his palette.

 

3. Ascending in the mechanism, Mr. Yeats takes the long view. 

Zeno Diemer, “German Airships over the Thames.” Postcard, ca. 1915. Photoshopped. http://stampcircuit.com/Stamp-Auction-Collectable/sonstiges?page=47

There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

 

Nude for Norway: on the culturally limited expressiveness of the human body

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Sources and translations

The Oldsmobile advertisement, from 1942, is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jon_williamson/11982067064/

The image of women on the battlefield can be found in many locations online. It was taken by Dmitri Baltermants in Kerch, 1942.

The painting of the girl writing to the soldier wearing Norwegian mittens in Germany’s SS Wiking division, like the two other propaganda images in color, is by the Norwegian Nazi artist Harald Damsleth. All three of the Damsleth images are at http://gasskammer.blogspot.com/2013/02/en-nasjonal-samling-bilder-av-harald.html

Austrvegr, literally  “eastern road,” is an Old Norse word referring to Russia. I have also written about this image at http://jonathan-morse.blogspot.com/2010/01/home-front-art-familiarizing-defamiliar.html

Enten eller translates as “Either / or.” The red-and-yellow sun disk was the emblem of the Nasjonal Samling (National Gathering), Vidkun Quisling’s Norwegian Nazi party. In the image titled Kultur-Terror, the dialogue at the bottom translates as, “The U.S.A. will save Europe’s culture from destruction. . . .  with what right?” I thank Domhnall Mitchell for correcting the translations.