A New Book by our Co-Editor, David Mayernik
TIMELESS CITIES: An Architect's Reflections on Renaissance Italy (Westview Press: Icon Editions) focuses on the civic mythology, or personas if you will, of five Italian cities (Rome, Venice, Florence, Siena, and Pienza), and how that mythology pre-dated and gave shape to the building fabric we know today. In essence, those cities had a self-image, a mythology, and a set of aspirations/dreams, and these directed and gave shape to their urban development, creating the renowned places tourists flock to visit and residents enjoy. More than a book on historic cities, the book uses these examples as living models, and describes how we can learn to make our cities today speak for our own dreams and aspirations. [More Information]
It is available NOW at online bookstores, such as AMAZON.
Mona Lisa Smiles
September 2003
These days intuitive understanding is really not enough to satisfy. We must analyse things to see if we can work things out with logic. There are scientists at work analysing how painters such as Leonardo Da Vinci may have achieved their effects. One theory even suggests that Mona Lisa isn't actually smiling. Evidently it's an optical effect created quite deliberately by using certain mysterious visual techniques previously known only to Leonardo but now thanks to science, we too can know what he did!
A smile after all is a very flexible gesture. There are closed smiles, open smiles, friendly smiles, etc. There are some smiles which are really smirks. Whatever it is, the range of a smile can express an infinite set of sentiments. This open-ended nature of emotion helps the artist because the art of making images is not, by necessity, a prescriptive act of creating specific effects. There is much more reliance on chance than commonly perceived since how the hand might move at a certain moment can only be controlled to a point. Once something is made, that's that. The deft hand of Leonardo created characters noted for their gentleness and grace. His appreciation and mastery of feminine expression has no parallel. The texture and plasticity of human personality he could render was much softer and more subtle than say, Michelangelo, whose forte as a painter was in capturing the assertive outlines of the raw drama of human presence itself. The enigma of Mona Lisa's smile is also the engimatic fleetingness of the painterly moment. This simple observation might be about as analytical as one could get about it. Paradoxically, it's the attempt to investigate art with scientific methods that becomes purely speculative, if not downright farcical.
Source: 'Mona Lisa smile secrets revealed'
- BBC
A Dust-up for David
September 2003
Sometimes it has to be wondered how this generation treats the past. The teaching of history in schools is generally pathetic and historical references have notfeatured in mainsteam architecture for some time. The pristine earth that we inherited from the past has been subject to the most atrocious abuses. What is clear is that in the diminuition of its general appreciation, sheer snobbery about curating the past has inflated in direct proportion. The past has retreated into the inaccessible worlds of cut and dry scholarship and heritage bureaucracies. To be noted with some bemusement is the recent fracas inside the restoration business in Italy about what to do with Michelangelo's "David". It has not been cleaned for a while and is evidently covered with a variety of muck. The argument is fundamentally philosphical although the underlying acrimony might give the impression that it is a fight between cleaning ladies about soaps and rags. There is one view that would want to just give it a good clean. To do this an expert would use a small brush with little drops of water. The opposing view wants it "restored" as closely as possible to the "original". This method uses poultice soaked in distilled water to try and draw out the accumulated dirt. The proponents of the former 'mechanical' method argue that the poultice will remove the protective oil originally applied by Michelangelo. The proponents of the latter argue that their method will be much gentler as it does not require any scrubbing. Feelings run high with one party accusing the other of idiocy while hapless art lovers and the general public look on in confused dismay. David is a permanent display at the Accademia Gallery in Florence. Florence has one of the worst levels of air pollution in Italy. Perhaps Michelangelo, known to have been a highly practical man, would have preferred that the city had clean air before clean art.
Sources:- The Dirt on the David
- NY Times
Question for 'David' at 500: Is He Ready for Makeover?
- NY Times
David, il restauro della discordia
- La Reppublica
News Flash
September 10, 2003
Today NASA announced that it had evidence of the Harmony of the
Spheres: a black hole in the Perseus galaxy has been emitting a
B-flat note for the last few billion years (at 57 octaves below the
lowest available on a piano, middle-C, so un-hearable).
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=12503
