2011年12月31日 星期六

dropping incendiary bombs on London

On Dec. 29, 1940, during World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London.

燒夷彈

2011年12月27日 星期二

The Design Museum

http://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/2011/terence-conran

16 November – 04 March 2012

The Design Museum marks Sir Terence Conran’s 80th birthday with a major exhibition that explores his unique impact on contemporary life in Britain. Through his own design work, and also through his entrepreneurial flair, Conran has transformed the British way of life. The Way We Live Now explores Conran’s impact and legacy, whilst also showing his design approach and inspirations. The exhibition traces his career from post-war austerity through to the new sensibility of the Festival of Britain in the 1950s, the birth of the Independent Group and the Pop Culture of the 1960s, to the design boom of the 1980s and on to the present day.

The exhibition is curated by Stafford Cliff and Deyan Sudjic.

For Families
Mini-worlds Kids workshops
Details and booking on the workshops page

Late Opening
Resident Steady Go
Friday 20 January, 6 - 10pm
Details and booking on the overtime page




The Q&A: Terence Conran



2011年12月26日 星期一

Holbein and England /小漢斯·霍爾拜因

  • May 2005
    320 p., 9 3/4 x 11 1/4
    180 b/w + 40 color illus.
    ISBN: 9780300102802
    Cloth: $65.00 sc

Holbein and England

  • Susan Foister
REVIEWS PREVIEW CONTENTS EXCERPTS


Shortlisted in 2005 for the William Berger Prize for British Art History, awarded by the Berger Collection Educational Trust and the British Art Journal.

Included in Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles list, January 2006

One of the greatest artists of sixteenth-century Europe, Hans Holbein the younger earned high acclaim for his work both in the city of Basel and in England for Henry VIII and other patrons. This book is the first to explore the full range of the artist’s English body of work as well as the relation of this work to the visual and material culture of Tudor England. Providing a detailed account of the paintings, drawings, and woodcuts that Holbein produced in England, the book demonstrates convincingly that that country was not as remote from a common European culture as is often assumed. Rather, it was an unmistakable part of that culture.

Susan Foister discusses not only Holbein's well-known portraits but also his decorative paintings and murals, now lost, his designs for goldsmiths, and the works that can be associated with the English Reformation. In addition, she considers Holbein's religious and secular images, his techniques and practices, his status as an official court painter, and a variety of other intriguing topics.

Susan Foister is curator of Early Netherlandish, German and British painting and Director of Collections, National Gallery London.



Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Holbein
Holbein in England
Holbein’s English Patrons
Holbein at Work
A Holbein Workshop?
2 England
Paintings in Early Sixteenth-century England
Valuing Paintings
Acquiring Paintings
3 Decoration and Design
The Greenwich Revels of 1527
The Hanseatic Commissions
Designs for Goldsmiths
4 Holbein and the English Reformation
Holbein and the Imagery of the English Reformation
The Coverdale Bible
Holbein’s Radical Reformation Woodcuts
5 Holbein the Portraitist
From Basel to England
Princely Portraits
Portraits of Foreigners
Portraits for the English
Conclusion: Holbein and England after 1543
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Appendix
Photograph Credits
Index


English
维基百科,自由的百科全书
盧卡斯為霍爾拜因畫的微型畫像,1543年
《大使們》,1533年

小漢斯·霍爾拜因德語Hans Holbein der Jüngere,約1497年-1543年11月29日以前) 是德國畫家,最擅長油畫版畫,屬於歐洲北方文藝復興時代的藝術家,他最著名的作品是許多肖像畫和系列木版畫《死神之舞》。

目錄

[隐藏]

[编辑] 早期生平

霍爾拜因出生於巴伐利亞奧格斯堡,是 歐洲最大的礦冶工業和金融業的中心。[1]他主要是向他的父親老漢斯·霍爾拜因學習繪畫,後來他和哥哥一起去了瑞士巴塞爾,在那裡他遇見人文主義伊拉斯謨,伊拉斯謨委託他為自己的諷刺作品《愚人頌》繪製插圖,他同時還為馬丁·路德翻譯的德語聖經》繪製了插圖,他也為巴塞爾市政廳繪製壁畫,為教堂和私人住宅設計玻璃鑲嵌畫和裝飾畫。1517年應邀到瑞士中部作畫,順道到過義大利,學習義大利的「新藝術」。回來後被接納為巴塞爾畫家同業公會會員,和一位皮革商的寡婦結婚,並開了自己的畫店。1524年,曾到法國旅行。[2]


[编辑] 在英國

當時發生在瑞士的宗教改革反對教堂懸掛繪畫等偶像,因此作為一位藝術家霍爾拜因的處境比較艱難,1526年他轉道尼德蘭去了倫敦,伊拉斯謨為他向托馬斯·莫爾寫了一封推薦信,所以霍爾拜因在英國站住了腳,他為亨利八世和他的朝臣們繪製了許多肖像,還曾經為亨利八世設計朝服,並為其第二個妻子安妮·博林設計墓碑和墓前裝飾,不過他為博林畫的畫像可能在博林被處死後已經被銷毀了。他還曾經為亨利八世後來的其他幾位妻子畫過肖像。亨利八世曾經批評他的肖像畫過於美化他的妻子們。1528年,他回到巴塞爾處理一些事務,並承接了幾項繪畫,第二年繼續拋妻離子回到倫敦,再也沒有回家。

《托馬斯·莫爾像》,1527年


1543年,他正在為亨利八世畫另一幅肖像時,由於感染瘟疫在倫敦去世,年僅48歲,他是在 10月7日寫下的遺囑,在遺囑的11月29日附件上註明他「最近已經逝世」。[3]

[编辑] 風格

《死神之舞》中的「死神和修道院長」
Wiki004.jpg

霍爾拜因在創作一幅肖像畫以前,經常用鉛筆描繪衣物、裝飾品等細節,有時也用鋼筆或堊筆,然後在紙上沿輪廓紮上小孔,鋪在畫布上,用炭粉將其轉移到 畫布上。在晚年也使用複寫紙。他的畫作對細節描繪非常詳細、真實,甚至於儀器上的刻度、信箋上的文字、桌布上的花紋都描繪的一絲不苟,但整體風格仍然非常 統一,人文主義風格非常明顯,俄羅斯作家陀斯妥耶夫斯基曾經評價他的作品《墓中的基督》:「可以把許多人的信仰奪去。」 [2]


他曾經從同為英國王室畫家的弗拉芒畫家盧卡斯·霍亨布特那裡學習畫微型畫,盧卡斯曾為他畫了一幅微型畫像,他自己從沒有畫過自畫像。

[编辑] 注釋

  1. ^ Biography at Kunstmuseum
  2. ^ 2.0 2.1 朱龍華編著 《荷爾拜因》 上海人民美術出版社, 1964年6月,上海
  3. ^ Michael Levey, The German School; National Gallery Catalogues, 1959, National Gallery, London

[编辑] 外部連結和參考文獻

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OTHER TITLES BY THIS AUTHOR

2011年12月24日 星期六

A trip along the Dales Way shows how Britain balances walkers’ rights with property rights

The joy of walking

A path through time immemorial

A trip along the Dales Way shows how Britain balances walkers’ rights with property rights

PACKHORSES first crossed the Old Bridge in Ilkley in 1675, probably bringing wool to market from the sheep farms that still dot the Yorkshire Dales. The modern traveller will approach the bridge across the river Wharfe with a different purpose. A sign at its foot heralds the start of the Dales Way, a 76-mile (122-kilometre) trek through some of the prettiest parts of England.

The intrepid hiker who makes the full trip will walk on every kind of surface: main roads, narrow rocky paths that are slippery when wet (as this correspondent can painfully attest), alleys overgrown with weeds, and fields where mud has merged with sheep and cow dung to form a brown ooze the colour of oxtail soup. He will pass through tiny villages with quintessential Yorkshire names like Hubberholme and Yockenthwaite and cross (via an overhead walkway) the six lanes of the M6 motorway that threads from Birmingham to Carlisle. And he will observe the English at play in all kinds of weather—teenage boys enjoying a refreshing swim, trout fishermen standing thigh-high in the current, elderly couples accompanied by their dogs and even one man taking his falcon for a walk.

The joys of walking have long inspired poets and writers. Some have spoken of the sense of freedom that comes from leaving the city behind; the delicious choices offered by forked paths that lead through deep woods or over hilltops. In the “Song of the Open Road”, Walt Whitman wrote:

  • Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road,
  • Healthy, free, the world before me,
  • The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Walking seems to set the mind free for contemplation. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” The Welsh writer Lloyd Jones, who was inspired to produce his first novel by a 1,000-mile trek round his homeland, said that “The moving landscape provides an absorbing diversion which frees the mind and gives us a fresh viewpoint, and we’re most at ease with the world when we walk because everything is happening at a manageable pace.”

Some politicians like the ability to ponder the great issues of state as they plod. William Gladstone, a Victorian prime minister and moralist, was an enthusiastic daily walker, opening a route up Mount Snowdon at the age of 83. While mired in the euro zone’s financial woes this year, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, chose to spend her summer holiday walking in the south Tyrol (although the trip didn’t inspire any immediate solutions to the problem).

In Europe, now that national borders have withered away, the open road is longer. Paths criss-cross the continent from the Black Sea to the Atlantic. Lis Nielsen of the European Ramblers’ Association recounts how she met a young Slovenian while walking in her native Denmark. He had grown up in a village marked by a sign for the E6 hiking trail that runs from Finland to the Aegean. He dreamed of following the route to Denmark and saved up all his annual holiday entitlement so he could do so.

America has a huge number of hiking routes, nearly all on public land. The Appalachian Trail, which follows the eponymous mountains from Georgia to Maine, is almost 2,200 miles long (some hikers claim that there is little to see but trees). Yosemite national park in California includes over 800 miles of trails.

Some 56m Americans went hiking in 2010, according to a survey by the Outdoor Industry Foundation. The number of people who went backpacking overnight rose by 18% between 2006 and 2010. It is a cheap activity, well-suited to an era of economic malaise. A survey of hikers in America’s Washington state found that, on average, they each spent just $409 a year on their hobby.

Broadly speaking, the countries that offer the most liberal rights to walkers are those with the most free space. In Norway and Sweden, where the national character is steeped in stoicism and fresh air, there is a general assumption in favour of access. But the pattern does not always hold. In the thinly populated American West, hikers sometimes find it necessary to cross private land in order to link between national and state parks. They can do so only if landowners are friendly: the idea of a “right to roam”—enacted in Britain in 2000—would strike most Americans as very strange.

Recreational walking is by far the most popular leisure activity in Britain: 16% of Britons do it each week, according to the government, compared with 11% who go to the gym. Perhaps this derives from the old connection between rural pursuits and breeding: Victorian businessmen who made good hastened to buy a country estate. Perhaps the claustrophobia caused by living in the most densely populated large country in Europe drives Britons to seek out open spaces at the weekends. Or perhaps it is down to the British love of dogs, who trot behind many an occasional walker.

But while Britons have itchy feet, they are also very attached to the notion that their homes are their castles. So there is a struggle—albeit a generally well-mannered one—between walkers’ rights and property rights.

Walking since time immemorial

The 4,000 or so people who annually complete the Dales Way are tackling just one of the 720 long-distance trails that traverse the British Isles. The longest, the South West Coast path, is 630 miles long, taking in the coast of Devon and Cornwall; it is also one of the easiest to navigate as long as travellers follow a simple rule (start in Minehead and keep the sea on your right). New long-distance paths are added every year, largely by linking existing paths together; there were just 150 national trails back in 1980. The total British network covers close to 150,000 miles; a lot for a small group of islands.

These treks are part of a grand British tradition; the right to walk over private land. This right is not unlimited. The route has to have been established by custom. Some of the paths were built by the Romans; others date back to “time immemorial”, a date established by legal convention to be the reign of Richard the Lionheart (1189-1199).

Paths were originally designed for practical, rather than leisure, use. In Scotland broad paths were built after the Jacobite rebellions of the 18th century, as a way of allowing English soldiers to move quickly round the rugged landscape. Medieval peasants needed to cross feudal estates to get to market. Some paths disappeared when common land was enclosed in the 18th century but walkers fought back: in 1826, the Manchester Association for the Preservation of Ancient Footpaths was formed with the aim of taking a local landowner to court.

A legal principle dubbed “once a highway, always a highway” means that a right of way, once established, is hard to abolish. That is why English hikers can find themselves wandering through a cornfield, or facing the suspicious gaze of a sheep; activities that in America might attract the attention of an angry landowner with a shotgun. The Dales Way takes the hiker past the kitchen windows of several farms and down private driveways; on this correspondent’s trek, an enterprising schoolboy had set up a stall, complete with honesty box, to sell drinks to parched walkers.

A rough code binds both parties. Landowners are not supposed to block footpaths, or leave hikers at the mercy of an angry bull; walkers are supposed to shut gates, leave no litter and keep their dogs under control. The designated highway authority (usually the local council) is responsible for maintaining the route and, as a result, owns the physical ground of the path, “to the depth of two spades” according to legal custom.

These hiking rights were established through classic English compromise. In 1932, 400-500 ramblers walked across a stretch of grouse moor in Derbyshire in the face of robust opposition. Gamekeepers sought to repel the invasion, lest the hikers scare away the birds that their employers sought to shoot. Some of the trespassers were sent to jail. In those days, hiking was a cheap way for factory workers to escape from their satanic mills at weekends, so the pastime was imbued with proletarian virtue. Ministers in the post-war Labour government of 1945-51 held an annual ramble in the Pennines. That government duly passed the National Parks and Access to Countryside Act, enacting walkers’ rights and creating much-loved parks in, for instance, the Lake District and Snowdonia. Another Labour government passed the Countryside and Rights of Way Act in 2000 that gave walkers Nordic-style rights to roam across open land like moors and mountains.

Hiking was a cheap way for factory hands to escape from satanic mills at weekends

Such acts have a difficult balance to strike. Even those who guard the right to roam most jealously would object if passers-by wandered through their back gardens. Some celebrities, such as Madonna, have argued that walkers represent a threat to their personal security and demanded restrictions on access rights. One landowner, Nicholas van Hoogstraten, blocked a path through his land with barbed wire and even a padlocked gate. The Ramblers’ Association took him to court and won.

But such cases are rare. The most alarming hazard this correspondent came across was a sign implying the presence of a bull in the next field; fortunately, it turned out to be a pictorial, rather than actual, deterrent.

To the annoyance of landowners, ramblers tend to resist permanent alterations to ancient paths, even when a diversion would make the walk no less pleasant; but landowners are often able to get courts to agree to temporary diversions past their land (as the model Claudia Schiffer did when she married in the Suffolk village of Shimpling in 2002). The Ramblers’ Association, which fights doggedly for walkers’ rights, says it is notified of such diversions, the vast majority of which are unopposed, 70-80 times a week.

In America, the hiker’s biggest problem is generally isolation. It can be a week between towns on the Appalachian Trail, so travellers need a week’s worth of food as well as extra water. On long stretches of the trail, the accommodation is a wooden hut with one side exposed to the elements.

The British hiker, by contrast, is rarely far from a bed-and-breakfast where sweaty clothes can be shed, showers taken, and a full English breakfast provided, complete with such nutritionally dubious items as fatty bacon and fried bread. At the communal dining table, doughty old women rub shoulders with rugby-playing students. While the landlady slaves away in the kitchen, the landlord may well give the guests the benefits of his views on the finer points of politics and economics. But even if his company is uncongenial, the boarding house will soon be left far behind. On the Dales Way, only the sheep can hear you scream.