from India Insight:
M.F. Husain, Swami Ramdev and the world’s largest democracy
M.F. Husain, India's most famous modern artist, died at the age of 95 this morning, not in Maharashtra, his home state, nor New Delhi, where many of his ground-breaking works were exhibited, but in London, where he lived in exile with Qatari citizenship. The 'Picasso of India' has for five years felt unable to live and work in his country of birth.
Husain fled India in 2006, leaving behind court cases and death threats against him, and continued vandalism of his works from right-wing Hindu groups that accused him of insulting their religion by painting deities in the nude.
Husain, a Muslim, felt unsafe and unable to practice his particular art form in the world's largest democracy. And he's not the only one. Salman Rushdie, who was born in Mumbai but lives in the UK, saw New Delhi ban his Satanic Verses for its perceived depiction of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
And Husain's death presents a timely reminder to India of the multi-faceted obligations of an open, secular democracy, as anti-graft movements swell against the government.
On Thursday morning, India's news channels cut to the breaking news of Husain's death from pictures of Swami Ramdev, the yoga guru turned social activist being treated by doctors monitoring his health during a hunger fast that entered its sixth day on Thursday.
The country's Home Minister P. Chidambaram, in an effort to undermine Ramdev's stand against corruption, sought on Wednesday to paint the guru as an agent of the Hindu-nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) organisation, and raise his worries of an upsurge in far-right extremism against the government - currently headed by his secular Congress party - to discredit the wider anti-graft movement.
Moscow’s “Holy Rus” religious art show spotlights sacred Russia
Russia opened an unprecedented exhibit of religious art pulled from across the country and abroad at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery on Thursday, in a show of Kremlin support for an Orthodox Church growing more powerful since the fall of Communism.
The state-sponsored exhibit “Holy Rus” displays art works from the Old Eastern Slavonic state, which existed in the middle ages and united the lands of modern Belarus, Ukraine and the European part of Russia, with its capital in Kiev.
Russia inaugurated a new holiday last year to mark its adoption of Christianity in 988 by the leader of the Kievan Rus Prince Vladimir more than 1,000 years ago. “It isn’t the political state called Russia, whose history we are telling here, it’s the historic period of ‘Rus’ we are showing,” Orthodox church representative Father Nikolai Kim said.
The exhibit, which combines 420 masterpieces from 25 Russian museums and from the Louvre in Paris, opens with massive 600-kg, gold-leafed gates from a cathedral in Suzdal, a town 200 km (120 miles) northeast of Moscow with a historic center that dates back to medieval times.
Fragile 11th-century icons, gem-encrusted and metal-bound copies of the New Testament, priestly robes and rich iconostases are displayed behind glass in cross-shaped stands.
The director of the Tretyakov Gallery said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had been behind the government’s sponsorship of the costly and stunning exhibit. “It’s a very expensive project, and we wouldn’t be able to pull it off without the state’s help. No investors would provide us with that much money,” Irina Lebedeva said. She did not disclose the cost of the display.
Santa Croce fresco restoration like “looking angels in the eye”
For lovers of Italian art, it’s as close as you can come to ascending a stairway to heaven and looking angels in the eye. For the first time after a major restoration, the scaffolding that has shrouded the 850 sq m (9,150 sq ft) of frescoes of the Capella Maggiore in Florence’s famed Santa Croce Basilica will not be dismantled immediately.
Instead, for about a year, a small number of visitors will be able to don hard hats and clamber up the clanking steps to admire the 600-year-old frescos of Agnolo Gaddi, the last major “descendant” of the Giotto school, from close up.
“Climbing up the scaffolding and standing in precisely the same spot where the artist stood is a bit like travelling in a time machine,” said Alberto Felici, one of the team that spent five years restoring the frescoes. “You can re-live the emotions and the atmosphere that the painter experienced 600 years ago,” he said, speaking some 30 m (90 ft) above the basilica’s ground floor.
Since the next restoration may not take place for centuries, it is the chance of a lifetime to get within inches of a masterpiece that helped pave the way for the Renaissance.
Here’s a reuters video on the porject:
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The restoration of the Santa Croce Basilica is great news. I am very kind of Agnolo Gaddi’s artwork and I would love admire his frescos. I also like this painting, ‘The Triumph of the Cross’ here .
Afghan archaeologists find Buddhist site as war rages
Archaeologists in Afghanistan, where Taliban Islamists are fighting the Western-backed government, have uncovered Buddhist-era remains in an area south of Kabul, an official said on Tuesday. “There is a temple, stupas, beautiful rooms, big and small statues, two with the length of seven and nine meters, colorful frescos ornamented with gold and some coins,” said Mohammad Nader Rasouli, head of the Afghan Archaeological Department.
“Some of the relics date back to the fifth century (AD). We have come across signs that there are items maybe going back to the era before Christ or prehistory,” he said. “We need foreign assistance to preserve these and their expertise to help us with further excavations.”
Government and foreign troops are battling an insurgency led by the radical Taliban movement which destroyed Buddhist statues at Bamyan during its five-year control of the mountainous country from 1996 to 2001, viewing the monuments as an affront to Islam.
Martin Luther statues have Wittenberg in a stir 500 years on
About 800 colourful statues of 16th-century Protestant reformer Martin Luther are popping up in the eastern German town of Wittenberg, where Luther first railed against some practices of the Roman Catholic Church almost 500 years ago.
The one-metre high plastic figures in red, green, blue and black are the creation of the artist Ottmar Hörl and are intended to replace a statue of Martin Luther on the town square while it is being renovated.
“My Luther looks just like the original, except for the feet,” Hörl told German press agency ddp.
The art installation has stirred the ire of some Protestant theologians who say the statues, copies of which Hörl is selling on his website for 250 euros each, make a mockery of Luther’s achievements.
Bring him back. The PROTESTants dont PROTEST anymore.
Moscow art curators anger Russian Orthodox church but escape jail
Two art curators have been found guilty in Moscow of inciting religious hatred in a case that has highlighted the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox church and its links to the Russian government.
Yuri Samodurov and Andrei Yerofeyev must pay fines of 200,000 roubles ($6,477) and 150,000 roubles, respectively, to the state for their 2007 Forbidden Art exhibit, which mixed religious icons with sexual and pop-culture images.
Among the art on display in the exhibit were works depicting an Orthodox icon adorned with Mickey Mouse, a Russian general raping a soldier, and a Soviet-era Order of Lenin medal over Christ’s head. Leading cultural figures had appealed to President Dmitry Medvedev to drop the charges, saying it heralded a new era of censorship.
Outside the court, men clad in black leather jackets raised icons and crosses and two priests looked on in silence as Samodurov and Yerofeyev emerged from the courtroom. Mikhail Nalimov, head of the United Orthodox Youth movement, told reporters in court the curators should be sent into exile.
Museum exhibit unveils Andy Warhol’s Catholic, abstract side
As a pop art pioneer, Andy Warhol blazed his way to fame with trademark Brillo soap pad boxes and silk-screens of Campbell’s Soup cans. But a new museum exhibit shows pop art was just a seven-year phase for Warhol in the 1960s, before his 1980s plunge into abstract art and Christian imagery, particularly his versions of “The Last Supper.”
Flippant, brazen and flamboyant as an art world personality, Warhol long kept private his devout, lifelong Catholicism.
“Only his closest confidants knew he was a religious person and frequently went to Mass,” said Sharon Matt Atkins, coordinating curator of the Brooklyn Museum exhibit “Andy Warhol: The Last Decade,” which opens on June 18.
Little known is that Warhol attended church in the plush Upper East Side of Manhattan, a world away from his famed downtown Factory studio complex, frequented by the eccentric and outlandish. In his middle age, he began exploring religious themes in his art.
“Last Supper” paintings show how food portions grew over millenium
We’ve been overeating our way through ever-larger portions over the past 1,000 years, a U.S. study revealed after studying more than 50 paintings of the Biblical Last Supper.
The study, by a Cornell University professor and his brother who is a Presbyterian minister and a religious studies professor, showed that the sizes of the portions and plates in the artworks, which were painted over the past millennium, have gradually grown by between 23 and 69 percent.
“We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history’s most famous dinner,” said Brian Wansink, author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,” said in a statement.
Whoever wrote this is displaying an abysmal lack of knowledge about both Jesus and The Last Supper. What part of Jesus was Jewish has escaped you? The last supper was a Passover Seder. Jews DO NOT EAT BREAD for the eight days of Passover they eat Matzoh, unleavened bread. Shame, Shame that researchers and reporters are so in sensitive as to ignore this fact and/or do research.
In Sistine Chapel, pope tells artists beauty can lead to God
Pope Benedict met artists from around the world in the Sistine Chapel on Saturday and urged them to inject spirituality into their work, saying contemporary beauty was often “illusory and deceitful.”
“Beauty … can become a path toward the transcendent, toward the ultimate Mystery, toward God,” he told the artists meeting beneath the vaulted ceiling of the chapel painted by Michelangelo. “Too often … the beauty thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful … it imprisons man within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy.”
The Vatican said it invited some 500 artists to the event, regardless of religious, political or stylistic allegiances. More than 250 accepted, mostly from Italy, including singer Andrea Bocelli and award-winning film composer Ennio Morricone. Amongst the other guests were Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid, whose Maxxi modern art museum has just opened in Rome, and F. Murray Abraham, the American actor who won an Oscar for his role as Salieri in the Mozart film, Amadeus, in 1985.
Read the whole story here and the full text of the pope’s address here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNXKFYe8U OgPlease comment – the clip has relevanceIn Judaism we find beauty in creativity as well, but this has not been developed in many ultra religious circles because of the value of study in our faith.
Oldest Christian Bible made whole again online
The surviving parts of the world’s oldest Christian Bible were reunited online on Monday, generating excitement among biblical scholars still striving to unlock its mysteries. The Codex Sinaiticus was hand written by four scribes in Greek on animal hide, known as vellum, in the mid-fourth century around the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great who embraced Christianity.
Not all of it has withstood the ravages of time, but the pages that have include the whole of the New Testament and the earliest surviving copy of the Gospels written at different times after Christ’s death by the Four Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Bible’s remaining 800 pages and fragments — it was originally some 1400 pages long — also contain half of a copy of the Old Testament. The other half has been lost.
Read our full story here. And consult the Codex here.
Respected Sir John Lennon
Here are some Scriptures that you must consider.
This passage is from the book Philippians(New Testament) chapter 2.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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BABA RAMDEV IS AN IKON….HE HAS GIVEN INDIA A BRAND YOG AND YOGA THAT WAS THEER FOR CENTURIES BUT NEER TAPPED…THE UNEDUCATED SANYASI HAS DONE IT WHAT NOT EVEN RELIANCE OR TATAS OR BIRLAS COULD GIE TO INDIA THAT IS A TRULY GLOBAL BRAND…INDIA IS KNOWN BY YOG TODAY …TODAY EVERY GRADUATE …IIM OR IITIAN HAS ONE AGENDA TO PASS OUT FIND A JOB,GOOD HOUSE WIFE,BRANDED CARS AND LUXURY HOW MUCH PERCENTAGE OF US CONTRIBUTE TO OUR COUNTRY’S BRANDING AND ECONOMY..? NONE…OF US…HE IS ACTUALLY TRUE IKON IN CONTEXT OF THE AUSTERITY AMERICANS HAVE HIJACKED…LIKE BUFFET AND BILL GATES…THEY COME TO INDIA AND MEDIA GOES GAGA OVER IT …BUT INDIAN MEDIA IS BUNCH OF FOOLS WHO CANT LOOK INTO THERE OWN COUNTRY AND FND A BABA RAMDEV WHO HAS ACTUALLY DONE MUCH MUCH GREATER CAUSE TO HIS COUNTRY THEN ANY BUFFET OR GATES TO AMERICA…WHT HARM HAS HE DONE …BY TEACHING A NON MEDICAL AND ANCIENT INDIAN LEGACY TO THE WORLD,…WHT HARM HAS HE DONE BY OPENING ASHRAMS AND DHARAMSHALAS ALL OVER HOLI PLACES WHERE PPL WHO CANT AFFORD TO STAY IN THE TAJ CAN STAY IN HYGEINE AND EAT HYGENIC FOOD…AND WHT HARM IN FMCG PROUCTS AND SCHOOLS WHOSE FOODS IS TOTALLY FREE OF CHEMICALS AND SCHOOLS NOT FOR THE WEALTHY …AND ALL EARNINGS OUT OF THESE INVESTED AGAIN IN THESE ACTIVITIES…AND WHT HARM IN RAISING VOICE AGAINST A COBRA OF CORRUPTION …ACTUALLY THIS IS JUST A BEGINNING INDIA IS GETTING READY FOR AN EGYPT IF THE GOERNMENT KEEPS ON PUTTIN THE LID ON THE STEAMED HOPES OF PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY …IT COULD GET WORSE