Haunted by Tao

After my succesful post from a while back, I’ll give it a second go!

Discovered the new album of The Prodigy. One word: WOW!

Update:
Living life as it should be. Have lots of work. Know I’ve been neglecting this blog for some while. But other interest have come up. Facebook and email are replacing HBT. I’ll leave it be, no matter what. But I’m thinking about moving it to a new subdir, like /blog.

I often wonder: is poetry something to write when feeling sad? I don’t really feel the need to write it anymore, although I love writing and dedicating poems to others.

It’s bizarre, I do want to write, but just too many happy thoughts fly across and make it very hard to come up with the right words. Words that express my emotions. Words that tell the story. As if walking away from my path would be the only way to clear my mind.

Difficult to imagine …

I think it fits this site perfectly!

As already much has been written about him, there is nothing more to add. Perhaps one thing that might be interesting.

Landscape portrets were already known by the Flemish Primitives (hate that term!). So perhaps Patinir wasn’t really a pioneer there. Also religious inspired pictures existed for over centuries, ages, … The question just might be where his genious lied. It is in fact, rather simple to discover. Just look at the pictures that I included. What does come back in every picture? A little hint might be: examine the color schemes used. It’s the same everywhere. Also the depicture of the rocks is typical to Patinir.

So we have a scheme that goes as follows: brown in the front to depict the important scene, green in the middle and blue in the back. Somewhere in between stand the rocks to form a solid connection between all the different layers. Take a look: it’s the same for all.

Patinir thus created a new form of landscape painting that will have great influence on later artists and will live on until the 18th century. Fascinating, no?

Pictures by Google

Being a huge fan of Horta, it’s sometimes difficult to interpret and understand modern architecture that is “inspired” by him. A recent example is “Cafe Horta” in Antwerp. As is in a name, it pretends to uphold the legislation of Horta. Well, maybe it’s not all that simple.

First of all, have a look at their website and in specific the “Art Nouveau Hall“. It reuses some parts of “La Maison du Peuple” that I’ve mentioned earlier on this website. So far so good. Reusing original otherwise lost artifacts is a good thing. But take a look at the rest of the hall. Seriously … That’s not the idea nor philosophy of Horta. Creating a large amount of light is good, that’s how he meant it to be. But what’s up with the pale colours? Art Nouveau was about light forcing it’s way through a spectre of coloured light, stained glass. The whole rainbow in one room. Not some pale imprint of even more pale colours …

Why couldn’t they add vivid colours, play with the light and shadow that inevitably paint the walls. As my dissertation is about stained glass from the 15th century until now, I know a bit about how colourful it all can be. How even the medieval man knew about it’s beauty. A person we often called “stupid and moronic” (although recent research has somewhat revoked that view, many still hold on to that thought). Still they knew and they were experts with light and colour. It wasn’t until the 19th century for the rediscovery of this secret. And what have we learned from it? Looking at the Art Nouveau hall … not much.

A shame really. Having spent so much effort in integrating original parts of Horta’s Maison du peuple, it’s in no relationship with the other elements. A missed opportunity, but that’s perhaps modern architecture. Maybe I’m just too old fashion. On the other hand: don’t copy when you can’t reach the original level. Be original for god’s sake!

Just listen. I can’t think of any song right now I find more beautiful. I’m still exploring jazz and I don’t know that much about it. But I do know what good music can sound like. And I pretty sure this is a winner.

On the other hand, I’m not someone who believes that music expresses my emotions. This is a rather sad song, but that would be the complete opposite of how I feel and how I stand towards my surroundings. I’m very happy with myself and my peers. Something I come to realize every day.

A true discovery, I think