Enamel Painting in a Medieval Village

Few weeks ago I visited an ‘open air’ museum complex and got the chance to attend an enamel-art workshop. It was a throw back in time…

‘ingredients’

‘getting started’

after coming out of the kiln

 

~ The Pink Room ~

Some of the pink art works from the Zsolnay Porcelain Factory:

 

Visiting Alice…

 

 

~

Visiting the Zsolnay Porcelain Factory

Here are the best-ofs of the ‘Golden Age of Zsolnay‘ exhibition, located in the Zsolnay Quarter, Pecs, Hungary.

The pieces belonging to the Art Nouveau collection are mesmerising.

Hope you enjoy watching the photos!

N.

The Chimney of the Factory

Porcelain Column in the Zsolnay Garden

Blue tile of the Column

La Luna

Happy 100th, Amrita!

The reformer of modern Indian painting, Amrita Sher-Gil would be turning 100 years old this year.

Amrita Dalma Sher-Gil was born in Budapest, Hungary (30th January 1913) to a Sikh father and a Hungarian mother. Both her parents were aristocrats, providing Amrita with an excellent education.

Amrita and her sister, Indira spent their childhood in Hungary, then with the end of the First World War the family moved back to India.

A few years later, in the early 1920s Amrita moved back to Europe with her mother in order to study art. She was enrolled at schools in Florence and Paris  (École des Beaux-Arts).

Young Girls, 1932, by Amrita Sher-Gil

With her painting, Young Girls, she became the youngest and the only Asian elected as an Associate of the Parisian Grand Salon in 1933.

Amrita is often compared to Frida Kahlo, and called the ‘Indian Frida Kahlo’, because of her unique style, her bisexuality, and her reputed libido.

 

In the 1930s she travelled to Hungary several times, where she met her future husband, Egan Viktor, a medical student.

While staying in Hungary, Amrita Sher-Gil was inspired by the rural life and created several paintings focusing on this theme.

In the 1930s she ‘discovers’ India, examining the ancient art of her father’s homeland. As a woman who lived and travelled in the West, Amrita Sher-Gil recognised the contrasts between East and West, ancient and modern rather clearly. In her art work she reflects on the beauty of this unique duality of contrasts, which she also finds in her own heritage.

In 1939 Amrita Sher-Gil and her husband, Viktor Egan moved to Gorakhpur, India. Egan opened his own medical practice, while Sher-Gil was concentrating on her art work.

Two years later, on 5th December Amrita Sher-Gil suddenly became ill, fell into a coma, and passed away.

Some Facts about Sher-Gil:

• She was the niece of the well-known Hungarian Indologist, Ervin Baktay.
• Amrita’s mother tongue was Hungarian.
• Her mother, Gottesmann Marie-Antoinette, was an opera singer, trained by Puccini himself. She committed suicide after her daughter’s premature death.
• Her father, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, was a famous linguist, a scholar of Persian, Urdu, and Sanskrit.
• Amrita Sher-Gil was also musically trained. She played the piano and the violin.

 

Love and Light

 

Noémi

 

Wolf-Alice

 

‘Sometimes the sharp ears of her foster kindred hear her across the irreparable gulf of absence; they answer her from faraway pine forest and the bald mountain rim. Their counterpoint crosses and criss-crosses the night sky; they are trying to talk to her but they cannot do so because she does not understand their language even if she knows how to use it for she is not a wolf herself, although suckled by wolves.

Her panting tongue hangs out; her red lips are thick and fresh. Her legs are long, lean and muscular. Her elbows, hands and knees are thickly callused because she always runs on all fours. She never walks; she trots or gallops. Her pace is not our pace.’

Angela Carter – The Bloody Chamber

Variations on a Theme

I stumbled upon this flight of stairs in the hall of an old building in my hometown. I found its simplicity and its arrangements of lines and arches quite striking…and also the weight that the bends of the stairs suggest…heavily ancient.

Delight in Disorder — The Art of Dress

While working on one of my projects during exam time I came across with a very interesting book by Jane Ashelford; The Art of Dress: Clothes Through History, 1500 – 1914. I was so happy to  have a book on loan that actually has some pictures in it!! After weeks of constant reading and writing, it was a pure bliss to my eyes….

I was writing about fashion, becoming a popular motif in seventeenth century literature, therefore, it was actually quite essential to put my hands on a book with images.=) When I started exploring the topic of my choice, I knew it straight that sooner or later I would share some details and images of my research with you. I also started a Pinterest board to collect some remarkable pieces. (http://pinterest.com/noemi9/17th-century-fashion/)

I have chosen the seventeenth century because I think it was a turning point in the history of fashion. That was the first time when common people started dressing in a more pompous way, blurring the sharp edges between classes.  After the turmoil and the height of strict Puritan values of the antecedent decades, the age of the Restoration was a breath of fresh air. With the re-opening of the theaters across all England, people could finally begin to enjoy earthly delights again without any guilt.

Not to mention that the country was just after recovering from an outbreak of plague, which greatly affected both poor and rich for many years. ‘People wore rags since they were afraid of contracting plague through having new clothes. Once the plague was over, people started to dress lavishly’ (Ashelford) After the period of shortage the desire for new attires was stronger than ever. People were missing and longing for the Tudor pomp, and this time not only the aristocracy wanted to be adorned with sumptuous garments, but common people as well.  Besides, clothing became a business, and not only did it become a means of money making, but it also became a favoured subject of art as well.

Ahh poetry…

In my project I decided to discuss this eventful era through analysing a poem. I was quite hesitant, not knowing which poem to go with..then my choice fell on Robert Herrick’s Delight in Disorder… a beautiful sonnet in which Herrick gives an abundant account on the grandiosity of imperfection that manifests in the carelessly worn pieces.

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness :
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction :
An erring lace which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher :
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly :
A winning wave (deserving note)
In the tempestuous petticoat :
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility :
Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

Another aspect that also makes these lines rather relevant in the seventeenth century is the popular motif of the time appearing in the sonnet. The ‘calculated tidiness’ of which the French were so fond of, found its way into poems and paintings as well. Ben Jonson wrote in his poem, the Song; Robes loosely flowing, hair is free; Such sweet neglect more taketh me’. Or Isaac Oliver’s painting of the poet Edward Herbert, depicting him with an unbuttoned shirt also is in line with the popular custom of the era.

And finally here are some more paintings and pieces from the seventeenth century:

Anne of Denmark

Collar made in seventeenth century Italy

A sketch by Inigo Jones, a famous fashion designer of his time.

Collage

‘Bonus Track’

And some additional images and a quotation from the book The Art of Dress which are not related to the seventeenth century, but definitely deserve some attention. =)

Pretty feminine

My favourite piece…

The virgin Queen

Shoe shopping – never goes out of fashion…

‘When the photographer Cecil Beaton wrote an account of fashion and the decorative arts in the first half of this century he felt he had to defend himself against the charge of being a “propagandist of frivolity”, for the author of such a work will “certainly discover that, both in England and America, fashion is viewed with a jaundiced eye, feminine enthusiasm nothwithstanding”. At the time of writing, 1954, Beaton thought that it was “France alone” who had “laboured to elevate both fashion and les arts mineurs to a degree of perfection comparable with the purity of its literature and painting”.’

Thank you for your time, hope you enjoyed reading my article.

Love and light,

Noémi 

x

‘Do you think this is just another day in your life? This is not just another day, it’s the one day that is given to you: today.’