Slowly Seeping into our Landscape

Moratorium on exotic representations

It is unusual that I don't post images for two straight weeks, and the previous post was too serious to put up images which corroborate with the erroneous "Moorish Revival" as proposed by the writers at Space Toronto.

I understand and appreciate fully the creative desire at times to represent "exoticism." And this is just what I did with my gouache print design which I did a couple of years ago entitled "Desert Jewels." I'm pretty sure it is the turquoise domes of the Iraqi landscapes which inspired me to do this.

But, this type of occasional representation is a far cry from the stories of design and fashion changes that our Muslim residents are planning for our cities.

Print design "Desert Jewels"

With sadness, I have to conclude that exoticism has to be out for now. And we are far better off going back to our original landscape to reinforce it back into our psyche.

Fortunately, I did just that last year, with my Trillium and Queen Anne's Lace series.


Print design
"Trillium/Queen Anne's Lace"

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Cross-Cultural Influences

Moorish Revival, with a twist

I've consistently said that Canadians are either very naive or deeply irresponsible. A recent article I came across from Spacing Toronto entitled Toronto meets Marrakesh leads me to think that the sin lies in irresponsibility.

The online blog, which is part of a print edition, describes itself thus:

Spacing Toronto is your hub for daily dispatches from the streets of Toronto to cities around the world, offering both analysis and a forum for discussion. Our contributors examine city hall, architecture, urban planning, public transit, transportation infrastructure and just about anything that involves the public realm of our cities.

Clearly a blog and magazine that tries to understand the urban landscape of cities across Canada.

But, the writer of Toronto Meets Marrakesh, Thomas Wicks, is incapable of differentiating between a benign, and even flourishing, urban landscape, and that which is endangered.

European and American artists have always had a fascination for foreign cultures, from African masks, to Chinese ceramics to exotic "Moorish" styles. Often, they lived in these cultures for some time, or spent years traveling back and forth, while borrowing from and being inspired by their alien friends.

Still, the bottom line has always been that they never transformed their societies with these strange and foreign elements. Whatever they brought, somehow and not always tidily, fit into their European or American environments.

Wicks' great description of the Toronto landscape of the early 20th century, when there was a general Moorish Revival through architecture, art and design, shows that many of these elements (they were actually very few) somehow blended in, albeit a little incongruously, with the rest of the city, and Toronto went on being Toronto, and nothing fundamental changed.

Yet, Wicks' attempt to favorably compare the latest "Moorish" incursion with the original one is completely erroneous and dangerous.

There is no Moorish Re-Revival. There are no artists and architects who, enchanted by these faraway lands, tried to bring a little of that exoticism back to their hometown.

What we have now is actual "Moors" right here, who are adamant about changing the landscape to fit their world view. They are not building mosques and minarets as quaint additions to a northern city, but as buildings which will transform this city. There will not be one or two buildings dispersed here and there, but whole regions which will be under the visual and aural spell of this new landscape.

Wicks appears to be a regular writer for Spacing Toronto. I hold him responsible for his myopia and wrong analogies, since he appears to be a professional. He will be directly responsible for the innocent bystander who will have to hear chants five times daily from the minaret that was built just across his home. And even if he moves to another place, a new one is sure to rise up again.

Canadians are certainly not naive. They have ample evidence, information and proof. They are ultimately profoundly irresponsible to their society, their environment and their landscape.

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Flat, Simple and Funny

Charley Harper's Illustrations

It is always a pleasure to find an innovative artist who eschews the avant-garde mentality. Charley Harper (1922-2007) made his first claim to fame when he illustrated The Golden Book of Biology, and The Animal Kingdom. Although not pure realism, his illustrations are nonetheless realistic. He calls his work "minimal realism" and he describes it as "flat, simple and funny."

I think they are more than that, with a certain charm, rhythm, and a story to them.

Birch, Bark and Birds

Double Lucky

Octoberama

Trumpeter Swan

Migration Mainline, Cape May

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Collapsing Architecture

The warning signs of Toronto's latest architectural addition

The new Royal Ontario Museum's (ROM) extension sits on the narrow curb of Bloor street as if ready to fall on the innocent pedestrians. Its architect, Daniel Libeskind, who also started the Twin Towers memorial, but later on had to cede the design to another architect for fear of an unstable structure, has been very buoyant during his interviews about his new Toronto structure.

The new Royal Ontario Museum exterior

The new Royal Ontario Museum interior

Interviewer: Your addition is radically different from the existing ROM building. Along with the praise, you’ve heard lots of criticism of it.

Daniel Libeskind: When the Eiffel Tower was built, it was condemned universally. But what would Paris be without the Eiffel Tower?

Libeskind hubristic response equating the Eiffel Tower with the new ROM extension is not even correct. The Eiffel Tower was built in the spirit of triumph, celebrating the one hundred years of the French Revolution and man's perceived victory against fate, at least the fate of ordained Kings and serfdoms, by lofty (if misguided) ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. It was also an ode to the science and technology, and the achievements of the industrial age.

What has Libeskind's convoluted structure to offer? Libeskind's consistent response is that his buildings are "different" and "progressive." That's it, according to him. That's their value.

But there is another undeclared layer that Libeskind is not articulating. Either he doesn't really know it, or is too clever to mention it. His buildings all convey destruction, the opposite of architecture. But why is that? I think primarily because of uncertainty. Libeskind has no principles to build on. Liberty, equality, science, centennials? None of these words figure in his interviews. Instead abstract and empty ones like "different" and "radical" describe much of his intentions.

Libeskind is essentially a nihilist. And since art is always the projector of its creator's thinkings, his buildings emerge as potentially (imminently) crumbling edifices. And his interiors are no different. There is a sense of claustrophobic despair inside his structures, as though the wall are about to fold in. In fact that was one of the strongest criticisms of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, another of his buildings on the verge of collapse.

Whenever architects and artists distort our structures to the point of collapse, I believe that danger is nearby. This was what happened just before the horror of the Nazis. German filmmakers were making their own nightmarish films, and claustrophobic buildings about to cave in figured prominently in their stage sets. But there was at least a sense of awareness of impending doom by the German filmmakers. They chose, unwisely, to deal with it in metaphorical terms. Libeskind, on the other hand, keeps cheerfully giving interviews about the renaissance of Toronto, with, of course, his exemplary contribution.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Robert Wiene, 1920. Exterior and interior scenes

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Winter Wonderland

New Year's Day, 2008

Street Scene with Overhanging Trees

Fir Tree in the Park

View of the Allan Gardens

The Allan Gardens Conservatory

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Priez Pour Nous et Pour les Musulmans

Notre Dame d'Afrique

Notre Dame d'Afrique across the Mediterranean from
Notre Dame de la Garde

During their colonization period in Algeria, the French built the Basilica Notre Dame d'Afrique in Algiers. Miraculously, the place still stands, and is still used as a place of worship for Catholic Algerians. The Church lies at the northern coastline of Algiers, and is thought to be a complement to the Notre Dame de la Garde across the Mediterranean in Marseilles.

Religion is a combination of tradition, architecture, geography and symbolism. And the French Catholics were susceptible to all of them when transferring their Catholicism to Algeria.

The statue of Mary in Notre Dame d'Afrique has fine Caucasian features, but is ebony black. The reasoning has to be that this metaphorically black Madonna would be a gateway into the rest of Africa at this point of entry, and act as an incentive for and a familiar guard over her new converts. It is also a clear indication that Algerian and French Catholics are two different peoples.

The positioning of the Basilica is also very important. As a new church, facing the hill-top Notre Dame de la Garde across the Mediterranean would give Notre Dame d'Afrique the support and the protection (and the prayers) from her mature brethren in Christ from across the sea.

Finally, the French modeled the Basilica after the Byzantine Eastern churches, which influenced the great domed mosques of the Ottoman period, who took their example from Constantinople's Hagia Sophia. Mosaics, also a feature borrowed by mosques from the Byzantines, figures both inside and outside Notre Dame d'Afrique. Thus this north African church, in the land of the Muslims, who wished to draw them into her interior, wouldn't be so strange and alien in her Islamic surroundings.

And what an interior, with the prayer: "Notre Dame d'Afrique pray for us and the Muslims" written across nave facing the alter. And what a difference from Constantinople's Hagia Sophia, which after being converted into a Mosque by the Ottomans, now bears Islamic calligraphy plates which cover Christian images.

God helped the French to build the perfect church in Notre Dame d'Afrique. The proof is that it she still standing and performing her rites.

The Interior of Notre Dame d'Afrique with the mosaics,
the Black Madonna and the inscription "Prier pour nous
et pour les Musulmans"

[Click images to see a larger versions]

To get more information on the French presence in Algeria, Gallia Watch covers it along with several posts on Sarkozy's trip to Algeria, and also mentions Notre Dame d'Afrique at this post.

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A Sample of Connected Thoughts

Figuring out the cracks
Shibboleth, by Doris Salcedo. Currently at the Tate

Ugly Betty is a show about an ugly Hispanic woman who ends up working in the New York fashion industry. Yet, in real life, the Ugly Betty star (ironically named America) is cute and charming. Why couldn't she be cute (although she is somewhat charming) in the movie? I suspect it is an attempt to tell the average viewer that beauty is only skin deep, and that we have been judging ethnic women by unfair and wrong standards. Yes, she's ugly, but look at how good she is.

But why not have a show of a "Beautiful Maria", or some such title? Wasn't Maria good enough with beauty to top it off, to be a star in West Side Story? Maybe they're just worried that all beautiful Hispanic female leads might never get their hero.

Still, ugly Betty didn't stop Ugly Betty from becoming a hit.

Julie Taymor made the Lion King, a glorification of Africa with African songs, African American (and African) actors, and African animals.

She also recently directed Across the Universe, using Beatles songs to stage her own anti-establishment movie/musical berating American traditions and culture.

Why is Taymor able to make such a glorified and grand musical about Africans, but does such a terrible job at directing a movie full of the lovely Beatles melodies?

I suspect it is quite simple. Taymor finds more to admire in an alien, distant, culture than she does in her own. Although, for all purposes, she seems to know very little about this alien culture apart from a few clichéd, feel-good examples.

The Tate Gallery has sponsored and set up an installation which required a fissure in its floor. The Colombian artist who made the crack in the floor says "it represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred...It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe."

After the installation is removed, there will be a "scar", which the Tate owners are quite happy about since it will be a "memorial to the issues [the artist] touches on." So much for artistic defacing of architecture. Impromptu free associations, this time not on paper but on real live concrete.

Why a scar?

To expiate their deadly sins, which includes not letting in illegal (i.e criminal) Third Worlders into their society. The irony is many British are so overwhelmed by these forsaken immigrants, that they in turn are leaving for Australia, New Zealand, and yes for Canada.

The Louvre will be loaning out some of its master paintings to Abu Dhabi. Critics are concerned they will be censoring religious paintings, and of course the famous nudes. I would think also that other more "benign" paintings will be censored. For example, Delacroix’s Marianne, a strong female figure leading her countrymen to freedom.

Is it all in the name of money?

I doubt it. The Louvre is also expanding its Islamic art section with millions of dollars funding from Saudi Arabia. The French are selling off one of their most famous national words, Liberté, and getting nothing back in return.


Liberty Leading the People, by Eugène Delacroix, 1830

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