Saturday, October 13, 2007
* World Classic Gallery *
* HENRI MATISSE *
BIOGRAPHY and PAINTINGS Matisse, Henri 1869 - 1954
France
Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis in northern France on December 31, 1869. The son of a middle-class family, Matisse studied and began to practice law. In 1890, however, while recovering slowly from an attack of appendicitis, he became intrigued by the practice of painting. In 1892, having given up his law career, Matisse went to Paris to study art formally. Matisse joined Gustave Moreau’s studio at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he met Camoin, Manguin, Marquet and Jean Puy.
Matisse's first teachers were academically trained and relatively conservative; Matisse’s own early style was a conventional form of naturalism, and he made many reproductions after the old masters. Matisse also studied more contemporary art, especially that of the impressionists, and he began to experiment, earning a reputation as a rebellious member of his studio classes.
Matisse’s true artistic liberation, in terms of the use of color to render forms and organize spatial planes, came about first through the influence of the French painters Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne and the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, whose paintings Matisse studied closely beginning about 1899. Then, in 1903 and 1904, Matisse encountered the pointillist painting of Henri Edmond Cross and Paul Signac. Cross and Signac were experimenting with juxtaposing small strokes (often dots or “points”) of pure pigment to create the strongest visual vibration of intense color. Matisse adopted their technique and modified it repeatedly, using broader strokes.
By 1905 Matisse had produced some of the boldest paintings ever created, including a striking painting of his wife, Green Stripe (Madame Matisse) (1905, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen). The title refers to a broad stroke of brilliant green that defines Madame Matisse’s brow and nose. In the same year Matisse exhibited this and similar paintings along with paintings by his artist companions, including Andre Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck. Together, the group was dubbed les fauves (literally, “the wild beasts”) because of the extremes of emotionalism in which they seemed to have indulged, their use of vivid colors, and their distortion of shapes.
While Matisse was regarded as a leader of radicalism in the arts, Matisse was beginning to gain the approval of a number of influential critics and collectors, including the American expatriate writer Gertrude Stein and her family. Among the many important commissions Matisse received was that of a Russian collector who requested mural panels illustrating dance and music (both completed in 1911; now in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg).
Such broadly conceived themes ideally suited Matisse; they allowed him freedom of invention and play of form and expression. Matisse paintings of dancers, and of human figures in general, convey expressive form first and the particular details of anatomy only secondarily. Matisse extended this principle into other fields; his bronze sculptures, like his drawings and works in several graphic media, reveal the same expressive contours seen in his paintings.
Although intellectually sophisticated, Matisse always emphasized the importance of instinct and intuition in the production of a work of art. Matisse argued that an artist did not have complete control over color and form; instead, colors, shapes, and lines would come to dictate to the sensitive artist how they might be employed in relation to one another. Matisse often emphasized his joy in abandoning himself to the play of the forces of color and design, and he explained the rhythmic, but distorted, forms of many of his figures in terms of the working out of a total pictorial harmony.
From the 1920s until his death, Matisse spent much time in the south of France, particularly Nice, painting local scene paintings with a thin, fluid application of bright color. In his old age, Matisse was commissioned to design the decoration of the small Chapel of Saint-Marie du Rosaire at Vence (near Cannes), which he completed between 1947 and 1951. Often bedridden during his last years, Matisse occupied himself with decoupage, creating paintings of brilliantly colored paper cutouts arranged casually, but with an unfailing eye for design, on a canvas surface.
Matisse died in Nice on November 3, 1954. Unlike many artists, Matisse was internationally popular during his lifetime, enjoying the favor of collectors, art critics, and the younger generation of artists.
The Red Room,1908, Oil on canvas, 220x180 cm
Dance, 1912, Oil on canvas, 190x114 cm
Family Portrait, 1911, Oil on canvas, 194x143 cm
Fruits, 1901, Oil on canvas, 61x51 cm
Blue Still Life, 1901, Oil on canvas, 73x59 cm
Study for Le Bonheur de vivre, 1905, Watercolor on paper mounted on board, 25.4 x 32 cm
The Dance, 1910, Oil on canvas, 391x260 cm
Untitled
New Ku Klux Klan
It is now obvious that the decision to release to the public the recordings and the stenograms emerging by investigations against two ex ministers and one businessman belongs to 
Traian Basescu. 
Daniel Morar, a head of the DNA (National Anti-Corruption Department), a remnant of 
Monica Macovei, admitted it officially that he had provided the documentation to the President, since the Cotroceni commission had been suspended and then dismembered. The commission would have been the only one entitled to get the documentation. The President claimed having put it in the safe and not having taking it out. He also expressed a too early opinion by claiming in the documentation there were "proves" much more serious than the ones released. As I know our President's past, I can only conclude that he released the criminal inquiry documents before the people at stake were announced about these documents or even before an official inquiry started. As for Daniel Morar, he broke the law - how many times did he do this? - by giving information on the progress of some cases to the head of state, which is a power in state different from Justice. The question is the following: why does Traian Basescu have this obsession, very harmful for Justice and democratic institutions, that inquiries and trails must be held in the public square instead of in the institutions meant for it ? Why are there face-covered people who behave like some Ku Klux Klan members, inciting people to play courts, thus arranging the public execution of some political adversaries ?
This view and this anti-democratic practice originate in Traian Basescu's past. He was an intelligence officer and it was then that he got accustomed to instruments other than the transparent ones to accomplish missions.
Secondly, while a ship captain before 1989, he was in charge of a special kind of economic unit. While far from the country and subordinate to military regulation, Traian Basescu took action imitating Nicolae Ceausescu, just like a small dictator. Occult operations prevailed instead of law instruments. This is why he got into conflict with the crew many a time. Most ship captains had a triple status: 1. a head of a special group, the most visible status; 2. an officer or collaborator of the ex Securitate (Communist Secret Service in Romania); 3. a smuggler. And there were no exceptions to the rule. All the captains of ship and aircrews used to bring products, sometime banned products, to the country without paying the customs fees, in order to make a better living. The ex Secutitate would pretend not to see it. In those years it was the way some ex Securitate collaborators were paid. Traian Basescu's entire education and experience are subordinate to these "values". After 1989, Traian Basescu was investigated several times. He was suspected of being the reason why Romania's strategic fleet went extinct. This time as an "objective", he was faced with the repressive state institutions harassing him, using the inherited mechanisms and procedures.
We can therefore understand why Traian Basescu says one thing and does the other when state institutions are at stake. Given his previous experience, Justice is to be disdained and its methods are out of date or even harmful. Therefore Justice must be replaced with something else, which is why the secret services and the prosecutors enjoy the President's full protection as long as they please him. And Justice is Cinderella.
But how can there be inquiries and executions without Justice ? They can be held in the public market by media lynching. His political adversaries are no longer investigated on, but just pointed to, humiliated, sentenced and subject to public rebuke. It is the new Ku Klux Klan. When Justice reaches verdict, it will be too late.
Sorin Rosca Stanescu
Ziua Saturday 13 october 2007 http://www.ziua.net/english
Traian Basescu. 
Daniel Morar, a head of the DNA (National Anti-Corruption Department), a remnant of 
Monica Macovei, admitted it officially that he had provided the documentation to the President, since the Cotroceni commission had been suspended and then dismembered. The commission would have been the only one entitled to get the documentation. The President claimed having put it in the safe and not having taking it out. He also expressed a too early opinion by claiming in the documentation there were "proves" much more serious than the ones released. As I know our President's past, I can only conclude that he released the criminal inquiry documents before the people at stake were announced about these documents or even before an official inquiry started. As for Daniel Morar, he broke the law - how many times did he do this? - by giving information on the progress of some cases to the head of state, which is a power in state different from Justice. The question is the following: why does Traian Basescu have this obsession, very harmful for Justice and democratic institutions, that inquiries and trails must be held in the public square instead of in the institutions meant for it ? Why are there face-covered people who behave like some Ku Klux Klan members, inciting people to play courts, thus arranging the public execution of some political adversaries ?This view and this anti-democratic practice originate in Traian Basescu's past. He was an intelligence officer and it was then that he got accustomed to instruments other than the transparent ones to accomplish missions.
Secondly, while a ship captain before 1989, he was in charge of a special kind of economic unit. While far from the country and subordinate to military regulation, Traian Basescu took action imitating Nicolae Ceausescu, just like a small dictator. Occult operations prevailed instead of law instruments. This is why he got into conflict with the crew many a time. Most ship captains had a triple status: 1. a head of a special group, the most visible status; 2. an officer or collaborator of the ex Securitate (Communist Secret Service in Romania); 3. a smuggler. And there were no exceptions to the rule. All the captains of ship and aircrews used to bring products, sometime banned products, to the country without paying the customs fees, in order to make a better living. The ex Secutitate would pretend not to see it. In those years it was the way some ex Securitate collaborators were paid. Traian Basescu's entire education and experience are subordinate to these "values". After 1989, Traian Basescu was investigated several times. He was suspected of being the reason why Romania's strategic fleet went extinct. This time as an "objective", he was faced with the repressive state institutions harassing him, using the inherited mechanisms and procedures.We can therefore understand why Traian Basescu says one thing and does the other when state institutions are at stake. Given his previous experience, Justice is to be disdained and its methods are out of date or even harmful. Therefore Justice must be replaced with something else, which is why the secret services and the prosecutors enjoy the President's full protection as long as they please him. And Justice is Cinderella.
But how can there be inquiries and executions without Justice ? They can be held in the public market by media lynching. His political adversaries are no longer investigated on, but just pointed to, humiliated, sentenced and subject to public rebuke. It is the new Ku Klux Klan. When Justice reaches verdict, it will be too late.
Sorin Rosca Stanescu
Ziua Saturday 13 october 2007 http://www.ziua.net/english
Show the warrants !
The bugging of the phones belonging to businessman Gheorghe Ciorba, which led to the ex minister Muresan and also to the ex agriculture minister Remes raises questions on the legality of the phone calls interception, as no institution admits doing it.
The Remes-Muresan case is still shrouded in mystery. Apart from the controversies on the authenticity of the evidence unveiled so far, proving that ex minister Remes took the bribe or not, there are more details that need clarifications. One of it is the legal grounds for intercepting the phone calls of businessman Gheorghe Ciorba and watching him. As known, he was the key element targeted and they got to the ex minister Muresan and Remes. (...)
It is certain that both the National Anti-Corruption Department and the Romanian Secret Service should tell which institution intercepted the businessman's phone calls, so that they would do away with all doubt. They should explain who asked that he be watched and due to which warrants, if there were any.
On the other hand, the recording showing Remes, Muresan and Ciorba was broadcast again and yesterday some more recordings came out. They show images of Muresan and Ciorba and phone calls between the two, as well as some phone calls to Steluta, the wife of Decebal Traian Remes. But this time it was not the Public Television that released the recording, but the www.hotnews.ro, an Internet servant of Romanian Presidency. Last Monday the same website announced the Public Television was going to broadcast the first recording to show minister Remes taking bribe. You can watch this latest recording on www.ziua.to.
D.E.I.
Ziua Saturday 13 october 2007 http://www.ziua.net/english
The Remes-Muresan case is still shrouded in mystery. Apart from the controversies on the authenticity of the evidence unveiled so far, proving that ex minister Remes took the bribe or not, there are more details that need clarifications. One of it is the legal grounds for intercepting the phone calls of businessman Gheorghe Ciorba and watching him. As known, he was the key element targeted and they got to the ex minister Muresan and Remes. (...)
It is certain that both the National Anti-Corruption Department and the Romanian Secret Service should tell which institution intercepted the businessman's phone calls, so that they would do away with all doubt. They should explain who asked that he be watched and due to which warrants, if there were any.
On the other hand, the recording showing Remes, Muresan and Ciorba was broadcast again and yesterday some more recordings came out. They show images of Muresan and Ciorba and phone calls between the two, as well as some phone calls to Steluta, the wife of Decebal Traian Remes. But this time it was not the Public Television that released the recording, but the www.hotnews.ro, an Internet servant of Romanian Presidency. Last Monday the same website announced the Public Television was going to broadcast the first recording to show minister Remes taking bribe. You can watch this latest recording on www.ziua.to.D.E.I.
Ziua Saturday 13 october 2007 http://www.ziua.net/english
Pensions come first
According to Romanians, the raise of pensions and wages (48%), scarce jobs (25%) and health (19%) are the main priorities the present government should settle by the end of 2008, according to a poll released by Gallup Organization last September, at request from the Governmental Strategy Agency.According to the research, Romanians think the government managed to meet their expectations in fields like foreign affairs (28%) and pensions (27%). On the other hand, agriculture (22%), health (21%) and education (15%) are the main fields the government should check on more.
As far as the approaching election of MEPs is concerned, almost a half of the Romanians say they are sure to go voting under any circumstances.
Ovidiu Banches
Ziua Saturday 13 october 2007 http://www.ziua.net/english
* READ THIS !!! *
Hello ! Friends & Visitors
Starting next Monday the Daily NEWS & COMMENTS will be presentet in a NEW format !!!
This new improvement will gave to any reader the opportynity to select his/her preffered article by simply pushing the right-link added.
Here bellow we illustrate with an sample the NEW presentation formula
EDITORIALS
“President X said this” – here -
“President X said yesterday that him….“
“Parliament has addopted the Law of…“ – here -
“Yesterday, the Romanian Parliament has addopted the Law of…“
And so on….
COMMENTARIES
“War & Peace between Cotroceni and Victoria Palaces” – here -
“Yesterday, the War between Cotroceni and Victoria Palaces has become…“
“Democrat PMs wants initiate a new bill against Government” – here -
“The Democrats says they want to initiate a new bill against Government…“
And so on….
We hope that this NEW formula will gain Your accept so we wish to All of U: ENJOY IT !!!
[mig007]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)
