In View

The Adventures of Hamza - "Born of the tradition of Persian oral literature that entertained audiences around nomadic campfires and in urban coffeehouses, the fantastic tales of the Hamzanama so captured the imagination of the young Mughal emperor Akbar that he recited them personally and ordered them to be the subject of the first royal manuscript illustrated in India during his reign (1556-1605) (Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery - Washington, DC)

Marcel Proust, Writing and the Arts - "Manuscripts, documents, books, objects accompanied by some hundred paintings (Monet, Manet. Chardin, Turner). . . . . Proust's discovery of art takes place in the Louvre museum. It is there that he begins constituting a personal museum. Several masterpieces become his 'lighthouses' . . . . " (Bibliothèque nationale de France)

The Mongols in World History - "The Asia for Educators Project at Columbia University has produced a number of important resources for educators and the general public, and this latest resource serves as a great addition to the project's archive. This particular resource deals with the role of Mongols in World History, and covers the period from 1000 to 1500 A.D. With the assistance of faculty consultant Professor Morris Rossabi, the site is divided into four primary sections which contain detailed perspectives on major figures in Mongol history, the pastoral nomadic life of the Mongols, and their substantial influence on China's Yuan dynasty. Complemented by a selection of historical images, the short essays offer some important new insights into the world of the Mongols, including an exploration of the popular misconception that the Mongols were merely barbaric plunderers. Finally, there are some nice online readings that may be viewed on the site or downloaded for reading at a later date." [KMG] (The Scout Report) - "The Mongols in World History was produced by the Asia for Educators Program at Columbia University, with consulting faculty member Morris Rossabi. The unit was made possible by the generous support of The Freeman Foundation."

In the Garden of Antiquities - Views of Chinese Art from the Indianapolis Museum of Art. "A production of the Indianapolis Museum of Art in conjunction with an exhibition at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. titled 'Asia in America: Chinese Art from the Indianapolis Museum of Art' from September 18, 2004 to March 20, 2005."

The Mercator Globes - "The Harvard Map Collection is the oldest map collection in America. The collection has grown to include ca. 400,000 maps, over 6,000 atlases, and several thousand reference books. Topographic maps, nautical charts and thematic maps provide an excellent research collection representing all chronological periods and notable map makers. The Map Collection also has a strong commitment to digital resources, including historical images and the Harvard Geospatial Library."

QUOTES: - "The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide fields. To have lived through all its sunny hours, seems longevity enough. The solitary places do not seem quite lonely. At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he makes into these precincts. Here is sanctity, which shames our religions, and reality, which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that come to her. We have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How willingly we would escape the barriers which render them comparatively impotent, escape the sophistication and second thought, and suffer nature to entrance us. The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently reported spells of these places creep upon us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles: Here no history, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year. How easily we might walk onward into the opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures . . . . Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural objects, whether inorganic or organized. Man imprisoned, man crystallized, man vegetative speaks to man impersonated. That power which does not respect quantity, which makes the whole and the particle its equal channel, delegates its smile to the morning, and distills its essence into every drop of rain." (On Nature in 'Essays: Second Series' (1844) by Ralph Waldo Emerson)

NOTES: - "The sacred inheres in great art . . . . refusing to recognize this sacred dimension diminishes both the art work and one's satisfaction from it" (In "Tilting at cultural windmills" a review by Feeney of 'Real Presences' by George Steiner --"Critic, linguist, novelist, polymath, Steiner holds that in the creation of art (especially music), and in its experiencing, there is a fundamental encounter with a "real presence" and that, in fact, it is this transcendent reality that grounds all genuine art and human communication." (Leon H. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel Management Lib., Washington, D.C.)

Notes for a Perspective on Art Education and Culture and Motivation

THE WORK FEATURED ABOVE: Bronze, detail, 1933. Andreotti Libero, 'Affrico e Mensola' - Argomento: Scultura moderna Epoca: Secolo XX - Ubicazione: Roma, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna" - "Per spiegarsi la violenza iconoclastica dei futuristi, che a distanza di anni può anche sembrare eccessiva, occorre tener presente che il movimento non riusciva a scalfire le tradizioni rigidamente accademiche: infatti, proprio in quegli anni si impostava la 'restaurazione neorinascimentale' che in Libero Andreotti avrebbe avuto l'esponente più in vista e lungamente imperante."(1200 Years of Sculpture, Thais.com, Italy) -- Translate . . . . . . . MUSIC: Polish Ballades - Op. 23 by Frédéric François Chopin (1810-1849) - in Gmin (39k), Valerie Tryon (Midiworld)