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The Red Deer Walmart shooting
Central Alberta has been rocked this week from the horrific attack at the south Walmart on Friday night, and confused by the nonsense that has come out since.
Unlike that poor nurse is the burning car I have no knowledge of anything involving the case. I was drinking at The Pint downtown at the time of the shooting and only found out about it because after the hockey game one of the TVs was left on CityTV.
In the aftermath as we learn more, from the Red Deer RCMP deliberately lying about the shooting to try and discredit (accurate, it turns out) reports being shared on social media† to the entirely predictable discovery that the savage killer was in fact a Red Indian, we are still left with a few "why"s, as the official "robbery goes wrong" seems odd. At least, I was...until watching Global TV interview the victim's wife.
Things are about to become more clear. Let's start with the timeline as we understand it as of today, Christmas Eve:
~6:35pm: Charles (Jim) Williams is in the Walmart apparently only buying deodorant and interacts with Chase Freed. It is unclear where the accomplice Crystal Maurice was at this time. This apparently occurred inside the Walmart. The conversation was not violent and appeared civil enough that RCMP claimed this was why they first thought Williams was targeted.
6:45pm: Williams is now outside of the Walmart now and his confrontation with Freed fires at him. Williams walks over to the car where his wife Roxine is waiting for him, and he opens the car door and vehemently tells her to stay put. This is the last she ever sees him alive.
6:47pm: Freed shoots at Williams multiple times and flees to a black SUB that Freed and Maurice have stolen together. On the drive out of the parking lot, he fires shots out the window possibly at two onlookers and possibly into the air like he's in a western.
9:17pm: Freed and Maurice drive out towards Rimbey and steal a red pickup in or near the town.
10:30pm: Both the pickup and the SUV are spotted near Sylvan Lake, and driving eastbound on Highway 11 are stopped by a spiked belt. They find the suspected murder weapon and surprise surprise it isn't legal.
† In between 6:47pm and 10:30pm, Rimbey RCMP are looking for the suspect kinda not really while Red Deer RCMP are instead in full on fake news mode.
Police initially said the shooting was targeted, but later determined it was not. Calls to 911 and social media reports also indicated the shooting had occurred in the main entrance of the store and that there were multiple victims.
RCMP had initially said there was no danger to the public on Friday evening. Groves said that while the suspects were still at large at that time, RCMP were trying to cull rumors of a mass shooting.
“We wanted to let everybody know that the culprits who had committed the shooting had left the scene,” Groves said. “What we were dealing with at the scene was the result of the violence that had taken place… the accused had departed.
I'm not sure whether or not "quelling rumours" was the correct term for this. They made Williams out to be something he wasn't so that people didn't get the crazy idea that this was a "mass shooting"...even though additional shots were fired at multiple people that night. It's not even clear that at the times Williams was killed he was the first person shot at: Roxine says there was a "pop" sound before he told her to stay put, no guarantee it was directed at him. In other words, police admitted they lied about the scenario because people's social media accounting erred one way and they felt it was best to err the other.
As an armed robbery gone wrong the story doesn't make a lot of sense: Williams was buying a $4 can of Right Guard. Even evil Red Indian thieves tend to aim higher than that: after all they stole a flashy red pickup in Rimbey, not a 2008 beige sedan. Why didn't he get into a confrontation with a middle aged asian woman struggling with a 55" Smart TV, or somebody pushing a cart full of Christmas booty? If this wasn't a "targeted" shooting it certainly doesn't resemble an armed robbery.
So then I watched the widow's interview on Global...here is the victim, Jim Williams with Roxine:
Suddenly everything seems a lot more clear. Williams likely was targeted...because of his facial deformity. I suspect the scenario went something like this: Freed was there to commit robbery, likely by watching people taking stuff back to their vehicle and then following them out. Since it's the Red Deer South Power Centre he was possibly looking for somebody who would drop off bags and then proceed to Five Guys or Reitman's and leave their (locked) vehicle unattended. The weapon was likely intended (at least in the pre-planning phase) to only be brought out if required. A scuzzy Red Indian up to no good would easily draw the ire of other people, and the feel of all those unfriendly eyes who knew what kind of punk he was but just didn't know how far he would go must have put him on edge. Williams probably was the latest in a long line of such eyes, and his own physical abnormality would have been an easy target for Freed to lash out at in return. Williams at this point would have reacted: harshly or patronizingly wouldn't have been unfair replies and either could set Freed off even more. While Williams is shopping Freed's hate festers and instead of moving onto his targets he instead thinks of some good responses to Williams (who may have come up with some good material on his own). The second confrontation goes much more aggressive than the first, and Freed reaches for that hidden weapon.
Is that what actually happened? I wasn't there, I can't tell you. But you can believe the theory of the Red Deer RCMP who have already lied to the public about Freed, or start looking for more likely reasons that a jackpine savage shot a guy with a screwed-up face holding less than $10 worth of merchandise.
In just under an hour the 107th Grey Cup begins live from Calgary.
Last year, I attended the Grey Cup here in Edmonton, and while my cousin is at the game and suggested I come along, I decided to continue my streak of never attending a game at McMahon Stadium and give the hated Stampeders organization hard currency (it's the same reason I don't go to Cuba or Montreal).
It goes without saying that this year's edition is much less rage-inducing than last year's edition: I don't hate either of these teams though I'm still mad at Hamilton over last week's debacle. And it goes without saying that after the events of earlier this year there's no reason to cheer for Hamilton about anything.
So...uh, let's go Blue Bombers.
The Wrath of Abrams
Ranker.com has a list of the greatest film scores of all time.
The highest Star Trek score is, probably unsurprisingly, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. What is surprising is that it's at a criminal #47 overall [please, no "47s" lame quips.. -ed], below Dances With Wolves and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Surely Jerry Goldsmith's sublime and powerful album deserves a Top 25 spot along with other 40something scores like Goldfinger and The Wizard of Oz.
But then things get sad, and they get sad fast. What's the second ranked Trek score? My money of course is on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the wonderful before-he-was-famous James Horner score. Dark horse candidates would include The Search for Spock, First Contact, The Undiscovered Country, even The Final Frontier (no, really, the movie is horrendous but the score is lousy).
So, second place Star Trek score, ranked at #111 is... Star Trek (2009). Wait, what? No, seriously: are you kidding me?
Movie scores have been on steady decline since Howard Shore and John Williams did such great work on the Star Wars prequel and Lord of the Rings trilogies. By 2009 they were essentially Rick Berman's famous "window dressing". There's nothing remotely memorable about the score. For that matter, no movies made after 2009 should even be on the list. But there's the 2009 waste of space Abrams-verse film polluting spaces that better scores could take up.
The next Star Trek film is First Contact at #177, Wrath of Khan at #188, Final Frontier (see?) at #343, The Undiscovered Country at #346, The Search For Spock at #374, The Voyage Home (the worst of the original 6 Trek scores) at #375, Star Trek: Nemesis at #397, Star Trek: Into Darkness (the one that opens with Faggot Spock flaming) at #425, and finally the IV-level forgettable Star Trek: Insurrection at #459. Almost every entry is ridiculous.
Other surprising omissions on the list are The Hunt for Red October (surely a top 50, Crimson Tide sits at #253), Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Event Horizon, and National Treasure (both surely in the top 588!).
Movies|Music|
Labels: Movies, Music
Physics must be racist now
Bianca Andreescu has defeated Serena Williams and won the US Open. If the Serena-loving leftwing media went ape over racism when she was rightly defeated by a half-Jap half-negress last year, just wait for what the excuses are this year.
Note Serena's closest chance to win was only taken away when she double-faulted. I assume the only thing that can come next is the Lucy van Pelt defense...
Sports|Women|
Labels: Sports, Women
2019 Edmonton Fringe Review: Game of Chrohn's
"I was failing biology and biology failed me."
One of the downsides of fringing...
a) at the very end
b) with other people
...is that you're at the mercy of what the group wants to go see. While nobody in my circle has Chrohn's Disease, one of the girl's brother did and therefore we ended up spending Friday night watching Game of Chrones and trying to laugh at disease.
Play play features one of my least favourite tropes: "the story of my life". "Write what you know" is good advice and all that, but it also comes across as horribly narcissistic, which we all know arts majors are notoriously guilty of, but they don't have to remind us so effectively. Dan Rosen, helpfully styled as "Dan B. Rosen" fortunately gets that fact about him out of the way relatively early.
Growing up in Halifax, both of Dan's parents were doctors. He was the always seeking attention class clown, when suddenly he got hit by a debilitating illness that neither of them could work out. I'll take a brief aside here to note I know a girl (not one who attended the show) with two doctor parents and she's also diseased. Read into that as you will. Anyways, Dan (a balding guy who vaguely resembles Enrico Colantoni from "Just Shoot Me!") is constantly in hospital before discovering that what he has is Crohn's disease.
He goes into the dietary restrictions quite a bit which resonated well with those of us (most of us) who have diabetic family members who also suddenly can't eat the foods they like to eat. I counted five Game of Thrones references. I'm not a fan of the show, so there may have been more. Martok seemed to think there were a dozen, but I consider his input unreliable. The crowd generally ate it up (Dan had to smack down a brief heckling comment), as the fru-fru fringe crowd (especially on Friday night) really likes their poop jokes. Is it because of all the homos, they have shit on the brain so to speak? Who knows.
There were a few legitimate laughs, a lot of uncomfortable moments when he went into detail about medical stuff I don't like hearing about, He also yammered about "white privilege" because of course he does. For a guy who's been stuck in the hell of the Canadian healthcare system he didn't have much material about its failings: whether that's because he's as delusional about socialized medicne as all "white privilege" talkers are or because he never thought anything abnormal about his experiences, who can say.
For those interested in hearing a sympathetic tale of a teenager whose romantic and professional future was sabotaged by his own bowels, it's engaging enough. I didn't feel it though. Rosen's energy is just enough to keep you interested without being manic however, and except for the third quarter of the play really dragging and getting repetitive, it flowed well enough.
Flowed well. That insane far-leftist Fish Griwkowsky made a half dozen poop jokes in his review. I only made the one, and it wasn't even intentional.
Dan Rosen may become the public face of Crohn's disease, but I'll still keep typing "Chr" and having to correct myself until the day I become worm food.
#yeg|Entertainment|
Labels: #yeg, Entertainment
Where the Wild Thi...wait is that really the theme this year? Ugh. 2019 Edmonton Fringe
It's that time of year again, and after missing the first half by being on vacation I've been able to fit in the final weekend of the Edmonton Fringe Festival. Just like 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and most years going back to 2007 and 2006.
And as always for my fringe reviews, I have the standard rule:
NO FAGS.
Read the Game of Crohn's review here.
Day 1 of the Hipster Millenial Holocaust
YouTuber Emily Hartridge killed in UK's first fatal electric scooter crash
Comedy|
A Third Edge of the Sword Success Story
A special thank-you to everybody on team Third Edge of the Sword.
I honestly didn't think Operation Destroy FagWalk From Within would work, but you guys who pretended to be women and got outraged that dykes are allowed to exist.
#yeg|Race Religion and Sex|
Labels: #yeg, Race Religion and Sex
145th running of the Kentucky Derby
Break out the mint juleps, tell your woman to put on a silly hat, and get ready for the 145th running of the Kentucky Derby from beautiful soaking wet Churchill Downs in Louisville Kentucky.
Currently Tacitus and Improbable have met up at 5-1 to be tied for the favourite this year, with strong contender Omaha Beach already being scratched. And since I'm sitting at home with mint juleps in a proper silver cup instead of somewhere I can gamble, I provide my (mostly) seat of the pants predictions for the main event.
Win: War of Will (17-1)
Place: Vekoma (21-1)
Show: Tacitus (5-1)
ALBERTA ELECTION: Global Edmonton tells lies about conservatives
As you may have heard this week, Far Left Big Tech further banned Faith Goldy from social media because of her political beliefs.
As you may have also heard, Faggot-Familiar Alliances are still big news because Jason Kenney dares to think maybe parents should know when child molesters like Kristopher Wells or Mike Morrison are being invited to secret meetings with young children who have shown an interest in an evil and unacceptable lifestyle choice.
And if you watch Global TV Edmonton, you'll hear all about the "online reaction":
What you definitely won't hear in the extremely biased and one-sided reporting of fake news peddler Sarah Kraus is anybody opposed to Faggot-Familiar Alliances in school, or even opposed to keeping parents in the dark. Why is that? Because Global News is only looking on platforms that are already setup to exclude those voices. Kraus and her bosses know this, but they'll push the sodomite agenda endlessly and claim ignorance to anybody who pushes back.
So I'm calling out Kraus, her bosses (Jim Haskins and Kerry Powell), and any other media member pushing this false narrative. They know, surely, that Twitter won't even let you call a man by his name to satisfy the insane tranny activists. As a result, the people likely to support Kenney are either removed from the platform (as what happened with Faith Goldy this very week) or forced to self-censor in order to avoid the axe falling on them as well. As a result is it any wonder that pillow biting teachers extolling the benefits of exposing the children they are supposed to protect to sexual deviants are the only tweets Kraus can find (or pretends to find) in her disgusting story?
I call on Global News Edmonton to apologize to Jason Kenney for their story that makes it sound like he's a crazed maverick standing against universal opposition. I demand that they permit those of us who oppose these sick schools airtime in accordance with the popularity of our views in accordance with Global's own news policies which Kraus and Haskins violated:
Integrity, fairness and transparency are at the foundation of our newsgathering process. We are committed to reporting news without distortion or misrepresentation.
How is it not distorting and misrepresentation to talk about "online reaction" and not admit that these social media platforms are biased against conservative expression, especially social conservative expression?
We will not formulate news content based on our own personal cultural beliefs, opinions, corporate influences or those of anyone else engaged in its preparation or delivery.
News events and public issues may be analyzed and put into context, as long as comment or opinion is clearly identified and kept distinct from regular news coverage.
Based on the fact that child raping sodomite Kristopher Wells is a routine guest on Global Edmonton's morning show, it's clear that this story is part of a longstanding trend of Global TV stories about the Edmonton uranist community formulated on the personal beliefs and opinions of Global TV News department.
Kerry Powell, will you promise going forward that Global News will cease publishing anti-conservative opinion under the fake guise of "reporting on online reaction"? If not, will these stories feature a disclaimer in the future that the social media platforms these reactions are posted on have a long history of banning, shadow-banning, and suppressing viewpoints that would provide a more balanced (and accurate) set of views?
We all know this story was written, coordinated, and aired in order to attack Jason Kenney. No "online reaction" news stories have ever been posted when conservatives not yet banned on social media have used their accounts to blast Trudeau or Notley. Global News owes an apology to us all, and a promise that in accordance with their own journalistic principles they will not push false narratives in the future.
The chance to set the record straight on the eve of polls closing is fading fast, Global. Your move.
Eugenie Who?
As I type this, Angelique Kerber is defeating a shaved ape in straight sets (after winning the first 7-6) at the Indian Wells quarter-finals.
But the story of the tournament isn't either of the ugly monkeys who keep U.S. sportswriters employed. It's probably 7/10 Belinda Bencic who topped 7/10 Naomi Osaka to get to the quarter-finals on the weekend, and then Karolina Pliskova to move onto the semis.
The second biggest story though has to be Bianca Andreescu (7.5/10), who last month surpassed the 10/10 Eugenie Bouchard as Canada's best female tennis player. This week she herself moved into the semifinals herself by defeating 7.5/10 Gabriñe Muguruza. Canadian tennis is now in an Anna Kournikova/Maria Sharapova scenario, where the hotter and famous player has to give way to a younger less attractive girl in the cold hearted reality known as "you may actually need to be good at tennis now and again". Bianca Andreescu is certainly no Maria Sharapova, but she's decent looking enough and can actually win a match or two. It's certainly better than the poor American situation where two shaved ape sisters win the matches while Nicole Gibbs has to languish in relative obscurity.
For now, Andreescu will take on Ukrainian hottie Elina Svitolina (9.5/10). She already, by getting to the semifinals, has in this tournament surpassed her lifetime earnings.
Now she just needs to do some more suggestive photo shoots.
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What our George did in Africa this year
Posted on June 10, 2013 by rangell
George went to South Africa with his university in April this year. SInce he got back a lot of customers have asked what he was doing out there. Below is his presentation on the study trip. He did a lot of other “fun” stuff like visit a cheetah sanctuary but this was the “work” part of the trip. His presentation was on the rationale of burning regimes on the reserve of Mankwe: why burning is done, why it is effective, what it acheives etc.
Does the time of day affect the diversity of grazing species across different burn years?
Figure 1: Male white rhinoceros (Angell, 2013)
Prescribed burning is a method used by game ranches to manage their grassland. Burning disposes of dead grass as shown in a study by Trollope in 2004 where it is proven that burning is an effective way of removing unacceptable grass material and controlling/preventing the encroachment of undesirable plants.
Burning regimes and large mammal populations can affect the carrying capacity of a reserve. The carrying capacity is defined by Bothma, 1989 as the maximum population of animals an area can support without deterioration to the habitat. A study by Bird et al, 2005 shows that good burning regimes will affect the veld condition and thus the utilisation of the veld by the animals. A veld is an area of grassland in Africa and is another name for a field. If the veld is poorly managed then the animals will begin to overgraze areas which leads to a lack of resources, and, in turn lowers the carrying capacity.
Figure 2: Zebras, Bulk grazers. Le Breton 2013
A game reserve will need to be able to accurately estimate the numbers of animals within the reserve to determine whether carrying capacity is exceeded or not. To do this line transects can be used to estimate the population within the area. Strip transects may also be used however these tend to have more observer bias than line transects according to (Ogutu, 2005).
Figure 4: Warthog, Specialist feeders. Le Breton 2013
MacTavish, 2013 stated that animals that have the greatest effect on carrying capacity are the grazers, this is because they can cause overgrazing leading to soil erosion and bush encroachment. He also stated that there are three main types of grazers found on game reserves and these are bulk grazers (species like white rhino, wildebeest, and zebra), mixed feeders (species such as impala and eland) and specialised feeders (species such as reedbuck and warthog). Other large mammals such as kudu will fall into the strict browsers category.
Figure 5: Kudu, Strict Browser. Le Breton 2013
Therefore to evaluate the carrying capacity and predict the areas of overgrazing due to population movements, large mammal line transects should be used. Driven transects differ from walked transects as the cover much more ground in the same period of time.
This study will enable game ranches to better determine how the time of day effects the grazing patterns of the animals within it. An animal’s location can be manipulated through the burning regime as shown by a study by Bird et al (2005), however a study by Delagarde et al in (2000) showed that time of day may affect this further due to the plants composition of soluble carbohydrates.
A study by Archibald et al in (2005) shows that grazing species move towards recently burned areas and their abundance is between 2 and 6 times more than that of their control areas. They also show that other areas are also consequently not grazed, which gives these areas a resting period. This allows burning regimes to be designed to maximise carrying capacity by limit overgrazing and the damage to the habitat. It also helps reserves better understand where the next over grazed area may be, as supported by Trollope, 1990.
Bothma, 1989 states that burning regimes are necessary as the smaller the area being used for wildlife, the more intensively it must be managed. Trollope, 1990 supports this by saying natural rotational grazing, for example migrations, cannot occur due to the areas being too small. Therefore using techniques such as grass surveys alongside techniques like those carried out in this study, the effectiveness of burning regimes can be assessed and improved by understanding the animals utilisation of areas.
Understanding the utilisation of grassland depending on time of day will help game ranches better manage the manipulation of population location, whether it be for anti poaching methods, resting areas of veld or to better increase the nutritional value of the veld within the reserve and in turn improving carrying capacity. It is possible that there is a higher diversity of animals on the newer burns in the evening to take advantage of the fresh vegetation of new burns and high sugar contents within the grasses as suggested by Delegrade, 2000.
Firstly the transect routes were selected.
Transect 1 took place on the 17th April at 4:50pm-6:15pm. It started at the North end of Zebra drive and came South to join up with centre road to then follow zebra drive back North. The second half of the transect then started at the North end of Eland drive and drove South until we met Kgokong road.
Transect 1 differs from transect 2 3 and 4 as the 2010 burn section from the north end of eland drive, coming south was all thicket so it was difficult to spot wildlife. Also the first section of the transect meant driving back on Zebra drive meaning that the wildlife could have been scared away on our first pass or double counted.
Tsessebe Le-Breton, 2013
Transect 2 started at 7:17 am and finished at 9:20am. It started on the East side of centre road and then met Zebra drive and headed North to meet perimeter road. The second section started at the north end of the east perimeter road and headed south until we met the 2012 burn. Transect 3 followed the same route but started at $:09pm and ended at 6:01pm.
Hartebeest Le Breton 2013
Transect 4 was the same route as transect 2 and 3 however it was carried out in reverse. It started at 7:17am and finished at 9:09am. It was carried out in reverse to be able to get a better representation of results. This is because animals that may have been present on the burn for example here on the 2010 at the start of the transect but were not actually seen when recording took place.
Wildebeest Le Breton 2013
One scribe was present to record the data and four spotters were present. However group numbers changed between drives meaning more spotters were sometimes present. There was also a driver who also acted as a spotter along with a member of staff, both of which changed between drives 1-2 and 3-4. All spotters used binoculars to identify the animals.
Eland Le Breton 2013
Once the selected route was reached the odometer reading on the car was reset and a start GPS co-ordinate was taken. The selected route was then driven, when an animal was spotted the vehicle was stopped and recordings were taken. Recordings included the odometer reading along the transect, the angle the animals were from the transect line (this was measured using a compass), the distance they were from the vehicle (measured using a rangefinder), the number of individuals and the species present (The species we were recording we all those who have an effect on the carrying capacity, so that is all the types of feeders mentioned previously, along with ostriches although they are not mammals they also graze and effect the veld condition), the time they were observed (to the nearest minute) and the burn year they were observed in.
The total distance travelled on each burn was recorded for each transect to standardise the distance travelled. Any animals spotted after 3km on any burn were not counted, this is due to 3km being the limiting distance on the 2009 burn.
The data that is collected will be analysed using Simpsons index to measure the diversity in each burn on each transect.
Our results from each transect were put into tables to be able to analyse the diversity of each burn.
Results tables page 2
The Simpsons Index was calculated and the tables were used to create graphs to better present the data
Simpsons index chart
This bar chart compares the Simpsons index of all burn years across all transects. Drive 1 and 3 took place in the afternoons and drive 2 and 4 took place in the mornings. Results show that generally areas are more diverse in the mornings and that on average the 2012 burn was more diverse than any other burn. No data was collected on drive 1 for 2010 burn as this was the thicket patch where no animals could be observed which would indicate why 2010 appears to have the lowest diversity overall. It could be argued that these results show that time of day does affect species diversity and that the newer burns are of preference.
My results show that time of day does affect species diversity across different burn years with the highest diversity being in the morning. This is opposite to what was expected as it was hypothesised that there was to be more diversity in the evening when the grass has the higher soluble carbohydrate level. However a study by Watts and Pollitt, 2010 has shown that almost all of the African grasses tend to be higher in sugars and starches than other grasses from across the world. Therefore it could be argued that due to the naturally higher sugar levels in African grasses, the grazing animals do not need the extra sugar found in the evenings so graze in the mornings to eat before the competition eats all the grass.
The 2012 burn has the highest diversity on average and on each morning drive it was the highest. This supports the research by Bird et al, 2005 and Archibald et al 2005 showing that animals prefer the newer burn years due to the newer more palatable grass. It was to be expected that 2010 would have the next highest diversity as after having a year to rest while new pasture was grazed following it being burnt, it would have palatable grasses for grazers, however due to the limitation of the thicket in 2010 burn on transect 1 this could not be concluded.
Certain species abundance in burn years differed with time of day. It can be noted that higher numbers of wildebeest and impala were found in 2012 burn in the morning and 2009 burn in the evenings. It can be argued that these animals eat the easier to digest more palatable grasses in the morning to beat competition and go on to eat the more lignified grasses in the evening when competition dies down and the gut is more metabolically active.
During transect 1 and 2 the weather was warm and dry with minimal cloud cover, however transect 3 was overcast and cooler while transect 4 was after a night of heavy rain and was still very overcast. This may have affected the animals grazing strategies as the grass could have been more palatable while it was wet.
During transect 3 more spotters were on the vehicle which means that animals that may not have been normally spotted could have been counted. Also transect 1 and 2 had a different member of staff and driver present to transect 3 and 4. A total of 252 animals were seen on transect 1 and 2 whereas a total of 413 animals were seen on transect 3 and 4. This could be down to the difference in driving speeds, transect routes, spotters present or weather change.
In conclusion, burning is an essential method to small game reserves as a way of controlling dead, undesirable plant material within the reserve. It is important as it increases the quality of the veld and improves the digestibility of the grass to species such as zebra, wildebeest, impala and warthog. Good veld management will help increase the carrying capacity by better improving nutrition and reducing overgrazing. Measuring carrying capacity is imperative as it ensures the reserve is not keeping animals at the detriment to the habitat.
Time of day does have an effect on species diversity within different burn years, with the morning having the highest diversity. It can be argued that this is down to competition between species for the more palatable grasses as the newest burn was also the most diverse.
Impala and Ostrich. Angell 2013
George is off again in just over a weeks to the Seychelles and Aldabra/Assumption to work on a conservation project for a year. We will post on the outline of this project soon.
This entry was posted in mammals, Pet Shop Gloucester Blog Roll, Uncategorized, wildlife and tagged afican mammals, angell pet, angell pets, conservation, gloucester pet shop, gloucester pet shops, pet shop, pet shop gloucester by rangell. Bookmark the permalink.
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Movie Review – In Bruges
Director: Martin McDonagh
Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Clemence Poesy
In Bruges is simply Snatch, less frantic and more somber. Or else, it will always be compared to films like that, to Guy Ritchie’s early style, to British crime comedies, because that’s exactly what it is, and it apologizes not once. McDonagh recently found success with Three Billboards, which I did not particularly like, but which I hadn’t understood my dislike for until just now, having watched and loved In Bruges. This is the genre he has the talent to add to, this is the story I want to see, a romp gone wrong with a touch of deep sadness, which sure sounds like Three Billboards, but is done much better here, because this time we have a main character we can love and side characters we can laugh at. Basically, McDonagh peaked early, has tried to reinvent his masterpiece since, but has failed, which is probably because In Bruges is a singularly excellent dramody that cannot be duplicated.
Ray & Ken are on the run, assassins who botched there last job and so are hiding out for a time until things cool down. Their boss sent them to Bruges, Belgium, which is only a ferry ride away from London, but is out of the country and well away from whatever fire is burning since their mistake during their last mission. The instructions now; keep your heads down and enjoy the scenery, Bruges at Christmas is a lovely place to be, with all the architecture and the canals and whatnot. But Ray is restless, he hates fucking Bruges, and so looks for trouble somewhere other than in the hotel room. He meets a midget, a mouthy Yankee, a bungling burglar, and a lovely lady named Chloe, who he spends far too much time with and begins to forget why he’s in Bruges in the first place. Because it’s he who messed up in London, and it’s he who has yet to pay the price.
Hilarious from the opening scene on, In Bruges is a film that should be on a pedestal somewhere in a museum as an example of British Isle humor at it finest. The leading men both hail from Dublin, and their chemistry is unmatched, a pathetic but lovable pair if ever there was one. And the shit they pull, the trouble they get into, the oddballs they meet, well that’s unmatched as well. The story moves quickly through many stages, from grief to laughter, from romance to murder, but it always holds itself tight through the tricky corners, never loses control when other movies would have. There are heavy moments, scenes where you will laugh out loud, iconic lines to quote for years; this film has it all. Farrell is incredible, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him better, other than, perhaps, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and Gleeson was the perfect sidekick. Poesy was solid, Ralph Fiennes made a nice addition later in the plot, and I enjoyed myself from the opening line to the final credits. Perhaps we have seen this style done before, but rarely have we seen it done better, done with both precision and with ease with the result being something you will never forget.
My rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
« Movie Review – Seven DVD Review – Go Tell the Spartans »
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Potemkin Translators
In Essence | Autumn 2010
“The Pevearsion of Russian Literature” by Gary Saul Morson, in Commentary, July–Aug. 2010.
Like Dostoyevsky’s saintly Prince Myshkin, literary translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky seemingly can do no wrong. Their recent translations of Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, and Dead Souls, among other Russian classics, have garnered praise from such diverse cultural arbiters as The New Yorker and Oprah Winfrey. But accolades do not sway Gary Saul Morson, a humanities professor at Northwestern University. In Morson’s eyes, P&V, as the two translators, who are married, are known among the literati, churn out “Potemkin translations—apparently definitive but actually flat and fake on close inspection.”
Morson holds that P&V’s weakness as translators owes a lot to their method. Volokhonsky, a St. Petersburg native, kicks off the process by translating the Russian text into highly literal English, which is then massaged into readability by Pevear, a literature professor from Massachusetts who has only a basic command of his wife’s native tongue. That approach gives short shrift to essential literary elements such as context, tone, humor, and timing, Morson says.
Take a passage from Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842). In the 1942 English translation by Bernard Guilbert Guerney, the protagonist, a bureaucrat, settles into “a very dark cubbyhole, whither he had already brought his overcoat, and together with it, a certain odor all his own, which had been imparted to the bag brought in next, containing sundry flunkeyish effects.” “Sundry flunkeyish effects” is true to the spirit of Gogol, Morson asserts, since “Gogol often chooses words less for their meaning than for their humorous sound and resonances.” Guerney also stays true to Gogol by ending the passage with a funny image, as in the Russian.
P&V’s translation is quite different. In their version, the bureaucrat settles into “a very dark closet, where he had already managed to drag his overcoat and with it a certain smell of its own, which had been imparted to the sack of various lackey toiletries brought in after it.” The use of “toiletries” in the P&V version is prompted by the Russian word tualet in the original, but Gogol’s intention, Morson says, was for tualet to be funny and jarring. This effect is achieved by Guerney, but not in the P&V translation.
A handful of instances in which P&V emphasize semantic accuracy over tone and overall meaning round out Morson’s indictment of the lauded literary pair. For Morson, a great work of literature is an “experience, not just [a] sequence of signs on a page.” If translators are not able to convey that experience, they risk leading readers to think that the book’s greatness is the real sham.
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Parashat Vayishlach 5778 Fighting Angels and Chasing Demons
Parashat Vayishlach 5778
Fighting Angels and Chasing Demons
As he made his way back home to the land in which he was born, the land which was promised to his children, there must have been many thoughts swirling around Yaakov’s mind. The threats which had caused him to flee had not changed; only Yaakov had changed.
Years earlier, Yaakov had run away, to escape the real possibility that his brother would do him harm. His mother Rivka assured him that when Esav’s murderous hatred abated, she would send him a message, and let him know it was safe to return. Yaakov knew that he had brought Esav’s rage upon himself by impersonating his elder brother and stealing the blessings; the fact that he had done so at his mother’s insistence did nothing to assuage his guilt or to satisfy Esav’s thirst for revenge.
In Lavan’s home, Yaakov embraced the years of servitude to which he was subjected: First, he toiled for seven years for the promise of Rachel’s hand in marriage. When he awakes the morning after their wedding only to discover that the woman sleeping next to him is not his beloved Rachel, but her elder sister Leah, his reaction is completely unexpected: He confronts Lavan, whose response is sinister, sarcastic, and biting: “That’s not the way things are done here. We don’t put the younger sibling before the elder.” Yaakov is silent; he accepts his fate with equanimity. Like Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov, Yaakov seems to believe that he deserves to be punished for the crime he committed, and Lavan’s words must surely have sounded to him like well-earned rebuke. He accepts the punishment, and agrees to seven more years of servitude.
The years slip away; the all-clear message from his mother does not arrive, and Yaakov cannot be certain whether his mother simply was unable to send the message before her death, or if Esav’s anger has not subsided. Either way, as soon Yosef is born, Yaakov knows it is time to make his way back home.
As Yaakov prepares to disengage from the house of Lavan and strike out on his own, we cannot help but notice that a change comes over Yaakov. Perhaps the decision to go home has emboldened him, or perhaps his new courage and guile are what help him make the decision to start the next stage of his life; either way, Yaakov begins his journey by facing up to his erstwhile tormenter. Lavan, who has benefited greatly from Yaakov’s years of dedicated service, soon finds himself outsmarted by Yaakov, who takes his new-found wealth and his growing family, and with God's blessing and encouragement, sets out for his father’s home.
Yaakov speaks up for himself, venting decades of pent frustration, and casts aside the roles he has played; he is no longer a victim, no longer a refugee, no longer a person to be mistreated or abused. Yaakov has found his voice; he has become empowered. This does not mean he behaves rashly or without careful thought and planning: He is wise, and cautious, as he prepares for the showdown he had been avoiding for so many years – but he has no intention of backing down: He is coming to stake his claim on the land God promised him. What made Yaakov suddenly able to confront Esav was precisely this new resolve: Yaakov had to know that he was in the right, and he had to be prepared to take what was rightfully his, before he could face a man like Esav.
The night before the fateful confrontation, Yaakov is accosted by a mysterious adversary.
When he had started his journey, Yaakov had dreamed of angels climbing a ladder; upon returning, an angel tries to stop him. But this is not the same Yaakov who ran from Esav and cowered before Lavan. Now, Yaakov takes on - and defeats - his heavenly assailant. He is a new man, and his new name reflects this new identity: He has become Yisrael. With his trust in God and a clear conscience, with his confidence that he has the right to inherit the Land promised to him and his descendants, Yaakov/Yisrael will be victorious. After defeating an angel, Yaakov is finally ready to face his demons.
© Rabbi Ari Kahn 2017
For more Essays and Lectures on Vayishlach:
http://arikahn.blogspot.co.il/2017/11/audio-and-essays-parashat-vayishlach.html
Audio and Essays Parashat Vayishlach
Essay:
Fighting Angels facing Demons
http://arikahn.blogspot.co.il/2017/11/parashat-vayishlach-5778-fighting.html
Parshat Vayishlach - Fighting Angels facing Demons
Full lecture -
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/889953/
5 minute -
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/889644/rabbi-ari-kahn/parshat-vayishlach-fighting-angels-facing-demons/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnwErxcNWFk
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/868791/rabbi-ari-kahn/fear-and-trembling/
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/845558/rabbi-ari-kahn/struggle-of-yakov-and-esav-from-birth-to-almost-death/
The Struggle of Yaakov and Esav; Yom Kippur and Sukkot
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/845562/rabbi-ari-kahn/the-struggle-of-yaakov-and-esav;-yom-kippur-and-sukkot/
שלש שיטות בגיד הנשה
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/845559/rabbi-ari-kahn/%D7%A9%D7%9C%D7%A9-%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%98%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%92%D7%99%D7%93-%D7%94%D7%A0%D7%A9%D7%94/
Yakov's Struggle; Identifying the Angel of Esav
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/845192/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/Yakov-s_Struggle-_Identifying_the_Angel_of_Esav
Struggling with Angels
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/821446/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/Struggling_with_Angels
Yakov and Yisrael
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/752096/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/Parshat_Vishlach_-_Yakov_and_Yisrael
The Death of Rachel
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/821445/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/The_Death_of_Rachel
The Ultimate Defeat of Esav by Yosef (Haftorah)
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/821447/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/The_Ultimate_Defeat_of_Esav_(by_Yosef)
Yakov Esav and Yosef
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/821448/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/Yakov_Esav_and_Yosef
The Name Yisrael
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/821449/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/The_Name_Yisrael
Theological Echoes of The Confrontation between Yakov and Esav
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/821740/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/Theological_Echoes_of_The_Confrontation_between_Yakov_and_Esav_
Kol and Rav -Michal and Meirav; The Secret Identity of King David
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/821742/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/Kol_and_Rav_-Michal_and_Meirav;_The_Secret_Identity_of_King_David
Preparing for Battle
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/784495/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/Preparing_for_Battle
Who are You - Yakov or Yisrael?
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/821450/Rabbi_Ari_Kahn/Who_are_You_-_Yakov_or_Yisrael
Parashat Vayishlach - Yakov and Yisrael
http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/752096/rabbi-ari-kahn/parshat-vishlach-yakov-and-yisrael/
Parashat Vayishlach Homeward Bound
http://arikahn.blogspot.co.il/2015/11/parashat-vayishlach-5776-homeward-bound.html
Preparing for Battle, Praying for Peace
http://arikahn.blogspot.co.il/2014/12/parashat-vayishlach-5775-preparing-for.html
Confronting Your Fears
http://www.aish.com/tp/i/moha/231568951.html
Give Truth to Yaakov
http://arikahn.blogspot.co.il/2009/11/parshat-vayishlach-5770-give-truth-to.html
Yaakov / Yisrael
http://arikahn.blogspot.co.il/2008/12/parshat-vayishlach-5769-yaakovyisrael.html
http://archive.rabbiarikahn.com/writing?id=45
The Struggle of Jacob
Parashat Vayetze 5778 Limited Leverage: You Can’t Force God’s Hand
Parashat Vayetze 5778
Limited Leverage: You Can’t Force God’s Hand
Parashat VaYetze opens as Yaakov runs for his life: He had been told that his brother Esav has murder on his mind, that he intends to take revenge on for Yaakov’s deceptive acquisition of blessings that he felt were rightly his own - and Yaakov doesn’t stick around to see if Esav will make good on his threat.
For his part, Yaakov had been put in an untenable situation. His mother Rivka had not merely encouraged him to impersonate his brother Esav and to secure their father’s blessing for himself, she had commanded him to do so. Yaakov faced an impossible choice: Should he obey his mother, if it means deceiving his father? Or should he ignore his mother’s orders, which may well have been motivated by the prophecy she had received years earlier?[1] And were these blessings not rightfully Yaakov’s to take? Esav had abdicated his rights as firstborn years earlier; he had willingly, even enthusiastically, passed the responsibilities to his younger brother. Should the blessings not have accrued to Yaakov as part of the deal?
Aside from the complex interpersonal family relationships, there is another important perspective, which was lurking in the shadows in last week’s Parasha, namely, God’s perspective. Was Rivka, and, by extension, Yaakov, acting with Divine license? Were her instructions to Yaakov an outgrowth of the prophecy she had received, or had Rivka taken things into her own hands? If she was acting on her own, new questions arise: Can a blessing actually be “stolen”? Does God have a say in who is blessed, or are the blessings Yitchak bestowed on his son some sort of magical incantation that necessarily brought about the desired result? The blessings Yaakov “usurped” involved physical bounty and military-political power. Were these blessings, once they were uttered, guaranteed to whomever received them?
The inauspicious beginning of Yaakov’s journey is a stark contrast with the blessings in question: Yaakov is a fugitive; he is destitute and afraid for his life. He has no place to sleep, and no possessions. The blessings do not seem to have had any immediate magical effect.
As Yaakov slips away unto slumber, something magical does happen, he has an epiphany; God appears to him. This is not a simple point, for if God were truly displeased with Yaakov, we suspect he would not have been privileged to receive such a revelation. The content of the vision needs to be carefully considered. Of course, the most famous element is the ladder with its feet on the ground reaching into the heavens. And the angels which climb the ladder and return to earth.
And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (Bereishit 28:12)
Then there is a Divine soliloquy:
And God was standing beside him and He said, “I am The Eternal, the God of your father Avraham and the God of Yitzchak. The ground on which you are lying I will give to you and to your offspring.
Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All the families of the earth shall be blessed through you and your descendants.
Behold, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Bereishit 28:13-15)
It must have come as a relief to Yaakov that God appeared to him, and declared that He will remain Yaakov’s protector. Moreover, God reiterated what his father Yitzchak had promised him; the inheritance of the Land of Israel. However, the crux of the matter, is not just what God said, it is also what God did not say. There was no mention of the blessing designated for Esav. Regarding power and bounty there was an eerie silence, one which Yaakov certainly heard. The blessing designated for Esav was not coming to Yaakov. He would have to make his livelihood by the sweat of his brow, and not by divine providence.
Yaakov responds to the silence and declares, that if God provides even the bare minimum he would be grateful.
Yaakov made a vow. 'If God will be with me,' he said, 'if He will protect me on the journey that I am taking if He gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return in peace to my father's house, then I will dedicate myself totally to God. Let this stone that I have set up as a pillar become a temple to God. Of all that You give me, I will set aside a tenth to You.' (Bereishit 28:20-22)
Clothing on his back, bread on his plate is all which Yaakov now imagines. He is not thinking of riches and power, just the bare minimum needed to survive. The silence of God spoke volumes. One cannot “steal a blessing”. One cannot force God’s hand. Yaakov sees the ladder with its feet on the ground and the angels first ascending and then coming down; to receive divine blessings we need to first create those angels based on our actions below, only subsequently will angels come down.
All that was accomplished by taking these blessings was not that Yaakov would be the beneficiary of stolen blessings, but rather that Esav would have less power, and less ability to wreak havoc. Sometimes a little less is more, sometimes your enemy having less can be a blessing.
For more Essays and Lectures on Vayetze:
http://arikahn.blogspot.co.il/2017/11/audio-and-essays-parashat-vayetze.html
See Targum Onkelus Bereishit 27:13
Parashat Vayishlach 5778 Fighting Angels and Chasi...
Parashat Vayetze 5778 Limited Leverage: You Can’t ...
Audio and Essays Parashat Vayetze
Parashat Toldot 5778 - Carry On My Wayward Son
Parashat Chayei Sarah 5778 - Walking Together
Parashat Vayera 5778 - The Chosen
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Retrospecstive 2015: recorded
Happy new year to you, and welcome to the Specs 'round-up' of 2015 - part one. This year I thought I'd mix genres (so that people who like a bit of everything might come across something different) - so here are my 'recorded' highlights, covering CDs/downloads (including reissues) from both the classical and rock/folk worlds. I'll follow this up with a second post recalling my favourite 'live on stage' memories from the year.
I hope you enjoy it and - ideally - discover a new artist, band or composer to love.
(Quick digest for specialists - with my CDs of the year in bold type...)
Classical: Ian Bostridge & Julius Drake, Alice Coote & Graham Johnson, Mark Padmore & Kristian Bezuidenhout, Adrienne Pieczonka & Brian Zeger, Rachel Podger, Jo Quail, Dorothea Röschmann & Mitsuko Uchida, Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton, Andreas Staier.
Rock / folk / other: Beirut, Calexico, John Carpenter, Clutch, Golden Void, Bert Jansch & John Renbourn, Myrkur, Sieben, Swans, Richard Thompson, Trembling Bells.
Onwards! Yet also backwards!
Beirut: "No No No"
Thrilled to see one of my favourite bands return in 2015, with a glorious, slight swerve of a record. Short, delicate and with less of the just-about-hinged clutter of some older material - here we get a focus on piano and drums. At times, both stately *and* slinky, as on this track, 'So Allowed'.
Ian Bostridge, Julius Drake: 'Songs by Schubert - 2'
The ongoing 'Schubert live at the Wigmore Hall' series from this duo continues to pay dividends with brilliant programming as well as performance. I thought the first CD was one of the great live albums in any genre, but this sequel has exhilarating moments even surpassing that, including a superb closing run featuring this track (Schubert riffing in his most sprightly fashion) along with 'Atys', 'Nachtviolen'... oh, just get it, it's fantastic. (I could only find a studio version of 'Fischerweise' to include here, but no matter!)
Calexico: 'Edge of the Sun'
Sometimes I feel a bit guilty for taking Calexico's scorched Americana for granted, but then they come along with the brilliant idea of adding the 'we-found-him-in-a-cave' whisper of their old mucker Iron & Wine's Sam Beam to their vocals on this track... and it reminds you how individual and precious they are. A lovely, but again slightly low-key album... I'm aware that really rating this and the Beirut record this year is almost certainly no coincidence.
John Carpenter: 'Lost Themes'
Who could've predicted this treat? In an era of cool retro electronica and resurrected soundtracks, the man on earth most able to scare you witless with both a movie camera and a synthesiser reappears with an album's worth of 'fake' film music. Take this superb opening track, 'Vortex', which will probably have you checking the corners of your laptop screen for agile shadows or sudden disturbances.
Clutch: 'Psychic Warfare'
A tight funk outfit trapped in the bodies of a metal band, Clutch are now decades into their existence but show no signs of running out of incredible riffs or whip-crack beats. I love the fact that even an in-your-face groover like this track, 'A Quick Death in Texas' - flirting with both Zep and ZZ Top - reveals more riches with each listen. An array of hooks - one for verse, another for chorus, another for middle eight, and a slightly warped version of the chorus riff for the outro; excellent use of the rock 'n' roll "Hey! Hey!"; gratuitous cowbell; and some born-storyteller imagery ("The saloon door stopped swinging / The piano player stopped playing"). One of their best albums in years, overflowing with ideas. Mostly noisy ideas.
Alice Coote, Graham Johnson: L'heure Exquise
A terrific year on record for mezzo Alice Coote - one of our finest, most involving and at times, intense performers - releasing a 'Sea Pictures' CD with the Hallé Orchestra and a superb disc of Schumann with pianist Christian Blackshaw. But on this gorgeous Hyperion album with Graham Johnson, she presents a selection of French mélodies that make full use of her astonishing emotional - as well as vocal - range. Bringing in a hint of the 'chanson' where appropriate, she's not afraid to temper the sheer beauty of the sound with mischief, seductiveness or ennui. A treasure trove.
Golden Void: 'Berkana'
This heroic track, 'Burbank's Dream', is a typical - and typically glorious - example of Golden Void's psychedelic rock. As out of their time as you'd expect from a band named after a Hawkwind track, the atmosphere is so thick, it feels like you're listening to it through smoke - and extra points for vocals that sound to me as if they're 'informed' by the marvellous Gary Brooker of Procol Harum. Prog-standard!
Bert Jansch and John Renbourn: 'Bert and John'
All of Bert Jansch's early records are being reissued. Great news for fans of spectral acoustic fingerpicking, clearly, but it also means I've finally got myself a copy of 'Bert and John', the informally named collaborative album Jansch made with John Renbourn, in their pre-Pentangle days. This track ('The Time Has Come') just has the pair take a channel each - the guitars miraculously dancing around each other as the voices gently harmonise. The art of sounding diffident, while knowing exactly what you're doing.
Myrkur: 'M'
Interesting stuff, this - Danish singer-songwriter Amalie Bruun, already successful in solo and band careers, decided to create an alias to record some of the music she really loves: black metal. While not without its ethereal touches (occasional passages of choir and piano make you wonder if this is what would result if Enya had grown up listening to Darkthrone), it's mostly a thunderous gallop of rumbling drums and buzzsaw guitars: totally true to its inspiration but not compromising other aspects of its creator's talent. An intriguing grower, recommended.
Mark Padmore, Kristian Bezuidenhout: 'Beethoven / Haydn / Mozart'
I'm desperate for this partnership to get together as often as possible and just record MORE STUFF. MP's measured, serene tone and KB's ringing fortepiano are a perfect match and produce a kind of jointly celestial sound. After a disc of mostly Schumann song, they seem to be gathering repertoire as well as pace and released this wonderful CD of the story so far. Here's LvB's 'Adelaide'.
Adrianne Pieczonka, Brian Zeger: 'Adrianne Pieczonka sings Strauss and Wagner'
AP is one of my favourite operatic performers, so any CD is most welcome. But this was a particularly exciting prospect, featuring songs by composers with whom she seem particularly at home on stage. It doesn't disappoint - she's in glorious voice: here's Wagner's 'Träume':
Rachel Podger: Biber 'Rosary Sonatas'
Slight red herring, this example (it was all I could find on YouTube) - as RP is playing the solo Rosary Sonata which originally appeared on her earlier CD named after it, 'Guardian Angel'. This year, she released a double album placing it alongside all the other Sonatas on it, too - so *imagine* how good that is. Surely one of the most accomplished Baroque musicians ever.
Jo Quail: 'This Path With Grace'
This cellist-composer - a very familiar name to Specs regulars, I'm sure - continues to push her writing and playing in unexpected, exhilarating directions. This incredible 20-minute piece, is scored for cello (Jo's electric instrument alongside a squad of traditional acoustic cellos), percussion and choir. From the opening blasts to the all-encompassing voices, you'll be transfixed as the piece comes 'full circle' to its climax, taking in rock, folk, choral and classical along the way.
<a href="http://joquail.bandcamp.com/track/this-path-with-grace">This Path With Grace by Jo Quail</a>
Dorothea Röschmann, Mitsuko Uchida: Schumann and Berg Lieder
I was lucky enough to be at one of the Wigmore Hall recital evenings where this album was recorded. The duo have a fascinating dynamic in performance: extraordinary empathy (it struck me that it was all too rare to see a two-woman recital partnership, but could that have an effect?) and in some ways a reversal of the norm, with MU more likely to be the firebrand in perpetual motion and DR almost an old-school, regal presence. But in fact, the extent to which the pair clicked is audible: MU constantly looking from her music over towards her colleague, tracking her precisely, while DR's emotions are all filtered through her gloriously expressive voice, making this an ideal 'listening' recital. In this track (apologies if you don't have Spotify), you can hear them navigate Schumann's twist and turns as if they were a single entity.
Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton: 'Fleurs'
My classical CD of the year. Carolyn Sampson ventures out of her familiar Baroque surroundings and into art song. Creatively and artistically, this is clearly a huge step - but how lightly she skipped over it. Thinking about the way she combines expressive purity of tone with speed and precision, it's a wonder she didn't try it earlier..! But one of the things I think make 'Fleurs' a truly great record is the programming as well as the performance. The duo have made a 'concept album' of sorts, with the floral link kept throughout as the track listing ranges across composers and styles, showing off the brilliantly versatile playing of JM alongside CS's 'born-to-this' renditions. I hope this is just the start of a really strong partnership (you get the impression from 'Fleurs' that their rapport is burned into the disc) and expect that future records and recitals from them will be equally as interesting and illuminating as simply, satisfyingly beautiful.
Sieben: Norse EP
Matt Howden - the man behind one-man musical phenomenon Sieben - is on a roll at the moment, releasing his forthcoming album in stages, as three quite distinct EPs. The familiar elements are there - voice, violin, loops - but with a constantly increasing majesty. Always pushing the boundaries of his chosen set-up, the current Sieben sound explores the epic: tracks of around 10 minutes each, layer upon layer of shifting sound, leaving behind a strict verse-chorus format to explore chant/mantra. This is new magic.
<a href="http://sieben.bandcamp.com/album/norse-ep">Norse EP by Sieben</a>
Andreas Staier: J S Bach Harpsichord Concertos
I first heard Andreas Staier through his marvellous fortepiano playing - particularly when accompanying Christoph Prégardien in lieder - but he's also 'rather good' at the harpsichord, and this year's Bach disc is understandably an embarrassment of riches. Listen to the full-on, exhilarating production on this track, the D minor concerto.
Swans: White Light in the Mouth of Infinity / Love of Life
One of the most intense rock groups ever, the current incarnation of Swans continue to put out vast albums, like universes unto themselves. However, in a previous life - with the band dynamic balanced between Michael Gira and Jarboe - they achieved a kind of wracked musicality. This year, the ongoing reissue series reached this pair of albums (they belong together and come in a single package) - and this track in particular seduced me back in the day and got me into them for the first time. I had to include it.
Richard Thompson: Still
As in, still brilliant. Another example of an infallibly reliable talent suddenly releasing not 'just' another great set of songs, but a record to sit alongside their best. Based around the 'Electric' trio - sounding very (a)live in a warm and sympathetic production from Wilco's Jeff Tweedy - but fleshed out with harmony vocals and tempered with acoustic touches (as on this track), it's the best of all old worlds.
Trembling Bells: The Sovereign Self
My rock CD of the year. Trembling Bells are, on the face of it, a folk-rock outfit, but they can't really be contained by that description - in the same way that their sound seemed barely kept in check by the studio or your speakers. Blessed with chief songwriter Alex Nielson's virtuosic jazz drumming (somehow keeping the beat while adding multiple shades of percussive colour) and Lavinia Blackwall's all-points-between-heaven-and-earth voice, they released a three-and-a-half minute spooky pop wonder, 'Hallelujah', for Record Story Day, along with their finest album yet, 'The Sovereign Self', where everything came together perfectly. Unafraid to stretch themselves on every track, a bewildering stew of musical styles bubble together in the cauldron - folk, country, even metallic riffage - not so much from song to song, but all the time, in the overall, consistent sound. This feels to me like my national music. Out there, but not as far as you think. A masterpiece.
Sound waves: Alice Coote and Julius Drake
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Artwatch Protecting Art
Posts tagged “The Sistine Chapel”
Michelangelo’s disintegrating frescoes
As we predicted at the time of the last restoration of the Sistine chapel ceiling, by removing all of the glue-painting applied by Michelangelo to finish off and heighten the effects of his frescoes, the Vatican’s restorers exposed the bare fresco remains for the first time in their history to new dangers from the atmospheric pollution that is exacerbated by huge numbers of paying visitors.
Then, 2 million visitors entered the chapel every year. Now, that figure is 6 million.The Vatican has been carrying out secret attempts to remove disfiguring calcium deposits building up over the remains of Michelangelo’s painting. These deposits are caused when moisture given off by tourists and air-borne pollutants are absorbed by the plaster. This now-acknowledged process will also activate, as we specifically contended, the remnants of the cleaning agents (sodium and ammonia) that were washed into the frescoes during the rinse cycles of their last so-called restoration and conservation treatments. At the time, the use of the ferociously aggressive cleaning agent AB 57 was justified by the Vatican on the grounds that it was necessary to remove, among other things…ordinary solvent-resistant calcium deposits that had built up over the centuries in parts of the ceiling exposed to leaks in the roof.
Then, the Vatican promised that special air-conditioning systems would protect the newly exposed fresco surfaces in perpetuity. That system had failed even before the Vatican recently celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the end of the last restorations of Michelangelo’s paintings. Today, as the new physical threat is seen to be turning the frescoes white, the Vatican promises new, improved air conditioning units (from the same firm). To counter the new pale appearance, the Vatican recently installed thousands of LED lights, each individually attuned to heighten the colours in Michelangelo’s painting. Michelangelo’s now twice-injured painting has been left a colourised but still lucrative wreck – and an EU-funded (EUR 867 000) showcase (“This made the Vatican City’s Sistine Chapel the ideal venue for LED4ART”) for a company that shows in its advertisements that it has no idea what the Sistine Chapel looks like.
We said at the time that the restoration constituted a crime against art. Now, the Vatican promises to limit the numbers of visitors inside the chapel to 2,000 at any one time. But that means allowing a crowd as big as a full capacity audience at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, to pack into the small chapel all day long. The Vatican’s administrators – who have known of the present problems since 2010 – now concede that the glue coatings (that were in truth Michelangelo’s own final painted adjustments) had served as a protective barrier against all air-borne pollutants. The tills will continue to ring. Art lovers remain weeping. Shame on the Vatican’s administrators.
For our previous coverage, see:
Misreading Visual Evidence ~ No 2: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling;
The Sistine Chapel Restorations: Part I ~ Setting the Scene, Packing Them In;
The Sistine Chapel Restorations, Part II: How to Take a Michelangelo Sibyl Apart, from Top to Toes;
The Sistine Chapel Restorations, Part II – CODA: The Remarkable Responses to Our Evidence of Injuries; and Thomas Hoving’s Rant of Denial;
The Sistine Chapel Restorations, Part III: Cutting Michelangelo Down to Size;
The Twilight of a God: Virtual Reality in the Vatican;
Sistina Progress and Tate Transgressions;
ArtWatch Stock-taking and the Sistine Chapel Conservation Debacle;
Coming to Life: Frankenweenie – A Black and White Michelangelo for Our Times
11th November 2014. Michael Daley
UPDATE: 16 November 2014
While the Vatican now admits the hitherto concealed fact of the damage that is being caused to Michelangelo’s frescoes by the massive increase of tourist numbers, it remains in denial about the destruction during the last restoration of the final a secco adjustments that Michelangelo had made to those frescoes. That autograph last-stage painting – which was observed and described with perfect, detailed clarity by the painter Charles Heath Wilson in the 1881 (second) edition of his book Life and Works of Michelangelo Buonarroti – is characterised, preposterously, and against the evidence of all contemporary and subsequent copies of the Sistine ceiling, as consisting of “centuries of built-up candle wax, dirt and smoke”, as if such substances might somehow have disported themselves along the lines of Michelangelo’s design so as to reinforce his modelling and depict shadows cast by his figures. This latest apologia is carried in an Associated Press article “Sistine Chapel frescoes turning white ~ Humidity, tourists’ CO2 to blame”.
A paperback facsimile of a 1923 edition of Wilson’s milestone book (in which he describes his close examination of the ceiling on a special portable scaffold) is now available. It is time for the Vatican to acknowledge that Michelangelo had indeed finished his frescoes with secco painting, and that its curators, restorers and conservation scientists had blundered badly and inexplicably when, having judged Michelangelo’s specific, purposive pictorial enhancements and modifications to be nothing other than arbitrary accumulations of polluting material, removed it – and, thereby, exposed the lime plaster surfaces of the frescoes to their present dangers. That initial error and the subsequent falsification of art history that was made on its back, have both now been maintained for two decades.
November 11, 2014 | Categories: news | Tags: A crime against art, AB 57 cleaning agent, Corbis, ECN Impact Awards, Frankenweenie, LED4ART, Michael Daley, Michelangelo, Michelangelo's frescoes, The Royal Opera House, The Sistine Chapel, The Sistine Chapel Ceiling, The Vatican, The vatican's administrators, Thomas Hoving. | Leave A Comment »
Sistina Progress and Tate Transgressions
The tide continues to run against supporters of the Vatican’s 1980s and 1990s restorations of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes, but it looks as if the National Gallery’s technical conservation division might be about to attempt a last-stand defence of the proclaimed “Gloriously Recovered Colours” that were said to have resurrected a “New Michelangelo”. An exhibition at the Gallery, Making Colour (June 18 to September 17), is to examine the stuff of pigments, in the course of which… Michelangelo is to be enthroned among the great colourists Titian, Turner and Matisse. The manoeuvre shows signs of back-firing.
The Times’ art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston was healthily wary and alert to art world conservation politics when previewing the exhibition (“True colours: from Titian to Turner”, The Times, 31 May 2014):
“It is wilfully provocative to put a sculptor most famous for his pallid stone carvings on a list of the world’s greatest colourists. But his Sistine Chapel paintings – coming together as they do to create the single greatest pictorial scheme of the Italian High Renaissance – are among the most vibrant works of western art ever created. And after a recent and highly controversial restoration in which solvents were used to strip away half a millennium’s worth of accrued candle smoke and grime – and with it, many argue, the artist’s own shadowy subtleties – Michelangelo is being reassessed. Every book on this artist will have to be rewritten declare historians who marvel at the newly revealed drama of vivid colour. Others, however, remain not just sceptical but deeply dismayed at the irreversible damage that the cleaning has done.”
Even the restoration-friendly Art Newspaper carries seditious words on conservation and the Sistine Chapel in its current (June) issue. The spat that we reported between Bendor Grosvenor (“Art historian, dealer and broadcaster”, of the Philip Mould and Company gallery), and Martin Myrone (“Lead curator, pre-1800 British art at Tate Britain”), at last month’s Mellon Centre conference on connoisseurship and educated eyes, is re-run in the Art Newspaper under the heading: “Do we need a return to connoisseurship?” Dr Grosvenor’s latest comments on restoration and connoisseurship are, however, almost cryptically condensed. They read in full:
“I despair at seeing a picture over-cleaned through a conservator’s misunderstanding of how an artist worked, and the removal of an original glaze in the belief that it is either dirt or over-paint (the Sistine Chapel is the most depressing example of this).”
For the record, Dr Grosvenor’s Mellon Centre mea culpa of May 2nd was delivered as follows:
“And to show why I think that connoisseurship has such a valuable role to play in conservation, let me mention what is – let me end with what is probably the most single important painting in Western art history: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. I recently went to Rome and saw the ceiling for the first time, and as I was standing underneath it with my binoculars, being jostled this way and that by the crowds, I am afraid I got a terrible shock. I always used to think that critics of the Sistine Chapel restoration were being slightly myopic, or a little bit obsessive, and that trained restorers surely at this level were infallible, and couldn’t possibly damage pictures. But how wrong I was! The Sistine Chapel has been subjected to the most brutal over-cleaning imaginable. I don’t mean the exposure of the bright colours which we see looking so nice here, which most people fixate on, but the actual removal, through simple abrasion with solvents and a rough sponge, of the crucial darks and shadows which gave the ceiling so much meaning and form. Though we don’t have time to go into the debate here as to whether Michelangelo worked a secco on the ceiling or purely in fresco it seems to me that the whole approach to the cleaning of the ceiling was fundamentally misunderstood. But my contention is that if the restorers had, in fact, been real trained connoisseurs of Michelangelo’s work and were not just pure technicians and had a feeling and an eye for how Michelangelo intended his pictures to work they might not have made the same mistakes. And I don’t think I can really make a greater example of why connoisseurship matters. Thank you very much.”
The now linked battles over art restoration and connoisseurship are intensifying. (We are intrigued to know what Dr Grosvenor thinks of the Philip Mould gallery’s own picture cleaning methods. We do know that even when restorers aim to remove just “varnish”, real paint often comes off in the wash – as seen at Figs. 12 and 13. Would the risks not be all the greater when restorers are removing what they take to be “re-paints” from pictures in a hunt for better work underneath?) The museum world’s phoney “Culture Wars” between a supposed but now mythic Art Establishment (look at the recent membership of the Royal Academy and its Summer Show banner “Discover the new; discover the now”) and the Tate and State-pampered, edgy, head-banging contemporary art sensationalists is masking a fundamental art world schism that shows signs of turning ugly. Dr Grosvenor’s ideologically opposite number at both the Mellon Centre conference and the Art Newspaper forum, was Dr Martin Myrone – who happens to have hit the headlines. Tate Britain is mounting an exhibition of British folk art (see “Tate Britain rejects ‘elitist’ Old Masters as Turner makes way for thatched king”, the Times, 5 June 2014). Tate’s press release declared “British Folk Art will include surprising and diverse examples of British folk art, from rustic leather toby jugs to brightly coloured ships’ figureheads. The imposing larger than life-size thatched figure of King Alfred created by master thatcher, Jesse Maycock, in 1960 is one of the exhibition’s highlights.”
News of this exhibition almost caught us off-guard: when Tate spokespeople witter about “diverse” and “surprising” things, we instinctively reach for our cultural pistols, so to speak. But for once, the artefacts clearly are of interest (see Fig. 11) and worthy of attention. The bone cockerel shown in the Times is, in its wit, force and verve of plastic articulation, the superior of the over-sized blue cockerel presently occupying the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square – which itself is the best of a very long, very bad bunch of occupants. The straw man, likewise is, with its subtle, ominously Germaine Richier-like weight-shifting presence, more than an expressive sculptural match for, say, Sir Anthony Gormley, R. A.’s turgid “Angel of the North”. In short, we have no problem with the subject of the exhibition: quality is, as quality is found. No problem, that is, except this: the Tate is not parking this exhibition in Tate Modern’s vast halls or spinning it as an overdue and welcome blast against the enfeebled self-indulgence of today’s decayed fine art tradition. Instead, it treats this folk art as vindication of that very sector (because Tracey sews and Grayson potters) and is using it as yet another way of denigrating and humiliating odious, elitist Old Masters. (One more sign, perhaps, of the un-wisdom of permitting one man an unbroken, guaranteed-for-life, twenty-six years long reign of tenure at the Tate?)
Insofar as Dr Myrone’s dense sub-Marxian jargon in the Art Newspaper permits appraisal, it would seem that his antipathy to the notion and practice of connoisseurship is deep and visceral. As he puts it in the Art Newspaper:
“…Instead, contriving the resuscitation of connoisseurship on the basis that its worth is self-evident may be retrogressive, obscuring the stakes and investments actually brought into play as the different parties involved (academics, curators, dealers and so forth) establish their relative authority and their claims to public attention…Arguably, the only thing that now distinguishes connoisseurship as such is the element of economic and social purposefulness, its specific role as a way of talking about art and asserting aesthetic merit in terms which are readily translatable into economic value. The language of connoisseurship is simply more compliant to the needs of the market than other forms of historical discussion, which may be more open-ended and questioning, less certain about the judgement of value.
“Moreover, allowing the issues of authenticity and authorship to overshadow all the other issues and questions around historical works of art risks impoverishing our understanding and enjoyment of art’s rich histories and our ability to communicate this in genuinely open-minded, engaging and thought-provoking ways. There is nothing, I think, radical or outrageous in pointing out that connoisseurship has served to reinforce social difference and further material interests over history.There are numerous studies which testify to this. What would be absurd would be to claim that this has somehow stopped in the present age and that connoisseurship is now absolutely removed from struggles over cultural authority…”
What is so sad and alarming is that art professionals working in the most elevated art institutions should be so antipathetic to art as art. As for lucre, they are happy to pursue careers and draw salaries working among art as long as it can be made instrumental – serve some “enlightened” progressivist, consciousness-altering, society-levelling social force. This is sad because it is philistine. It fails to respond directly, unashamedly, unapologetically to art itself. It is dangerous because should such blinkered aversions gain an absolute upper hand, cultural repression would result. Dr Myrone is clearly a conscientious man with the interests of the common weal at heart. But if we were to deny contemplation of the highest, the best, and the most life-enriching art to all, we would gain nothing and simply add cultural and personal impoverishment to existing social ills.
This antipathy to connoisseurship must be defused. First, let us recognise that it really doesn’t necessarily come with snooty baggage or an eye on the financial main chance. That, at heart, it is a perfectly simple, decent and desirable matter; that it is comprised of nothing more odious than an ability to discern qualities that are of value. Second, that every art school lecturer used to recognise “the hand” of every student. We say “used to” because artistic hands are only evident when common cultural purposes are pursued through limited artistic means (as when all art students drew and drew from the same casts or figures). If scrunching paper and blinking lights count as art today then connoisseurship is already dead – and Dr Myrone can chill. He may, on the other hand, already be halfway to connoisseurship himself – in the Art Newspaper, he also writes:
“It is perfectly possible to talk about technique, authorship, authenticity and quality without recourse to the rubric of connoisseurship. Moreover, the application of skill in these various matters is part of the every day work of the art historian and curator, tending in practice to be rather modest and mundane. It is just part of the job.”
Well, which is it to be? If connoisseurship is being done routinely, albeit under a different name, what is the problem? And why should we not talk about the doing of it, on the assumption that some may be doing it better than others?
In art practice itself, every proper artist is a connoisseur, not least of his own work. Every teacher forms preferences and will see more of value in the productions of one student over another. That is connoisseurship in action. Nothing to be ashamed about. When teaching in art schools it is not unheard of to encounter a student from Eton or from the Old Kent Road. Proper professional concern for quality and talent puts the Old Etonian on a level playing field and at risk of being outclassed by the greater talent of someone from nowhere. Dr Myrone complains, as reported in the Times, “We have rested much more on the idea of a canon of great masters, a Hogarth-to-Turner story…it is a fairly narrow kind of canon. A select few artists have been elevated, but there is a whole world of making and physical production which is really exciting.” And so there is – but what humbug: narrow canons? How many working illustrators, film animators or car designers win Turner Prizes or get elected to the Royal Academy? Is everything really of equal value to the Tate? Are all avant gardists of the same merit? On what basis, then, are the Turner Prizes awarded? If someone scrubs a painting and features come away, as was the case with the group of lads holding a ladder at the top of Fig’s. 7 and 8, would it be a good and desirable thing if art historians lacked the critical visual ability to notice – or the courage to speak out? Dr Grosvenor has at last cottoned on to the menace – is Dr Myrone still not up to it? Has he not yet come across the excellent post on Grumpy Art Historian which carries this helpfuly clarifying comment:
“Why cannot the art historian emulate [the archaeologist] and treat all images simply as artefacts of a given culture? I think the answer is simple. Such pretended scientific objectivity would rapidly lead to the suicide of our subject. On a purely practical level the archaeologist is saved from the agony of selection by the relative scarcity of his evidence. We are in a very different position. Once we decided not to make any distinctions between painting ceilings or, for that matter, assembly halls, we would be so swamped with material that Michelangelo’s or Wren’s creations would be lost in an ever-swelling card index”
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Above, Figs. 1, 2, 3 and 4: Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Libyan Sibyl, as seen before and after restoration in colour (Figs. 1 and 2), and in greyscale (Figs. 3 and 4).
Above, top, Fig. 5: The Sistine Chapel ceiling as seen after cleaning in the 2006 Scala book The Vatican Museums ~ Masterpieces from the Incomparable Papal Collections. The book carries this statement-in-brief of the enduring official account of the restoration: “It took nine years from 1980 to 1989, for the restorers to rid the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of the accumulated grime of centuries to recover the original bright colouring, allowing us to enjoy these extraordinary figures once more.”
Above, Fig. 6: A detail, as recorded in a large-scale lithograph of the entire ceiling that was printed in twenty-one colours on two sheets of paper. The lithograph measures 1,027 x 470mm and was made from an 1853 drawing by Pratesi by C. Köpper, under the art direction of L. Gruner and supervision of J. Storch at Winckelmann and Sons, Berlin.
(The lithograph is reproduced in Michael Twyman’s stunning A history of Chromolithography as described in our previous post.)
The testimony of this large-scale work which faithfully recorded the Ceiling’s then chromatic and tonal relationships is immensely valuable. Partly because it shows all of Michelangelo’s upper walls and ceiling frescoes simultaneously on the same plane and without any perspectival distortion (and, thus, in a manner that was inconceivable photographically), but more especially because it captured the hierarchy of tones and colours which progressed from the darker more subdued lower sections (seen in this image in its outer parts) toward the brightly lit ‘windows’ which cut through the illusionistic architecture and permitted the biblical scenes to be set in the sky or out in the wider world. This single image gives the lie to the original claims of the restorers – and their once-numerous supporters – that the shading in Michelangelo’s frescoes had not been a deliberate artistic intention, but was simply the arbitrary consequence of accumulations of soot and varnish. That claim was always preposterous – but it explains why, even to this day, some supporters of the restoration cling to the once-confident and near-universal belief that the “transforming” (i.e. artistically devastating) effects of the cleaning constituted an almost God-given revelation. The ‘political’ need for this restoration to be defended at all costs has inflicted considerable theological collateral damage as well as immense artistic damage.
Above, Figs. 7 and 8: A section of the upper-right corner of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement wall, before cleaning (top) and after cleaning (above). Again, looking at the areas and the scale of the shading that was lost here, makes clear how absurd was the claim that Michelangelo had originally painted as as in the cleaned state at Fig. 8, and, then, centuries worth of grime had conspired to alter Michelangelo’s painting so as to bring it to the condition see at Fig. 7.
Above, Figs. 9 and 10: The head of a boy seen in the Sacrifice of Noah scene on the ceiling, before cleaning (top) and after cleaning above.
Above, Fig. 11: Part of the Times’ coverage of Tate Britain’s new exhibition “British folk Art” (“Tate Britain rejects ‘elitist’ Old Masters as Turner makes way for thatched king”).
Above, Fig. 12: Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate since 1988, (as drawn by Michael Daley for the cover of Jackdaw No 5, February 2001: “Serota a dangerous dictator?”).
A RECENT RESTORATION “DISCOVERY”: WHAT COMES OFF IN THE VARNISH REMOVAL WASH
Above, Figs. 12 and 13: A painting – View of Scheveningen Sands, by Hendrick van Anthonissen – as seen (top) before “varnish removal” at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, the art conservation branch of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and after cleaning (above).
View of Scheveningen Sands is on permanent display in the Fitzwilliam Museum in the recently refurbished gallery of the Dutch Golden Age, which reopened on 3 June.
Cambridge University’s Varsity website reports that whilst removing the varnish from this painting, the restorer, postgraduate student Shan Kuang, discovered that “a figure started appearing standing directly on the horizon line [of the sea].” And then, soon after, the fin of the whale was discovered, being at first thought to be the sail of a ship. However, eventually, the body of the stranded whale was fully revealed…and another glorious restoration discovery and Good News Story had been made and announced to the world.
…AND, YET ANOTHER RESTORATION DISCOVERY:
“Paris Street; Rainy Day” – now not!
The Wall Street Journal reports that The Art Institute of Chicago’s six-month restoration of Gustave Caillebotte’s 1877 painting revealed surprises. A previous restoration left the sky “duller and more one-dimensional [sic]”. As a result of the varnish removal – and the removal of what was taken to be an earlier restorer’s repaint in the sky – curators now believe Caillebotte is likely to be viewed more as an Impressionist and less a traditional realist. Moreover, the restorer said that Caillebotte had not (as had been thought) depicted a generic rainy day in this bustling street scene near the Gare St. Lazare. Instead, he had had in mind “a precise moment right after the rain has stopped and the sun is trying to break through” — which is why everyone in the picture continues to walk around with umbrellas up. To the present restorer, this newly recovered state of the painting constitutes “the kind of specificity that was a hallmark of the Impressionists”. Another great conservation-led advance for scholarship, then.
Click on the images above for larger versions. NOTE: zooming requires the Adobe Flash Plug-in.
June 6, 2014 | Categories: blog | Tags: Angel of the North, Anthony Gormley, Art Institute of Chicago, Bendor Grosvenor, British Folk Art, Cleaning the Sistine Chapel, Connoisseurship, Futzwilliam museum, Grumpy Art Historian, Gustave Caillebotte, Hamilton Kerr Institute, Making Colour, Martin Myrone, Michael Daley, National Gallery, Old Etonian, Old Kent Road, Philip Mould, Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Art Newspaer, The Mellon Centre, The Royal Academy, The Sistine Chapel, The Tate, Tuate Modern, Turner Prize | Leave A Comment »
The Sistine Chapel Restorations, Part II: How to Take a Michelangelo Sibyl Apart, from Top to Toes
“I must confess I harbour a lingering almost subconscious fear that someday someone will come, unexpectedly, with a really intelligent observation that will show all of us to have been blind.” ~ Gianluigi Colalucci, 1990
We were startled when the Vatican authorities admitted that Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes are in greater peril than at any point in their history. Powerful art institutions rarely broadcast their own embarrassments. More often, they see off their critics by sitting tight, quietly briefing journalistic proxies and…continuing to be. Welcome as was the acknowledgement of the problem by Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums, casting the Chapel’s paying visitors as the principal cause of the present crisis, masked greater institutional responsibilities.
The Vatican has yet to acknowledge that this environmental crisis arose as a direct consequence – and within just two decades – of permitting the Chapel’s ancient frescoes to be used as a test bed for the then new and highly controversial cleaning agent “Mixture AB 57”. And, despite the brouhaha over toxic visitors, there remains no hint of acknowledgement that the restorations of the 1980s and early 1990s proceeded on an art critical misreading which, in addition to stripping the fresco surfaces bare and leaving a chemical time-bomb within the Chapel, inflicted grave and irreversible artistic injuries on Michelangelo’s paintings – see right.
On the cleaning method’s toxic conservation legacy, we had precisely warned in 1993 that: “even if the Vatican team were to concede that the brilliance of Michelangelo’s new colours is a chemical deceit purchased at the cost of a physical and chemical weakening of the frescoes, the dispute would not be laid to rest. The need to avoid further deterioration would still be there.” (James Beck and Michael Daley, “Art Restoration: The Culture, the Business and the Scandal”, Chapters III and IV.) In similar vein we can now say that today’s promises of dramatic technical “improvements” are simply recycled 1980s assurances that, at best, remain of a palliative nature. Even when promised the first time around, the Vatican authorities had admitted to us (see below) that the measures could not fully solve the then already pressing environmental problems unleashed by the restoration’s experimental method.
The Experimental New Picture Cleaning Method
AB 57 was developed by Professor Paulo Mora and his wife Laura Mora, chief conservators at Rome’s Istituto Centrale del Restauro, for cleaning stone buildings. It comprised: “a mixed gelatinous solvent, consisting of a solution of ammonium bicarbonate, sodium bicarbonate, Desogen (a surf-actant and anti-fungal agent), carboxymethylcellulose (a thixotropic agent), dissolved in distilled water.” Toti Scialoja, a painter and a former professor at Rome’s Academy of Fine Arts, complained that its ingredients were “too powerful – ammonia and soda, the stuff you use to clean your bathtub”. Professor Christoph Frommel, director of the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, described it as “a sharp and aggressive chemical”.
The Moras presented AB 57 as a means of removing insoluble salts and incrusted materials from wall paintings: “If the original surface of the painting is unaffected by water then this mixture will have no deleterious action on it”. Michelangelo’s frescoes did not suffer greatly from incrusted and insoluble salts but they were extensively covered with water sensitive glue/size painting which artists, conservation experts and scholars held to comprise Michelangelo’s own final painted adjustments. An early sign of the wrongness of the new cleaning method came when the restorers abandoned customary claims of a miraculous “recovery” of original and authentic conditions. The use of AB 57 had produced such a mismatch between the cleaned frescoes and the early copies that had been made of them, that the hype had to be bolder and of a different order. As seen in our previous post, the decision to clean with AB 57 had been taken quickly and in express excitement at the prospect of overturning art history itself. This dramatic technology-led change of conservation philosophy was reported in a 1983 Newsweek account: “As recently as 1976 while cleaning paintings by the other artists on the side walls of the Chapel, workers deliberately kept the colours muted so that Michelangelo’s wouldn’t look too faded by comparison. ‘Even then it entered nobody’s head to start on Michelangelo’, says master restorer Gianluigi Colalucci. But when a new cleaning solvent was developed, Colalucci tested it…”
Selling the Surprising AB 57-induced Changes to Michelangelo’s Painting
Having used it, the resulting rupture between the old Michelangelo and his restored self was trumpeted by Fabrizio Mancinelli, the Vatican Museums’ curator and co-director, with Gianluigi Colalucci, of the restoration. Mancinelli claimed in 1986 that the restoration “had brought to light (and will continue to bring to light) a totally new artist, a colourist quite different in character from the unnaturally sombre character who has in the past fascinated generations of historians, connoisseurs and fellow artists…The cleaning of the frescoes has led to the surprising conclusion that the kind of suggestive painting by shadows for which Michelangelo was admired until a few years ago was essentially the product of candle smoke and still more of glue varnishes applied possibly even before the 18th century.” (“The Sistine Chapel ~ Michelangelo Rediscovered”, p. 218.)
Even though no evidence was ever produced of extensive glue applications having been made by restorers, in the early years, art historians and credulous art critics queued to repudiate what one scholar dubbed the “Darkness Fallacy” and the “Sculptural Fallacy” of traditional Michelangelo studies. The proclaimed “New Michelangelo”, however, was an entirely modern chemically engineered artefact, not a scholarly construct. In fact, it flew in the face of the historical record: Michelangelo had been celebrated at his own funeral not for any colouristic brilliance – let alone for, as one critic recently held, the “sharp and acid palette used by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel” – but for his “fleeting, sombre colours”. The new art historical dispensation rested on a twentieth century purging of aged, sometimes distressed but nonetheless authentic material. Indeed, it was precisely because this was not a historically-informed recovery of an original state that drums had had to be rolled for “The New Michelangelo”.
It was claimed that this revisionist reading of historical and material evidence had been corroborated “scientifically”. But this was a New Science to sanction a New Michelangelo. Scientific examinations of the frescoes in the 1930s by X-ray and ultra-violet imaging techniques had led to altogether contrary conclusions. It was reported in 1938 that Michelangelo’s “overpaintings were lying quite brightly a secco on the fresco layer itself; these overpaintings proved themselves undoubtedly the painting of the Master himself.” (See “Art Restoration”, Chapter III.) It was further claimed that Colalucci and his colleagues had recovered the original fresco surfaces so deftly that they had preserved its “original” patina and even left a thin layer of dirt above them that would protect the new surface from airborne pollution. Well, we all now know from the present panic in the Vatican that that assurance was not worth a used solvent swab and that a couple of years ago “unimaginable amounts” of dirt were scrubbed off the frescoes by conservators working at night so as not to impede the daytime tourism stream.
The Over-Selling of Conservation Science
Conservation science has its uses but it can never analyse or appraise works of art because Art’s essential properties are aesthetic not material; perceptual not mechanical. Insofar as there might be a science of art, it is to be found in art itself and within artists’ own practices. This is because art consists not so much of materials as of values and the relationships between values that artists’ create and orchestrate, albeit, with materials. These values are aesthetically relative, not intrinsic to materials, and they are continuously appraised and adjusted by artists as they work. Self-criticism, self-analysis and continuous aesthetic appraisal are integral to the making of art. With art, critical and analytical faculties can never be replaced by apparatuses or be donned by technicians. Conservation science might sometimes tell us of what something is made but never by whom it was made.
The Mis-Appliance of Conservation Science
In terms of professional art restoration, conservation science can serve a useful diversionary purpose. The restoration-authorising authorities and art lovers alike can be invited to put aside critical responses on an implicit assurance that some inscrutable but infallible force has guaranteed the probity of whichever of the many conflicting restoration methodologies is being used at that moment. We ArtWatchers are not inclined to be so trusting nor so easily led. In the case of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, having examined evidence of the cleaning method and its consequences for two and a half decades, and being now armed with the officially published accounts, we are confident that not only can it be shown that Michelangelo’s tonal/plastic systems were recently injured, but that even his very designs, his drawing, his vaunted disegno were repeatedly violated and corrupted.
A Catastrophic Loss of Art Citical Nerve
These losses and violations were not so much unfortunate by-products of an inappropriately aggressive cleaning agent as the consequence of prior and catastrophic failures of art critical judgement and powers of aesthetic analysis. This failure was evident not only within the Vatican’s curatorial, scientific and conservation staffs, but throughout much of the wider international art historical establishment. By effectively agreeing to “de-attribute” what were – and had always been recognised to be – the last stages of Michelangelo’s own work, an overly deferential art historical establishment sanctioned their destruction. For all this (initial) pan-national consensus, the judgement was historically rogue. In 1986, when defending his own restoration, the chief restorer, Gianluigi Colalucci admitted that his professional predecessors’ judgements had been contrary to his own and “not encouraging” to the restoration. That was an understatement: restorers who had worked on the previous restoration (1935-36) had officially and flatly reported that Michelangelo had “finished off a secco”, that is, that he had painted on top of his frescoes when they had dried.
The Testimony of Charles Heath Wilson
Restorers who had worked on the restoration of 1904 had abandoned attempts to clean the frescoes for fear of damaging Michelangelo’s vulnerable work on the surface. Colalucci, greatly in thrall to contemporary “scientific” analysis, dismissed such official reports as “subjective impressions”. He also ignored the testimony of the British painter and fresco expert Charles Heath Wilson who had reported his own close-hand examination of the ceiling in an 1876 book “Life and Works of Michelangelo Buonarotti”. Wilson had found the frescoes “extensively retouched with size colour…evidently by the hand of Michelangelo”. He found that this secco painting “readily melted on being touched with a wet finger and consisted of a finely ground black, mixed with a size probably made according to the usage of the time from parchment shavings.” He further noted, “The shadows of the draperies have been boldly and solidly retouched with this size colour, as well as the shadows on the backgrounds…The hair of the heads and the beards of many of the figures are finished in size colour …These retouchings…constituted the finishing process or as Condivi [Michelangelo’s preferred biographer] expresses it, alluding to it in the history of these frescoes, ‘l’ultima mano’.”
For Wilson, there could “be no doubt that nearly all of this work is contemporary, and in only one part was there evidence of a later and incompetent hand.” Aside from its artistic force, certainty about the secco painting’s antiquity lay in an elegant technical proof: “The size colour has cracked as the plaster has cracked”. It is a matter of record that the ceiling cracked before any restorers touched it. If, as has been claimed, later restorers had repeatedly applied glues, those glues would inevitably have been brushed into the pre-existing cracks. Wilson, who tested the depth of the cracks with a penknife, saw that none had been. Artists like Wilson appreciate that it is impossible to paint over a cracked surface without working the material into the cracks. Wilson was left in no doubt: having been applied when the ceiling was new and not-yet-cracked, these surface glue paints could only have been Michelangelo’s own work, his finishing stages, his l’ultima mano. Normally, restorers recognise that when varnishes or paints can be shown to have run into age-cracked materials this can be taken as a proof of their more recent origins. On this occasion, the restorers failed to recognise the implications of the converse.
The Vulnerability of Michelangelo’s Glue Painting
Moreover, this original secco work, Wilson appreciated, was water-sensitive, having been damaged when “washed by labouring men with water in which a caustic has been mixed”. As to when the alleged restorers’ glue-varnishes might plausibly have been applied, no evidence was forthcoming. In 1996 Colalucci said that although “countless attempts at cleaning and restoration seem to have been made”, only “four are actually accounted for”. The four are of 1566, 1824-25, 1904 and 1935-36. As we showed in our post of 1 April 2011, that first restoration itself provided the clearest possible evidence of Michelangelo having painted shadows a secco. That evidence, taken together with the copies of the ceiling discussed opposite should have been an end to the matter. The last two restorations cited by Colalucci coincide with photographic records and these, too, offer no support for the claimed superimpositions of secco painting and glue-varnishes by restorers.
Perplexed by the Vatican’s unwavering but evidently unsupported insistence that the ceiling had repeatedly been coated with glue “varnishes”, I asked in May 1990: “Does any documentary evidence exist to support the claim that hot animal glue was repeatedly applied to the frescoes over the centuries in order to revive the colours?” Colalucci replied that there was none. In 1986 he had reported a note in a manuscript which described how the ceiling had once been cleaned with linen rags and bread “scrubbing hard, and sometimes when the dirt was more tenacious, the bread was moistened a little” but added “That is as much as it says. The note does not mention at all the use of substances to revive colours or of glue varnish.” (See “Art Restoration”, pp. 74-78.) If, as Wilson discovered, the secco painting dissolved at the touch of a wet finger, an earlier hard scrubbing with wet rags or bread would certainly have been sufficient to cause the injuries that Wilson and others had reported to parts of the ceiling.
A Filmed Corroboration of Wilson’s Testimony
Wilson’s appraisal was echoed from another scaffold a century later. In 1967 the art critic and writer Alexander Eliot and his wife Jane Winslow Eliot spent over 500 hours making a close-up documentary film of the ceiling, “The Secret of Michelangelo, Every Man’s Dream”. Alexander Eliot reported in the April 1987 Harvard Review how “with the exception of the previously restored Prophet Zachariah, almost everything we saw on the barrel vault clearly came from Michelangelo’s own inspired hand. There are passages of the finest, most delicately incisive draughtsmanship imaginable. Michelangelo’s loving depiction of fingernails, eyelids and tiny wrinkles stand in contrast to tremendous swirls of colour…” On 20 May 1985 Eliot had pleaded with the Vatican’s Secretary of State for him to view the Vatican’s own copy of the Eliots’ film and to “have it stopped at the images of the Ancestors [on the lunettes]. Compare what it proves was there against what’s left today”. That precious, now historical, record still awaits a re-showing.
Venanzo Crocetti’s Protests Against the Restoration – as a Sculptor and as a Former Restorer in the Sistine Chapel
In 1989 the sculptor Venanzo Crocetti, who had spent “four full years” working during the 1930s as an apprentice restorer on the scaffold, published three photo-comparisons of the cleaned lunettes in an article in the December Oggi e Domani (“Salviamo Almeno il Giudizio Universale”) – see Fig. 28. Crocetti’s account was detailed and technically informed. He began by explaining how he had appealed unavailingly in 1983 to the director general of the Vatican Museums, Prof. Carlo Pietrangeli, to desist from incurring the “rapid biological degradation caused by the cleaning power” of AB 57. Crocetti flatly dismissed claims that the glues had been applied by restorers. He also testified that as early as 1983 applications of AB 57 had been standardised at 3 minutes each, regardless of local conditions (see below). He complained of the folly of cleaning aggressively in small patches, zones that had originally been made with very broad applications. These glue-paint applications, he noted, had been made chiefly in the shaded parts of the figures and to such artistically selective purpose that Michelangelo’s authorship was beyond question. As a (formerly) supreme case in point, see Fig. 1.
The Effects of the Double Applications of AB 57
Crocetti’s testimony on the AB 57 cleaning method then being used on Michelangelo was particularly damning. He noted that while the first 3 minutes long application left the frescoes looking cleaner, the second on the following day, left them with altered and considerably degraded colours. He believed that the first applications effectively “degreased” the surfaces leaving them open to greater penetration by the second applications. He was convinced that the immediately apparent visual effects of these twin applications would not be their final outcome. He argued that their corrosive actions would continue because of the absorption of the solvents to a depth of half a centimetre. Some days after the second applications he noticed (from the scaffold itself) the appearance of “whitish oxidations of variable intensity” over large zones.
He considered the restorers’ claimed discovery of “stratifications of dirt gathered on the frescoes over the centuries” exaggerated and misleading, and he held that the early photographs of the lunettes by Anderson made the extent of this exaggeration clear – see Fig. 28. He believed that the ferocity of AB 57 made any finely tuned cleaning gradated to meet local conditions impossible. He believed that the greatest injury was to the chief feature of the frescoes – their disposition of lights and shades, and not their local colours. He believed that the restorers, in their pursuit of more intense colours, had penetrated the frescoes to their brighter, less modulated preparative layers. He felt confident that he had seen at first-hand how, with “cleaning”, the figures in the lunettes had been remade, becoming “false in form and colour” alike. He saw that many of the shadows from which the figures had formerly emerged had simply disappeared. He saw that corrections which Michelangelo had, with mastery, made invisible, had been exposed (in particular, see Figs. 11-16). Above all, he confirmed that the condition of the frescoes remained “excellent”, and that this was in part due to the absorption over the centuries of greasy substances of chapel smoke which had “strengthened the colour. Leaving upon it a glittering shift of the lightest varnish [thereby counterbalancing] the aridity and fragility” of old fresco. Having worked on the restoration in the 1930s, he found himself near to despair.
The Invasive Ferocity and Likely Legacy of AB 57
The AB 57 water-based paste used to remove Michelangelo’s size painting contained two “caustics”: sodium bicarbonate and ammonium bicarbonate. Professor Frommel had questioned the method of application: “Who knows if they succeed in cleaning this completely away? No one can prove whether or not it will affect the frescoes in the future. No one can say definitely if they get all of it off.” Consider Colalucci’s own account of the method of application:
“The times of application, rigorously measured, were: First application: 3 minutes, followed by removal, washing with water. Left to dry for 24 hours. Second application: 3 minutes, followed by removal, washing and leaving to dry as before. If necessary, and locally only, small applications, followed by plentiful final washing. In the case of salt efflorescences consisting of calcium carbonate, there was added to the solvent mixture a saturated solution of dimethylformamide…”
Chemically Adjusting Michelangelo’s Colours
AB 57, a calcium dissolving solvent, was thus used to remove organic materials with an oven-cleaner like ferocity and speed even though many experts held those very materials to comprise authentic Michelangelo work. Contrary to assurances otherwise, the aesthetic consequences of this stripping extended, as Crocetti had observed at first hand, into the very fabric of the exposed fresco surfaces. This was a serious matter. The Vatican’s research chemist, Nazzareno Gabrielli had explained that AB 57 contained two separate salts because while “Ammonium Carbonate alone tends to tone down colours…sodium carbonate livens them up”. The Moras’ combination, he judged, had “the proper chromatic effect”. So far as we know, it was never explained by what means the “proper” combination for Michelangelo might have been established.
Juggling with dangerous chemicals and processes constitutes professional chic in some restoration quarters. Restorers often claim that a dangerous chemical in “safe hands” is better than a mild one in “untrained hands”. When restorers speak among themselves, the professional conceits are more evident. The IIC Bulletin carried an obituary on Paolo Mora who died on 27 March 1998. He had studied under Mauro Pelliccioli, who restored Leonardo’s Last Supper, and, reportedly, was fond of claiming that he could clean a picture with a broom and drugstore chemicals. When he found himself too busy to clean a large Bellini altarpiece, Pelliccioli enlisted two students and showed them how to dissolve rods of caustic soda in water. He demonstrated his cleaning technique by sweeping a swab of soda over the picture with one hand followed immediately by a “neutralising” swipe with a turpentine swab with the other. Thus enlightened, the students were said to have “cleaned the large painting in a single day”.
The AB 57 Rinse-Water Menace
Aside from exposing the stripped fresco surfaces to the Chapel’s notoriously polluted atmosphere, yet other risks were taken in pursuit of brighter colours. Removing the water-based solvent gel with copious amounts of washing risked, as Frommel feared and Crocetti had observed, depositing corrosive ingredients within the frescoes. The “highly soluble” ingredients were said to have been selected because “they are easy to wash off”. It was certainly desirable that they should be so: carboxymethyl cellulose is known to encourage sodium retention; ‘Desogen’, being a detergent as well as fungicide, is non-volatile and does not evaporate. The Moras had conceded that these ingredients have “the disadvantage of remaining in the painting unless removed after treatment by rinsing with water”.
There are problems with washing, however. First, the rinse water was absorbed deeply into the porous fresco and with it, inevitably, particles of soluble and corrosive ingredients. Twenty four hours were needed for the water to evaporate before a second application of AB 57 could be applied. Second, tap water may contain solutions of sodium, iron, copper, and chloride, and unless it is packed with sufficient calcium bicarbonate, will itself attack the calcium carbonate of fresco. Even distilled water (which is free of impurities) slowly dissolves calcium carbonate and attacks the frescoes’ structure. When challenged in 1991 on having introduced dangerous materials into the frescoes, Colalucci replied: “AB 57…has been greatly tested and is very old. The actual solvent is held within a gel which does not allow the particles of the actual solvent to penetrate the plaster and the colour. However, the gel is removed and only a minimal (if any) percentage might remain which has no influence on the colours.” In 1986 Colalucci disclosed that, at that date “The work was concluded with abundant rinsing, repeated at intervals of up to several months” and that only “The last rinsing was done with distilled water”. Much copious washing was thus carried out with tap water.
Mirella Simonetti on Dangerous Deposits and their Air-Borne Allies
Far from having “no influence”, experts expressly feared that residues deposited within the frescoes by rinsing would react with airborne pollutants and moisture. The restorer Mirella Simonetti held one of AB57’s ingredients, bicarbonate of soda, to be an “extremely damaging” residue because, when combined with the sulphates of calcium and air-borne sulphuric anhydrites, it produces sodium sulphate – a whitish dust which corrodes the fresco and destroys its coloured surface. Simonetti also maintained that the use of EDTA (ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid) within the solvent gel had chemically altered the fresco by causing a “breakdown in the molecular structure [and] bringing about a disintegration [which] in turn causes the division of the components and the discohesion of the lime.” Once weakened in this fashion, the disintegration would continue – and “even water can favour such a process”. Simonetti’s alarm was later vindicated when, tests showed that the compound’s corrosive properties etched the surface of marble into irregular corrugations, scattering light and imparting a deceiving effect of brightness that provided more routes of ingress to airborne pollutants.
Fresco Painting and Its Known Enemies
It had long been recognised that air-borne sulphur attacks fresco. In 1884 the reverend J. A. Rivington explained in a paper delivered at the Society of Arts in London how air contaminated by coal and gas emissions destroys fresco: “The carbonate of lime is converted into the sulphate, breaking up the paint and becoming itself disintegrated in the process of change.” The notoriously contaminated air surrounding and invading the Sistine chapel contains sulphur dioxide from coal-burning, nitrous oxides from car exhausts and hydrogen chloride from incinerated plastics. When combined with rain or condensed water these substances produce sulphuric, nitric and hydrochloric acids respectively, all fiercely corrosive. Water is brought into the Chapel by tourists in the form of perspiration and breathing vapour while breathing itself gives off carbon dioxide.
On 12 December 2012, Corriere della Sera reported: “‘Dust, temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide are the great enemies of paintings’, Museum Director Antonio Paolucci told reporters in the Vatican, ‘so this threat is something we have to address. The five million tourists who visit the Sistine Chapel each year bring massive amounts of grime and humidity with them, and it is seriously damaging Michelangelo’s frescoes. So starting in the middle of 2013, every tourist will be thoroughly vacuumed, dusted, cleaned, and chilled before admission to reduce the amount of environmental pollution they cause. ‘On entering the chapel, each tourist will be required to pass through a hi-tech vacuum system to remove dust, fibres, skin flakes, hair and other tiny particles, before they are allowed to view the frescoes. At the same time, a special carpet will also clean their shoes, while side vacuums will cool their temperature, to reduce the heat and humidity that emanates from their bodies. The dirt and heat generated by the 20,000 bodies each day has caused grime to accumulate on the paintings, and a thick layer of dirt had to be scrubbed off of the Last Judgment two years ago. This cannot be allowed to happen again.’”
What Goes Round, Comes Round
We have been there before. In “Art Restoration” in 1993 we wrote: “A recent report commissioned by the Vatican on the Chapel’s microclimate noted that the very large numbers of tourists produce the following adverse effects: they carry in from the streets polluted dust and organic particles on their clothing and hair; their combined body heat raises the temperature by as much as 5°C; and they greatly increase the relative humidity of the air. The moisture and carbon dioxide given off by tourists combines to produce carbonic acid which dissolves the calcium carbonate of the fresco. Water vapours convert sulphur particles into sulphuric acid which also dissolves fresco. The body heat creates convective air currents which carry polluted particles up to the walls and ceilings. Water vapour can activate the traces of salt and detergent left behind after the cleaning with AB57.”
In 1981 Colalucci had equated the glue/size paints with “extraneous chemical substances” without which “and with the science we have today” he hoped “the frescoes will remain in good condition for a very long time”. As mentioned, he offered an assurance that he had left “a very thin film of dirt touching the paint surface with its varying ‘patina’. This fine layer of dirt acts as a form of protection to the paint.” As also mentioned, we now know that whatever Colalucci might have left behind performed no such service, and that dirt on frescoes is no protection from further accumulations of corrosive dirt.
There have been many unfounded assurances. In 1987 Kathleen Weil Garris Brandt, Professor of Fine Arts, at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, and spokeswoman for the Vatican on the restoration of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes, assured readers in Apollo that, “The substances used for the cleaning…have been used successfully for over twenty years… their chemical action is known and stops once the process is finished…the cleaning chemicals do not actually come into contact with the fresco surface”. Just months before in the Summer 1987 Art News, Summer 1987, the Moras themselves had claimed no more than that placing the solvents in a cellulose gel helped to “reduce penetration into the fresco”. In the summer 1987 Art News, the assurances were becoming more specific. M. Kirby Talley Jr., an independent consultant in fine art, interiors and art conservation, wrote:
“In order to prevent the condensation of moisture on the surface of the fresco, the Vatican has already embarked on an extensive programme to control the micro-climate of the Sistine Chapel. Professor Camuffo of the University of Padua spent a year making detailed measurements of relative humidity, temperature and air movement. A climate-control system based on his findings, which will prevent the movement of air above the windows as well as filter it, is now being developed by Carrier-Delchi. Electrical heating coils, ‘A sort of giant electrical blanket,’ as Persegati called it, will be placed under the roof above the ceiling, and will help to maintain a steady temperature during the winter. A dirt absorbing carpet has already been installed on the stairs down to the chapel and on part of the floor inside. Carrier-Delchi is considering a wind shower to remove dust particles from people’s clothing before they enter the chapel. Low heat lamps that can be adjusted to the amount of natural light entering through the windows will further reduce the temperature.”
Synthetic Resins – On or Off?
Talley Jr. reported that Colalucci had assured him that Michelangelo had used no secco paint on the lunettes, and that while the synthetic resin B 72 had been used to seal the walls of the lunettes it had not been used to that purpose on the ceiling. Even the official apologias for B 72 were more disturbing than reassuring: “Like all restoration materials it has its good and its bad points”, Talley said. Frommel was quoted as saying “According to the critics B 72 is something which may become opaque in the future. Are the critics right when they say we don’t know what it will do? They say tests should have been made and then a long period of time should have been allowed to elapse before proceeding. Paraloid can close the surface to respiration. It can close the pores, and if that were to happen it might change the interior life of the fresco.” To this Talley gave voice to B 72’s champions. According to the Moras “If you don’t use Paraloid, what do you use? Organic resins and inorganic fixatives such as lime water, ethysilicates and barium hydroxide all have serious drawbacks. Of the synthetic resins the acrylics are the best, and of the acrylics Paraloid is the least bad.” Was the least bad, good enough for Michelangelo – and better than his own secco painting which had for centuries protected the fresco surfaces from airborne pollutants?
On this question, the Vatican’s accounts prove unsatisfactory and shifting. All that can be said safely is that B 72 was abandoned and not replaced at some point between 1986 and 1991, at which latter date Colaucci claimed “There was no final application to protect or saturate the painting”. This change of mind was defended in 1991: “Our decision not to apply a protective material derived from the awareness that any new material which is not homogeneous with the original components of the fresco will undergo rapid degradation, causing, in the best of cases, aesthetic damage.” This being so, we must expect some parts of the frescoes to deteriorate more rapidly than others – but how many? In 1991 Colaucci put B 72 applications at “lunettes 50 per cent, ceiling 3 per cent”. In 1993 (“Art Restoration” p. 120) we had noted that while protection of the frescoes was to depend on the thin layer of original dirt that Colalucci claimed to have left in place and on the above described plans to stabilise and purify the chapel’s microclimate: “When Michael Daley asked if the air-conditioning system would eliminate the great fluctuations triggered by tourists, he [Mancinelli] replied ‘No. It will reduce the peaks and the troughs but will not eliminate the problem entirely.’” Of course, at that date, as today, the problems could have been halved by halving the numbers of tourists. Then, as perhaps still is the case, on days when the Chapel was closed to visitors, visitor numbers to the Vatican museums fell by 60 per cent.
The Breach of Methodological Good Practice that Menaced Michelangelo’s Shading
In the execution of the cleaning, certain procedural lapses compounded the risks and dangers. Early in the programme (in 1981 when working on the lunettes), Colalucci had said that AB 57: “was created mainly for marble but the Moras experimented with it on fresco. It is like paste. It can be on for a minute or ten minutes. The effect varies with the amount of time it spends in contact with a surface. The danger is that if you leave it on a minute or two too long it will go beyond the foreign substances and start removing the paint. You can see little areas where I’ve applied AB57 in two or three stages. Each time I take it off well before it’s too late. Then I look at it and gauge how much more time it will need…Here’s a tiny patch where I left it on too long. In this little experimental patch you see completely solid violet paint, but around it you can see the gradations of dark and light, which are the shadings of Michelangelo’s own work.”
Why, then, were the varying thicknesses of the (mis-designated) “foreign and extraneous substances” all given identical applications of two three minutes-long applications set twenty-four hours apart? Such an uniform treatment of so vast and varying a programme of painting seemed to breach conservation’s own ethics and “good practice”. As we had reported in “Art Restoration”:
“Within four years, Colalucci had abandoned this control of the solvent by constant observation and timing. In its place a standardized procedure was adopted, described in the 1986 ‘General Report on the Lunettes’: ‘First application, three minutes followed by removal and washing with water. Left to dry for 24 hours. Second application, three minutes followed by washing and leaving to dry as before’. These three-minute applications were said to have been ‘rigorously measured’. Colalucci explained the reason for the change of procedure: the size of the ceiling required that work be carried out by a team. Individual restorers, responding to the evidence of their own eyes, would draw different conclusions. Therefore, in order to obtain a ‘homogeneity of result’ – a ‘primary objective’ – they must be denied the opportunity to judge for themselves how long the solvent should remain in place. Solvent applications had to be predetermined, Colalucci felt, in order to avoid ‘either emotional involvement or complex mechanical manipulation on the part of the restorers’. When asked in 1985 at the Wethersfield Conference in New York why he did not adjust the timing to what his eyes were witnessing, he replied: ‘Because emotional or subjective conditions must not be permitted to intrude upon science.’ The scaffold, he added, did not permit stepping back to assess effects and the continuous bright lights of the Japanese film-makers ‘fatigued one’s eyes’. The activity of the film crews was itself a distraction as was also his having to entertain up to sixteen VIP visitors a day…” See Figs. 34 and 35.
Conservation Ethics and Showbiz Restorations
The inventors of AB57 held that cleaning should never be considered “entirely a technical matter…confined merely to the choice of solvent”. The restorer’s responsibility for the control of the solvent’s actions is absolute and should never be left to “depend on the natural uncontrolled action of the products” and must always depend on “the precise wish and aim of the restorer guided by his critical interpretation”. By failing to exercise control at all times, the restorer “deprives himself of the principal alarm signal when faced with new situations; he gives up looking ahead and allows the problem to resolve itself mechanically so that subsequently he can impose the result as an accomplished fact.”
By test-driving a new cleaning agent under television studio conditions in a constricted, over-crowded and art-politically febrile space, the Vatican restorers pioneered a new professional genre: conservation as both entertainment and professional swank. The combination of the Nippon Television Corporation sponsored showbiz and a provocatively radical restoration drew many protests. This spawned intensely propagandistic promotional razzmatazz, the unprecedented scale and character of which will be examined in Part III.
“The activity of restoration can be defined in terms of two overlapping headings, procedure and method. Procedure is fixed and invariable, and consists in the scientific planning and execution of the restoration project, regardless of the material involved. Method, however, is the department strictly of the action taken in the course of the restoration, and is therefore variable, subject to factors arising from the material, technique and state of conservation of the monument involved. “The adoption of a procedure which governs the progress of the work is characteristic of modern restoration. Under the impetus of a marked development in technological expertise, modern restoration has extended its established and primary function of conservation for aesthetic ends to include a research capacity, directed towards the work of art considered as an inseparable duality, conceptual and material. “In the past restoration practice aimed at cancelling out the effects of time and events upon the work of art, termed by Brandi comprehensively its historical aspect, absolute priority was given to its aesthetic aspect, conditioned of course by its contingent situation. The restoration of works of art was therefore entrusted to artists, who were free to introduce personal methods, often secret or private, consistent with the aim of returning the work to its pristine material state, but not necessarily to its original intended state. “In the evolution of the ‘art’ of restoration, the laboratory for the Restoration of Pictures in the Vatican Museums has had a not insignificant role. Founded in 1992 by Biagio Biagetti according to the latest ideas, and subsequently provided with a Laboratory for Scientific Research, the institute is today directed by by Carlo Pietrangeli who in 1978 established its guidlines in Rules for the restoration of works of art. “In June 1980 this laboratory, constitutionally responsible for the restoration of the pictorial patrimony of the Holy See, qualified and informed by its enormous experience, which goes back more than 50 years and has been constantly renewed both technically and in terms of personnel, undertook the most important task it had yet undertaken in its history, the restoration of the frescoes of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel…” ~ Gianluigi Colalucci, “Michelangelo’s Colours Rediscovered”, “The Sistine Chapel – Michelangelo Rediscovered”, London, 1986.
“The restoration of Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel was a venture that shook the very foundations of the art world more than any other single event has managed to do in the last quarter of a century. “Promoted and conducted with rigorously conservative objectives, over the course of its execution the restoration program assumed an ever-growing significance in historical and critical terms – an importance that was foretold when the first patches were cleaned and was fully confirmed by the restoration of the Eleazar-Mathan lunette.” ~ Gianluigi Colalucci, “Michelangelo The Vatican Frescoes”, by Pierluigi de Vecchi and Gianluigi Colalucci, 1996.
“…The intuition that the colours must have been quite different from those that could be seen can be found sporadically in the writings of the more perceptive scholars of Michelangelo, from [Charles Heath] Wilson to Biagetti and Wilde. But clear and conclusive evidence of the original colours was established for the first time in recent times by the extraordinary photographs of the Japanese photographer Takashi Okamura, taken just before the restoration and published in a book of 1980, unfortunately in a small limited edition and now not widely seen. The eye of the camera, in itself much more acute than the human eye, and aided by much stronger light than is usually available in the Chapel, revealed beneath the dirt and deteriorated glue-varnish the tangible existence of of what the restoration today is gradually retrieving. “Although the book with Okamura’s photographs and the restoration that is now proceeding came about independently and for different reasons, the two are complementary, and Okamura’s book is today a valuable record of what for centuries had masked the true nature of Michelangelo’s painting; if the cleaning had not gone ahead, it would have been the sole means by which to achieve a proper or effective analysis of his work…” ~ Fabrizio Mancinelli, “Michelangelo at Work”, “The Sistine Chapel Michelangelo rediscovered”, London, 1986.
Above, (top) Fig. 1: Michelangelo’s Libyan Sibyl, detail.
Above, Fig. 2: Michelangelo’s Moses.
Evaluating restorations (or attributions) requires a clear appreciation of an artist’s most secure works and characteristics. Michelangelo’s phenomenally potent carved figures, such as his Moses (above), found parallel realisation in the figures he was compelled to paint on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, such as the Libyan Sibyl shown at Fig. 1 and below. In the reproduction of his Moses at Fig. 2, we see how (natural or artificial) light and shadows are trapped/made by the architectural projections. Within the constraining rectilinear spaces set by the architecture, the figure’s own component parts move and shift against one another so as to produce planar and volumetric dynamism and expressive anatomical torsion.
MICHELANGELO’S USE OF DRAPERY
The not-naturalistic drapery in the Moses complements and enhances the body’s deportment with its own autonomously animated structures and vitalising rhythms. The deeply undercut, shadow-producing drapery over Moses’s left thigh had found direct pictorial anticipations on the ceiling in the Libyan and Erythraean sibyls shown here. Michelangelo had discovered, as Leonardo had taunted, that a painter controls his own lighting and can (like an etcher) submit it to his own singular will, darkening here, highlighting there, shaping and moulding matter with form-describing tonal values and relationships. In Fig. 1, which is a fragment of a coloured painting reproduced in greyscale, we “see” a piece of sculpture – or strictly speaking, a sculpturally conceived figure that happens not have been made but was depicted pictorially with an imagined optimal lighting so as to render its forms with the fullest sculptural lucidity and force. Such was Michelangelo’s genius in these matters that the fragment from his Libyan Sybil might be thought the creative equal of a fragment of the Parthenon’s carved frieze.
SPOT THE ODD ONE OUT:
Above, Figs. 3, 4 and 5.
Fig. 3 (above, top) is a fragment of the Libyan Sibyl’s drapery before restoration. Fig. 4 (above, middle) is the same fragment after restoration. Fig. 5 (above) is a fragment of an engraved copy of the Libyan Sibyl made in 1797 by a fine (Flaxmanesque) engraver, Tommaso Piroli.
Of the three images, the first is by Michelangelo as found before the last restoration. The second is the same fragment of the figure as it emerged after the last restoration. The third is the corresponding fragment of a copy showing the figure as it had survived for nearly three hundred years. We hold that the differences between the first and the second states constitute evidence of injury, and claim support for this reading in the third image here and in the images at Figs. 6, 7 and 8. As further corroboration, we show below how, in the wake of the restorations of the 1980s and 1990s, many similarly injured passages can be found throughout the ceiling. The painting contained in the first image (at Fig. 3) had never been challenged or doubted as part of an entirely autograph work of Michelangelo. Never challenged, that is, until the beginning of the last restoration when the Vatican’s restorers advanced a claim that this figure, and all others on the ceiling, had been so deformed by dirt and successive layers of restorers’ varnishes as to constitute a corrupted and misleading Michelangelo. The true Michelangelo, it was contended, lay unrecognisably different under alien material accretions which, with the help of some very powerful chemicals-in-a-gel, would be dispersed – even though the resulting change of appearance in the paintings would in turn require that everything previously thought about the artist be overturned. Tragically, the Vatican authorities permitted this hubristic, artistically perverse and historically unsupported programme to proceed. That which had survived for nearly five hundred years in Fig. 1, was turned after two three minutes long chemical dousings into Fig. 2.
THE CHANGED CHARACTER OF THE DRAPERY
The pre-restored image showed drapery that was boldy massed, purposefully shaded and satisfyingly sculptural in its volumetric descriptions and compositional fluency. To educated eyes, its then appearance could only have been a product of artistry. It could not have been an accidental by-product of random accumulations of unequally disfigured accretions, as has been claimed in defence of all the restoration changes. The pre-restoration state, as is shown above, bore too close a family relation to Michelangelo’s carved sculptural forms for its authorship ever to have been in question. By comparison, the post-restoration image is weaker; its forms smaller; its tones consistently lighter. The surviving tonal modelling is more local to each piece of material, less broadly unified across incidents. It is thus weakening to the previously strong overall sculptural effects, spatially ambiguous, and more akin to shallow relief than free-standing sculpture. There is no historical corroboration for today’s appearance – it appears in no copies. All of which raises the question: “Why was the very design of Michelangelo’s work changed by this removal of a piece of drapery?”.
THE LOST SECTION OF DRAPERY
The large fold of drapery that hangs from the lower left leg no longer sweeps down gracefully from below the knee, as seen if Figs. 3 and 5, but emerges abruptly and uncomfortably at the shin. On stylistic grounds alone, the removed material cannot be said to have been an addition made by some other person, let alone by accretions. This section of pre-restoration drapery was entirely, seamlessly of a piece, and served a clear compositional purpose.
Above, Fig. 6. The Libyan Sibyl, as copied in 1797 by Tommaso Piroli. As well as giving the clearest account of the not-yet truncated drapery hanging from the left leg, Piroli (an engraver of antiquities) provides an elegant shorthand account of Michelangelo’s three principal zones of dark tone. The first, at the bottom between the legs, differentiates their positions in space vis-a-vis the viewer: the side of the more distant leg misses the strong light source (as indicated by its emphatically cast shadow) and is therefore optically subordinated by darkened tones. The arms and torso are relieved by dark tone over the drapery hanging from the table. The curving sweep of drapery on the right begins brightly at the top, as if caught by the light. This area of brightness relieves the darker shaded side of the arms and torso. It then darkens as it passes close to the Sibyl’s body before lightening again as it moves froward into the light that catches the left leg and foot.
Above, Figs 7 and 8: Two states of an anonymous 16th-century engraving.
Although the author of this copy (published in “La Sistina Riprododotta”, 1991, and here reversed) was not as fluent a draughtsman as Piroli, and took liberties with the architecture, on the two crucial issues of the right foot’s cast shadow and the shape and the extent of the hanging drapery at the raised left leg, the copy is entirely consistent with the later artist’s testimony. Thus, just as with Piroli two centuries later, we see that the drapery emerged below the knee and at an acute angle. It did not, as today, burst into view abruptly at a right angle from behind the shin, as left by the restorers. We can rule out the possibility that a change might have been made to Michelangelo’s drapery by a restorer even before this 16th-century engraving was made. The restorer known to have been called in during the 16th-century – Domenico Carnevale – did so in 1566. He made five repairs in total and all were made in buon fresco, not a secco. He did no work on the Libyan Sibyl. Thus, only Michelangelo could have amended his own buon fresco work on the Libyan Sibyl’s drapery with a secco painting – just as he can be seen to have done on the sybil’s right foot…which can also be seen to have been injured in the last restoration, at Figs. 11, 12 and 13.
Above, Figs. 9 and 10. The legs of the Libyan Sibyl, as published in 1990 (left) and in the post-restoration state in 1992 (right). In Fig. 9 we see how before restoration the former design of the hanging drapery helped create a compositionally mediating, “fanning” movement between the position of the two legs, as had been recorded in the 16th and 18th-century copies shown above. Both copies show that, as before restoration, the wedge-shaped piece of hanging drapery ran into the shadowed zone that served to push back the right leg and give greater prominence the left leg.
THE MANGLED FOOT AND ITS DISAPPEARED SHADOW
Above, Figs. 11, 12 and 13.
This sequence records many alterations made in the Libyan Sybil’s right foot: before cleaning (top); after cleaning (middle); and after repainting (bottom). In fig. 11 we see a mini fanning movement in the three short dark accented folds at the ankle of the sybil’s right foot which have melted away in Fig. 12. We see also in Fig. 11 examples of what Alexander Eliot described as “Michelangelo’s loving depiction of fingernails, eyelids and tiny wrinkles”. Once again, Michelangelo’s habit of placing a dark shadow beind the lit edge of a form and a light ground behind its shaded side was evident here in his treatment of the strategically dramatic arched foot.
UNDOING AND (PARTIAL) REDOING
This sequence also comprises a tacit acknowlegement of error on the part of the restorers. Evidence is here present not just of the loss of the foot’s cast shadow (as also with the Jonah below) but even of its anatomical credibility. Michelangelo had repositioned this foot, scraping away one part and adding another. The cleaning undid this revision, and thereby produced (uniquely in Michelangelo’s oeuvre) a human heel that was not rounded but that came to a point, as in Fig. 12. We questioned this transformation (and that of the Erythraean Sibyl’s right foot, shown below) to Fabrizio Mancinelli, the co-director of the restoration, when he gave a talk on the restoration at the Courtauld Institute, London. Later, on visiting the Chapel we discovered that the heel had become rounded again if not entirely whole, as seen at Fig. 13. Clearly, if the repainted addition is now correct, it should never have been removed in the first place.
Above, Fig. 14: An article in The Independent of 22 November 1991, which first showed the Erythraean Sibyl’s right foot as it emerged after restoration.
Above, Figs. 15 and 16: The Erythraean Sibyl’s right foot before cleaning (left) and after cleaning and restoration (right). Note, in addition to the mangled foot, the changes made to the forms and the colours of the drapery. We assume that no one believes that the foot today is as Michelangelo intended it to be left. We have found deafening the collective silence of art historians and art critics on this grotesque blunder. Perhaps some think that such sacrifices of authentic painting are a price worth paying to get at brighter colours?
Above, Fig. 17: The Libyan Sibyl and the Prophet Daniel, before restoration
Note how effectively Michelangelo had simulated monumental figures set within palpable architecturally bounded spaces. On the left, we see the Libyan Sibyl (discussed further below) and the Prophet Daniel. Note particularly with what force the drapery over Daniel’s right shoulder cascades and twists, and how emphatically it captures a deep dark shadow next to his right side.
Above, Figs. 18 and 19: The Prophet Daniel, before restoration (left) and after restoration (right).
In this pairing, we see one of most massive destructions of a Michelangelo a secco revision. Once again, corroboration of the pre-restoration state – and disqualification of the post-restoration state – is found in early copies of the figure, as shown below.
Above, Figs. 20 and 21. Engraved copies of the Prophet Daniel.
These two copies made in the 1790s by artists working in very different graphic styles (in tones in the case of Giovanni Volpato, left, and with lines with Tommaso Piroli, right) both testify to the then survival of Michelangelo’s unprecedented pictorial chiaroscuro – his emphatic placement of lights against darks which had so struck and thrilled his contemporaries.
When we first reminded the restoration’s supporters of Michelangelo’s original pictorial schema and drew attention to the corroborating copies, Nicholas Penny, for one, rushed to be dismissive, saying of the copies that “none of them support the claim Daley makes”, and added, “I am surprised to hear that the ceiling was ‘praised precisely for its unprecedented chiaroscuro’.” In the 11 February 1993 London Review of Books Dr Penny had recited the then Standard Defence For The Restoration:
“Study of the ceiling now that it has been cleaned tends to distance Michelangelo from the art of recent centuries – and from the work of artists who were inspired by the ceiling – and reveal a far closer connection with the dazzling colours favoured by artists in his immediate following and also evident in some of the better preserved 15th-century panel paintings.”
The operative words were “now that it has been cleaned”. While it is true that Michelangelo’s biographers had suffered the handicap of having to respond to the ceiling when it was freshly painted and not yet “cleaned”, it was remiss of Penny not to have noticed that none of Michelangelo’s contemporaries had spoken of dazzling colours or likened his great fresco cycle to 15th-century panel paintings. The truth is that Michelangelo had shown his figures and his fictive architecture as if placed in a brilliant “cinematographer’s” light – why else, how else, could so many of his feet have originally sported such dramatically cast shadows on the ceiling’s illusionistic mini projected “floors”, and so many of his figures have cast such dramatic shadows onto the walls?
EVEN GOD WAS AT RISK FROM THE CLEANERS
Above, Figs. 22 and 23: God (detail) in Michelangelo’s panel showing the bestowing of life upon Adam, before cleaning (top), after cleaning (above).
If old pictures were simply being cleaned and not injured, their ranges of tonal values would be extended and not diminished, as seen here. For example, in the bottom left-hand corner what was graduated, nuanced, modelled, has become uniform, flatter, more “on the surface”. The ridges of drapery which formerly wrapped round the shoulder, now break off short. The folds themselves have become simpler in drawing, less expressive in shading. Lines of under-drawing emerge more strongly, while crisp tonal demarcations blur. Individual hairs get lost. If Michelangelo really had left his painting as in this “cleaned” state, what might have improved the drawing and modelling to the degree seen in the uncleaned state through all the (alleged) foreign accretions and filth?
Above, Fig. 24. This pre-restoration photograph shows the crucial junction between the Last Judgement and the ceiling. The zone contains some of Michelangelo’s most brilliant figural inventions, of which the commanding central Jonah earned the greatest admiration when the ceiling was unveiled. Note the general dispositions of tonality, the relative lightness of the illusionistic compartmentalising architectural elements, and the then legibility of the shadow cast by Jonah’s left foot – which foot, curiously, touches the same architectural arch as the foot of the Libyan Sibyl, above and to the right of Jonah.
Above, Fig. 25: Jonah’s left foot, before cleaning (left), and after cleaning (right).
While no one enthused over Michelangelo’s colours, everyone marvelled at his unprecedented use of light and shade on the ceiling. Among them, Condivi thought the Jonah the “most admirable of all…because contrary to the curve of the vault and owing to the play of light and shadow, the torso which is foreshortened backward is in the part nearest the eye, and the legs which project forward are in the part which is farthest.” Vasari asked: “Then who is not filled with admiration and amazement at the awesome sight of Jonah…The vaulting naturally springs forward, following the curve of the masonry; but through the force of art it is apparently straightened out by the figure of Jonah, which bends in the opposite direction; and vanquished by the art of design, with its lights and its shades, the ceiling even appears to recede.” [Emphases added.] Note carefully what was being said at the time: by his drawing and his use of lights and darks, Michelangelo had made surfaces which were actually advancing towards the viewer seem to recede. What was not said, pace Mancinelli, was that Michelangelo’s colours had been used “pure” and that, as such, they had played “a primary structural role”. No authority then existed for the restorers’ recent trading of those impeccably accredited lights and darks for today’s heightened colours.
Above, Fig. 26. Four copies of Jonah, as published in “Art Restoration: The Culture, the Business and the Scandal” in 1993.
Most certainly, no authority existed for removing the shadow cast by Jonah’s foot. Countless copies over the centuries had recorded it. Giulio Clovio, in his copy shown here in the top left-hand corner, also recorded (in the bottom corners) parts of two lunettes that Michelangelo had painted before 1512 but destroyed before 1536 to prepare a continuous surface for the Last Judgement.
Above, Fig. 27: A 19th century engraved copy of a now lost drawn record of the two sacrificed lunettes. The copy of a copy of the sacrificed lunettes shows precisely “the kind of suggestive painting by shadows for which Michelangelo was admired until a few years ago”. Its testimony specifically contradicts the restorers’ claim that the suggestive painting was “essentially the product of candle smoke and still more of glue varnishes applied possibly even before the 18th century.” The dramatic shading in this record captures the decisively drawn shadow at Jonah’s left foot, as glimpsed at the top left. Fabrizio Mancinelli’s claim that the lunettes had erroneously “been interpreted for centuries by scholars as chiaroscuri with light and shade distributed so that the figures seem to be emerging from the darkness”, flouted Paolo Giovio’s 1525 testimony that Michelangelo had “used a gradually diminishing light to suggest some figures in the distance, almost hidden…”
Above, Fig. 28: A lunette figure before (left) and after (right) restoration. This was one of three photo-comparisons of the cleaned lunettes published by the sculptor Venanzo Crocetti in the December 1989 Oggi e Domani. That there was much surface disfigurement on the lunettes is not in dispute. Crocetti had seen for himself after years on the scaffolds that the effects of smoke varied by location within the Chapel and that the lunettes had been disproportionately affected because of their position at the junctions between the walls and ceiling. The central question in the restoration generally, as here, is why previously evident artistic features (shadows, folds of drapery and so forth) disappeared along with the dirt through which they had formerly been visible? How, for example, could the left thigh of this figure have been perceived before restoration with a light upper surface and a darker side surface – and why did that tonal distinction disappear?
Above, Fig. 29: An engraved copy of Michelangelo’s Erythraean Sibyl made in the 1570s by Giorgio Ghisi. Here we see that shadows that disappeared in the last cleaning had been recorded within sixty years of the painting and therefore could not have been products of later accretions. It has sometimes been suggested that the testimony of engraved copies is not reliable because engravers exagerated tonal effects. Ghisi produced five other major plates of the prophets and sibyls (and of their surrounding figures). Like his Erythraean Sybil above, all showed a strongly dramatic use of shading that was still to be found in the figures themselves until the restoration. If Ghisi had exaggerated, what had he been exaggerating at a time when soot and restorers’ alleged varnishes had yet to impart their (Mancinelli-attributed) chiaroscuro-esque effects? Had Ghisi and other early copyists like Giulio Clovio collectively anticipated dramatic effects that Time and Accident would bestow centuries later?
Above, Fig. 30: The Erythraean Sibyl before cleaning. Note the many correspondences of lighting and shading between the engraving and the photograph four centuries later. In both, the Sybil’s head casts a shadow onto the architecture. In both, the face’s lit profile is thrown into relief by background shadow. In both, the deeply undercut ‘U’ shaped fold of drapery that runs from the right thigh begins in the light but sinks progressively into a shadow which merges with the shadow that the figure casts onto the architecture.
Above, Figs. 31 and 32. The head of the Erythraean Sibyl before cleaning (left), and after cleaning (right), showing catastrophic losses of modelling and shading. Note here the particulary emphatic and successful use of the tonal convention of relieving light contours against dark grounds, and vice versa, so as to deploy the most sculpturally expressive range of half-tones in between.
Above, Fig. 33: This (rotated) view of the ceiling in which the vertical wall appears in the bottom left corner shows the complicated curved geometries on which Michelangelo’s images were painted and the curious way in which the shadow-casting feet of Jonah and the Libyan Sibyl touch the same piece of curving architectural moulding.
Michelangelo’s task in designing and executing such a complex array of figures in so precise an “architectural” context was immensely difficult. In this respect, it would be less than human not to feel some sympathy for the restorers whose handicaps were compounded by the decision to allow the sponsors (the Nippon Television Corporation) to film the entire operation from the scaffold. In addition to the TV crews, other photography was permitted as part of the restoration’s promotion in the media. In one specialised respect, photographs that catch restorers at work can illuminate restoration proceedures to a degree rarely encountered in offical presentations.
Above, Fig. 34: The Libyan Sibyl during cleaning. This photograph, of a restorer being filmed at close quarters while working on the Libyan Sibyl, was reproduced across two pages of a 1992 book “Michelangelo and the Creation of the Sistine Chapel” by Robin Richmond, a painter who was supportive of the restoration. It shows that the figures were being cleaned first and separately from the backgrounds. A slight overlapping of the cleaning onto the figures’ dark green “relieving” background has introduced a light green halo-effect. The difference between the light green ‘halo’ and the adjacent dark green between the figures indicates the magnitude of the reductions of tonal values that took place in the shaded zones throughout the cleaning. As Crocetti had observed, Michelangelo had used his size or glue painting most of all in these zones. Wilson, testified that he had done so with a finely ground black pigment.
Above, Fig. 35: The Libyan Sibyl during cleaning. Over the years, many excellent photographic records of major restorations have appeared in National Geographic. The December 1989 issue carried an article (“A Renaissance for Michelangelo”) which contained the stunning photograph above by Adam Woolfit (here in greyscale for comparative purposes). This photograph records the cleaning as it approached the draperies over the Libyan Sibyl’s legs. The halo effect seen at Fig. 25 had by then disappeared along with the removal of almost all of the dark green background toning. Only a small rectangle of the former dark paint on the background remained, temporarily attached to the bottom of the Sibyl’s left upper arm. Woolfit eloquently captures the extremely bright artificial television lighting under which the restorers worked, and, most valuably of all, an “in-between” state when the incoherences that emerge in the stripping-down of paintings have yet to receive restorers’ tidying and patching-up with the paint brush (-or, in restoration trade posh, “reintegration”) .
Above, Fig. 36: The Libyan Sibyl as published in 1990.
Above, Fig. 37: The Libyan Sibyl as published in 2010. The transformation during restoration was immense. In 1986 Mancinelli claimed that Michelangelo had used his colours “constantly pure” and that they had served “a primary structural role” enabling him to “abandon almost altogether traditional chiaroscuri modelling”. The following photographs chronicle the swift demise of Michelangelo’s nearly five hundred years old chiaroscuri.
Above (top), Fig. 38, the torso of the Libyan Sibyl, as published in 1904 and, Fig. 39, in 1996. Within the characteristically restoration-compressed range of tones, the boy’s hair, which previously was light and blonde, relieved against a blackish green ground (as seen in Figs. 36 and 38), is now darker than the radically “cleaned” light green background drapery. If we consider the whole figure before cleaning (as at Figs. 17, 33 and 36) we see a consistent and dramatic light falling on it from the left. As well as casting the strong shadow from the right foot, that light illuminated the left side of the sibyl and the right-hand side of the architecture. The sibyl’s head had a lit side and shadowed side and, just like that of the Erythraean Sybil, each side was set off by a tonally contrasted background. Similarly, the brightly lit left arm was strongly relieved by the very dark green drapery, while the shaded right arm was thrown into relief against the light stonework…and so forth. After a cleaning, we would expect Fig. 39 to be like Fig. 38 in its values only more so with lighter lights and darker darks. Instead, while Fig. 39 is now certainly cleaner looking and tidier, by comparison with its former self, it resembles an early state of an etching before the dark tones and blacks have been worked up – rather as may be seen at Figs. 7 and 8.
Above, Fig. 40. The Libyan Sibyl’s head, as published in 1966, before restoration. Note the progressions of tones, and the brilliant highlight at the shoulder.
Above, Fig. 41: The testimony of Woolfit’s 1989 photograph (detail) of the cleaning in progress. We see at this stage of restoration that along with the removal of the glue-based paint on the background green draperies, the formerly clear and precisely established contours of the left upper arm have been disrupted by the emergence of dark patches of sketchy, inconsistent and disconnected outlining. Given that these arbitrary irregularities are not present in either the pre- or the post-cleaning states, we must consider how they arrived and how they were persuaded to depart.
Above, (top) Fig. 42, the Sibyl’s forearm, as seen in 1904. Above, (middle) Fig. 43, the Sibyl’s forearm, as seen during cleaning in 1989. Above, Fig. 44, the Sibyl’s forearm as seen after cleaning and repainting. At Fig. 43, once again, along with the removal of the former dark toning material behind the arm, we see remarkable changes to the tonal modelling of the arm itself and to its previously lucid, now erratic contours. We would claim that such changes cannot be seen as anything other than restoration-induced injuries: 1) It is inconceivable that Michelangelo would ever have been content to leave a limb in such a condition. (Think of the Virgin’s arms in the Doni Tondo.) The massively intrusive overdrawing of the thick bar-like contour of the thumb and forefinger seen after cleaning at Fig. 43 is inexplicable except as preliminary underpainting. (Remember that Crocetti complained of AB 57 having penetrated the frescoes to a depth of half centimetre.) 2) It is inconceivable that Michelangelo would have depicted the left contour of the forearm being ruptured by the intrusion of the edge of the giant book’s cover board that rests on the top of the draped table behind the sibyl, as seen at Fig. 43 (and as such, exclusively by courtesy of Woolfit’s photograph, so far as we know). Such an illogical intersecting relationship might have appealed to Picasso in his analytical cubist phase, but it could hardly have done so to Michelangelo. How, then, did it arise and how did it disappear? Have any accounts been published of the emergence and swift extinguishing of this extraordinary pictorial phenomenon? Has film of the cleaning of this arm been broadcast? 3) Finally, it is of course, inconceivable that had Michelangelo left the forearm drawn and modelled as seen in 1989 at Fig. 43, that subsequent accumulations of soot and glues could have sufficiently remedied his defects of drawing so as to bring the work to the condition seen in 1904 at Fig. 42. Clearly, the restorers themselves did not accept the emerging injuries to the arm to be a fair recovery of some original and authentic condition, because it is apparent from Fig. 44 that steps were taken to paint out some of the more glaringly incongrous defects. But who was the author of the “corrections” to the very defects that the restoration unleashed? Who should be accredited for authorship of the hybrid, revised arm as seen at Fig. 44?
Above, Fig. 45. In December 1989 National Geographic published this beautifully balanced record (here flipped) by Victor R. Boswell, Jr. of the last moments of the Sistine Chapel ceiling as finished by Michelangelo. Springing from the centre top of the not-yet-cleaned Last Judgement we see Jonah around whom congregate, in the last section of the ceiling that Michelangelo painted, some of the artist’s most miraculously inventive figures set in their fictive temple-in-the-sky. For a little longer this section retained the majesty and mystery of the infinite space and dark depths that had survived for nearly half a millennium.
February 1, 2013 | Categories: blog | Tags: AB 57, Alexander Eliot, Anderson photographs, Antonio Paolucci, Art Restoration The Culture, Ascanio Condivi, B 72, Barium Hydroxide, Carlo Pietrangeli, Carrier-Delchi, Charles Heath Wilson, Christoph Frommel, Conservation Ethics, Conservation science, EDTA, Fabrizio Mancinelli, Gianluigi Colalucci, Giorgio Vasari, Istituto Centrale de Restauro, J A Rivington, jane winslow eliot, Kathleen Weil Garris Brandt, Laura Mora, M Kirby Talley Jr., Mauro Pelliccioli, Michael Daley, Michelangelo's Erythraean Sibyl, Michelangelo's l'ultima mano, Michelangelo's Libyan Sibyl, Michelangelo's Moses, Mirella Simonetti, Nazzereno Gabrielli, Nicholas Penny, Nippon Television Corporation, Paolo Mora, Prof Camuffo, Prof. James Beck, Robin Richmond, Synthetic Resins, The New Michelangelo, The Sistine Chapel, The Sistine Chapel Ceiling, The Sistine Chapel restoration, The Vatican Museums, The Wethersfield Conference, Toti Scialogia, Venanzo Crocetti, Walter Persegati | Leave A Comment »
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The Aboriginal tribe or language group areas located around Canberra and the ACT. [00-360]
Colour relief map of Afghanistan showing provincial borders and names, disputed boundaries, major roads and rivers. [05-026]
Country: Afghanistan
Afghanistan & Pakistan
Afghanistan, highlighting the provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Oruzgan and Paktia and it's proximity to Pakistan, along with a selection of main towns. [00-355]
Country: Afghanistan , Pakistan
Afghanistan - Provinces
Updated colour map of the provinces of Afghanistan - 2018. [18-275a]
Arnhem Land and the surrounding National Parks and Sanctuaries along with main roads, rivers and towns. [00-261]
Arnhem Land and Kakadu National Park showing main roads, rivers, selected place names and elevation. [09-047c]
Arnhem Land Plateau
The western area of Arnhem Land showing the Arnhem Land Plateau, Kakadu National Park, Alligator Rivers Region and aboriginal languages of the area. [00-162]
Ashmore Reef
Map of Ashmore Reef including the three islets. [06-001a]
Australia showing state borders, elevation, lakes and major rivers. [10-025a]
Australia in colour showing state borders, elevation, main deserts, lakes and rivers. [09-074]
Australian Territories
Eight of the ten Australian Federal Territories - The Australian Capital Territory (ACT), the Northern Territory and Jervis Bay are all mainland territories; Ashmore and Cartiers Islands, Norfolk Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas Island and Co
Aust_basins_MurrayDarling
Major Southern Australian basin and blocks (cratons) highlighting the Murray-Darling basin. [00-147]
Climate Zones of Australia and the location of Barrow Island in relation to the Sahul Shelf.
Bonaparte Archipelago and nearby islands and reefs.
Islands and reefs off the northwest coast of Australia, north of Broome and Derby. [00-370]
The territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, a territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean. [00-138]
Costa Rica - Oil Palm Districts
The location of the main oil palm districts in Costa Rica, Central America - 2010. [10-008]
Country: Costa Rica
Colour elevation map of the DRC showing main rivers, rail lines and a selection of cities. [00-187]
Country: Democratic Republic of the Congo
Derby Coast, Northwest Australia
Western Australia coast from Derby, King Sound north to Bonaparte Archipelago. [06-026]
East Maui, Hawaii
East Maui, Hawaii, with relief and roads and 2007 National Park boundaries. [07-046]
East Maui, Hawaii, with relief and roads, 1935 and 2010 National Park boundary. [10-177a]
Fishing areas off King Sound, WA.
Australian Fisheries Surveillance Enforcement Line showing the area from Ashmore Reef to Scott Reef where traditional Indonesian fishermen are permitted to fish.
Country: Australia , Indonesia
The location of King Island and the Furneaux Group off the northeast tip of Tasmania with an inset showing the islands of the Furneaux Group.
Furneaux Group, Bass Strait
The islands of the Furneaux Group, eastern Bass Strait which includes Flinders Island, Cape Barren Island and Clarke Island.
Hawaii's main islands and towns.
Hawaii's islands, reefs and shoals.
Hawaii - main islands
Hawaii's main islands and towns (old).
Hawaii base
Main islands of Hawaii - 2012. PNG versions of the base map can be downloaded with or without elevation shading.
Hawaii Island - Big Island
Hawaii Island - "Big Island" - with relief, roads, places and National Park boundaries.
Hawaii's largest islands
The Hawaiian islands with enlargements of the islands of Moloka'i, Kaua'i, Maui, O'ahu and Hawai'i.
Himalayan rivers
Rivers of the Western Himalayan Mountains originating in Tajikistan, Northeast Afghanistan, Northern Pakistan and India.
Country: Afghanistan , India , Pakistan , Tajikistan
Japan - Australia coast showing major locations in both countries.
Country: Australia , Japan
Elevation map of Kakadu National Park showing the park boundary, floodplain (to 10m contour), neighbouring Arnhem Land and the western extent of the Arnhem Land Plateau.
Kakadu National Park location
Colour relief map showing the position of Kakadu National Park and a selection of NT locations.
Australia's third-largest island, just off the coast of South Australia, showing main conservation parks, wilderness protection areas and settlements.
Lake Eyre Basin
Location of the Lake Eyre Basin and the Great Artesian Basin in South Australia, Northern Territory, Queensland and New South Wales.
Languages of Northern WA and NT
Aboriginal languages centred around the Ord River area of northwest Western Australia and northeast Northern Territory.
Macdonnell Ranges, Northern Territory
Colour relief map of the Northern Territory showing mountains and locations within the Macdonnell Ranges.
Marshall Islands base
Marshall Islands showing island names and capital city - 2012.
Country: Marshall Islands
Maui, Hawaii, 1935
The island of Maui, Hawaii, with relief, roads and places, and Haleakala National Park boundary.
Maui, Hawaii, with relief, roads and places, and Haleakala National Park boundary
Murray Island Protection Zone
Juristriction and protected zone areas covering the Torres Strait area of the Murray Islands.
New Guinea Island
The island of New Guinea with selected features and towns showing its proximity to Australia's top end.
Country: Australia , Indonesia , Papua New Guinea
Norfolk Island, one of Australia's oldest territories, showing the historic areas of Kingston and Arthur's Vale (World Heritage listed 2010) and the islands Reserves and National Parks.
North-west Shelf bathymetry
Bathymetric contours of the Northwest shelf of Australia.
Northeast Arnhem Land
The Northeast corner of the Northern Territory - Northeast Arnhem Land.
Northeast NSW
Colour elevation map of the northeast NSW/southern Queensland border area.
Northwest Australia
Islands and reefs off the northwest coast of Australia.
Country: Australia , Timor-Leste
Red Sea area
Colour relief map of the northern Red Sea area.
Region: Asia, Africa
Country: Egypt , Israel , Jordan , Saudi Arabia
Roper River
The eastern section of the Roper River which forms the southern boundary of Arnhem Land, from Elsey to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Sea levels BP between Australia and New Guinea.
Sea levels BP (before present) from northern Australia and the island of New Guinea.
Seabed boundaries off the northwest coast of Australia.
Seabed boundaries, IEEZ's and AEEZ's between Australia and Indonesia and East Timor (2006).
Country: Australia , Indonesia , Timor-Leste
Shipping Activities
Australia & New Zealand shipping activities including major sea routes, cargo movements and annual ship visits to ports.
Country: Australia , New Zealand
Southern Angola
Colour relief map of Southern Angola from Namibe to the border with Zambia showing the river systems and main roads.
Country: Angola
Sydney Electoral Divisions
Sydney and surrounds showing electoral divisions and boundaries, national parks, major river, road and rail lines.
Basins and sub-basins of the waters surrounding Tasmania, including the 2000m contour.
The ACT and Region
The ACT and surrounding shires of NSW showing towns, roads, lakes and reservoirs.
The Murray-Darling Basin
The Murray Basin and Darling Basin areas.
Colour map of the Torres Strait Islands from the tip of Cape York to the border with Papua New Guinea.
Torres Strait base
Torres Strait with reefs and island names - 2012.
Torres Strait Cultural Complex
Torres Strait Dialects
Western and Eastern language groups of the Torres Strait with island names in the native language.
Torres Strait language groups
Language groups of the Torres Strait Islands and southern Papua New Guinea.
Torres Strait Reefs
Colour map of the reefs and islands of the Torres Strait.
Vanderlin Island, Gulf of Carpentaria
Vanderlin Island, the largest of the Sir Edward Pellew group of islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Wotho Atoll
Wotho Atoll, part of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands.
Australia (46) −
Costa Rica (2) −
Marshall Islands (2) −
United States (10) −
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Brian Reed: Head Halo Writer
Author Topic: Brian Reed: Head Halo Writer (Read 3123 times)
https://twitter.com/BrianReed
So... yup. This just happened.
Man, it's a shame Halo ended after Reach! I would've like to see where that story was going!
I'm not sure whether I'll get a PS4 or a WiiU. You guys?
Re: Brian Reed: Head Halo Writer
Quote from: craZboy557 on December 09, 2013, 10:37:59 PM
I couldn't find a whole lot on the guy other than he used to be a comic writer. Is he like the Mac Walters of the comic industry or something?
On the subject of new hires, 343 also acquired Tim Longo from Crystal Dynamics, who made the Tomb Raider reboot. Too bad he wasn't around prior to Halo 4's launch as I'm sure he would have brought Cortana's bust size down to a more "reasonable" size
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-12-09-tomb-raider-creative-director-joins-343-industries
I was thinking of getting a PS2 slim version myself. I have a strong desire to replay games like Spy Hunter, Dino Crisis 1-2, Resident Evil 1-3, Einhander... the list keeps growing. Retro gaming ftw!
I got a Wii U. Wind Waker HD ftw.
He's always been the franchise writer. I dunno if he actually went a job change or its just semantics.
It can't be a difficult job.
Humani-bros are best. Aliens are ugly terrorist monsters. Geneva Convention is for pansies. After a war its more important to make new armor variants and claim alien artifacts than build houses.
Semi-relevant bits from GAF:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=93255304&postcount=1478
And a thought that I think applies to Spartan Ops as well and Halo in general, going forward.
The problems with Halo 4's writing were twofold, in a general sense; one, they didn't say enough in regards to the Didact's motives in the game.
The second is that less is more, and a lot of scenes would have played out much nicer had they straight-up cut some dialogue. Cody Miller at HBO posted an edited cutscene from the end of Midnight where they lose Chief's "she told me that once" line to himself, and the scene plays so much better and has a greater sense of subtlety. Cortana stroking the Chief isn't really weird if you know the backstory, and it's not really played that sexually... except Cortana says "I've always wanted to do that", and it pushes it over the edge into weird and creepy for me. A line here and there would have made an inordinate amount of impact on improving the style of Halo 4's storytelling.
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Privacy Policy | UKuni
This policy and the terms of use of our website sets out the way in which the personal data that you provide to us and that we collect from you will be processed by us.
Privacy policy definitions with reference to the Data Protection Act 1998:
万博体育首页“Website” is aichangpei.com
"Data Controller" is UKuni, a brand of OSSC Ltd a company registered in the UK.
"Personal Information" is any information about you.
万博体育首页"Application Centre" are the pages of the website that enable the applicant to make an application to a UK education institution.
"Declaration" is the declaration which you will accept if you choose to submit your application through the UKuni Application Centre.
1 Information which we collect about you
a) We may collect and process the following information about you:
万博体育首页Cookies stored on your device about your use of UKuni and/or selected third party websites.
Your IP address, this is a number that identifies a specific network device on the internet and is required for your device to communicate with websites.
万博体育首页Your operating system and browser type.
万博体育首页Information which you provide to us from any of the input areas within the website.
万博体育首页Information which you provide to us by any other means, including but not limited to correspondence by phone or email.
2 How we use your personal information
a) We use personal information held about you in the following ways:
万博体育首页to contact you with regard to information related to the UKuni website that we believe may be of interest to you.
万博体育首页to provide you with services; for example newsletters or news alerts.
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a) Please note that our advertisers may use cookies that are not under the direct control of UKuni
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Logistics Parks
MidState Hayes Buildings #2 and #3 Now Fully Occupied
VISALIA, Calif., Jan 22, 2007 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The Allen Group, a major developer of industrial and office properties across the United States, today announced that it has leased space in the MidState Hayes Building #2 to WorkflowOne, a leading provider of document and business process outsourcing services. The 10-year lease covers 118,000 square feet of warehousing and distribution space at the MidState 99 DistributionCenteron the northwest corner of Plaza Drive and Ferguson Avenue in Visalia, Calif.
“The new business service center in Visalia will help WorkflowOne offer improved services to our West Coast customers,” said Douglas Burnham, Senior Director of Distribution Services. “In addition to increased inventory capacity, it enables us to provide one-day shipping to virtually all of California.” WorkflowOne offers a wide variety of print and promotional products, as well as fulfillment and distribution services, to organizations of all sizes across the United States.
The MidState 99 Distribution Center is strategically located in the heart of Calif. With direct access to Highway 99, the state’s major trucking corridor, companies located at MidState 99 have the distinct advantage of being able to access both northern and southern California.
“MidState 99 is unlike any other distribution and manufacturing site in the state,” said Harve Filuk, Vice President of Development, California, The Allen Group.
“Companies located at MidState 99 tactically benefit from the ability to efficiently serve 98 percent of California overnight via next-day UPS Ground service, which is nearly impossible from other distribution site locations.”
The tenant signing of WorkflowOne will result in MidState Hayes Buildings #2 and #3 being 100 percent occupied. Filuk notes that the Company is already in the planning stages for the next speculative buildings at MidState Business Park, with hopes to begin construction this summer.
For more information on MidState 99 or The AllenGroup, log on to www.allengroup.com .
Editor’s note: A high resolution photo of the MidState 99Distribution Center is available upon request.
About The Allen Group
The Allen Group is a commercial development firm specializing in rail-served industrial parks and build-tosuit facilities, including Class A office buildings. The Company currently has 8,000 acres under development across the United States, with commercial properties ranging in size from 35,000 square feet to 1.7 million square feet, as well as four master-planned industrial parks. These projects include the International Trade andTransportation Center ( www.ittc.com ); MidState 99Distribution Center ( www.midstate99.com ); the DallasLogistics Hub ( www.dallashub.com ), and recently announced, a new BNSF Intermodal logistics hub near Kansas City.
The Allen Group, based in San Diego with regional offices in Visalia and Bakersfield, Calif., as well as Dallas, Texas, is trusted by Fortune 500 companies such as VF Corporation, Cox Communications, FedEx, International Paper Company, Intuit, Kraft Foods and Wal-Mart Stores. For more information about The AllenGroup, please visit www.allengroup.com .
Read Pdf >>
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PSU Men’s Basketball tops Framingham State
Framingham State
Plymouth State (3-0) 30 27 57
Framingham State (1-3) 22 28 50
Pts: Curtis Arsenault - 16
Reb: Nathan Clarke - 10
Ast: Nathan Clarke - 3
Pts: Bertholyn Alexandre - 15
Reb: Bertholyn Alexandre - 7
Ast: Timothy McCarthy - 4
Panthers' strong interior play leads to another win
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. – Plymouth State University improved to 3-0 after getting past Framingham State University, 57-50, in men's basketball action Thursday night. With the win the Panthers are off to the best three game start since the 2006-2007 season, when PSU opened the year 4-0.
Junior Curtis Arsenault (Berlin, N.H.) led all scorers with 16 points, while classmate Jack Preston (Nashua, N.H.) added 14 points and six rebounds. Senior Uche Nwokeji (Lynn, Mass.) contributed 11 points and six rebounds, as sophomore Brian Boulay (Keene, N.H.) had eight points. Senior guard Nathan Clarke (Reading, Mass.) put in a complete effort, stuffing the box score with four points, two steals, three assists and a game-high 10 rebounds.
Sophomore Tony Alexandre (Hyde Park, Mass.) led the Rams (1-3) with 15 points (7-of-9 shooting) and seven rebounds, as senior Jacek Louisville (Worcester, Mass.) contributed 13 points.
The Rams jumped out to a 9-2 lead early in the first half, but the Panthers used a 14-2 run, capped by a three in transition from Arsenault, to take a 16-11 lead. Plymouth State pushed the lead to as many as nine, 24-15, on a steal and layup from Clarke, before taking a 30-22 lead into halftime.
Framingham State opened the second half with a 5-0 spurt, fueled by a bucket in the paint from Alexandre to pull within three, 30-27, but the Panthers responded with a 10-2 run of their own, highlighted by a reverse lay-in from Preston and another three from Arsenault, pushing the lead to 40-29 with 13:15 left to play.
Arsenault and Boulay both hit a pair of free throws, giving PSU its largest lead, 49-35, with 5:11 remaining. Framingham State made things interesting, using a 13-5 run to close within six, 54-48, with 50 seconds to go behind a pair of three-pointers from junior Daniel Gould (Quincy, Mass.) and a layup from Alexandre. Clarke hit one-of-two from the line, followed by a pair of free throws by Boulay, to wrap up PSU's third straight win.
Plymouth State shot a solid 46% from the floor (20-of-44), while holding the Rams to 40% shooting (17-of-43). The Panthers owned the glass, outrebounding FSU 38-25.
Plymouth State opens Little East Conference play Saturday at UMass Dartmouth (3:00 p.m.). The Panthers will look to avenge last season's 88-87 overtime loss on a buzzer-beating jumper at the Tripp Athletic Center. The Rams will host Trinity College Tuesday night (6:00 p.m.).
(With contributions from Framingham State University Sports Information)
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A Funeral in Bath
Vintage Lorry Funerals first funeral in Bath was an emotional send off for a well respected man and over 600 people attended, which is documented in the Blog September 2017. Unbeknown to David, his second funeral in Bath would attract a similar sized crowd at Haycombe Crematorium.
The second funeral in Bath was for the largest Funeral Director in the City and often when visiting Bath with his wife, David would contemplate how he would manage the logistics if he was ever asked to undertake a funeral from their small yard.
David took a phone call from a Funeral Arranger who he had known from her days working in Bristol. Kim was excellent in providing the details of the funeral, including the timings and the Family’s decision that there would be no flowers. Kim advised that the vintage lorry needed to be with them by 1330 hours, however, she provided no information on why the Deceased’s Family had chosen the vintage lorry.
The 1950 Leyland Beaver is based in a garage behind David’s home, however, the street which leads to the main road can become gridlocked with cars being deposited at inappropriate places by people needing to catch a train to Bath. Obstructive Parking has prevented Emergency Vehicles getting up the street and on one occasion an elderly lady fell at home, broke her hip, and the Ambulance couldn’t get near her house. Sadly the lady had to be carried down the street and this event led to David galvanising the neighbours to demand Double Yellow Lines. The concept has been approved, however, it takes time for action to take place so, until Double Yellow Lines are installed, David will leave the street before 0730 hours.
David was left with a conundrum, where to park the vintage lorry in Bath, a historic city with Roman Baths and elegant Georgian properties but with limited parking opportunities for any vehicle larger than a car. David spoke to the Bath Spa Hotel, one of the most prestigious hostelries in the city, frequented by famous clientele such as Joan Collins. To David’s surprise the Receptionist was most friendly and offered parking for the vintage lorry whilst David could have his morning coffee, however, she omitted to mention the £15 parking fee.
The solution involved David contacting Paul Dallenty, a Funeral Director based in Twerton, the less affluent part of the city. Paul gave David his first funeral in Bath and was delighted to help, highlighting the opportunity to park in the Bath City Football Club car park or else in front of his shop. David opted for the second suggestion as he saw a way to promote potential future business for both Paul and himself.
David arrived in the Leyland Beaver at 0730 hours only to find that a Double Decker Bus had parked in the space in front of Paul Dallenty’s shop. The Bus was waiting for School Children and the Bus Driver was very interested in the vintage lorry, taking pictures with his tablet. Then some of the children got off the Bus and took pictures with their cameras.
Sue Hart, of Paul Dallenty Funerals, was extremely kind and held up the traffic whilst David turned the vintage lorry in the street. She then parked her car to prevent anyone leaving a car in front of the lorry which would have created a difficulty for the lorry to leave later in the day. Sue then invited David to sit in the Dallenty Office where he wrote his next blog by the heat of the 3 bar electric fire. The warmth of Sue’s hospitality and the warmth of the office were most welcome on this bitterly cold February day.
David left Twerton at 1315 hours and proceeded to the Funeral Director where he was scheduled to collect the coffin. There were no flowers for the funeral, so David decided to arrive only 30 minutes before the cortege was due to depart, because it wasn’t possible to get into the yard due to the volume of parked cars. The only place available was very close to the Funeral Directors wall and then to encourage those drivers wanting to pass, to mount the kerb.
A number of people walked past and commented how clean the lorry looked and how fitting it was for someone’s final journey. Whilst a Mother was talking to David, her Daughter used her mobile phone to load up the Vintage Lorry Funerals website and asked David about the most interesting Themes he had created. David described some Themes that were related to TV shows, like a 1950’s TV Set with The Lone Ranger & Tonto on the screen or his working model of Del Boy falling through the bar from Only Fools & Horses.
As this was the hub of the Funeral Directors operation, there were a number of coffins in the despatch area and David asked which was the one that he was about to load. Approaching the coffin indicated, David became alarmed that someone had left some old rags on top of the coffin and he admonished the staff for not treating the coffin with respect. One of the Funeral Director’s Staff started to chuckle saying, ‘that ain’t rubbish Dave, that’s to go with the coffin, the Deceased was a Painter & Decorator.’
As the Leyland Beaver descended the hill down to the crematorium it became evident that Deceased was a much loved and well respected man, because over 400 mourners were outside the chapel. David gave the Family Bearers instructions how to receive the coffin and as the Deceased was being raised onto their shoulders the ‘Only Fools & Horses’ Theme tune played, much to the delight of most people in the crowd. Although David appeared calm, he was raging inside because had he known more about the Deceased he could have created his ‘Only Fools & Horse’ Theme with the working model, of the counter being lifted, Del Boy falling through the bar and then springing back up again. Two of the Deceased’s Workmates declined to go into the service and decided to talk to David about his lorry. They understood David’s disappointment at not having any contact with the Family.
The men confirmed that the Deceased’s Family would have loved to see Del Boy falling through the bar and that the extra £150 would not have been a problem, they said they would have paid £75 each to see what David had described. David shook his head and said, ‘I have a limited number of skills but being a clairvoyant isn’t one of them, and if a Funeral Director doesn’t give me access to the Family how was I supposed to know that the Deceased liked Del Boy. I hate to leave a crematorium knowing that I could have done more for a Family.’
One of the men then asked, ‘Have you ever had a whole family on your lorry, you know two coffins together and then another one or two rows.’ David looked at the man and said, ‘Do you mean loading coffins side by side?’ The man nodded and David turned to the Funeral Director who had conducted the funeral and asked, ‘Why is it that a member of the public can visualise coffins side by side but people in the funeral industry can’t? David went on, ‘It is because when there are multiple bodies for a funeral a Funeral Directors eyes light up, as more coffins mean more hearses.’
The Funeral Director said that wouldn’t happen in his company, however, he accepted that David’s comments would apply to most Funeral Directors.
Posted by David Hall at 03:52
I had my first ride in a 1950 Leyland Beaver when I was 5, in 1958. It is an honour and a privilege to take a Loved One on their final journey using my Leyland Beaver. When I'm travelling around the UK some amazing things happen and often facts may appear stranger than fiction, as you will see in these articles.
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